Bombing in Paris

Paris Attacks Kill More Than 100, Police Say; French Seal Border
By ADAM NOSSITER and RICK GLADSTONE NOV. 13, 2015.PARIS 

The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking that President François Hollandecalled an unprecedented terrorist attack on France. He closed the borders and mobilized the military in a national emergency.

French television and news services quoted the police as saying at least 100 people had been killed at a concert hall alone, and dozens more in apparently coordinated attacks outside the country’s main sports stadium and at least five other popular locations in the city.

Witnesses on French television said the scene at the rock concert was a massacre.

The casualties eclipsed the deaths and mayhem that roiled Paris in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and related assaults around the French capital by Islamic militant extremists less than a year ago.

An explosion near the sports stadium, which French news services said may have been a suicide bombing, came as Germany and France were playing a soccer match, forcing a hasty evacuation of Mr. Hollande. As the scope of the assaults quickly became clear, he convened an emergency cabinet meeting and announced that France was closing its borders.

“As I speak, terrorist attacks of an unprecedented scale are taking place in the Paris region,” he said in a nationally televised address. “There are several dozen dead, lots more wounded, it’s horrific.”

Mr. Hollande said that on his orders the government had “mobilized all the forces we can muster to neutralize the threats and secure all of the areas.”

President Obama in Washington came to the White House Briefing room to express solidarity and offer aid and condolences. “Once again, we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians,” he said. “This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Twitter erupted with celebratory messages by members and sympathizers of the Islamic State, the extremist group based in Syria and Iraq that is under assault by major powers including the United States, France and Russia.

The main shooting appeared to have broken out at a popular music venue, The Bataclan, where the American band Eagles of Death Metal was among those playing, and French news services said as many as 100 hostages may have been taken there. Some accounts said grenades had been lobbed as well.

A witness quoted by BFM television said he heard rounds of automatic rifle fire and someone shouting “Allahu akbar!” at The Bataclan.

Another witness who escaped the concert hall told BFM: “When they started shooting we just saw flashes. People got down on the ground right away.”

The police were ordering bystanders in the that area to get off the streets, French television reported.

French news media reported that Kalashnikov rifles had been involved in the shootings — a favored weapon of militants who have attacked targets in France — and that many rounds had been fired.
Police sirens sounded throughout central Paris on Friday night.

Unlike the attacks against Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January, terrorism experts said the targets of the Friday attacks had no apparent rationale. Instead, assailants appeared to strike at random in hip neighborhoods on a Friday night when many people would be starting to enjoy the weekend.

“It’s a Friday night and there’s a lot of people out, a lot of tourists out,” said a senior European counterterrorism official. “If you want maximum exposure you do it like this, in the dark when it’s scarier and more difficult for police to act.”

Source: The New York Times

God Save the Noble Queen!

     Today, Queen Elizabeth surpassed her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria ruling a staggering 63 years! Elizabeth came to the throne at 25 years old and had been married to Prince Philip of Greece for five years and had two small children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne. Eight years later Prince Andrew was born, followed by Prince Edward two years afterwards. 

      Elizabeth was never meant to be queen. She was the oldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, but when King Edward VII abdicated to marry the twice divorcee Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth's father Bertie became King George VI and led Great Britain through the horrors of WWII. Elizabeth learned a great deal from her father as well as from her extraordinary mother, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mum). 

     Princess Elizabeth married her handsome cousin Prince Philip of Greece on November 20, 1947 after a great deal of struggle to get her parents to accept their relationship and Philip. A year later, Prince Charles was born and Princess Anne two years after that. Elizabeth and Philip lived quietly for five years until the King died in 1951 and Elizabeth was declared the new queen. For the next 63 years, she has ruled Great Britain with dignity, calm and absolute honor. She is truly a remarkable woman, wife, mother, grandmother and queen!

God save the Queen and long may she reign!

Pray for Ukraine

      My sister has been to Ukraine several times for mission trips and she absolutely loves it there. This country is so beautiful, but so broken as well. All these people want is freedom; they thought they would get after the fall of Communism in 1989, but it's been hard fought and little benefits have been reaped from their fighting.

Obama warns Russia against Ukraine intervention, says 'there will be costs'

By Chelsea J. Carter, Ingrid Formanek and Diana Magnay, CNN

updated 7:11 PM EST, Fri February 28, 2014

Armed men patrol outside the Simferopol International Airport in Ukraine's Crimea region on Friday, February 28. The gunmen, whom Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov called part of an "armed invasion" by Russian forces, appeared around the airport without identifying themselves. Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine with an ethnic Russian majority. It's the last large bastion of opposition to Ukraine's new political leadership after President Viktor Yanukovych's ouster.

Simferopol, Ukraine (CNN) -- Tension dramatically mounted in Ukraine's Crimea region Friday as its ambassador to the United Nations warned Russia against any further violation of its territorial borders, a warning that came as the United States urged Russia to pull back from the region or face possible consequences.

"We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside Ukraine," U.S. President Barack Obama said in televised comments from the White House.

"...It would be a clear violation of Russia's commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine and of international laws."

Obama said any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be "deeply destabilizing, and he warned "the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine."

The remarks were the latest in a series of fast-moving developments that saw Ukrainian officials grappling with rising secessionist passions in the Russian-majority region, where the airspace has been closed and communications have been disrupted.

Ukraine accused Russian Black Sea forces of trying to seize two airports in Crimea but said Ukrainian security forces prevented them from taking control.

Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov earlier characterized the presence at the airport of unidentified armed men, who wore uniforms without insignia, as an "armed invasion."

The crisis echoed throughout the world, with the U.N. Security Council president holding a private meeting about the crisis enveloping Ukraine and world leaders calling armed groups not to attempt to challenge Ukrainian sovereignty.

'This group is making a serious mistake'

At a press conference outside the U.N. Security Council, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N., Yuriy Sergeyev said the country was prepared to defend itself and urged the U.N.'s moral and political support for the Kiev government, particularly in Crimea.

Since last week's ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine has faced a deepening schism, with those in the west generally supporting the interim government and its European Union tilt, while many in the east preferring a Ukraine where Russia casts a long shadow.

Nowhere is that feeling more intense than in Crimea, the last big bastion of opposition to the new political leadership. And Ukraine suspects Russia of fomenting tension in the autonomous region that might escalate into a bid for separation by its Russian majority.

"We still have a chance to stop the negative developments and separatism," Sergeyev said.

Sergeyev accused Russia of violating its military agreement by blocking Ukrainian security forces, including its border guards and police, in the region.

"This group is making a serious mistake challenging our territorial integrity," he said.

But Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaliy Churkin, compared the reports of Russian troops taking charge of positions on the ground to rumors that "are always not true."

"We are acting within the framework of our agreement," he said.

Even so, U.S. military commanders and intelligence agencies were scrambling Friday to determine what was needed to get a better picture of Russian movements.

That included an assessment of intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance needs, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

Meanwhile, Obama is considering not attending the G8 Summit in Sochi, Russia, in June, if Russian troops remain in the Ukraine, a senior administration official familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kerry talks to Russian foreign minister

The Russian Foreign Ministry said maneuvers of armored vehicles from the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea were needed for security and were in line with bilateral agreements.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday morning about the airport and military activities, and Lavrov told Kerry that the Russians "are not engaging in any violation of the sovereignty" of Ukraine. Russia has a military base agreement with the country.

Lavrov told him the military exercises were prescheduled and unrelated to the events in Ukraine, Kerry said.

Gunmen seize Crimean parliament

"I nevertheless made it clear that that could be misinterpreted at the moment,'' Kerry said, "and there are enough tensions that it is important for everybody to be extremely careful not to inflame the situation and send the wrong messages."

Yanukovych's news conference was under way in Russia, Kerry said, as he spoke with Lavrov.

Kerry said Lavrov had reaffirmed to him a commitment that Russia would "respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine."

"We would overwhelmingly stress today that we urge all parties -- all parties; that includes the new interim technical government, rightists, oppositionists and others, anybody in the street who is armed -- we urge all parties to avoid any steps that could be misinterpreted or lead to miscalculation or do anything other than to work to bring that peace and stability and peaceful transition within the governing process within Ukraine," Kerry said.

Russian response

In a telephone call with European leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the importance of avoiding a further escalation of violence in Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a prepared statement Friday.

Putin also called for a normalization of the situation, speaking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, according to the Kremlin.

Crimea was handed to Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1954. Just over half its population is ethnic Russian, while about a quarter are Ukrainians and a little more than 10% are Crimean Tatars, a predominantly Muslim group oppressed under former Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers introduced two bills Friday to simplify annexing new territories into the Russian Federation and simplify access to Russian citizenship for Ukrainians, the state news agency Itar Tass said.

One bill also stipulates that the accession of a part of a foreign state to Russia should be taken through a referendum, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Ukraine's President in Russia

Making his first public appearance since his ouster Saturday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said the newly appointed interim government was not legitimate and did not represent the majority of Ukraine's 45 million citizens.

"I intend to continue the fight for the future of Ukraine against those who, with fear and with terror, are attempting to replace the power," Yanukovych said in Russian, not Ukrainian.

"Nobody has overthrown me. I was compelled to leave Ukraine due to a direct threat to my life and my nearest and dearest."

In his hourlong news conference, Yanukovych accused the interim authorities in Ukraine of propagating violence. He spoke against a backdrop of Ukraine's blue-and-yellow flags before reporters in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don about 700 miles south of Moscow.

"I never gave any orders to shoot," he said, adding that he sought peace and that the security forces took up arms only when their lives were at risk.

Yanukovych is wanted in Ukraine on charges connected to the deaths of demonstrators, who were protesting his decision to scrap a European Union trade deal in favor of one with Russia.

Armed men at airports

Back in Kiev, Andrii Parubii, chief of national security and defense, said Ukrainian military and police forces had stopped Russian military forces from seizing two airports in the Crimean region.

The Russian military is on the outside of both airports, Parubii said in a televised news conference from the Ukrainian parliament.

Weapons were not used during the operation, according to Avakov, the interior minister.

Russian armored vehicles were moving toward Simferopol, the regional capital, on Friday, the Ukrainian news outlet TSN reported.

Men in military uniforms had been seen patrolling the airport in Simferopol, as well as a military and civilian airbase in nearby Sevastopol since early Friday.

Avakov said the armed men at the Sevastopol air base were troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet, stationed in the port city. They were in camouflage uniforms without military insignia, he said.

The presence of the armed men has not affected the Simferopol airport, civil aviation authorities said.

"We are checking to make sure that no radicals come to Crimea from Kiev, from the Ukraine," said one man outside the airport, who didn't give his name. "We don't want radicals, we don't want fascism, we don't want problems."

Other men outside the airport, dressed in black rather than military fatigues, said they belonged to the pro-Russia Unity Party and had come on the orders of the new Crimean administration -- voted in Thursday after armed men seized regional government buildings.

Concerned about the latest developments, Ukraine's parliament passed a resolution Friday that demanded Russia halt any activity that can be interpreted as an attack on its sovereignty.

Moscow alarmed some observers by announcing the surprise military exercises Wednesday in its western and central areas, near the Ukraine border.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's largest telecom firm was unable to provide data and voice connectivity between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine because unknown people had seized telecommunications nodes and destroyed cables, it said Friday. There is almost no phone connectivity or Internet service across Crimea, said Ukrtelecom, which is the only landline provider.

Source: CNN

Goodbye Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple Black, Screen Darling, Dies at 85
by Aljean Harmetz - Feb. 11, 2014

Shirley Temple Black ~ 1928 - 2014

Shirley Temple Black, who as a dimpled, precocious and determined little girl in the 1930s sang and tap-danced her way to a height of Hollywood stardom and worldwide fame that no other child has reached, died on Monday night at her home in Woodside, Calif. She was 85.

Her publicist, Cheryl Kagan, confirmed her death.

