The Costly Item

Creative Sofa......Must Watch......

Creative Sofa

Protesters keep Egypt's bureaucratic heart paralysed

Activists barred access to the Mugamma building on Tahrir Square on Monday, the heart of Egypt's bureaucracy, despite dozens of people seeking to have documents such as passports or birth certificates processed

Items Recovered From Raymond Davis

Woman to wear same dress for a whole year

Woman to wear same dress for a whole year

One woman has committed to wearing the same dress every day for a year for a project that’s part lifestyle experiment, part cultural protest.
The average woman reportedly has 22 unworn items in her closet, yet on the blogosphere, minimalist wardrobe projects abound. In fact, eco-closets seem to be shrinking fast! Project 333 takers pared down their wardrobes to 33 items for 3 months, while Six Items or Less challengers whittled their closes down to just six items for an entire month.
Now comes a woman who has pretty much pared down her close to just one item — for a year. Kristy Powell, a therapist and Pilates teacher in New Haven, Conn., plans to wear just one dress for 365 days, blogging her experience at One Dress Protest.
Of course, one dress projects aren’t entirely new. Alex Martin wore a little brown dress for a whole year back in 2005-2006, and more recently, Sheena Matheiken’s The Uniform Project documented a year of wearing a simple, multifunctional black dress — reaccessorized every day to create unique looks.
Powell’s project is directly inspired by the Uniform Project — which is where Powell purchased her Little Black Dress for her experiment. In fact, Powell purchased two identical dresses from the Uniform Project — thereby giving herself some laundering wiggle room.
Why is Powell documenting yet another one dress project? “I’ve set out to explore what it looks like to openly, publicly and boldly survey what clothes and fashion mean to me, and to investigate some of the more meaningful implications the world of clothes have for our lives and hearts,” writes Powell, who describes her choice as part lifestyle experiment, part cultural protest. “One Dress Protest is meant to be both a statement and an action to express my disapproval of and objection to the ways that fashion undervalues, denigrates, objectifies and oftentimes insults women.”
So far, Powell’s experiment has run into some comical snafus. First, she spilled split-pea soup on a dress — a stressful mess if the plan’s to keep wearing the same item all year. Then she managed to make one of the LBDs a mini LBD the first time she washed it. “It shrunk ALOT — 3.5 inches in length to be exact. It was noticeably smaller, resembling more of a long shirt than a dress.”
All that makes for a pretty entertaining read. Powell is just finished her first month of her One Dress Protest project. Read her blog to see how the fashion fast is going.

Zardari is a numbskull, British told Americans.

Zardari is a numbskull, British told Americans.

The officials and military leaders gave their damning assessment of Mr Zardari in the months following his election as president in September, 2008.
Sir Jock Stirrup, then Chief of the Defence Staff, told American diplomats that Pakistan was already in an “arguably worse” state a month after Mr Zardari’s election. He added that although the new president had “made helpful political noises, he’s clearly a numbskull”.
His comments were echoed by high-ranking British officials who said Mr Zardari had “not much sense of how to govern a country” and no goals beyond “hanging on to power”
A leaked record of the talks with US officials discloses that Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office and David Cameron’s national security adviser, said the British government “would like to believe in Zardari”, but added: “I fear he talks and talks but not much happens.”
Mr Zardari took over as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party from his estranged wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, following her assassination in 2007.

Donkey Dies of Heart Attack

Donkey Dies of Heart Attack

The donkey ended up in the skies as a result of an impromptu advertising campaign

A donkey who shot to international fame last year after being forced to parasail above the beaches of southern Russia has died of a heart attack.
A veterinarian said the heart attack was likely the result of stress brought on by the experience, which sparked an international outcry from human-rights activists and a campaign by a British tabloid to rescue the beast.
The female donkey named Anapka made headlines worldwide and attracted the attention of local police after beachgoers in Russia’s southern village of Golubitskaya were stunned when they saw a braying, apparently terrified donkey soaring in the blue skies over the Sea of Azov.
The donkey was attached to a parachute pulled by a speedboat and was in the skies as a result of an impromptu advertising campaign by several entrepreneurial Russians to attract beachgoers to indulge in the thrill of parasailing.
The donkey died last month at stables just outside Moscow where she ended up after her heart-wrenching ordeal, her minders said.
Stable manager Yulia Dobrovolskaya says Anapka was old but looked healthy and was very quiet when she arrived in the stables but soon began to refuse food and water.
“She got sick in December. She became very weak,” she said, adding that vets had to force-feed her for more than a week before she died.
A veterinarian who examined the donkey said she was probably around 40-years-old but the most likely cause of death was a heart attack.
“An autopsy showed she died from myocardial infarction,” Ms Dobrovolskaya said, chalking up her illness to the stress endured during her parasailing experience.
“A young animal may recover but for an old one there is no way back.”
Local media said in the summer the donkey was so high in the sky that children on the beach cried and asked their parents why a dog was tied to a parachute.
“The donkey landed in an atrocious manner: it was dragged several metres along the water, after which the animal was pulled out half-alive onto the shore,” local newspaper Taman said at the time.
The stunt aroused a storm of protest from animal-rights activists including French actress Brigitte Bardot who wrote to president Dmitry Medvedev.
The animal became the subject of British tabloid hysteria and The Sun published a series of stories saying it tracked down the poor animal and rescued it from its owner.

Wife of man killed by Davis commits suicide and Died.

Wife of man killed by Davis commits suicide

A nurse and unidentified relatives of Shumaila Kanwal, bottom, the widow of a Pakistani man allegedly shot and killed by a US official, stand beside her at a local hospital in Faisalabad. -AP Photo

FAISALABAD: The wife of one of two youths gunned down by a US government employee Raymond Davis in Lahore on Jan 27 committed suicide on Sunday.
Shumaila Kanwal, wife of Faheem Ahmed, took insecticides in the morning and was brought to Allied Hospital where she died a little before midnight. Hospital official Prof Zahid Yasmeen Hashmi confirmed her death.
When she was brought to the hospital, Ms Kanwal told newsmen that she had decided to end her life in protest against “favourable treatment being accorded to the killer of her husband by police and reports that he will be set free”.
Ms Kanwal had married Faheem Ahmed about six months ago.
Her cousin said the 26-year old widow had taken insecticides to kill herself after learning Davis would be handed over to the US government without trial. She had returned to her parents’ home from Gadri village near Chak Jhumra a couple of days ago.
She had told newsmen gathered at the hospital: “The killer is being treated as a guest at the police station. I need justice and blood for the blood of my husband.”
She said that even after 11 days after the murder of her husband, there had been no progress in the case.
Activists of Jamat-i-Islami gathered outside the hospital and held a demonstration.
JI district chief Azeem Randhawa said Ms Kanwal was an orphan and her mother was disabled.
Agencies add: Faheem’s brother Mohammad Waseem told AFP that Ms Kanwal was plunged into a “severe depression” by her husband’s death.
She took the poison before dawn and was rushed to the hospital early on Sunday, he said.
“I want blood for blood. The way my husband was shot, his killer should be shot in the same fashion,” she had told reporters at the hospital.
“I do not expect any justice from this government,” said Ms Kanwal in a statement recorded by doctor Ali Naqi. “That is why I want to kill myself.”
“Mohammad Faheem’s wife Shumaila this morning took poisonous pills and she was taken to Allied Hospital” in Faisalabad, local police chief Usman Anwar told AFP.
Earlier, Dr Naqi confirmed the suicide attempt, describing her condition as critical.
The shootings have stoked anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, feelings that could be further inflamed by Ms Kanwal’s death.