Monday, September 21, 2009 TOKYO: Around 100 Japanese children spent their Saturday flying paper airplanes in a contest held in suburban Tokyo.'We organised this contest to let our children get experiences in handcrafting things so that they become interested in craftsmanship at their early age and later become professional craftsmen,' Fumihiro Uno, the secretariat of Japanese Paper Airplane Association, says.30 teams, each with three members, participated in the event - seeing who could keep their plane airborne for the longest time.The country has a long and proud history of paper plane flying prowess, with nine out of the top-ten longest glides set by the Japanese.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
Comments