Dailynewsegypt

Author: AP

  • Official says Jolie plans to adopt Vietnamese boy

    HANOI, Vietnam: Angelina Jolie plans to adopt a young Vietnamese boy and he probably will be moving to the United States in no more than three months, Vietnam s top adoption official said Wednesday.

    Jolie chose the boy, who is between 3 and 4 years old, during a recent visit to the Tam Binh orphanage on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, said Vu Duc Long, the head of the justice ministry s international adoption department in Hanoi.

    Under ordinary circumstances, it takes about four months to process an adoption after the forms arrive, Long said. If the prospective parent already has chosen a child, the adoption can be completed in just three months.

    Three months would be the longest, Long said, adding that Jolie s case could be processed faster than that.

    Long confirmed last week that Jolie had filed adoption papers, but did not provide any details about the child or how long the process would take.

    Jolie initiated the adoption process in the United States, but her application only arrived at Long s office last week. His department has approved the application and sent it to officials in Ho Chi Minh City, who also must review it Jolie and her partner,

    Brad Pitt, have three children: five-year-old Maddox, adopted from Cambodia; two-year-old Zahara, adopted from Ethiopia; and another daughter, Shiloh, who was born to the couple in May.

    The pair made a surprise visit to the Tam Binh orphanage at Thanksgiving, when they were spotted cruising around Ho Chi Minh City on a motorbike.

  • Woman awakens after 6 years, slips back

    COLORADO, US: A woman who went into a vegetative state more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back.

    “I m fine, Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday – her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods since suffering a heart attack and stroke in November of 2000. I think it s wonderful. It makes me so happy, Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

    Before her relapse on Wednesday, Lilly told the station her biggest frustration was learning how to talk again.

    After years of being fed from a tube, eating was no problem. I ve been eating cake, she said.

    Her neurologist, Dr Randall Bjork, said he couldn t explain how or why she awoke.

    I m just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states, he said.

    A vegetative state is much like a coma except Lilly s eyes remain open. Bjork said that he s never seen a similar quality of awakening. Bjork said that unlike the much publicized case of

    Lilly is minimally conscious. He said she could awake again.

    After Lilly relapsed her mother and caregiver Minnie Smith said: The good Lord let me know she s alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I m thankful for that.

  • Former US hostage in Iraq Jill Carroll returns to reporting in Middle East

    BOSTON: Jill Carroll, the journalist held hostage for nearly three months in Iraq last year, has returned to the Middle East to report for the Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper spokesman said Wednesday.

    Carroll has been working out of Cairo, Egypt, since last month, Monitor spokesman Jay Jostyn said.

    We haven t determined how long she will be there, Jostyn said.

    Carroll took on the Cairo assignment after completing a fellowship at Harvard University s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She analyzed the decline of international news bureaus in the changing newspaper industry during the semester she spent at the school s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press.

    We are really not saying anymore than that, Jostyn said when asked whether Carroll asked to be posted in Cairo and whether there were any concerns for her safety.

    Carroll was working as a freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor when she was kidnapped in Baghdad on Jan. 7, 2006. She was released March 30.

    The kidnappers, a formerly unknown group calling itself the Revenge Brigade, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq. US officials did release some female detainees but said the decision was unrelated to the demands.

  • Indonesia Disaster

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  • Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal secures Iranian pledge of fund for his group

    TEHRAN: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal extracted from Iran Tuesday a pledge to fund his group to compensate for the West s financial blockade of the Palestinian government.

    Mashaal, who arrived in Iran early Tuesday, told a press conference with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that Iran had been giving financial and political support to the Palestinians, whose government has been cut off from Western aid since Hamas took office in March last year.

    We still look forward to get support [from Iran] to break the political and economic sanctions, Mashaal said.

    Mottaki told reporters that Iran would continue to provide money to Hamas, but he did not give any figures.

    Iran is known to have pledged $120 million to Hamas since it took office following its victory in the Palestinian legislative elections. But it is unclear how much money the Palestinian Authority has received. There was no word Tuesday on how much more would be donated.

    The major aid donors to the Palestinian Authority – the United States, the European Union and Canada – cut off aid because Hamas has refused to renounce violence and recognize Israel and the previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians.

    Last month, Mashaal and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a Saudi-brokered agreement in Mecca under which they would form a coalition government and Hamas promised to respect the previous agreements.

    The United States and others are waiting for the coalition to be formed before declaring whether the Mecca agreement warrants a resumption of aid.

    At Tuesday s press conference, Mashaal was asked if Hamas had now recognized Israel.

    The Hamas leader did not answer directly, but said: The Palestinian government insists on June 4, 1967 borders [for a Palestinian state], full Palestinian sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital.

    He was referring to the international borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which broke out on June 5 that year, in which Israeli troops captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

    Mottaki said his government backed the Mecca accord.

    Iran supports this initiative, and it also supports any step toward achieving greater unity among Palestinians, the foreign minister said.

    Mashaal met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday and was expected to meet the country s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before he leaves the country.

    Mashaal lives in exile in Damascus, Syria.

    Iran had close ties with Israel when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was in power. However after the Shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, the new Iranian government broke ties with Israel and turned the former Israeli embassy into a Palestinian embassy.

  • UNHCR addresses Arab League

  • Play Sphinx

  • Muslim scholars, clerics to begin exchange program with US Catholics

    PHILADELPHIA: A group of Muslim clerics and scholars from the Middle East began a four-day visit to the Philadelphia area on Monday with a stop at a downtown homeless shelter.

    The group, which includes two Egyptians, two Jordanians and one Syrian, met the staff at Saint John s Hospice, operated by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and served lunch to homeless people.

    The American society deserves much better than what is the perception, Wael Mohammad Abdallah Arabiyat, a professor of Islamic law at the University of Jordan, said through an interpreter.

    We also have to differentiate between the nation of America and its politics.

    The group also spent time last week in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and will spend a week in Boston after leaving the Philadelphia area, according to Thomas Johnston, an official with the US Department of State s educational and cultural affairs unit. The program will include a reciprocal exchange for American clerics to Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

    Mahmoud Abdalla Mohamed Abdalla, an imam in Cairo, said his country has hospices for children with no parents and homes for the elderly, but nothing like the shelters he saw in the United States.

    This is a compassionate approach to solving the problem, he said through an interpreter, shortly before handing out bottled drinks Monday morning.

    In many Arab countries, mosques and Islamic groups and parties run extensive social programs that, in numerous cases, eclipse welfare services offered through the governments.

  • Egyptian Zidane in Germany