In a well-guarded hotel on top of a high hill, a lively audience of Afghans and US VIPs watched the season finale of Afghanistan's version of American Idol. Singers performed on a star-shaped stage while cutting-edge graphics flashed in the background.
Only a couple hundred meters down the hill, thousands of Afghans demonstrated on Friday against the publication of Prophet Mohammed drawings in Denmark, yelling "Down with Denmark" and "Death to America."
The protesters burned flags of the Netherlands and Denmark and an effigy of a Dutch filmmaker and lawmaker.
Richard Holbrooke, a former US ambassador to the UN under former US president Bill Clinton, was among the VIPs watching the filming of Afghan Star. But because of the protests outside, he couldn't leave the hotel when he had planned to. He took note of the irony.
"I love it, fabulous. Better than American Idol," Holbrooke said of the show. "It shows the two Afghanistans. The riots down there and the show up here."
Holbrooke skewered the way US President George W. Bush's administration has handled the Afghan conflict, saying Washington "neglected" the country "and now we're playing catch-up."
He said any of the three remaining candidates for president -- Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- would do better in Afghanistan than Bush.
"All three candidates will put more emphasis on it than President Bush," Holbrooke said in the hotel lobby.
"The war in Afghanistan is going to go on longer than the war in Iraq, at a lower intensity," he said.
But Holbrooke, a supporter and adviser to Hillary Clinton, said the Democratic candidates would phase out of Iraq faster than McCain and put more resources into Afghanistan.
He said Clinton would like to increase support for agricultural programs to help create jobs in the country.
Inside the ballroom of the hotel, Rafi Naabzada, a 19-year-old ethnic Tajik, was voted the winner of the third season of Afghan Star, the country's most popular TV show.
The two finalists -- including Hameed Sakhizada, a 21-year-old ethnic Hazara -- together received more than 300,000 text message votes.
A female singer from the Pashtun tribe, was voted out last week, finishing in third place.
She had drawn criticism from conservative clerics in Afghanistan, who said women should not be singing on TV.
Saad Mohseni, the founder of Tolo TV, which produces Afghan Star, said that the show is helping to bring about social change in Afghanistan.
"Not just in music, but in the way people voted, the way they lined up in an orderly manner [outside the show] ... the way the losers are gracious. No one is threatening violence. That's a huge change," Mohseni said.
He estimates that 11 million Afghans watch the show.
The country's population is about 30 million.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS