The Malawian government has criticised American pop icon Madonna, accusing her of exaggerating her contributions to the Southern African country and unreasonably demanding special treatment during her tour, reports Nyasa Times. Aw, Jeez, not this sh*t again.
The hit-maker was reportedly left furious during her visit when she was forced to queue with economy class passengers at an airport, reports say. Queueing with the peasants - the horror!
However, the president's office has issued a statement accusing Madonna of using her fame and money to press the government of Malawi to give her VIP treatment.
"Neither the president nor any official in her government denied Madonna any attention or courtesy during her recent visit to Malawi because as far as the government is concerned there is no defined attention and courtesy that must be followed in respect of her," says the statement. Perhaps there is hope for Malawi, near-alone in all of Africa.
The singer and actress reportedly claims that Banda is angry after her younger sister, Anjimile Mtila-Oponyo, had a labour dispute with Madonna.
#4
.. the president's office has issued a statement accusing Madonna of using her fame and money to press the government of Malawi to give her VIP treatment.
h/t Belmont
As President Obama struggles to halt North Koreas and Irans further peaceful production of nuclear explosive materials, he needs to take care that he doesnt stimulate the nuclear-fuel-making aspirations of two American allies Japan and South Korea.
Unlike Iran and North Korea, which are each generating several bombs worth of nuclear-weapons fuel a year, Japan may open a plant that can produce eight tons of plutonium a year enough to make 1,000 to 2,000 nuclear weapons annually. Thats at least as many weapons as are in the entire U.S. operationally deployed nuclear force.
Iranian authorities have long accused Google Earth of being a tool of western spy agencies, but now they have taken their attacks one step further -- by launching an "Islamic" competitor.
Iran's minister of information and communications technology, Mohammad Hassan Nami, announced that his country was developing what he described as an "Islamic Google Earth" to be called Basir (spectator in Farsi) which will be ready for use "within the next four months".
He said, "Preparations have been made for launching our world's 3D map project and we are currently creating an appropriate data center which could be capable of processing this volume of information."
Nami, a former deputy chairman of Iran's joint chiefs of staff and the armed forces, was appointed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new technology minister in February. Nami, who studied political geography in Iran, is also a PhD graduate in "country management" from North Korea's Kim Il-sung University, according to local reports.
Nami said, "On the surface, Google Earth is providing a service to users, but in reality security and intelligence organisations are behind it in order to obtain information from other countries."
Other Iranian officials have made similar accusations against Google. Iran's police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said last year that it was not a search engine but "a spying tool".
Nami gave little information on what he meant by an Islamic 3D map. "We are developing this service with the Islamic views we have in Iran and we will put a kind of information on our website that would take people of the world towards reality ... Our values in Iran are the values of God and this would be the difference between Basir and the Google Earth, which belongs to the ominous triangle of the US, England and the Zionists [a reference to Israel]."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.