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World News; News from around the world
Tweet Topic Started: May 4 2008, 04:19 PM (2,749 Views)
Auntie Maine May 4 2008, 04:19 PM Post #1
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We have a weird news section and a celebrity section so why not on what is happening worldwide today.I read the following article and was shocked.I had no idea that people like them,AKA "more money than Allah people" and they had never been exposed to classical music.That is one scary ass country/kingdom.


A first for Saudis: Mozart performed publicly and women come

By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer Sat May 3, 2:09 PM ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It's probably as revolutionary and groundbreaking as Mozart gets these days. A German-based quartet staged Saudi Arabia's first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed gender audience.
The concert, held at a government-run cultural center, broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets.
The Friday night performance could be yet another indication that this strict Muslim kingdom is looking to open up to the rest of the world.
A few weeks ago, King Abdullah made an unprecedented call for interfaith dialogue with Christians and Jews — the first such proposal from a nation that forbids non-Muslim religious services and symbols.
"The concert is a sign that things are changing rapidly here," said German Ambassador Juergen Krieghoff, whose embassy sponsored the concert as part of the first-ever German Cultural Weeks in Saudi Arabia.
"Evidently the government has decided that a minimum of openness in our new world economy and in our information-based world is necessary for us and also for good understanding among cultures," he added.
Public concerts are practically unheard of in the kingdom. Foreign embassies and consulates regularly bring musical groups, but they perform on embassy grounds or in expatriates' residential compounds, and the shows are not open to the public.
In the past couple of months, however, there has been a quiet, yet marked increase in cultural activities in Saudi Arabia. Lectures and a couple of segregated folk music performances were held on the sidelines of Riyadh's book fair. And Jiddah's annual Economic Forum opened with a surprise this February — a performance of Arab and Western music.
"For half an hour, we did not quite know whether we had stumbled into an unknown Jiddah nightclub or whether it was some amazing mistake that would suddenly stop," wrote Michel Cousins in the English-language daily Arab News, describing the 30-minute show.
Friday's concert of works by works by Mozart, Brahms and Paul Juon was the first classical performance held in public in Saudi Arabia, said German press attache Georg Klussmann. It was advertised on the embassy's Web site with free tickets that could be downloaded and printed.
The excitement in the 500-seat hall was palpable as the largely expatriate audience walked in.
"We have not done a concert like this before," German diplomat Tobias Krause told the audience at the start of performance by the Artis Piano Quartet. Those gathered applauded enthusiastically after each piece and were treated to an encore.
Sebastian Bischoff, the German cultural attache, said the mission had received permission for the event from the Ministry of Information and Culture, which runs the King Fahd Cultural Center where the concert took place.
Japanese pianist Hiroko Atsumi, the quartet's only woman, said there was some debate before the concert about whether she should perform in an abaya, the enveloping black cloak all women must wear in public. She ended up settling on a long green top and black trousers.
Among the first to arrive was Faiza al-Khayyal, a retired Saudi educator, with her 15-year-old daughter.
"I came here for her sake. She loves classical music," said al-Khayyal. "There are cultural activities at embassies, but we don't get invited to them."
Al-Khayyal said she had inquired about seating arrangements and was told the audience would be mixed.
Did she mind bringing her daughter to a mixed gathering?
"It's OK with me," she said, and then added with a smile: "I'm with her."
Faleh al-Ajami, a university Arabic language professor, brought his wife and two sons to the concert — a rare opportunity for the whole family to do something fun together.
"It's a good step to introduce Saudis to classical music," al-Ajami, 50, said during the intermission.
"I was amazed at the sounds coming from the musical instruments," said his son Ziad al-Ajami, 11, a fan of hard rock. "I've never been to a live concert before."
For the expatriates, the evening was an opportunity to have a normal evening out in Riyadh, a city with no movie theaters and where women are not allowed in outdoor cafes.
One foreign couple held hands, while another husband put his arm around his wife's shoulders — rare public displays of affection in the kingdom. The mutuwwa, the dreaded religious police tasked with enforcing public morality, were nowhere to be seen for a change.
"I'm glad for an opportunity like this," said Mary Ann Jumawan, a 40-year-old administrator at the South Korean Embassy. "It's the first time in nine years here as a married couple that my husband and I go to a location like this."
But not everyone was impressed.
Abdullah al-Sabhan, his brother and three friends received invitations from a German business associate, but after half an hour, they snuck out.
"I'm bored," said al-Sabhan, 26, an engineer who prefers Egyptian pop music and had never heard of Mozart. "Let me leave before the second piece begins."
His brother, Saud, dismissed the notion that gatherings involving men and women together might one day become the norm.
"Saudi society wouldn't accept it. And girls aren't used to such mixed gatherings," he said, adding that if he had a sister, she certainly would not have been allowed to attend.
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Denovissimus May 4 2008, 06:35 PM Post #2
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Excellent idea Dan!

