Laura Wright Wins Emmy for Best Lead Actress!!! 2011

Laura Wright Wins Emmy for Best Lead Actress!!! Laura Wright Wins Emmy for Best Lead Actress!!! 2011

Saudi Arabia women drive cars in protest at ban

Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel.

The Women2Drive Facebook page said the direct action would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.

Last month, a woman was arrested after uploading a video of herself driving.

Manal al-Sherif was accused of "besmirching the kingdom's reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion", but was released after 10 days having promised not to drive again.

Campaigners have not called for a mass protest - which would be illegal - but have asked women who have foreign driving licences to drive themselves as they go about their daily life.

"All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers," said one woman in the first film posted in the early hours of Friday morning.

The film showed the unnamed woman talking as she drove to a supermarket and parking.

"It is not out of love for driving or traffic or the experience. All this is about is that if I wanted to go to work, I can go. If I needed something I can go and get it.

"I think that society is ready to welcome us."

Another protester said she drove around the streets of Riyadh for 45 minutes "to make a point".

"I took it directly to the streets of the capital," said Maha al-Qahtani, a computer specialist at the Ministry of Education.

Religious fatwa

On Twitter, Mrs Qahtani described the route she had taken around the city with her husband, saying: "I decided that the car for today is mine."

Her husband said she was carrying her essential belongings with her and was "ready to go to prison without fear", AFP news agency reported.

One woman who asked not to be named told the BBC driving was often considered to be "something really minor".

"It's not one of your major rights. But we tell them that even if you give us all the basic and big rights, that you are claiming are more important than driving, we can't enjoy practising those rights because the mobility is not there.

"We can't move around without a male."

The motoring ban is not enforced by law, but is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics. It is one of a number of severe restrictions on women in the country.

Supporters of the ban say it protects women and relieves them of the obligation to driver, while also preventing them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.

But the men and women behind the campaign - emboldened by uprisings across the Middle East and Arab world - say they hope the ban will be lifted and that other reforms will follow.

Amnesty International has said the Saudi authorities "must stop treating women as second-class citizens", describing the ban as "an immense barrier to their freedom of movement".

The last mass protest against the ban took place in 1980, when a group of 47 women were arrested for driving and severely punished - many subsequently lost their jobs.

The women were angered that female US soldiers based in the kingdom after the war with Kuwait could drive freely while they could not.

Ayman al-Zawahiri appointed as al-Qaeda leader

The long-serving second-in-command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been appointed its head following the death of Osama Bin Laden, the militant organisation said in a statement.

Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan in early May.

Al-Qaeda warned it would continue to fight a holy war against the US and Israel under Zawahiri's direction.

Analysts say Egyptian-born Zawahiri, 59, is intelligent but lacks the charisma of his predecessor.

He is claimed by some experts to have been the "operational brains" behind the 9/11 attacks on the US.

For years Bin Laden's deputy, with a $25m (£15m) bounty on his head, he had been widely anticipated to replace Bin Laden at the helm.

The statement announcing his appointment was posted on a militant website and attributed to al-Qaeda's General Command.

"Sheikh Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God guide him, assumed responsibility as the group's amir [leader]", it said.

It vowed that under Zawahiri, it would pursue jihad or holy war against the US and Israel "until all invading armies leave the land of Islam".

'Jihadist renaissance'

Zawahiri, whose 60th birthday is believed to be this Sunday, warned just over a week ago that Bin Laden would continue to "terrify" the US from beyond the grave.

In a video message posted on the internet on 8 June, Zawahiri said al-Qaeda would continue to fight.

"The sheikh has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice," Zawahiri said.

"Today, and thanks be to God, America is not facing an individual or a group, but a rebelling nation, which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance."

The BBC's Middle East correspondent, Jon Leyne, says priorities for al-Qaeda's new leader may include attempting to to mount a big attack to show the organisation is still in business.

In addition, he says, Zawahiri will want to turn the wave of unrest in the Middle East to al-Qaeda's advantage - perhaps building more of a power base in Yemen and working to intensify the instability there.

Divisions?

In his message last week, Zawahiri applauded the Arab uprisings against "corrupt and tyrant leaders" and urged those involved to continue their "struggle until the fall of all corrupt regimes that the West has forced onto our countries".

But our correspondent adds that the delay in announcing Zawahiri as al-Qaeda chief - coming as it does more than six weeks after Bin Laden's death, despite his being the obvious choice - may point to divisions within the leadership.

Zawahiri has for years had a bounty on his head and security analysts have suggested he is most likely to be hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

However, Bin Laden and other key militant leaders who were also believed to be concealed there have instead been discovered in Pakistani towns and cities.

Bin Laden's killing by US special forces in a covert operation in the garrison town of Abbottabad on 2 May strained Washington's relations with Islamabad.

US President Barack Obama said "someone" was protecting Bin Laden, but Pakistan has denied any knowledge of Bin Laden's whereabouts and has arrested alleged CIA informants.

Jennifer Lopez Biography

Birth Name

Jennifer Lynn Lopez

Nickname

J. Lo
La Lopez
Lola
Jenny From The Block

Height

5' 7" (1.70 m)

Mini Biography

Jennifer was born on July 24, 1969, in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx. Her father, David, was a computer technician. Her mother, Guadalupe, taught kindergarten. Jennifer is the middle of three daughters. Her elder sister, Leslie, is a housewife who sings opera. Her younger sister, Lynda, is a DJ on New York's WKTU, a VH1 VJ, and a morning news show correspondent on New York's Channel 11. Jennifer's parents were born in Puerto Rico, but did not meet until both came to America. Her mother's parents were Europeans who settled in Puerto Rico. She says that it was her parents' work ethic that made a difference in her life. Jennifer took singing and dancing lessons from age 5. She attended 12 years of Catholic school, including an all-girl high school. She played softball and tennis in high school and was a gymnast.

After high school, she briefly worked in a law office. During this time, she continued dance classes at night. At 18, she left home because her mother was scared by her decision to pursue show business. With casting on "In Living Color" (1990) in 1990, she moved to L.A., but initially hated it. Finally her boy friend, David Cruz, moved to be with her there and she learned to accept her new environment. Her career took off from her "Living Color" stint and reached new peaks with her portrayal of slain Latino singer Selena (1997).

When the Saints Go Marching In

As corruption runs amok in India, a colorful cast of activists takes on the politicians.

Back in the 1950s, the British scholar W. H. Morris-Jones identified three idioms of Indian politics. These were the modern, the traditional, and the saintly. Thus, he wrote, “the modern language of politics is the language of the Indian Constitution and the Courts; of parliamentary debate; of the higher administration … ” On the other hand, the traditional idiom was local and sectarian. It “knows little or nothing of the problems of anything as big as India.” Here, “caste (or subcaste or ‘community’) is the core of traditional politics.” Finally, there was the saintly idiom, illustrated at the time Morris-Jones was writing, by the land-donation movement of Acharya Vinoba Bhave, “the ‘Saint on the March,’ who toured India on foot preaching the path of self-sacrifice and love and polity without power.”

To understand Indian politics today, Morris-Jones’s framework is still valuable, so long as we add a fourth idiom that has become increasingly common in recent years. This may be termed the instrumental, a euphemism for political behavior that advances the personal financial interests of an individual, his family, his caste, and his party.

For the first decade of independence, Indian politics was dominated by associates of Mahatma Gandhi who shared his integrity if not his courage. In the 1960s, the first signs of corruption entered the system. The economy was then strictly regulated. Entrepreneurs needed licenses to open or expand businesses, for which some politicians now expected bribes.

When the license-permit-quota raj was dismantled in the 1990s, it was expected that corruption would diminish. In fact, it has increased spectacularly. The state still retains control over land and natural resources and over infrastructure projects. With the surge in the Indian economy, control of these resources is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, encouraging sweetheart deals between politicians and entrepreneurs. The proceeds from these deals are then distributed among the elected members of the legislature and to favored bureaucrats. According to a recent study by the Association for Democratic Reforms, as many as 300 out of the 540 members of Parliament are millionaires. The majority were born in modest middle-class homes; their wealth ballooned after they entered politics.

In the past year, India has been racked by a series of corruption scandals. A housing complex in Mumbai meant for war veterans had its units allocated to politicians and bureaucrats and their cronies. Politicians associated with the ruling Congress Party skimmed off large sums of money from funds allocated to the Commonwealth Games, held in New Delhi in late 2010. Politicians of the major opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were involved in a mining scandal in the state of Karnataka, where millions of tons of iron ore were shipped to China untaxed and in violation of labor and environmental standards. Then, in the biggest scam of all, a minister of the Union Government was found to have massively undersold licenses to mobile-telephone companies, thus giving them cheap, privileged access to airwaves.

A Roadmap for the Planet

How we live today is clearly unsustainable. Why history proves that is completely irrelevant.

From the 18th through the mid-19th century, whale oil provided light to much of the Western world. At its peak, whaling employed 70,000 people and was the United States’ fifth-largest industry. The U.S. stood as the world’s foremost whale slayer. Producing millions of gallons of oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, with advocates scoffing at would-be illumination substitutes like lard oil and camphene. Without whale oil, so the thinking went, the world would slide backward toward darkness.

Climate alarmists and campaigning environmentalists argue that the industrialized countries of the world have made sizable withdrawals on nature’s fixed allowance, and unless we change our ways, and soon, we are doomed to an abrupt end. Take the recent proclamation from the United Nations Environment Program, which argued that governments should dramatically cut back on the use of resources. The mantra has become commonplace: our current way of living is selfish and unsustainable. We are wrecking the world. We are gobbling up the last resources. We are cutting down the rainforest. We are polluting the water. We are polluting the air. We are killing plants and animals, destroying the ozone layer, burning the world through our addiction to fossil fuels, and leaving a devastated planet for future generations.

In other words, humanity is doomed.

It is a compelling story, no doubt. It is also fundamentally wrong, and the consequences are severe. Tragically, exaggerated environmental worries—and the willingness of so many to believe them—could ultimately prevent us from finding smarter ways to actually help our planet and ensure the health of the environment for future generations.

Hunkered-down America

It’s a cliche — but true — that a huge obstacle to a stronger economic recovery is the lack of confidence in a strong recovery. If consumers and businesses were more confident, they would be spending, hiring and lending more freely. Even a slight relaxation might do wonders for the subpar nature of the expansion, highlighted by May’s meager 54,000 increase in payroll jobs. Instead, we’re deluged with reports suggesting that, because the recession was so deep, it will take many years to regain anything like the pre-crisis prosperity.

Just last week, for example, the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm, released a study estimating that the country needs 21 million additional jobs by 2020 to reduce the unemployment rate to 5 percent. The study was skeptical that this would happen. Ugh. Pessimism and slow growth become a vicious cycle.

Battered confidence most obviously reflects the ferocity and shock of the financial collapse and the ensuing recession, including the devastating housing collapse. But there’s another, less appreciated cause: disillusion with modern economics.

Probably without realizing it, most Americans had accepted the fundamental promises of contemporary economics. These were: First, we know enough to prevent another Great Depression; second, although we can’t prevent every recession, we know enough to ensure sustained and, for the most part, strong recoveries. These propositions, endorsed by most economists, had worked themselves into society’s belief structure.

Embracing them does not preclude economic disappointments, setbacks, worries or risks. But for most people most of the time, it does preclude economic calamity. People felt protected. If you stop believing them, then you act differently. You begin shielding yourself, as best you can, against circumstances and dangers that you can’t foresee but that you fear are there.

You become more cautious. You hesitate more before making a big commitment — buying a home or car, if you’re a consumer; hiring workers, if you’re an employer; starting a new business, if you’re an entrepreneur; or making loans, if you’re a banker. Almost everyone is hunkered down in some way.

Economic models, based on past relationships and assumptions, don’t capture the shift, which embodies new assumptions and beliefs. Of course, most Americans have not consciously rejected the promises of modern economics. Neither did they consciously embrace them before. Judgments were seat-of-the-pants. People simply compared the promises against the evidence. Since the 1980s, recessions had been brief and mild; modern economics had ensured crude stability. Now, that no longer applies.

Attitudes and behavior change. One disturbing fact from the McKinsey report is this: The number of new businesses, a traditional source of jobs, was down 23 percent in 2010 from 2007; the level was the lowest since 1983, when America had about 75 million fewer people. Large corporations are standoffish. They have about $2 trillion of cash and securities on their balance sheets, which could be used for hiring and investing in new products. Meanwhile, the latest University of Michigan Survey of Consumers reports that “record numbers . . . thought that their incomes would lag inflation over the next five years.” Note: They didn’t expect high inflation so much as low income growth.