Daily News Channel
TV singing contests around the world tend to serve up light, glitzy entertainment with a dash of emotional drama. But in the Middle East’s version of American Idol, it’s the region’s troubles that often take centre stage
When Syrian tanks and soldiers poured into the rebellious southern flashpoint city of Dara’a last month, the Twittersphere lit up with wry comments like “Hey army, that’s Dara’a, not the Golan!” mocking the fact that the same army shooting its own people hadn’t fired a bullet in decades to liberate the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and still the center of the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Syria. In fact, Damascus has long worked hard to ensure the strategic plateau remained one of the quietest border areas in the Middle East, branding the area a military zone and maintaining tight control.
Quintuplets were expected, quadruplets appeared. That was the story in London last week when government and colonial leaders signed the birth certificate of a new British Commonwealth nation.
Fadi Quran is the face of the new Middle East.
Even after his death, Michael Jackson is breaking records. “It wasn’t really like going to the movies, it was more of going to a V.I.P.
The Internet’s most popular search engine should get smarter about music, as Google updates the algorithms that power its searches this week, a company spokesman said. “It wasn’t really like going to the movies, it was more of going to a V.I.P.
Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya’abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. “They accused me of throwing stones at them,” recounts Walid, a skinny kid with dark eyes.