It is uncertain how FM Vuk Jeremić’s decision not to send the Serbian ambassador to the Nobel ceremony would affect his credibility in the country and abroad.
The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was attended by Serbian Ombudsman Saša Janković.
LDP party leader Čedomir Jovanović says it s positive that Serbian Ombudsman Saša Janković is attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.
But, he added speaking in Belgrade on Friday, “it is scandalous that he will be there as a representative of the government”.
Serbia’s Ombudsman SaÅ¡a Janković will attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, it was announced late on Thursday. Reports this week said that Serbia would boycott the ceremony due to its ties with China.
Serbia will send an official to the ceremony in Oslo for this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize award.
This comes despite an announcement this week that the ceremony, set to honor a Chinese dissident and opposed by China, would not be attended.
Reports say that Moscow is urging NGOs and public organizations to “seriously consider” nominating WikiLeaks editor-in-chief for the Nobel Peace Prize. London’s Guardian reports that the jailed founder of the whistleblowing website has received “an unexpected show of support”.
Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković says the decision not to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is a tactical one. The Nobel Committee decided to this year award Chinese dissident Lui Xiaobo – something that China angrily opposes.
Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Wei Jinghua says that China “highly appreciates†Serbia’s decision not to attend Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Liu Xiaobo.
“Serbian people know that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident has nothing to do with peace,†he pointed out.
Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić said that Serbia’s decision not to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony was not made easily. But he told TV B92 late on Wednesday that such a move was in the best interests of the country at this point.
Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) has called upon the state to change its decision to boycott this year’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
In an open letter to the authorities, YUCOM has asked the government to send its representative to Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo which will honor Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Serbia pays special attention to the protection of human rights, but the bilateral relations with China represent one of Serbia’s highest national interests.
This is according to Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, who on Tuesday in Belgrade explained the decision that Serbia will not attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo on Friday.
James Franco and Anne Hathaway will be co-hosting the 83rd Academy Awards, according to the organisers. As per producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer, the “fresh, exciting and multi-talented” pair “personify the next generation of Hollywood icons”, reports the BBC. Hathaway was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for ‘Rachel Getting Married’, while Franco is [...]
Go Team USA! Dark horse Miss United States Of America Alexandria Mills walked away with the prized tiara at the 60th annual Miss World Pageant in the Chinese city Sanya on Saturday. The 18-year-old aspiring teacher from Kentucky wore a ravishing white gown as she beat out 114 contestants from across the Globe for the [...]
Mozilla is warning users about a new critical vulnerability affecting Firefox. – A critical Mozilla Firefox zero-day has surfaced in the wild.
According to security researchers, an attack using the bug was
spotted Oct. 26, when the vulnerability was seen being exploited
to drop malware on unsuspecting visitors to the Nobel Peace
Prize Website.
Researchers at Norman AS…
The Dalai Lama, has criticised the Chinese government for its opposition to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said the Chinese government did “not appreciate different opinions”.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to the Chinese political dissident and human rights campaigner Liu Xiabao. The 55-year-old was among the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Last year he was arrested and jailed for 11 years while collecting signatures for his pro-democracy charter.
Does a warming world really mean that more conflict is inevitable?
AS THE planet warms, floods, storms, rising seas and drought will uproot millions of people, and with dire wider consequences. Barack Obama, collecting his Nobel peace prize, said that climate change “will fuel more conflict for decades”. He took the analysis not from environmental scaremongers but from a group of American generals.
The forecast is close to becoming received wisdom. A flurry of new books with titles such as “Global Warring” and “Climate Conflict” offer near-apocalyptic visions. Cleo Paskal, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, predicts that floods, storms, the failure of the Indian monsoon and agricultural collapse will bring “enormous, and specific, geopolitical, economic, and security consequences for all of us…the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent”. Jeffrey Mazo of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, also in London, calls climate change an “existential threat” and fears it could usher in “state failure and internal conflict” in exposed places, notably Africa. …
The leaders of Russia and America will sign a new strategic-arms reduction treaty in Prague
• BARACK OBAMA will meet Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, in Prague on Thursday April 8th to sign a strategic-arms reduction treaty. Over ten years this will cut the number deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 on each side. Delivery systems (missiles, bombers and the like) will be reduced to 700 apiece. That is still enough to wipe out whole continents, but it makes the Nobel peace prize sitting on Mr Obama’s mantelpiece look a little less like an invitation to hubris.
• THE foreign ministers of India and China will meet in Beijing on Monday 5th April. Asia’s two rising powers have a polite but tense relationship—thanks to their long-running and lengthy border dispute, and the sense that they are competing for the same slot as Asia’s dominant power. India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, and his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, are expected to hold talks on bilateral, regional and global themes. …
Arms cuts get you only so far; a safer world needs tighter anti-proliferation rules too
WHEN Barack Obama promised, in Prague a year ago, to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and won a Nobel peace prize for it, even he felt that the accolade was a bit premature. His Prague to-do list was long: reduce the role of nuclear weapons in America’s defences; cut the number of nukes, too, in a bold new treaty with Russia; win Senate ratification of the test-ban treaty; seek a United Nations ban (or “cut-off”) on making fissile material for bombs; and meanwhile secure all nuclear materials from terrorist reach.
