Tidbits of Arabic News translated into English

Monday, July 7, 2014

TV channel from Dubai

A TV channel has been switched on for the sake of its dramatic soap operas. These usually feature a lot of sappy language, and then ten minutes of camera time lovingly focused on the unhappy heroine as she stands in her rich living room and observes her fearful expression in the mirror, all while gloomy music is playing. I'm not kidding: I actually saw ten minutes without an dialogue, just the heroine looking frightened and hopeless as she stood in the living room.

Then when the soap opera is over, they show about ten minutes of news. Yesterday, the headline was about government appointments made by Dubai's ruler. It sounded like he was appointing others amongst his family into certain positions.

Then, they talked about Palestine: the burned Palestinian teenager and Israeli rocket attacks into Gaza, but also mentioned Gaza rockets fired into Israel.

Then they mentioned the UN Secretary-General, but I don't remember what for.

Then they mentioned a bunch of attacks that took place yesterday in Uganda; but they did not mention attacks that occurred in Kenya yesterday carried out by Al Shabab.

One morning I saw a commercial on this channel about how three million children die every year from dirty water, and here is a list of organizations that you can please donate to during Ramadan.

The other day I was in a taxi and for the second time this whole time in Jordan, the BBC Arabic radio was on. But both times I've heard it, the sound has been so distorted that I couldn't understand what they were saying.

Another day recently the Jordanian morning radio was on in the taxi, and one of the headlines was that there are 6.6 million Syrian children living as refugees, or are displaced.

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