Mrs. Black returned to the spotlight in the 1960s in the surprising new role of diplomat, but in the popular imagination she would always be America’s darling of the Depression years, when in 23 motion pictures her sparkling personality and sunny optimism lifted spirits and made her famous. From 1935 to 1939 she was the most popular movie star in America, with Clark Gable a distant second. She received more mail than Greta Garbo and was photographed more often than President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The little girl with 56 perfect blonde ringlets and an air of relentless determination was so precocious that the usually unflappable Adolphe Menjou, her co-star in her first big hit, “Little Miss Marker,” described her as “an Ethel Barrymore at 6” and said she was “making a stooge out of me.”

When she turned from a magical child into a teenager, audience interest slackened, and she retired from the screen at 22. But instead of retreating into nostalgia, she created a successful second career for herself.

After marrying Charles Alden Black in 1950, she became a prominent Republican fund-raiser. She was appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969. She went on to win wide respect as the United States ambassador to Ghana from 1974 to 1976, was President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of protocol in 1976 and 1977, and became President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989, serving there during the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

After winning an honorary Academy Award at the age of 6 and earning $3 million before puberty, Shirley Temple grew up to be a level-headed adult. When her cancerous left breast was removed in 1972, at a time when operations for cancer were shrouded in secrecy, she held a news conference in her hospital room to speak out about her mastectomy and to urge women discovering breast lumps not to “sit home and be afraid.” She is widely credited with helping to make it acceptable to talk about breast cancer.

Shirley signs her first film contract, 1932

Shirley Jane Temple was born in Santa Monica, Calif., on April 23, 1928. From the beginning, she and her mother, Gertrude, were a team (“I was absolutely bathed in love,” she remembered); her movie career was their joint invention. Her success was due to both her own charm and her mother’s persistence.

In “Child Star,” her 1988 autobiography, Mrs. Black said her mother had made a “calculated decision” to turn her only daughter into a professional dancer. At a fee of 50 cents a week, Mrs. Temple enrolled 3-year-old Shirley in Mrs. Meglin’s Dance Studio.

In 1932, Shirley was spotted by an agent from Educational Pictures and chosen to appear in “Baby Burlesks,” a series of sexually suggestive one-reel shorts in which children played all the roles. The 4- and 5-year-old children wore fancy adult costumes that ended at the waist. Below the waist, they wore diapers with oversize safety pins. In these heavy-handed parodies of well-known films like “The Front Page” (“The Runt Page”) and “What Price Glory” (“War Babies”), Shirley imitated Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse and satin garter as a hard-boiled French bar girl in “War Babies” Dolores Del Rio.

When any of the two dozen children in “Baby Burlesks” misbehaved, they were locked in a windowless sound box with only a block of ice on which to sit. “So far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche,” Mrs. Black wrote in “Child Star.” “Its lesson of life, however, was profound and unforgettable. Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble."

“Baby Burlesks” was followed by five two-reel comedies and a year of casting calls and bit-part auditions, which garnered young Shirley half a dozen small roles. By Thanksgiving 1933 she was growing older. She was 5½, and in the previous two years she had earned a total of $702.50. Her mother did the sensible thing: she shaved a year off her daughter’s age. Shirley would be shocked to discover, at a party for her 12th birthday in April 1941, that she was actually 13.

Her career began in earnest in 1934, when she was picked to play James Dunn’s daughter in the Fox fantasy “Stand Up and Cheer,” one of many films made during the Depression in which music chases away unhappy reality. She was signed to a two-week contract at $150 a week and told to provide her own tap shoes.

Within an hour of completing her song-and-dance number “Baby, Take a Bow,” she was formally placed under contract to Fox for a year at $150 a week. The studio had an option for seven more years and would pay Gertrude Temple an additional $25 each week to take care of her daughter.

In its review of “Stand Up and Cheer” (1934), Variety called Shirley Temple a “sure-fire potential kidlet star.” She made eight movies in 1934 and moved from potential to full star in February, when Fox lent her to Paramount for “Little Miss Marker,” based on a Damon Runyon story.