The real prize Mr Obama was after was international support for a stronger Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at its upcoming five-yearly review in May. For North Korea, Iran and others have battered its anti-nuclear foundations. …
Fazle Hasan Abed has built one of the world’s most commercially-minded and successful NGOs
SMILING and dapper, Fazle Hasan Abed hardly seems like a revolutionary. A Bangladeshi educated in Britain, an admirer of Shakespeare and Joyce, and a former accountant at Shell, he is the son of a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather was a minister in the colonial government of Bengal; a great-uncle was the first Bengali to serve in the governor of Bengal’s executive council. This week he received a very traditional distinction of his own: a knighthood. Yet the organisation he founded, and for which his knighthood is a gong of respect, has probably done more than any single body to upend the traditions of misery and poverty in Bangladesh. Called BRAC, it is by most measures the largest, fastest-growing non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the world—and one of the most businesslike.
Although Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for helping the poor, his Grameen Bank was neither the first nor the largest microfinance lender in his native Bangladesh; BRAC was. Its microfinance operation disburses about $1 billion a year. But this is only part of what it does: it is also an internet-service provider; it has a university; its primary schools educate 11% of Bangladesh’s children. It runs feed mills, chicken farms, tea plantations and packaging factories. BRAC has shown that NGOs do not need to be small and that a little-known institution from a poor country can outgun famous Western charities. In a book on BRAC entitled “Freedom from Want”, Ian Smillie calls it “undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world. The spread of its work dwarfs any other private, government or non-profit enterprise in its impact on development.” …
LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO RETURNS TO U.S. WITH 2010 TOUR
 Ladysmith Black Mambazo |
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “South Africa’s long-running musical treasure” (New York Times), returns to the U.S. in 2010, bringing the nine-man a cappella group’s high energy live show to over 40 cities nationwide, including two dates in New York City. The group will perform songs from their 2009 Grammy Award-winning album Ilembe, in addition to selections from their wide catalog.
“There is an honesty and integrity in their music that illuminates the best parts of humanity,” notes the Associated Press. “Using their majestic voices and nothing else,” adds the San Francisco Chronicle, “[Ladysmith Black Mambazo] produces a full orchestra of sound.”
The group marries the intricate rhythms and harmonies of their native South African musical traditions to the sounds and sentiments of Christian gospel music, garnering accolades worldwide and solidifying their identity as a cultural force. As Billboard explains, “Ladysmith is proof that music knows no boundaries.”
Over its forty-year career, Ladysmith Black Mambazo has earned three Grammy awards and received over 15 Grammy nominations, in addition to a Tony Award, and even an Oscar nomination. They’ve performed for kings, queens, presidents and popes. They accompanied Nelson Mandela when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and also recorded with Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, Josh Groban, among many others.
Tour Dates:
01/31/10 Sun Hill Auditorium Ann Arbor, MI
02/03/10 Wed Highline Ballroom New York, NY
02/04/10 Thu B.B. King Blues Club New York, NY
02/05/10 Fri Colonial Theater Bethlehem, NH
02/06/10 Sat Sanders Theater Cambridge, MA
02/07/10 Sun Mahaiwe Theater Great Barrington, MA
02/10/10 Wed Western Illinois University macomb, IL
02/11/10 Thu West Side Theatre Gary, IN
02/12/10 Fri McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage Glen Ellyn, IL
02/13/10 Sat Old Town School of Folk Music Chicago, IL
02/14/10 Sun Sheldon Concert Hall St. Louis, MO
02/16/10 Tue Jesse Auditorium Columbia, MO
02/18/10 Thu Bethel College Newton, KS
02/19/10 Fri Mccain Auditorium Manhattan, KS
02/20/10 Sat Walton Arts Center Fayetteville, AR
02/23/10 Tue Finney Chapel Oberlin, OH
02/24/10 Wed Akron Civic Theater Akron, OH
02/25/10 Thu Goodnight Theater Franklin, KY
02/27/10 Sat Avalon Theatre Easton, MD
02/28/10 Sun Byham Theater Pittsburgh, PA
03/02/10 Tue Mahaffey Theater at the Progress Energy Center for the Arts St. Petersburg, FL
03/04/10 Thu Winston-Salem State University Winston-Salem, NC
03/05/10 Fri Strathmore North Bethesda, MD
03/06/10 Sat Washington PAC Olympia, WA
03/08/10 Mon Benaroya Hall Seattle, WA
03/10/10 Wed Montalvo Arts Center Saratoga, CA
03/11/10 Thu Congregation Sherith Israel San Francisco, CA
03/12/10 Fri Beckman Auditorium Pasadena, CA
03/13/10 Sat Anthology San Diego, CA
03/14/10 Sun Centennial Hall Tucson, AZ
03/16/10 Tue Newman Center for the Performing Arts Denver, CO
03/17/10 Wed Lincoln Center Performance Hall Fort Collins, CO
03/18/10 Thu Popejoy Hall | UNM Albuquerque, NM
03/19/10 Fri Avalon Theatre Grand Junction, CO
03/20/10 Sat Peerys Egyptian Theater Ogden, UT
03/23/10 Tue Emerson Center for the Arts Bozeman, MT
03/24/10 Wed University Theatre Missoula, MT
03/25/10 Thu Bing Crosby Theatre Spokane, WA
03/26/10 Fri Broadway Center for the Arts Tacoma, WA
03/27/10 Sat McIntyre Hall Mount Vernon, WA
03/28/10 Sun Ross Ragland Theater Klamath Falls, OR
03/30/10 Tue John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts Eugene, OR
Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform “Homeless” at the Nobel Peace Concert:
