Walpurgis Night in Sweden

Walpurgis Night in Sweden is a very special event and a great way to experience Sweden's traditions. Walpurgis (Swedish: "Valborg") on April 30 is a widely celebrated event in Scandinavia, most of all in Sweden.
Walpurgis Night precedes Labour Day in Scandinavia on May 1 and many Walpurgis events continue over night from April 30 into that holiday.

The forms of celebration in Sweden vary in different parts of the country and between different cities. One of the main traditions in Sweden is to light large bonfires, a custom which began during the 18th century. Lighting the popular bonfires began with the purpose of keeping away evil spirits, especially demons and witches.
Nowadays, Walpurgis Night is usually seen as a celebration of springtime. The Skansen Open Air Museum, for example, hosts Stockholm's largest historical Walpurgis celebration.

Many Swedes now celebrate the end of long, dreary winters by singing Spring songs. These songs were spread by the students' spring festivities and Walpurgis Night celebrations are especially common in university towns like Uppsala - the nightlife in Uppsala is especially active then.

Walpurgis (Valborg) being celebrated on April 30 creates a double national holiday in Sweden. On this day, King Carl XVI Gustaf celebrates his birthday. So you'll see Swedish flags all around the country to salute the King and show him respect. unsecured loans

May Day/Labor Day (May 1st) follows Walpurgis Night celebrations with a wide choice of events, parades and festivities.

Walpurgis in Swedish is "Valborg" and Walpurgis bad credit loans Night in Swedish is called "Valborgsmassoafton".

Horse Day Turkmenistan

It’s April in Turkmenistan, so horse fever is in the air.

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s beloved Horse Day is being celebrated on the last Sunday of the month, and so officials of all stripes are being strongly encouraged to head down to the races this weekend.
As the Chronicles of Turkmenistan reports, students from high and middle school are also being forced to turn up at the hippodrome. Lest anybody think nobody is checking, people in Ashgabat say that failure to comply by those instructions last Sunday prompted concerned queries.

In case the races weren’t enough, state newspaper Neutralny Turkmenistan has over the past few days been printing impassioned verse celebrating the virtues of the equine beast and the country’s pre-eminent jockey: Berdymukhamedov, aka Arkadag (The Protector).

Here are a couple of stanzas from “Akhan,” by People’s Writer Gozel Shagulyeva:

How gracefully you pranced, Akhan!
By your stature you charm me!
You have become a symbol of the era of Arkadag.
What playfulness my Akhan.
By Arkadag you were adopted,
And a symbol of his greatness you have become.
You, beauty of beauties, have soaked up of the fragrance of spring,
Your movements, a pleasure to the eye,
The admiring gaze cannot love you enough. unsecured loans

For the uninitiated, Akhan is a star horse at the presidential stables and is held up as an exemplary descendant of the original specimen of Turkmenistan’s prized Akhal-Teke breed. The poem, published on April 24, is illustrated with a picture of the bad credit loans white steed himself gracefully galloping through hills specked with poppies.

Armenian Genocide Memorial Day

Hold on for a minute: is this still December 2011 (just) or are we already in April 2012? Before anyone assumes that I have taken complete leave of my senses, I am asking this question merely because of a recent hyper-inflation of stories in both the official media and blogosphere that are linked to the Armenian genocide of 1915.

This trend usually occurs nearer the annual anniversary date of 24 April and not at the end of the year when politicians are far more eager to rush back to their constituencies and rest after all the rampant mess they have caused over the past year.

However, December 2011 was somewhat different in that it was characterised by two key Armenian events - one in France and another in Israel. In France, the National Assembly - the lower house of parliament - approved a draft law that would criminalise the denial of the Armenian genocide.

Nonetheless, the Senate - the upper house of parliament - still needs to ratify the bill before it can ever become law. In fact, Bernard Accoyer, Speaker of the National Assembly, stated that such legislation was unlikely to be adopted by both houses of parliament before the forthcoming presidential elections.
The Turkish reaction to the vote was both disproportionate and vengeful when hackers crashed the website of the Senate in Paris. The site ended up showing a black screen signed by Iskorpit - allegedly the trademark of an infamous Turkish hacker who claims to have hijacked numerous websites under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack in which thousands of hijacked computers bombard a website with demands for information, swamping it and effectively shutting it down. On the same day, the website of Valérie Boyer, the parliamentarian from President Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party who was the primary sponsor of the ‘genocide draft law’ was also hacked and started showing a black screen with a Turkish flag.
Hot on the heels of the vote in the French National Assembly, the Commission on Education, Culture and Sport in the Israeli Knesset [Parliament] also debated whether Israel should mark April 24 as a memorial day for “the massacre of the Armenian people”. Although a similar proposal had been rejected by the Knesset in 2007, Zahava Gal-On from the left-leaning Meretz party suggested that the colder diplomatic climate might mean that the measure could gain support this time round whilst the Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin stressed that the issue was not a political one.

Apart from France and Israel, Milorad Dodik, Head of the Serbian Sector of Bosnia from the Serbian Independent Social-Democratic Party, also requested the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina to discuss a bill prohibiting denial of the Armenian genocide. Nevertheless, there is little likelihood for the adoption of such a bill since the Serbian Social-Democrats have only 8 out of 42 seats in the Federal Parliament of Bosnia.

Let me posit four key points that I would argue are germane to the ongoing discourse over the issue of recognition.

• The timing of the debates in France and Israel reek of sheer political expediency. In France, President Sarkozy is anxiously courting the Armenian French votes in order to outdo François Hollande’s Socialist Party in the presidential elections of April-May 2012. In Israel, the resurgent enthusiasm toward the Armenian genocide is meant more as a potential threat - a red flag if you will - to Turkey ever since bilateral relations chilled following the Mavi Marmara flotilla unsecured loans incident of June 2010. Given the incontrovertible historical authenticity of the genocide, coupled with a strong collective anamnesis, should Armenian nationalism and faithfulness to their identity accept their ‘cause’ to be crassly marketed with such animated toadying in a political bazaar that debases the memory of their murdered ancestors? Is it not clear that the Israeli Knesset or the French Senate will not deliver the goods? Even the Serbian proposal is more a spike against Croats and Bosnians than any real solidarity with Armenians.

• Given the strategy pursued so far by many Armenians, what is the long-term objective of those recognitions? Armenian and Turkish emotions vacillate every time this issue comes up, but have the 21 state recognitions to date achieved any discernible or concrete result in a geopolitical sense? Is it not perhaps time to think more laterally?

• All the bluster from Turkey’s irascible Prime Minister - with his comparisons to Algeria or his diplomatic sanctions against France - claim a fury with the French for daring to criminalise the denial of genocide. However, the blatant irony and dubious double-standards lie in the fact that Turkey itself has already criminalised genocide recognition in its Penal Code and has wantonly gaoled those who have referred to the Armenian experience as genocide.

• Almost a century after this genocide, should bad credit loans Armenians go down the road of muzzling freedom of expression - a fundamental right that the whole Middle East and North Africa population is dying for these days? Should one encourage legislating thought and thereby accepting the limits of freedom of expression? Mind you, given the horrific scale of the crime, this sensitive issue becomes laden with profound moral, ethical, legal, political and psychological implications. Is it perhaps not wiser to rely upon oneself and adopt a pan-Armenian strategy that uses a sharper national compass?
In a nutshell, should recognition not pass directly and unfailingly through Turkey rather than meander hither and thither?

Summer Solstice

This is the time when the Sun is at its highest or most northerly point in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and when we receive the most hours of daylight. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere it is the reverse, so you will be having “Winter Solstice.”

The angle of the Sun and the Earth's seasons.

Also known as “Midsummer” the Summer Solstice gets its name from the Latin for sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). The Sun reaches its most Northerly point and momentarily stands still before starting its journey South in the sky again until it reaches its most Southerly point “Winter Solstice”, before repeating the cycle. This is basically how we get our seasons.

It’s not actually the Sun that moves North or South over the seasons although it may appear so. It’s the Earths axial tilt that causes the Sun to change position in the sky as the Earth orbits the Sun throughout the year.
Summer Solstice/ Midsummer is steeped in ancient folklore especially in Northern Europe with the most famous place directly related to it being Stonehenge, where the sun has been worshiped for thousands of years.
The Sun reaches its most Northerly point in the sky at 17:16 UTC momentarily and from that point forward starts to make its way South. This means the days will get shorter and shorter until Winter Solstice in December.

When is the longest (and shortest) day?

When is longest / shortest day in 2011?

