A court in Belgium has ruled that the country’s authorities restitute nine boxes of smuggled ancient Iranian artifacts along with a bronze pin stolen from an exhibition.This file photo shows 2,700-year-old Persian silver drinking cup Shir Dal [Credit: PressTV]
An informed source at the Center of International Legal Affairs in Iran’s Presidential Office said on Tuesday that an appellate court in Belgium’s eastern city of Liège, situated nearly 90 kilometers (55 miles) southeast of the capital, Brussels, has passed the final verdict in favor of the restitution of the Iranian heritage, IRNA reported.
The source, whose name was not revealed, praised efforts made by Iranian legal experts and officials at Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handcraft and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) for following up on the case.
The contents of the nine boxes were looted over the past years from a 3000-year-old ancient site near the village of Khorvin, situated 80 kilometers (49 miles) northeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Following Iran's demand, the Brussels court ordered the seizure of the pieces and their preservation at the Museum of Brussels University, pending a final verdict.
Since the boxes contained metal items that might have oxidized over time, Iranian officials asked Belgian officials to open the boxes in the presence of ICHTO representatives. The boxes were resealed after experts examined the contents.
The ancient pin was stolen in December 2002 from the European tour of “7000 Years of Persian Art” during its run at St. Peter's Abbey in Ghent.
Iranian officials have filed several other lawsuits in courts in Britain, France, Turkey, and Pakistan for the return of smuggled artifacts over the past years.
The project of brand new railway station with a huge peak from a steel and glass was developed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
High-speed Railway System in Belgium
The project connects two parts of a city till now divided by tracks. The peak covers five platforms and lasts on 145 meters at length. The underground floor with a series of foot bridges and paths which connect various parts of a complex is created. The station provides a high-speed railway system of Belgium with a new complex of services.
Belgian design bureau Creneau International has finished creation of an interior of the central shop of the largest supplier of mobile phones in Belgium, companies BASE.
Designers have suggested to install unusual furniture and mobile show-windows in a shop interior.
The Mobile Installations
Sedentary places are scattered on all interior in the form of huge letters from which the brand name gathers: BASE.
Following comprehensive diplomatic efforts between Egypt and Belgium, Leuven University has agreed to return a 35,000-year-old human skeleton to Egypt which it has held since 1980.The prehistoric human skeleton unearthed in the Nazlet Khater area of the Upper Egyptian city of Sohag [Credit: Ahram Online]
The skeleton came into the possession of the university according to the division law. The law allowed foreign missions to have a share in the artefacts they discovered at archaeological sites in Egypt.
Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty explained that the skeleton was unearthed in the Nazlet Khater area of the Upper Egyptian city of Sohag during an excavation by the Leuven University archaeological mission.
After diplomatic efforts, he continued, the university agreed to return the skeleton because it is a very important artefact in the history of Egypt.
Ali Ahmed, head of the Stolen Antiquities Recovery Section, told Ahram Online that the skeleton will arrive next week and a committee is now studying how to put it on display at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat.
The new interior for Parisian shop L'Eclaireur was issued Arne Quinze, by the artist from Belgium.
For furnish of internal territory of a fashion it was required two tons of wooden boards, and also it is a lot of others vintage elements. Into walls it's integrated 147 screens showing various animated plots.
The Vintage Interior
“This place inspires us. We each time try to be beyond easier luxury. This research, search, surprise… Various possibilities for display of necessary expressiveness of data, the actual moment. It not simply stop, is experience. The project has united in itself dreams, emotions, history and memoirs. It's imagination in which each person will find itself.”
Name: Stefania Balasoiu Age: 19 | Height: 5’9″ | Laval, QC Stefania was born in Antwerpen , Belgium and is of Romanian background. She moved to Canada at two years old with her young parents that ran from the communist system and wanted to give their child a better future. She was raised in Montreal and was a very active child. She played Volley-ball and basket-ball in her school teams and she also practiced swimming and athlestism at competition levels. Then, at 16 years old, she was crowned Miss Diaspora Canada 2008 and went in Romania for the international finally as the reprensentative of our country. She currently speaks,writes and reads five languages and has the capacity to understand and speak seven.She will be starting university in september this year at Concordia’s School of Business in their Administration program. She also is a model and plans on taking a year off from university to pursue her dreams and accomplish her carreer in the fashion industry. During that year, she wishes to model internationaly and travel all around the world.Stefania has participated to many volunteer activities such as fundraising fashion shows, political campaigns, etc. She is very involved in the Montreal and Romanian communities and Stefania is a very generous person when it comes to giving her time to others. Finally,Stefania lives her life at it’s fullest potential and wishes to make this opportunity one that will bring out in her all the best she has to give to the world. She is not afraid of losing because she believes that from every experience, you learn something new and you come out to be a winner in your own unique way. She always says : “Life is all about taking chances and doing everything you do at your best!”. Sponsored by: Family and Friends Languages spoken Fluently (please include your native language if English is not your native language) French, Romanian, Spanish, English, Italian.
Special thanks and credits towww.beautiesofcanada.com source: (Thank you and credits to http://freedom-guy.blogspot.com/ and all sources for the information and pictures)
In general I'm a big fan of The Best American Series and the new one's for 2010 just came out. I bought The Best American Essays
and The Best American Travel Writing
since they are my two favorite collections. I flipped through the table of contents, skimming for essayists I know and love, and new ones I'm interested to read, when I saw that The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Essays both have an essay by David Sedaris in them. It's the same essay! Guy Walks into a Bar Car, which originally appeared in The New Yorker and can be read online. David Sedaris is known for being funny, so if you're looking for some giggles this is a great essay.
I wasn't vastly impressed by this piece but I think it's worth mentioning since it was chosen by Bill Buford and Christopher Hitchens this year. The essay is about Sedaris' trip on a train. In the bar car he meets a man who he is possibly attracted to, and he gets to talking and drinking with him. The guy is a total wreck, an alcoholic, screwed up family, and unemployed. Later in the essay he talks about a Lebanese man he met on a train some years before (he was 24), he felt an instant connection with this man, and the man invites him to come stay at his college with him, but Sedaris refuses. He later regrets this decision because, well, I think we've all been in that situation before. The essay looks at the train and travel as a kind of hopeful, romantic, new beginning, but then acknowledges that this is often not the case. And even when it is the case, we are often afraid of being truly romantic.
I love the way the essays starts: "In the golden age of American travel, the platforms of train stations were knee-deep in what looked like fog. You see it all the time in black-and-white movies, these low-lying eddies of silver. I always thought it was steams from the engines, but now I wonder if it didn't from cigarettes." This is a great set up for the rest of the essay. Sedaris gives us a well known image, beautiful, foggy, romantic train platforms that are full of mystery and elegance, but then he turns around and says something he has always though as beautiful and enticing might actually just be something gross or unimportant. And this is something I think happens a lot in travel. You dream up a place to be exactly what you want, but once you arrive it isn't anything like you expected. I experienced this when I went to Rome. I thought it would be this beautiful, romantic place, and I ended up thinking it was kind of disgusting.
He further ties this into age. He meets the Lebanese man at 24, but he meets the drunk more recently as an older man. "When you're young, it's easy to believe that such an opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one. Instead of a Lebanese guy in Italy, it might be a Nigerian one in Belgium, or maybe a Pole in Turkey. You tell yourself that if you traveled alone to Europe this summer you could surely do the same thing next year and the year after that. Of course, you don't, though, and the next thing you know you're an aging, unemployed elf, so desperate for love that you spend your evening mooning over a straight alcoholic." So in some ways life is a lot like travel. We enter with expectations, but as time goes on we realize they might not be exactly what we thought.
You can read this essay at The New Yorker, and if you do please come back to tell me what you thought of it!
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