Tag Archives: 인천출장샵

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Under President Obama, the United States started talking to Syria’s government, in contrast to a policy of isolation under former President George W

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“We assume that we are basically in front of an entity that may undertake an aggression at any time as long as its history is founded on aggression. Regardless of latest Israeli statements, we are always preparing ourselves for any Israeli aggression, whether large or small,” Assad told a press 부산출장샵 conference with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Our answer to these Israeli statements is obvious: we have to be ready at any time, in every moment, to confront any Israeli aggression that may be launched for any reason and under any justification,” Assad added in reply to a question.


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Senior Karachi police official Mazhar Mishwani said Qari Zafar was among his force’s most wanted terrorists for his role in the consulate attack

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Mohammed Qari Zafar was among at least 13 people killed Wednesday when three missiles slammed into a compound and a vehicle in the Dargah Mandi area of the North Waziristan tribal region on the border with Afghanistan, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

It was the latest strike in an intensified U.S. campaign to take out Taliban and al Qaeda leaders believed to be sheltering in the lawless border region with missiles fired from unmanned drone aircraft. At the same time, 대구출장샵 Pakistani intelligence forces have cracked down on Afghan Taliban in the country, arresting more than a dozen top leaders in the past few weeks.

The increased pressure on the Taliban in Pakistan comes as U.S.-led forces are fighting their biggest offensive of the eight-year-old war in neighboring Afghanistan in what Western official are hoping will be a turning point in the conflict.

Zafar, a senior member of the banned al Qaeda-linked militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, is one of Pakistan’s and Washington’s most wanted men.

The U.S. government alleges Zafar was a key figure the March 2006 suicide car bombing of the U.S. consulate in the commercial metropolis of Karachi that killed U.S. diplomat David Foy and three Pakistanis, and has posted a $5 million dollar reward for information leading to his capture. He is also suspected in Pakistan of being involved in the September 2008 truck bomb blast at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad that killed 54 people.

Senior Karachi police official Mazhar Mishwani said Qari Zafar was among his force’s most wanted terrorists for his role in the consulate attack.

“If the man killed is the same Qari Zafar, it is a very big success,” Mishwani said.

Nazirullah Khan, a local government official in Parachinar, near North Waziristan, confirmed Wednesday’s suspected missile strike and said it killed 13 people, including three Taliban commanders. Khan said he did not the identities of those killed.

Earlier Thursday, Pakistani officials said that nearly 15 senior and midlevel Taliban figures have been arrested in the country in recent weeks. The top prize has been Afghan Taliban No. 2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and information he has provided to interrogators has led to the detention of some other leaders, the officials said.

Baradar’s arrest has been hailed by U.S. officials and analysts as a major blow to the Taliban in Afghanistan, though they caution that the group has rebounded from the death or detention of previous leaders.

Opinion is divided, however, on whether the crackdown on Afghan Taliban in Pakistan signals that the country’s government and powerful intelligence forces are adopting a harder line against the militants, who have long enjoyed relative sanctuary in Pakistan. Some experts say the arrests may be linked to Pakistani attempts to influence possible conciliation talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

Meanwhile, a top Pakistani general said Thursday that three U.S. soldiers killed in a bombing in northwest Pakistan this month were not the intended targets of the attack.

The militants who blew up a car bomb as a security convoy passed aimed for the “most prominent” vehicle in the apparent belief that a local paramilitary commander would be inside, Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan told The Associated Press in a brief telephone conversation.

There had been speculation in the aftermath of the Feb. 3 blast that the attackers had specifically targeted the Americans, raising the specter of an informant close to the U.S. mission training members of Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps.

Khan, who heads the Corps, said five militants linked to the attack had been killed and others arrested, but gave no more details.

The killings were the first known U.S. military fatalities in nearly three years in Pakistan’s Afghan border region.

They drew attention to the training program, which officials from both countries rarely discuss because of opposition to American boots on Pakistani soil. There are around 100 U.S. special operations forces trying to strengthen the ill-equipped and poorly trained outfit’s ability to fight militants.


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“I thought the place was great

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De Niro first turned 64 on Friday in Melbourne, Australia, where he attended the grand opening of his latest Nobu restaurant. Then he caught a private jet over the international date line and 대구출장샵 had another birthday Friday in Hawaii.

