Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi peace activist who lives in the United States, was forced to change his T-Shirt, which bore an Arabic slogan, because it was found “offensive”.

The incident took place in JFK airport in New York. The activist Jarrar reported in his blog RaedInTheMiddle that he had checked-in his bags and was issued a boarding pass. After waiting near the gate to board his jetBlue airlines flight, and after having to gone through a secondary search, two officials approached him.

“People are feeling offended because of your t-shirt,” Raed reported that one of the men said to him. The writings on the T-Shirt said in both Arabic and English: “We will not be silent”.

Raed asked why this has offended anyone, and insisted his right to freedom of expression was violated.

According to Jarrar, one of the inspectors said, “You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank”. The airport official, unable to read Arabic, was unyielding to protests by Jarrar that the English language version of the Arabic was accurate, and suggested he wear the shirt inside out.

“Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and customers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area”, Jarrar was told after he complained.

One employee from JetBlue offered to buy Jarrar a T-shirt to replace the one he was wearing, since the activist had none other after his bags were checked. Refusing at first, he agreed to wear one with “New York” written on it.

The officer on the scene commented that it need not have gone from one extreme to the other: wearing a T-Shirt with an Arabic peace slogan on it, to wearing one with ‘New York’. There is no reason to hate New York if you are an Arab speaking peace activist, according to Jarrar.

“I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the U.S. was that I don’t want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon,” Raed said.

He was issued another boarding pass, with a different seat at the back of the plane.

JetBlue said it was investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: “We’re not clear exactly what happened.” The spokeswoman also said the airline does not forbid Arabic T-shirts, but that it does take into account the concerns of its passengers.

The American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee said the US Transportation Department and the Transportation Security Administration were also investigating the incident after the committee lodged complaints on behalf of Jarrar.

“We Will Not Be Silent” is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.

It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

The Norwegian Dawn, a 965-foot-long luxury vessel, was struck by “a freak wave that caused two windows to break in two different cabins,” the owners, Norwegian Cruise Line, said in a statement. It changed course, docking in Charleston late Saturday afternoon instead of completing its planned travel to New York.

The wave, estimated at 7-stories-high, flooded 62 cabins and injured 4 passengers with cuts and bruises. Company spokeswoman Susan Robison said the wave reached to deck 10.

The hull was damaged but the vessel was not in any trouble, according to the Coast Guard, and the safety of the ship “was in no way compromised by this incident.” Passengers were told to don their flotation jackets anyway.

The ship left New York last Sunday on a week-long round-trip cruise to and from the Bahamas.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Argentina’s football captain Lionel Messi spoke of retirement from international football after losing 4–2 to Chile in the penalty decider in Copa América Centenario final on Sunday. Since then, many players including his present FC Barcelona teammate Luis Suárez, former teammates David Villa and Ronaldinho, former Argentina captain Diego Maradona, and Argentine president Mauricio Macri have expressed disappointment, some urging him to stay.

Messi missed the penalty kick after Chilean Autero Vidal’s spot kick was stopped by Sergio Romero as the match progressed to a penalty shootout. Javier Mascherano and Sergio Agüero scored their spot kicks for Argentina, but after Lucas Biglia’s penalty was saved by Claudio Bravo, Francisco Silva scored the winning penalty for Chile.

Messi was crying after the match, and later told news reporters, “In the dressing room I thought that this is the end for me with the national team, it’s not for me” ^{((es)) Spanish language: En el vestuario pensé que se terminó para mí la Selección, no es para mí} . He added, “I tried so hard to be champion with Argentina. Now I am leaving without having managed it” ^{((es)) Spanish language: Ya lo intenté mucho, ser campeón con Argentina. No se dio, no lo pude conseguir} .

Today, Suárez speaking to Radio Tenfield said, “Knowing Leo, I’m sure it was said in a moment of sadness and helplessness. It would be a shame for football if he took this decision, but I’m sure he will reconsider and change his mind.”

Yesterday, president Mauricio Macri and Maradona urged him to think about his decision.

Messi’s former teammate David Villa said, “It’s very bad news for soccer. Messi is the best player in the world. […] I don’t know what happened in his mind[…] I know he’s strong, a professional player, he’s sure now disappointed because he lost one more final in penalty kicks again.”

Ronaldinho, former Brazilian player and ex-Barcelona player, told America TV he respects Messi’s opinion and he would be always with him.

Five time World Player of the Year Messi has lost four finals on the international stage, of which three defeats came in the last three years — 2014 FIFA World Cup loss to Germany, last year’s loss to Chile, and this year’s.

Sergio Agüero told Argentine newspaper Olé other players were also deciding weather to hang up their boots.

Messi played for Argentina when they won the 2008 Beijing Olympics gold medal.

Friday, September 24, 2010

A researcher at the University of Oxford has found a saucy poem attributed to John Milton, the 17th-century poet who wrote Paradise Lost and other religious verse. “An Extempore Upon a Faggot”, discovered in an 18th-century anthology of poetry, is not thought by modern scholars to be by Milton, however, and may in fact have been written by one of his rivals in an attempt to disgrace him.

The poem was found by Dr Jennifer Batt, who said that it “is so out of tune with the rest of his work, that if the attribution is correct, it would prompt a major revision of our ideas about Milton.” She discovered the rude verse in the Harding Collection of poetry anthologies held by the Bodleian Library, the main university library at Oxford. “To see the name of John Milton, the great religious and political polemicist, attached to such a bawdy epigram, is extremely surprising to say the least”, she added.

The book in question, the Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany from 1708 (over 30 years after Milton’s death), was described by another Oxford academic, Dr Abigail Williams, as “a set of poems written by witty young men about town for witty young men about town”. Milton wrote in blank verse rather than using rhyme and used differing poetic rhythms, whereas the handwritten poem uses a simple pattern of rhyming couplets as it contrasts the sexual behaviour of young women and more experienced women by comparing them to green wood and dry wood upon a fire.

Milton (1608–1674) wrote many influential religious poems, including Paradise Lost, which is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as “widely and rightly regarded as the supreme poetic achievement in the English language, fit to sit alongside the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Dante.” It tells the story of the fall from grace of Adam and Eve in an epic theological poem. He followed it with Paradise Regained, depicting the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.

Bawdy poetry is not thought by modern academics to be in keeping with Milton’s style, with Batt suggesting that it is likely that his name was added to the poem “to bring scandal upon [him], perhaps by a jealous contemporary.” She suggests that the culprit might have been Sir John Suckling, a poet who was a supporter of the monarchy, in contrast to the Republican Milton.

The University of Oxford is currently digitising the songbooks and anthologies of the Harding Collection, said to be the world’s largest such collection, as part of a project to allow online access. It is named after Walter Harding, a British musician who collected music and poetry in Chicago. The poem had been read before, but without anyone noticing Milton’s name at the bottom. Dr Williams, the project’s leader, expressed her doubts as to the authenticity of the attribution, commenting that “[y]ou could become very rich and famous – well, famous, anyway – if you could prove the rhyme was really by Milton. I am pretty certain it is not.”

Monday, July 4, 2016

On Friday, Neymar Jr agreed to a five-year contract extension with FC Barcelona, Zlatan Ibrahimovi? to a one-year contract with Manchester United F.C. as a free agent, and Nolito joined Manchester City F.C. from Celta de Vigo for a four-year term.

[edit]

Monday, July 4, 2016

On Friday, Neymar Jr agreed to a five-year contract extension with FC Barcelona, Zlatan Ibrahimovi? to a one-year contract with Manchester United F.C. as a free agent, and Nolito joined Manchester City F.C. from Celta de Vigo for a four-year term.

[edit]

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Actor Nicolas Cage was seen around various Washington, D.C.-area monuments this week by Wikinews contributor Patrick Mannion, filming the sequel to 2004’s National Treasure. He was seen on March 28 outside on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, sitting in his chair talking with a director. Cage has also been seen in the company of costars from the earlier film. The Memorial was closed to the public by police and park rangers while filming took place.

The sequel to the 2004 film, entitled National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, is currently filming through April 16. In addition to the Lincoln Memorial, crews were also spotted along the Capitol’s small Reflecting Pool, outside the White House, and in Layfette Square.

The District of Columbia hopes to see a large economic return on the film by granting the long-term filming rights and a financial incentive to keep filming in Washington on-location, instead of doing principal photography and then moving to another city where production costs are cheaper.