The women over there have to go in a separate line from the men?

:alien
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Julesy May 4 2008, 06:39 PM Post #3
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are you too gonna move this to Rowans so hardly anyone goes in there?
:toot
Just givin ya a hard time.



Major Arctic sea ice melt is expected this summer By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
Fri May 2, 4:11 PM ET



WASHINGTON - The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said Friday.

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"The long-term prognosis is not very optimistic," atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University said at a briefing.

Last summer sea ice in the North shrank to a record low, a change many attribute to global warming.

But while solar radiation and amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are similar at the poles, to date the regions have responded differently, with little change in the South, explained oceanographer James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What researchers have concluded was happening, was that in the North, global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, sending the Arctic into a new state with much less sea ice than in the past.

"And there is very little chance for the climate to return to the conditions of 20 years ago," he added.

On the other hand, Overland explained, the ozone hole in the Antarctic masked conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent other than the peninsula reaching toward South America.

"So there is a scientific reason for why we're not seeing large changes in the Antarctic like we're seeing in the Arctic," he said.

But, Overland added, as the ozone hole recovers in coming years, global warming will begin to affect the South Pole also.

The briefing covered data being reported in a paper scheduled for publication next week in Eos, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Overland said he used to be among those skeptical about the effects of global climate change. The new findings, which he termed "startling," were developed at a recent workshop, he said.

There is agreement between weather observations, the output of computer climate models and scientific expectations for what should happen, added Francis.

All the evidence points toward human-made changes at both poles, she said, a conclusion that "further depletes the arsenals of those who insist that human-caused climate change is nothing to worry about."

Climatologist Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey said that while the term global warming is widely used, things are more complicated at the regional level.

In the Antarctic, he explained, climate change strengthened winds blowing around the continent, helping trap colder air. But that will decrease in the future, allowing warmer conditions to begin, he said.

And, Marshall added, all studies now show that human activities are the drivers of climate change in the Antarctic.

Asked if this summer will match last year's record low sea ice in the North, Overland that is likely.

"The tea leaves point to a minimal amount of sea ice next September, that would be the same as we had last summer, 40 percent loss compared to 20 years ago," he said. Overland added that the winter freeze got a late start last fall.

Francis added: "Over this entire fall, winter and right up 'till today the ice concentration, the amount of ice that's floating around on the Arctic, has been below normal every single day."

"All arrows are pointing towards, certainly not a recovery, something like we had last summer and possibly worse," she said.

