Daily Archives: March 10, 2014

Masked Gaza Gunmen Steal $500,000 in Rare Robbery

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The Gaza Strip has endured back-to-back wars and uprisings in recent years, but criminal violence has been relatively rare.

 

That changed Monday. Police Col. Ayoub Abu Shaar says masked robbers broke into a post office in Gaza City, shot and wounded a guard and made off with $500,000.

 

The Islamic militant Hamas, which rules Gaza, distributes the salaries of 40,000 government employees through post offices. Salary payments for March are to begin Wednesday, meaning post offices currently hold large sums of cash.

 

Hamas says it made streets safe after seizing Gaza in 2007. But it is also struggling with a cash crisis because of a tightened border blockade by Egypt.

 

 

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Italians ‘outraged’ by US weapons ad featuring Michelangelo’s David with a sniper rifle

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A US weapons firm that turned Michelangelo’s most famous masterpiece – the David statue – into a gun-toting musketeer have come shot down by officials in Italy, with the country’s culture minister calling the move ‘offensive and illegal’.

Illinois-based weapon manufacturer ArmaLite used the iconic image of David in a new advertising campaign, manipulating the statue to make it appear to be holding a $3,300 AR-50A1 rifle.

The accompanying tagline reads: ‘A work of art.’

But the move has outraged Dario Franceschini, Italy’s minister of culture, who said he is pursuing legal action to have ArmaLite withdraw the campaign.

Taking to Twitter on Saturday, Franceschini said, in Italian, that the ad was illegal.

The superintendent of the State Museums of Florence, Cristina Acidini, elaborated on Franceschini’s comment, explaining that the image of David is copyrighted to Italy and can’t be used without permission.

 

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Rare Jules Verne book describing moon landings 100 years before Neil Armstrong’s ‘giant leap’ and signed by Nasa ‘stars’ sells for £1,600

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A rare copy of a Jules Verne science-fiction novel, which imagined man landing on the moon more than 100 years before Neil Armstrong set foot its surface, has been sold for £1,600.

De La Terre a la Lune (From Earth to the Moon) was written in 1865 and tells the story of an attempt to fire man to the moon using an enormous gun.

In the book, part of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires (Extraordinary Journeys) series, three men are blasted into space from a launch site in Florida.

On their return from the mission they land back in the Pacific Ocean where they are rescued by the US Navy.

In recognition of the similarities between the story and the actual events of 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, the book was signed by a host of NASA experts.

Among the 25 signatures is that of German engineer Wernher von Braun, the man behind the Saturn V rocket which launched Apollo XI into space.

The book was snapped up by a private European collector for £1,600 at the Bloomsbury sale.

It was sold with a NASA-issued copy of Bill Anders’ famous photograph of Earth taken while orbiting the moon on Apollo VIII in 1968.

 

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Afghanistan mourns death of first vice president Mohammad Qasim Fahim

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Afghanistan will begin three days of mourning starting Monday for the death of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, an important figure in the country and most recently its first vice president.

President Hamid Karzai’s office announced Fahim’s death in a statement Sunday on its website. The statement did not say where or exactly when he died.

Karzai ordered Afghanistan’s flags to be flown at half-staff through Wednesday in honor of Fahim.

Fahim served as a security adviser and defense minister under Karzai before taking on his most recent role as Afghanistan’s highest-ranking vice president.

 

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President received the Minster of Foreign Affairs of Serbia Ivan Mrkić

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 Today, President Serzh Sargsyan received the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia Ivan Mrkić.

The President welcomed the high-ranking guest and stressed the importance of his visit in terms of continuing the Armenian-Serbian high-level political dialogue and promoting the cooperation agenda. Serzh Sargsyan underscored that the age-old relations between Armenia and Serbia have had numerous illustrations. According to the President, the Armenian people gratefully remember the seven Serbian pilots who fell victim to the air crash on the approaches of Yerevan while they were coming to the aid of Armenia during the days after the 1988 devastating earthquake. Moreover, every year, at the anniversary of the earthquake, in the same place, a tribute is paid at the memorial dedicated to their memory.

Serzh Sargsyan and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia Ivan Mrkić stressed the importance of the high-level reciprocal visits, as a result of which, in recent years, the bilateral relations and the collaboration in a number of fields have intensified.

The interlocutors expressed their willingness to continue to make efforts at maintaining and developing the existing positive dynamics agreeing that there is a great unrealized potential in the advancement of political, economic, cultural, as well as of the other spheres of reciprocal interest in the framework of international organizations.

At the meeting, the importance of mutually beneficial and close cooperation between Armenia and Serbia during the period of Serbia’s chairmanship of the OSCE was also stressed.
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