Hareega's Observations

*** Jimmy Carter, the former US president, met with Khalid Mish3al of Hamas. Israeli officials released a statement describing their concern. They didn't want the man topping their most wanted list to meet with Khalid Mish3al.

*** Many protesters in Europe and the US are asking their governments to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing. They read about the Olympic torch reaching their town through their made-in-China laptops, chased the torch down the streets with their made-in-Chin tennis shoes and asked their leaders to help the Chinese people by boycotting the biggest sports event that happened and will ever happen in their country.

*** Delta Airlines and Northwest are merging. Two other airlines, Aloha and ATA, filed for bakrupcy. We may end up with only one airline running services in the whole US. Tell me something, are communists getting into this country twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall?

*** Crime rates are record high in Washington DC. The Congress is asking president Bush to do something about it. They suggested he should seriously consider "spreading democracy" in Washington DC.

*** Last week in Texas, arrests were made after a polygamist ranch was discovered. Many teenage girls in that ranch were forced to marry older men and were even impregnated by them.
In other unrelated news, the Arab Gulf Country Council asked its members to hold an urgent meeting next week.

*** HM Queen Rania appeared on special videos on youtube discussing different serious topics concerning Jordan and the region. She is the first queen to make such a video on youtube. She is also the first Arab woman to have a very popular video on youtube that is not preceded by "This video or group may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community."

*** Jordanians are still concerned the country is not capable of accepting the large number of Iraqi refugees who fled to Jordan in the past few years. They became much more concerned when Prime Minister Nader al-Thahabi assured them he's handling it with his always-overbook-to-guarantee-good-profit policy he adopted at Royal Jordanian.