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Denovissimus May 4 2008, 06:40 PM Post #4
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Smarty pants! lol

All the seas shall rise! :priest
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Julesy May 4 2008, 06:44 PM Post #5
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wow thats sad.
I will be able to tell my kids "I lived in a time before global warming was as out of control as it is now"
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 4 2008, 06:48 PM Post #6
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I may have to move more inland at some point. Even though I am not right on the coast, in 20 years Jersey probably wont exist anymore and I am right on the border with Jersey.
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Julesy May 4 2008, 06:51 PM Post #7
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the desert will swallow up all the water and maybe give us a beach
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Auntie Maine May 5 2008, 10:13 PM Post #8
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RICHMOND, Va. - Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.
Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.
Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.
"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."
Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers."
She became pregnant a few years later, she and Loving got married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Mildred told the AP she didn't realize it was illegal.
"I think my husband knew," Mildred said. "I think he thought (if) we were married, they couldn't bother us."
But they were arrested a few weeks after they returned to Central Point, their hometown in rural Caroline County north of Richmond. They pleaded guilty to charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.
They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave Virginia — the only home they'd known — for 25 years. They moved to Washington for several years, then launched a legal challenge by writing to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Attorneys later said the case came at the perfect time — just as lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act, and as across the South, blacks were defying Jim Crow's hold.
"The law that threatened the Lovings with a year in jail was a vestige of a hateful, discriminatory past that could not stand in the face of the Lovings' quiet dignity," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the ACLU.
"We loved each other and got married," she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. "We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants."
After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia, where they lived with their children, Donald, Peggy and Sidney. Each June 12, the anniversary of the ruling, Loving Day events around the country mark the advances of mixed-race couples.
Richard Loving died in a car accident that also injured his wife. "They said I had to leave the state once, and I left with my wife," he told the Star in 1965. "If necessary, I will leave Virginia again with my wife, but I am not going to divorce her."


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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 12:04 AM Post #9
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yeah for Mildred and Richard!!! I can get married because of you!!! :clap
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Julesy May 6 2008, 12:35 AM Post #10
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yeah for Mildred and Richard!!! I can get married because of you!!!


lol so there is just no hope for all white guys on the planet to marry you is there Michele?
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 12:39 AM Post #11
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there is very little hope. I am hopelessly attracted to black and hispanic men :shrug
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Julesy May 6 2008, 12:41 AM Post #12
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I find it interesting that you dig someone the opposite so to speak of yourself.
thats kinda cool

probably more interesting than someone thats the same
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 01:01 AM Post #13
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yeah I think that is why I like men of other races and find white men to usually be boring :zz
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Auntie Maine May 6 2008, 12:24 PM Post #14
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Thats a bit racist.
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 12:51 PM Post #15
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maybe, it is what it is. I dont know why, but that is the way my hormones rage.
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Julesy May 6 2008, 02:05 PM Post #16
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can attraction be racist?

I mean if you like something, you just do.
If youre gay does that make you gender bias?
No, you just like what you like.
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 02:21 PM Post #17
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right and it is not like I am never attracted to white guys or have never dated them. I am often attracted to them and I have dated a few. It is just none of the white guys lasted more than 6 weeks :chuckle and I havent had sex with any, except for Jack but he is part puerto rican. Though he doesnt look it at all.

Jack totally wont even say hi to me on myspace anymore cause he has a girlfriend now whom he recently moved in with. That is all fine and good, I wasnt trying to date him! Just be his friend but I guess he feels while in a relationship he cant even occasionally say hi to me because we had sex shortly before he started dating this girl I guess. So stupid if you ask me. Me and him go back 12 years. But what can I do? oh well his loss. Maybe she is one of those mega jealous kind of girls.
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Julesy May 6 2008, 02:25 PM Post #18
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lol
thats sucky.

I might add I dont think I would approve of my guy on myspace.
After hearing on here and from gfs on how they hooked up by usiing myspace, no way.
Not that hes a cheater but why chance it?
Their could be some enticing hoe trying to get at him. :ha

I reckon Im the jealous type. :curtsy
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la anaconda de chocolatee May 6 2008, 02:27 PM Post #19
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yea I noticed on jack's myspace that the only girl who ever posts comments on his page anymore is his gf. lol. I posted one comment over two months ago and he didnt delete it but since then his gf is the only one leaving comments when he had other female friends who were always leaving him comments before he got in a relationship.
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Julesy May 6 2008, 02:30 PM Post #20
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he banned all girls not his gf!

thats kinda pussy in a way but I understand to an extent.
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