Shirley Temple and Gary Cooper

Playing a child left with a bookie (Adolphe Menjou) as a marker for her father’s gambling debts, Shirley reforms a gang of gamblers, bookies and horse dopers. She would play a similarly wise and maternal miniature adult, dominating the adults around her and solving their problems with unbounded optimism and common sense, in most of her films.

She brought peace to a British regiment fighting rebels in India in “Wee Willie Winkie” (1937) and to white men and Indians in “Susannah of the Mounties” (1939). She was frequently cast as an orphan, the better to show adults how to cope with adversity: her father committed suicide in “Little Miss Marker”; her aviator father crashed and her mother was killed by a car in “Bright Eyes” (1934); she was the sole survivor of a shipwreck in “Captain January” (1936).

“People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog, Rin Tin Tin, and a little girl,” Mrs. Black often said in appraising her success.

Shirley with the Shirley Temple dolls

It is no surprise that Shirley Temple dolls were the best-selling dolls of the decade (and are valuable collectibles now). In many of her films she was a living doll, adored by entire groups of men: aviators in “Bright Eyes," a Yankee regiment in “The Little Colonel” (1935).

No Shirley Temple movie was complete without a song — most famously “On the Good Ship Lollipop” and “Animal Crackers in My Soup” — and a tap dance, with partners including George Murphy, Jack Haley and Buddy Ebsen. But her most successful partnership was with the legendary African-American entertainer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson. She may have been the first white actress allowed to hold hands affectionately with a black man on screen, and her staircase dance with Mr. Robinson in “The Little Colonel,” the first of four movies they made together, retains its magic almost 80 years later.

Not everyone was a Shirley Temple fan. The novelist Graham Greene, who was also a film critic, was sued by 20th Century Fox for his review of “Wee Willie Winkie” in the magazine Night and Day, which he edited. In the review, he questioned whether she was a midget and wrote of her “well-shaped and desirable little body” being served up to middle-aged male admirers.

After the failure of “The Blue Bird” (1940), a film version of the Maeterlinck fantasy that Fox expected to be the bonanza MGM’s “Wizard of Oz” had been a year earlier, the studio dropped 12-year-old Shirley’s contract. Even before the movie was released, her mother had decided it was time for Shirley, who had been educated in a schoolroom at Fox, to go to a real school.

Shirley's wedding portrait, Sept. 19, 1945

She entered the private Westlake School for Girls in seventh grade, with little idea of how to cope. She had sat on 200 famous laps and found J. Edgar Hoover’s the most comfortable. Amelia Earhart had shared chewing gum with her. She had conversed with Eleanor Roosevelt. The Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood had created the Shirley Temple — a nonalcoholic drink of lemon-lime soda, grenadine and a maraschino cherry — in her honor. (She didn’t care for it.) But her playmates had been few and carefully chosen. At Westlake, after months of being given the cold shoulder, she decided she might as well be herself. She eventually spent a happy five years there.

What Fox had dropped, MGM picked up eight months later. But the little girl was now entering adolescence. On her first visit to MGM, Mrs. Black wrote in her autobiography, the producer Arthur Freed unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her. Being innocent of male anatomy, she responded by giggling, and he threw her out of his office.

She made “Kathleen” (1941) for MGM and “Miss Annie Rooney” (1942) for United Artists; played supporting roles for David O. Selznick in two 1944 films, “Since You Went Away” and “I’ll Be Seeing You”; and made “Kiss and Tell” on loan to Columbia in 1945. But her golden hair had turned brown and, as the film historian David Thomson observed, she had become “an unremarkable teenager.” The public had lost interest.

By then she was a strong-willed, chain-smoking 17-year-old. Determined to be the first in her Westlake class to become engaged, she had accepted a ring from a 24-year-old Army Air Corps sergeant, John Agar Jr., a few days before her 17th birthday. They were married on Sept. 19, 1945.

Unable to handle being Mr. Shirley Temple, Mr. Agar began drinking excessively. While his wife was appearing in “The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer” with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy and “That Hagen Girl” with Ronald Reagan, Mr. Agar began an acting career of his own. He went on to appear in several low-budget movies, in support of John Wayne in a few westerns and war films, and on television. But he failed to achieve anywhere near as much success as she had.