While many his age are thinking about retirement, the Hollywood star seems as busy as ever with his film career and Japanese restaurant chain, which is quickly expanding internationally.

“I have time,” he said on his birthday, sitting in one of the private rooms at his swank Nobu Waikiki restaurant, which opened in May.

The Nobu chain was a result of De Niro meeting Nobuyuki Matsuhisa at the chef’s first U.S. restaurant in Los Angeles more than 20 years ago.

“I thought the place was great. I told him, ‘If you ever want to open a restaurant in New York, let me know,’ ” De Niro said. “A year or two later, he called me, said, ‘I’m interested.’ ”

Nobu started as a business partnership in 1994 between De Niro, Matsuhisa, Richie Notar and Hollywood producer Meir Teper. The first restaurant opened in New York. The chain now has locations across the world, from Italy to the Bahamas.

De Niro’s latest film is “Stardust.”


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“The outcome of the past period was in favor of the resisting powers in the region,” he said, adding that reinforcing ties among regional countries was the “only way” for an independent decision. His words seemed a quick and an indirect reply to U.S. desires, only one day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. lawmakers that the Obama administration is urging Syria to move away from its “deeply troubling” relationship with Tehran. Instead, Syria decided to strengthen its ties to Iran. Prior to the press conference, foreign ministers of Syria and Iran, Walid al-Muallim and Manouchehr Mottaki, signed an agreement to abolish visa requirements between the countries. Under the agreement, citizens of both countries can stay in the country without a visa for 90 days and can enter and leave the country without a visa for six months. “I am really surprised how they talk about stability in the Middle East, peace and other beautiful principles and they call two countries, any two countries and not necessarily Syria and Iran, to keep distance,” Assad continued. “We need to further reinforce relations if the true objective is stability. We do not want others to give us lessons on our region, our history. We can determine how things should go and we know our interests… (but) we thank them for their advices.” the Syrian leader told reporters. Iran’s president said the superpowers can no longer dictate and order other countries from oversees. “(The Americans) want to dominate the region but they feel Iran and Syria are preventing that,” Ahmadinejad said. “We tell them that instead of interfering in the region’s affairs, to pack their things and leave.” “Syria and Iran will stay together. We will remain so until the end and there will be no distance between us,” he commented, calling on the “Zionist entity not to repeat the mistakes of the past one more time as that would mean its doomed end.” Ahmadinejad was expected to see in the Syrian capital Lebanon’s Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Palestinian Hamas Movement leader Khaled Meshaal amid rising tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Syria’s foreign minister Walid Mouallem publicly blamed Israel last week for “spreading an atmosphere of war,” and warned that Damascus would not hesitate to strike deep into Israeli territory if provoked. He said plainly that a conflict would be “all-out,” regardless of whether “it hits southern Lebanon or Syria.” His remarks were a response to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s own comments a few days earlier that the absence of a peace agreement with Syria could trigger a new Middle East war. Nasrallah recently stated that Israel cannot afford an unwinnable war and blithely threatened an eye for an eye with the Jewish state. Bubbling accusations that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was behind the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mahbouh last month in Dubai have more spiraled regional anger. Muallem, in the same press conference he gave with his Austrian counterpart, said his country was determined to help Iran and the West engage in a “constructive” dialogue over Tehran’s contested nuclear program. Western governments suspect that the nuclear program in Iran — which earlier this month started higher grade uranium enrichment — is cover for a drive to produce a bomb. Iran, which has already been slapped with three sets of U.N. sanctions over its uranium enrichment, denies it has any such ambition and insists the atomic program is solely for peaceful purposes. Damascus has been Tehran’s major regional ally for the past three decades. Assad visited Tehran last August, and Ahmadinejad paid a visit to Syria last May. Syria also plays a key role for any brokering of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and controls a long border with Iraq that used to be the main point of entry for foreign Iraqi insurgents. Under President Obama, the United States started talking to Syria’s government, in contrast to a policy of isolation under former President George W. Bush. The U.S. road to dealing with Iran’s policy on Iraq, its nuclear program and much else may now be passing through Damascus. Syria, in turn, argues that Washington should make every effort to force Israel to accept the Arab peace initiative. Damascus wants to regain the strategic Golan Heights, an enclave Israel captured during the 1967 Mideast War. It has offered peace in exchange. Last week, William Burns, America’s most senior foreign service officer, held talks in Damascus with the country’s head of state, and Robert Ford, the current deputy chief of mission in Iraq, received an ambassadorial nomination to represent U.S. interests in Syria. Such steps will formally reopen diplomatic relations between the two countries, which had been suspended in 2005. Last week, eight years after being lumped into the axis of evil and five years since the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the U.S. State Department lifted an advisory that warned travelers about visiting Syria in hopes of warming relations. After the press conference, both leaders went hand-in-hand to celebrate the birthday of the prophet Mohammed in a mosque in Damascus.

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인천출장샵


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The T-birds and Pink Ladies of “Grease” pretend to be cheerfully anarchic, rebelling against the squareness of the Eisenhower era

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They chose the two leads in the latest Broadway revival of “Grease,” that seemingly indestructible homage to ’50s high school life. And their decision, first announced in March on the NBC reality program “Grease: You’re The One That I Want,” has proven to be a mixed bag, sort of like the new production itself.

But then, this is “Grease,” a musical not exactly ready-made for innovative reinterpretation, despite the best efforts here of director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall. She’s the woman who made recent New York productions of “The Pajama Game” and “Wonderful Town” work.

Yet Marshall’s take on “Grease,” which opened Sunday at Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre, moves in fits and starts, slowing down when the music and dancing stop and the sketchy story steps center stage.

The tale could not be more simple. Bad boy Danny Zuko, leader of the T-birds, falls for virginal Sandy Dumbrowski, who aspires for a place in the Pink Ladies, the T-birds’ female counterpart. Sandy eventually learns that vice will get you farther than virtue at Rydell High.

Now, about those television-anointed leads. As Danny, Max Crumm gives a cautious performance, vocally OK but short on swagger and sex appeal. Laura Osnes nicely gets Sandy’s transformation, morphing with enthusiasm from good girl to bad babe. Check out her skintight outfit in the last scene, courtesy of designer Martin Pakledinaz. Osnes also sings well and throws herself into Marshall’s spirited choreography.

So does the rest of the cast, who appear to be running on an inexhaustible supply of energy. That energy gets used to the fullest in Marshall’s choreography, particularly in her witty reworking of the big dance-contest number, “Born to Hand-Jive,” featuring the nimble Natalie Hill as the fabulous Cha-Cha DiGregorio. Marshall keeps the energy spinning from couple to couple, building an enthusiasm that demonstrates why she is one of the best choreographers on Broadway.

Because “Grease” doesn’t get much beyond stereotypes, it’s not easy keeping the secondary characters from descending into caricature. For the most part, the actors keep the clichés at bay.

Dramatic and vocal honors go to Jenny Powers as Rizzo, the quintessential tough girl who refuses to let the other Pink Ladies see her cry. Rizzo’s philosophy is explained in “There Are Worse Things I Could Do,” the one song in “Grease” that attempts to define character. Powers makes it work.

Other standouts: Lindsay Mendez, a genial, 대구출장샵 sweet-tempered Jan, and strong-voiced Daniel Everidge, an enthusiastic Roger. Everidge actually turns one of the show’s sillier songs, “Mooning,” into something that is more entertaining than it has any right to be.

As the musical’s authority figures, Susan Blommaert garners a few smiles as the prim teacher Miss Lynch, Jeb Brown oozes insincerity as smarmy disc jockey Vince Fontaine and Stephen R. Buntrock displays a laugh-producing narcissism as the Teen Angel who croons “Beauty School Dropout”

The orchestra, conducted by Kimberly Grigsby, is perched on a catwalk above the stage. Grigsby, who also plays the synthesizer, puts on quite a show herself, particularly after the actors have taken their curtain calls at the end of the musical and she lets the band rock theatergoers out of the Brooks Atkinson.

In the end, the appeal of “Grease” may lie in the universal desire to belong. The T-birds and Pink Ladies of “Grease” pretend to be cheerfully anarchic, rebelling against the squareness of the Eisenhower era. Yet in reality, conformity is all. They just want to be part of the gang, something this revival only fitfully celebrates.AP Arts Review By MICHAEL KUCHWARA AP Drama Critic


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