Category: Lifestyle

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Members of rival Iraqi biker gangs, clad in studded leather and black berets, burst out of their semi-circles to break dance, their tattoo-covered arms waving neon glowsticks. The Mongols Motorcycle Club dance circle was one of several at the Riot Gear Summer Rush event, a car show and concert held at…

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Tamas Irsai was a teenager when he last sang in the choir in Budapest’s Rumbach synagogue during World War Two, before most Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps. Irsai survived the Holocaust but the great majority of Hungarian Jews, including many of his relatives and friends, did not. Under Communist rule,…

APIA, Samoa (Reuters) – Oliver Fagalilo takes a labored breath and tenses his body before a sharp steel comb, dipped in ink, drives into his skin. Six hands keep his body still and his skin taut as a Samoan artist works on the traditional tattoo that will cover more than half of Fagalilo’s body. It…

LAVAUX-SAINTE-ANNE, BELGIUM (Reuters) – A 60-metre tall semi-circle of steel cast to look from a distance like a towering but incomplete ring, is set to surprise drivers taking a scenic tour in the south of Belgium to France or Luxembourg. Designed by French conceptual artist Bernar Venet and called L’Arc Majeur, the huge sculpture was…

MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish businessman has bought a statue symbolizing women forced to work in Japanese military brothels which was removed from an exhibition in Japan after organizers received threats over the piece. The “Statue of a Girl Of Peace” symbolizes the “comfort women”, a euphemism referring to women, many of them Korean, forced…

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Michael Wadleigh never played a note and is not a household name, but he may be the person most responsible for securing Woodstock’s place in history as the epitome of Sixties counterculture. Wadleigh filmed and directed the Oscar-winning “Woodstock” documentary about the three days of peace and music on a farm…

BETHEL, N.Y. (Reuters) – Fifty years ago, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline were just another young couple camped out at the Woodstock festival. But when a photographer snapped their picture early on that Sunday morning as they stood hugging each other while wrapped in a blanket, they unwittingly became part of pop culture history, ending up…

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – For decades the Equestrian and Racing Club has given upper-crust Sudanese the chance to learn horse riding and watch horse racing in a shady compound set apart from the surrounding urban bustle of the capital Khartoum. But the club has had to cut back activities since popular unrest erupted in December and led…

ROME (Reuters) – You can walk up and down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps all you want but don’t try sitting down to take in the moment any more because police will shoo you away with a whistle and threaten you with a fine. City authorities have imposed a new ban at the site, beloved of…

LONDON (Reuters) – When Bishop Herbert started building a new cathedral in the English city of Norwich in 1096, it was unlikely he ever envisaged it would play host to a 50-foot helter skelter. But that is exactly what the cathedral in eastern England will be housing for 10 days this month, giving visitors a…