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2011 23:21 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2011 17:16 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 23 2011 09:04 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 22 2011 05:30 GMT

2012

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2012 05:14 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 20 2012 23:09 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 22 2012 14:49 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2012 11:11 GMT

2013

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2013 11:02 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2013 05:04 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 22 2013 20:44 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2013 17:11 GMT

2014

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2014 16:57 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2014 10:51 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL)unseucred loans  SEPTEMBER 23 2014 02:29 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2014 23:03 GMT

2015

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2015 22:45 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2015 16:38 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 23 2015 08:20 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 22 2015 04:38 GMT

2016

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2016 04:30 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 20 2016 22:34 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 22 2016 14:21 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2016 10:44 GMT

2017

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2017 10:28 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2017 04:24 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 22 2017 20:02 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2017 16:28 GMT

2018

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2018 16:15 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2018 10:07 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 23 2018 0154 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2018 22:22 GMT

2019

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2019 21:58 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 21 2019 15:54 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) bad credit loans SEPTEMBER 23 2019 07:50 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 22 2019 04:19 GMT

2020

VERNAL EQUINOX (SPRING) MARCH 20 2020 03:49 GMT
SUMMER SOLSTICE (SUMMER) JUNE 20 2020 21:43 GMT
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX (FALL) SEPTEMBER 22 2020 13:30 GMT
WINTER SOLSTICE (WINTER) DECEMBER 21 2020 10:02 GMT

Locked in syndrome

The 58-year-old from Melksham, Wiltshire, has "locked-in syndrome" following a stroke in 2005 and is unable to carry out his own suicide.

His is seeking legal protection for any doctor who helps him end his life.

The Ministry of Justice argues making such a ruling would change murder laws.

"Locked-in syndrome" leaves people with paralysed bodies but fully-functioning minds.

The judge's ruling now means that Mr Nicklinson's case will go to a full hearing, where medical evidence can be heard.

Following the judge's ruling that his case can proceed, Mr Nicklinson's wife Jane read out a statement from her husband on BBC 5live.

It said: "I'm delighted that the issues surrounding assisted dying are to be aired in court. Politicians and others can hardly complain with the courts providing the unsecured loans forum for debate if the politicians continue to ignore one of the most important topics facing our society today.

"It's no longer acceptable for 21st Century medicine to be governed by 20th Century attitudes to death."

'Stressful' wait

Mr Nicklinson, who communicates through the use of an electronic board or special computer, said before the ruling that his life was "dull, miserable, bad credit loans demeaning, undignified and intolerable".

During the radio interview, Mrs Nicklinson passed on questions to her husband, using his letters board to spell out his response.

When asked what he hoped would happen next, he replied: "I will be able to access a doctor when the time is right."

He went on to spell out: "I can just about cope with life at the moment, but not forever."

Mrs Nicklinson said she was "really pleased" with the judge's decision. "It's been quite stressful waiting for this decision.

"It's really good to know that the judge thinks that we have a case that needs to be argued."

Earlier, Mrs Nicklinson said that her husband "just wants to know that, when the time comes, he has a way out".

"If you knew the kind of person that he was before, life like this is unbearable for him," she added.

She said she did not know when her husband might actually want to die. "I suppose just when he can't take it any more," she said.

Vaisakhi

 Vaisakhi is a religious as well as harvest festival and New Year Day also. For the Sikh community, it has a very special meaning. Sikhs celebrate Visakhi as the day of the formation of the Khalsa .On the day, in 1699, Guru Gobind Singh (the tenth Sikh Guru established the Khalsa and eliminated the differences of high and low and established that all human beings are equal.
For the Hindus, it is the start of the New Year, and is celebrated with requisite bathing, partying, and worshipping. It’s believed that thousands of years ago, Godess ganga descended to earth and in her honor, many Hindus gather along the sacred ganga river for ritual baths.

In Tamil Naidu Hindus plant poles (wrapped in flags of god-embroidered silk) in front of their homes, and hang pots of brass, copper or silver on top.

In Kerala, the festival is called ‘Vishu’. It includes fireworks, shopping for new clothes and interesting displays called ‘Vishu Kani’. These are arrangements of flowers, grains, fruits, cloth, gold, and money are viewed early in the morning, to ensure a year of prosperity.

In Assam, the festival is called Bohag Bihu, and the community organizes massive feasts, music and dancing.
Swami Dayanand Saraswati founded unsecured loans the Arya Samaj on Baisakhi, in 1875. Therefore, Baisakhi is as special for the HHindus as it is for Sikh. In April, this day marks the beginning of the Hindu solar New Year. In fact, this day is celebrated all over the country as New Year day, under different names.

Apart from the Sikhs and Hindus, Baisakhi is an important day for the Buddhists as well. On the day, Gautam bad credit loans Buddha achieved Nirvana in the town of Gaya, under the Mahabodhi tree.