Singer from Gaza wants to be Arab Idol

Arab Idol is an over-the-top TV ratings smash in the Middle East, and a young crooner from a Palestinian refugee family, whom admirers have nicknamed “the Rocket”, is stealing the show. The surprise breakout of the second season is a 23-year-old Gaza Strip resident named Mohammed Assaf, whose patriotic folk songs and romantic ballads – with their themes of grit, longing and love – have propelled him into the final rounds.

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From wild child to doting mother

As a tattooed wild child wearing her husband’s blood in a locket and luring Brad Pitt away from Hollywood rival Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie was dream fodder for the tabloid press. But her transformation into a humanitarian campaigner and now poster girl for the fight against breast cancer with her revelation that, faced with a high cancer risk, she had undergone a double mastectomy has elevated her to heroine status in the media.

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Tsunami: How to help the relief effort

Asia’s disaster has galvanized not just governments and international organizations but millions of ordinary people, who want to give anything from money to mosquito nets to those in need. Here’s a list of who’s doing what, and how to contact them: AID AGENCIES International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies A major relief provider and one of the few groups helping people trace lost family members

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Desperately Fleeing Syria: Refugees Cross into Turkey

The young Syrian in the white undershirt cradled a toddler in his arms as he sat beneath a line of laundry strung up between two stout gum trees. He stared out from behind the rusty metal gate of the disused tobacco warehouse that is now home to hundreds of Syrian refugees, most of whom are from the flashpoint town of Jisr al-Shughour, some 40 kilometers south of the Turkish border

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