Hollywood actor Richard Gere joined some 30 Nobel Laureates yesterday for a gathering of the world's top thinkers in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.
The conference, bringing together luminaries such as former peace prize winner the Dalai Lama, has set itself the none too modest task of finding solutions to the world's problems.
"A process begins here -- a process that all of you will shape -- and by your effort, help shape our world," host King Abdullah II of Jordan said in his opening speech.
Highlighting the conflict in the Middle East, he said the world needed to make a "new beginning" to create more freedom and opportunity, build peace and expand global cooperation, with a particular focus on the world's youth.
Gere, star of Pretty Woman and a close friend of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said the two-day meeting has "a lot of possibilities because the people who are meeting are not political, they have no agenda."
Former US president Bill Clinton is to join the gathering today.
Jordan's Finance Minister Bassem Awadallah said the conference -- hosted by King Abdullah and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel -- was aimed at bringing the best minds together to think about where the world is going.
"They are coming in from various disciplines in order to discuss issues because they believe the world is in real danger," he said.
Over the course of two days, the 29 laureates and other leaders will examine and try to find solutions for problems in four main areas, including terror and peace, economic development and poverty, health and environment, and education and media.
The conference is taking place amid centuries-old rose-colored ruins of Petra, a World Heritage Site some 200km south of the capital Amman.
It is being held just days ahead of a World Economic Forum summit on the banks of the Dead Sea in Jordan.
Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and writer, co-sponsored a similar conference in 1988, when French President Francois Mitterrand hosted some 75 Nobel laureates.
"Can we effect a change?" Wiesel said of this year's conference. "Can we bring about a `merger' between power and morality? We are on a runaway train hurtling toward the abyss. Do we have the determination to stop it? It will not be easy but we must, lest our past become our children's future."
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS