AMMAN: Jordan's Queen Rania has received YouTube's first Visionary Award for a daily video Web cast and blog in which she sought to challenge stereotypes of the Arab and Muslim world and encourage dialogue across cultures.Accepting the award in a YouTube clip posted Saturday, Rania listed 10 reasons for her five-month YouTube series in a spoof of the top 10 list segment on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman."Among her reasons were: "Because anything Queen Elizabeth can do, I can do better" and "I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player."More seriously, Rania has said she wants people to "know the real Arab world unedited, unscripted and unfiltered."YouTube created the Visionary Award to recognize people who use the video sharing Web site as a platform for positive social change.In the series, which ran from March to August, the media savvy queen and rights advocate invited viewers to share their opinions of the Middle East and talk about stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.The series began at a time when Muslim sentiment was stirred by an Internet film criticizing the Quran produced by an anti-immigrant politician in the Netherlands. It also followed the outrage over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in newspapers in Europe.Among her advocacy work, the wife of Jordan's King Abdullah has promoted education, micro-credit financing and anti-poverty campaigns
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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