I know, I know, it is not a funny headline. But here is the thing. People have egos. You might wonder why anyone would stay in the face of a threat so grave. It isn’t by coincidence that so many prisoners were busted out of prison – hundreds in Iraq, in Yemen, also if I remember correctly, in Pakistan.
These countries, under international understandings and agreements, provide security for one another’s embassies. Like WE provide security for the Saudi and the Yemeni and French diplomats in the United States. When a country suffers massive prison breaks, it is only prudent to wonder how well they might be able to protect international diplomats – it’s all security.
But – and here is why a very serious headline can make me laugh so early in the morning – who wants to be “non-essential?” I’ve lived through similar situations; people want to think themselves important – you would be surprised how many people will choose to stay, knowing the dangers, because they want to consider themselves “mission-essential”. π
WASHINGTON β The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to leave the country following the threat by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Middle East and Africa.
The department said in a travel warning that it had ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen “due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks” and said U.S. citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an “extremely high” security threat level.
“As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency and provide routine consular services remains limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation,” the travel warning said.
The U.S. Embassy is located in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
The State Department on Sunday closed a total of 19 diplomatic posts until next Saturday. They include posts in Bangladesh and across North Africa and the Middle East as well as East Africa, including Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius.
Asiana, when four pilots cannot land a jet on an airstrip on a sunny day with clear visibility, you already have reputation problems. The prank didn’t harm your pilots’ reputations; crashing the plane harmed their reputations.
One commenter on the original post said they are sending their lawyer Mie Su Yu.
July 12 (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board apologized on Friday after an intern mistakenly confirmed to a local television station racially offensive fake names for the pilots of an Asiana flight that crashed in San Francisco.
“The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6,” the NTSB said in a statement.
“Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft,” the NTSB said.
The crash of the Boeing 777 plane resulted in the deaths of three teenage girls in a group of students from eastern China who were visiting the United States for a summer camp, one of whom died on Friday in the hospital. Over 180 passengers and crew members were injured.
On Friday, an anchor for Oakland, California, station KTVU read a list of the supposed names of the pilots of the South Korean carrier on its noon broadcast after an employee apparently called the NTSB seeking to verify them.
The names appear to mock the events of the crash. The prank names were: Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.
How cool is this? We saw this car at Taco Rock and loved the optical illusion. We also loved it that the car makes a memorable impression; you’ll think of it and you will think Pensacola Specialty Pawn. It’s an effective ad if you remember who the ad is for π
When we walked inside, AdventureMan asked “Whose car is that with the mobster paint job?” and a guy picking up a take-out order grinned and said it was his. He told us it was a shrink-wrap technique – it’s temporary! When you get tired of it and want to try something else, it just peels off and you put something else on. I think that is so totally cool.
The first time I read anything by Jeannette Walls, I had not read her autobiographical best-seller, The Glass Castle. If I had, when I read the opening pages of one of my all-time-favorite books, Half Broke Horses , three young children out checking on the cows in America of the mid-1800’s, I would have said “Oh, yes, this is Jeannette Walls” instead of being so shocked that these three children were so far from home with a storm approaching. Not only does the storm approach – the oldest sister pushes her younger sister and brother up a tree and they are stuck there through a violent storm all night. No adult comes looking for them.
“Where is their mother?” in shock I thought, “a mother with three children out in the storm goes looking for them!”
Not if you are a Jeannette Walls mother. To ‘get’ Jeannette Walls, you really have to start with The Glass Castle, and learn about how she and her siblings are at the mercy of an alcoholic mother and father, both big liars, maybe with some attendant mental problems. Half Broke Horses is fiction, based on her own grandmother, who, at 15 rides 28 days across Indian territory to teach at a far-away school (What mother lets her 15 year old DAUGHTER ride for a month across dangerous country ALONE??)
I was on the send-as-soon-as-it’s-published list for Silver Star. And even once it arrived, I waited until I knew I might have a few free hours in the evening to read it – once you start Jeannette Walls, you can’t put it down. Her heroines in this novel are 15 year old Liz and 12 year old Bean (Jean) whose mother ran away from her hometown in Virginia to pursue a career in music. The mother has a small inheritance to sustain them; when life sours, as it often does for her, she packs the girls into her worn Dodge Dart and takes off. She isn’t always good about paying her bills. She talks to her girls about what a great team they are, and then takes off for a day or two, usually with some man, leaving them to eat chicken pot pies. Then, she abandons them with no sign of when she will be back.
The girls are pistols. They are survivors, much like Jeannette Walls grandmother in Half Broke Horses. When social services start coming around asking where their mother is, they take off headed for their Mom’s old home town, across the continent, in Virginia.
The heart of the story finds the girls living in the old family mansion, scouting for odd jobs, learning more about themselves and their heritage, and learning how a small community can smother, judge and support their community members in unexpected ways.
If you are a negligent, man-oriented, self-absorbed mother, you don’t want to have a writer for a daughter. Jeannette Walls is having a ball; her books are both sad and hilarious, and she has utter scorn for mothers who do not take the reins of motherhood and behave like grown-ups.
Little cross cultural problem going on . . . no license? No registration? No problem, you know my uncle, right, the Amir of Qatar . . . LOL!
Batman wouldnβt stand for it: Police peer inside the garish carβs doors (Picture: SWNS)
Itβs hard not to notice a bright purple Lamborghini with orange trim. So the driver of this Β£350,000 supercar was asking for trouble when he went for a spin without a front numberplate.
Police spotted the infringement and impounded the vehicle after its 24-year-old owner β thought to be a member of the Qatari royal family β was unable to produce evidence that he had a driving licence or insurance.
Crowds gathered as the 220mph Aventador was towed away in Londonβs Knightsbridge.
Arab playboys descend on the wealthy neighbourhood each summer in costly cars flown from home and often hit trouble for lacking the correct papers.
The mean machines are a draw for petrolheads but the roaring engines annoy residents.
Off we tow: The Lamborghini Aventador is loaded onto a truck (Picture: SWNS)
Dozens of onlookers gathered to photograph the scissor-doored supercar, which has been customised by a Japanese tuning company.
One fan said: βIt is great when the wealthy foreign tourists come over to London every summer as you always see these amazing supercars.
βThe Lamborghini looked like something out of Tron, it was absolutely stunning.
βHopefully there was just some confusion over the correct paperwork and it will be back on the road
UPDATE:
First it was carted off on the back of a truck, then it faced the crusher, now glow-in-the dark Lamborghini is ticketed in Mayfair
Police impounded Β£350k supercar after owner failed to produce documents
But he was slapped with ticket just hours after retrieving it from police
Purple Lamborghini Aventador customised to glow in the dark
Owner believed to be Nasser Al-Thani, 24, of Qatar’s ruling family
PUBLISHED:Β 04:49 EST, 5 July 2013Β |Β UPDATED:Β 14:32 EST, 5 July 2013
He was only a hair’s breadth away from seeing his beloved Β£350,000 supercar crushed to a pulp after it was seized by police for driving offences.
So you mightΒ think the owner of this glow-in-the-dark Lamborghini would be a bit more careful next time.
But within hours of retrieving his purple sports car from the Metropolitan Police, he found himself on the wrong side of the law again after being slapped with a parking ticket.
I am? That’s news to me . . . and to my husband, LOL!
My name is Umaru Abubakar am 85year of age please don't be offended
I work with Shell Petroleum plc, for 37year.
i lost my wife 3years ago with my daughter by bomb explosion by suicide bombers
But Thanks to Allah i have one child left his Name Is Mohammad
10years now.
Am contacting you because i strongly Believe you are send to me by
Almighty Allah who
Reveal to me your contact when i was sleeping saw your Name and your
Email because
There something very urgent and important that I want you to do for me
please do not
Ignore me i beg in name of Allah.
As my brother we serve one gods please attends to this issue because a
matter od life and death.
I retired from Shell Petroleum 2year ago and I have been paid my
Retirement fund compensation of $40.5million USD, and the money in a Bank
For over two year because am waiting for my only son to finish
Education but am worried
Because he is still a small boy of 10years to handle that amount of money,
for more than 8 months i been very sick spending money from hospitals
to different hospitals
Lately it resulted me stroke there nothing I can do an more am just
waiting Allah to call me.
I Umaru Abubakar , and my people here are very greedy if i order my
Bank to release they money
to them my people will kill my only son to inherit the Fund with their
children.
I know I will die any moment from now because I have suffer this for a
Very long time i have spent money from hospital to hospital so decide never
Again.
Please I want you to help me to take care of my son because its Almighty
Allah that said I should contact you because you are a good man please do
not ignore me because of Allah.
Please I like you to receive the fund from Italy Bank and take of my son,
Am waiting your response.
Email: umaruabubakar85@emailn.de
Umaru Abubakar
Hilarious! Thank you, John Mueller and the Guardian for this giggle.
Qatar returns statues to Greece amid nudity dispute
Culture clash erupts after Greek minister visits Doha show and spots ancient treasures covered in strategically placed cloth.
Naked ambition: cash-strapped Greece has long been wooing Qatar. The display was meant to ‘open a bridge of friendship’ between the countries. Photograph: Alamy
It was a spat that nobody wanted β neither the Greeks, the Qataris nor, say officials, the two nude statues that sparked the furore.
But in a classic clash of cultures,Β GreeceΒ has found itself at odds with the oil-rich state β a nation it is keen to woo financially β over the presentation of masterworks depicting athletes in an exhibition dedicated to the Olympic games.
“The statues are now back at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens,” said a culture ministry official.
The dispute, though authorities are not calling it that, broke when Greece’s culture minister, Costas Tzavaras, arrived in Doha last month to discover the “anatomically challenging” treasures cloaked in cloth for fear of offending female spectators.
“In a society where there are certain laws and traditions authorities felt women would be scandalised by seeing such things, even on statues,” added the official who was present at the time.
“The minister, of course, said while he totally respected local customs he couldn’t accept the antiquities not being exhibited in their natural state,” she told the Guardian. “They were great works of art and aesthetically it was wrong.”
The statues, an archaic-era Greek youth and a Roman-era copy of a classical athlete, were to be the centrepiece of an exhibition entitled Olympic Games: Past and Present. Bankrupt Greece was delighted to facilitate when organisers in Doha got in touch. Mired in its worst economic crisis in modern times, the debt-stricken country is eager for investment from the Gulf state, which this year promised to pour β¬1bn into a joint investment fund.
In another hopeful sign, the emir ofΒ Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, recently bought six isles in the Ionian sea with a view to building palaces on them for his three wives and 24 children.
Visiting the Qatari capital for the opening of the show, Tzavaras seized the opportunity to describe the exhibition as “opening a bridge of friendship” between the countries. The discovery of the covered-up antiquities was a setback few had envisaged.
“We don’t want to portray it as a row, and we certainly didn’t want it to overshadow the exhibition,” explained the official. “It was all very friendly. When they turned down our request (to remove the cloth) the statues were boxed up again and sent back to Athens.”
Mystery, nonetheless, shrouds the affair. The show, which had previously been hosted in Berlin, features more than 700 artworks from around Greece, including numerous nude statues. It remains unclear why Qatari authorities had taken such umbrage over the antiquities in question, although officials in Athens described the young athletes β both from Eleusis β as being especially beautiful.
Here There and Everywhere 