Shirley and her daughter, Linda Susan in 1948

They were divorced in December 1949, a year after the birth of their daughter, Susan. Less than 60 days after her divorce, Miss Temple, 21, met and became engaged to Charles Alden Black, the 30-year-old assistant to the president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, who claimed he had never seen a Shirley Temple movie. They were betrothed after a 12-day courtship. Their marriage lasted almost 55 years, until his death in 2005.

Mr. Black, who was dropped from the San Francisco Social Register for marrying an actress, told a reporter in 1988: “Over 38 years I have participated in her life 24 hours a day through thick and thin, traumatic situations, exultant situations, and I feel she has only one personality. She would be catastrophic for the psychiatric profession. You can wake her up in the middle of the night and she has the same personality everybody knows. What everybody has seen for 60 years is the bedrock.”

Mrs. Black had left the movies for good by Dec. 6, 1950, when she married Mr. Black. A son, Charles Alden Jr., was born in 1952; a daughter, Lori Alden, in 1954.

During the Korean War Mrs. Black followed her husband to Washington, where he was stationed at the Pentagon as a Navy lieutenant commander. In later years he would follow her to her diplomatic postings.

Late in the 1950s, with her old movies being shown on television all over America, she briefly returned to show business. From 1958 to 1961 she was the host and an occasional performer on the television series “Shirley Temple’s Storybook” (also known as “The Shirley Temple Show”), an anthology of fairy-tale adaptations.

By the early 1960s she was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and co-founder of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, raising funds to fight the disease that afflicted her brother, George. She was representing the federation in Prague on Aug. 21, 1968, when Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks rolled in and brought to a premature end Alexander Dubcek’s effort to remodel the Communist system.

For many years the Black family lived in the San Francisco area, where she was active in civic and community affairs. She worked particularly hard for the development of the San Francisco International Film Festival, but she resigned from the festival’s executive committee in 1966 in protest against a decision to show the Swedish film “Night Games,” which she called “pornography for profit.”

Mrs. Black had become interested in politics when she lived in Washington. In 1967 she ran for Congress to fill a seat left vacant by the death of the Republican J. Arthur Younger. She hoped to emulate the California political successes of George Murphy, her dancing partner in “Little Miss Broadway,” who had become a United States senator, and Ronald Reagan, her co-star in “That Hagen Girl,” who had become governor.

A backer of the Vietnam War, she lost to a more moderate Republican, Pete McCloskey, in the suburban 11th Congressional District south of San Francisco. It probably did not help that the bands kept playing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” at her campaign stops.

But Mrs. Black pressed on with her decision to have a new career in public service. In 1969, President Nixon appointed her to the five-member United States delegation to the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly. She acquitted herself well by all accounts, speaking out about the problems of the aged, the plight of refugees and, especially, environmental problems.

When she was appointed ambassador to Ghana in 1974, some career diplomats were outraged, but State Department officials later conceded that her performance was outstanding.

Among her duties as the government’s chief of protocol was heading a one-week training program for new envoys. She flashed her wit in describing it: “We teach them how to get used to being called Ambassador and having Marines saluting. Then, on Day 3, we tell them what to do if they’re taken hostage.”

When she arrived in Prague as ambassador — a post usually reserved for career diplomats — she discovered that there had been a Shirley Temple fan club there 50 years earlier. Officials brought “Shirleyka” old membership cards to autograph. Having been Shirley Temple was extremely helpful to Shirley Temple Black, she told reporters, “mainly because it provides name identification,” although she added that it had “little bearing on whether I succeed or fail thereafter.”

Mrs. Black succeeded beyond almost everyone’s expectations, winning praise during her three years in Prague from, among others, Henry Kissinger, who called her “very intelligent, very tough-minded, very disciplined.” It was a fitting tribute to a woman who had left the screen at 22 saying she had “had enough of pretend.”

Source - New York Times

~ ~ ~

Shirley Temple Black

 April 23, 1928 - January 10, 2014

Goodbye dear, wonderful, Shirley Jane Temple Black

Who made the world smile and laugh 

when it was at its darkest and inspired generations of children.

