"Twenty-one writers, including five Nobel prize winners, have produced an anthology to raise money for a charity helping those with Aids and HIV in southern Africa.
Telling Tales, a collection of short stories by Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Sontag, Woody Allen, John Updike and 15 others, will be launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York by Kofi Annan tomorrow, before World Aids Day"
(Guardian, London)
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"They teach us to do dead-checking when we're clearing rooms," an enlisted Marine recently returned from Iraq told me. "You put two bullets into the guy's chest and one in the brain. But when you enter a room where guys are wounded you might not know if they're alive or dead. So they teach us to dead-check them by pressing them in the eye with your boot, because generally a person, even if he's faking being dead, will flinch if you poke him there. If he moves, you put a bullet in the brain. You do this to keep the momentum going when you're flowing through a building. You don't want a guy popping up behind you and shooting you."
(The Village Voice, NY)
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Ratio of the minimum number of beheadings by the Saudi government last year to those by Saudi terrorists so far this year : 50:1
Rank of this year’s desert-locust plague in northern Africa among the world’s worst in 15 years : 1 [U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
Projected lifespan in years of a Zimbabwean born in 1989 and one born in 2002, respectively : 60, 34 [U.N. Human Development Report Office
Number of Ohio election boards being sued over erroneously informing parolees that they may not vote : 21
(From the Harpers Index)
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For those of you who make weekend flights outta here:
"Lebanon's annual European Film Festival opened at Beirut's Unesco Palace Thursday night...The 11th outing for the festival, which runs until Dec. 5, features 27 films, including works from new European Union member states Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Cyprus."
(Daily Star, Beirut)
"The first Dubai International Film Festival [DIFF] is being organized by the Dubai Media City and will start on Monday December 6th and end on the evening of Saturday December 11th 2004. The festival will feature 80 films, which include 55 main features, 10 sidebar screenings and 15 Arab short films, which will showcase contemporary and classic global cinema. The main venue of the Dubai Film Festival will be the new Madinat Jumeirah, The Arabian Resort of Dubai, but other screenings will take place at various venues and cinemas around Dubai, United Arab Emirates" (DIFF)
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"The UAE will allow establishment of human rights organisations by any group as stipulated by the country's law which caters to freedom and respect of people's rights, a senior official at the Ministry of Interior said yesterday" (Kuwait Times)
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4 comments:
My birthday is on the same day as World Aids Day. I always wished I would be in a game show and reach the million dollar question, and the question would be: What is the date of the World Aids Day?
but alas, it never happens :(
Now doesn't that sound like fun? I wish we had that in Kuwait, film festival with independent indie movies being shown in foreign languages.
Is Salman Rushdie the guy whose wanted "ima7ilileem Dama" (meaning it's okay to kill him) for writing books about black magic? peculiar o.O
Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses" which was led to a condemnation of death from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989..He won the Whitbread award for the book the year before..he played with imagery and characters from Islam in an unconventional way, and it was seen as insulting..The title of the book refers to the story that the Prophet Muhammad spoke verses that allowed the intercession of the pagan godesses allat al-uzza and manat..the verses were then revoked..so the title itself is also objectionable because of what it alludes to..the fatwa against him was revoked in 1998..
Right, well thanks for explaining :)
Oh and apparently there are "indie-type film festivals" in Kuwait but I just never heard of them 'cuz they're too underground. They don't get much coverage and such.
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