Hollywood will never, ever have another Screen Darling like you.

All pictures are from my personal Shirley Temple Pinterest board

A New King!

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima

     On April 30, 2013, history was made in the Netherlands as Queen Beatrix, who ascended to the throne in 1980, abdicated and was followed by her son who now holds the title, King Willem-Alexander (46) and his wife, Queen Maxima (41).

     Willem-Alexander is the first Dutch king in 123 years. Before him was his mother, Queen Beatrix (reign 1980-2013), her mother Queen Juliana (reign 1948-1980) and then her mother Queen Wilhemina (1890-1948). The new king will be followed by his daughter and heir apparent, Princess Catharina-Amalia (9).

     Willem-Alexander married Argentinian born investment banker Maxima Zorreguieta Cerruti on February 2002. They have three daughters, Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia (born December 7, 2003), Princess Alexia (born June 26, 2005) and Princess Ariane (born April 10, 2007).

The Royal Family of the Netherlands

King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Queen Beatrix

Princess Alexia, Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia, Princess Ariane

Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Crown Princess Maxima

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima

A Queen and a future queen.

With other future crown heads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Dutch enthrone '21st-century king' Willem-Alexander

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander becomes Europe's youngest monarch on Tuesday when his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicates and his country hails the avowedly 21st-century king with a massive, orange-hued party. Willem-Alexander, 46, will be the first Dutch king since 1890 and the first of a new wave of European monarchs, with the average age of the current cohort at 71.

Amsterdam's population is set to double with at least 800,000 visitors flooding the city's streets and canals as Beatrix, 75, ends her 33-year reign by signing the act of abdication at the royal palace. While Beatrix was known for her formal court, Willem-Alexander has already said that he and his glamourous Argentine-born queen consort Maxima, 41, will not be "protocol fetishists".

The king will be sworn in rather than crowned at deconsecrated church Nieuwe Kerk, a stone's throw from the palace, before a joint session of the houses of parliament. The investiture will be attended by a number of other royals-in-waiting -- protocol dictates that reigning sovereigns are not invited -- and will include Britain's Prince Charles, Spain's Prince Felipe and Japan's Prince Naruhito and his wife, Crown Princess Masako, who is on her first trip abroad in nearly seven years.

Beatrix's enthronement in 1980 was marred by violent protests and running street battles over a housing crisis that left the city looking like a war zone. Anti-royalists this time have been allotted six locations in Amsterdam to stage protests. But only one has been booked by Republicans planning playful protests, including by wearing white.

Preparations for the day have been overshadowed by a rancorous debate about the event's official song, known as the Koningslied. An online petition rejecting the song, an unusual mix of traditional and rap music, garnered 40,000 signatures within a few days. Composer John Ewbank withdrew the song but the enthronement organising committee stuck with it. The nation will now sing the Koningslied as one on Tuesday evening, just before the royal family heads off on a water pageant behind Amsterdam's central train station. A cornucopia of concerts and club nights has been organised around the city, including an open-air set by world-famous Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren, and orange-themed street parties are planned across the nation.

The day will also be tinged with sadness for Maxima, whose father, Jorge Zorreguieta, and mother will be notable by their absence. Zorreguieta, 85, a minister under the notorious Argentine regime of general Jorge Videla in the 1970s, also had to miss his daughter's 2002 marriage because of doubts over his role in the murderous junta. Maxima is largely responsible for having made her husband popular after an allegedly boozy youth which earned him the nickname "Prince Pils". Ever smiling, she has mastered the Dutch language and even taken a charity swim in Amsterdam's canals, endearing herself further in a country that expects their royals to be at once normal and regal. Willem-Alexander's brother Friso will also be missed, in a coma following a skiing accident in Austria in February 2012. 

Speaking ahead of the enthronement, Willem-Alexander said that "People can address me as they wish because then they can feel comfortable." He stressed he wanted to "be a king that can bring society together, representative and encouraging in the 21st century".

Source: Daily Nation

A new king and queen for the 21st century