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Millions of Women Throng Kerala Festival Attendance at the festival has grown year after year By John Mary Trivandrum, Kerala India's southern state of Kerala may have hosted the largest gathering of women ever seen on the planet. Clad in traditional Kerala saris and bearing offerings of food, more than two million women - perhaps more - thronged the state capital Trivandrum on Sunday. The women braved searing heat to offer a special meal at the Attukal temple to Hindu goddess Bhagavathy - one incarnation of the potent goddesses Kali and Saraswati. Women howled shrilly, as is the custom at...

Charles Russell, a member of the U.S. State Department Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team and an agricultural advisor, sprays 21-day-old chicks with a vaccine to prevent Gambaro disease, which attacks a chick's immune system, at the Poultry Agkardi Hatchery during an EPRT event in Mahmudiyah, Feb. 27. Photo by Jamie Vernon, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs. MAHMUDIYAH — The U.S. State Department’s Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (EPRT) participated in a project inoculating and delivering chickens to the Mahmudiyah Poultry Association, Feb. 27. Charles Russell, an agricultural advisor for the EPRT, traveled to the Poultry Agkardi Hatchery here to assist local Iraqi...

Advertisement Motorway police have had to deal with two women spotted walking down the central reservation of the M6. The women, twin sisters from Sweden, ran in front of oncoming traffic after wrestling with the police. Sophie Hutchinson reports.

The voice of Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, floated across the state Capitol grounds Wednesday as a line of “West Memphis Three” supporters snaked up the steps with a giant banner. Maines was due to arrive any minute. Meanwhile, those rallying for the release of three men convicted in the 1993 slayings of three 8-year-old boys listened to a recording of the Dixie Chicks’ 2006 hit, Not Ready to Make Nice Forgive, sounds good Forget, I’m not sure I could They say time heals everything But I’m still waiting... About 150 people — including national media and...

I want to hear your comments about the American Idol contestant who sang "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the dixie chicks and was axed.

One of the excellent attributes of "Shut Up and Sing" is that it lets the cards fall where they may and really doesn't try to spin the Chicks themselves. It's quite possible, then, to watch the film and come to the conclusion that Natalie Maines has a big mouth. Spectacularly talented, the young singer is also a spectacular blowhard, and documentarian Barbara Kopple almost subversively focuses on Maines blabbering away at meetings without a serious thought in her head, no impulse control anywhere in sight, and, for some reason, always supine, as if her great status grants her the right...

Shut Up and Sing, which documents three years in the lives of the Dixie Chicks, is a sympathetic if flawed portrait of a band in crisis and transition — both, to an extent, of its own making. The film — and the band's future, for that matter — spills with love and hate and accountability. The love and hate are easily identifiable. Behind the scenes, the band's three members — Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison — create a massive family with their spouses and children. Even when Maguire seems jarred by the backlash created by Maines' now-infamous comments...

[Dixie Chicks' movie totally tanks. Death of a PRez movie also. Found the article on Drudge, original posted here.] Newmarket's very controversial Death of a President (91 theaters) did only $.06 mil Friday with a pathetic per screen average of $673 for should be a $0.21 weekend. The Weinstein Company's Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up & Sing (4 theaters) took in $0.01 mil Friday and a disappointing $2,867 per screen average for what should be a $.04 mil weekend. "

MSNBC's Chris Matthews invited the Dixie Chick on last night's Hardball to promote the new documentary Shut Up and Sing and asked them if they felt their anti-Iraq position has been vindicated, to which the Chicks responded with martyred terms of being put on Free Republic's and "Christian fundamentalist" country fans' "hate list." The following exchange occurred on the October 26th edition of Hardball: Chris Matthews: "Martie, I get the feeling at the time that you folks, when you made that statement and you all stood behind it and took the heat for it, that the country world out there...

Mums help chicks if dad was ugly 29 September 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Evolution holds hope for ugly males. Females appear to invest extra energy in getting their poorer-quality offspring off to a good start, at least among house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus). Female birds can deposit different amounts of health-promoting compounds in their eggs, depending on social and environmental conditions. Previous studies on zebra finches showed that females were more likely to invest in eggs fertilised by high-quality males. Kristen Navara, now at Ohio State University in Columbus, expected to see the same pattern with house finches, in...

[snip] The lead singer spoke to the Vancouver Sun recently, saying, "but if you live in Lubbock, Texas, where I'm from -- you just have one paper and one radio station and unless you're savvy on the Internet, that's it for you. If Bush said get a gun and kill an Arab, they would do that." It's a comment that isn't sitting well with some Lubbockites.

Heart of Dixie EW's Chris Willman got a sneak peek at the Dixie Chicks' sure-to-be-controversial documentary ''Shut Up and Sing,'' in which Natalie Maines calls the president a ''dumb f---'' The international press won't get their first look at the documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing until its gala premiere at the Toronto Film Festival tonight. But EW.com got an early look at the sure-to-be-controversial doc in Los Angeles and can attest that the film will continue to bring the (ex?) country trio more plaudits from progressives and further condemnation from conservatives. And if you think singer Natalie Maines...

Morning, folks. The following thread is presented as a place for my fellow FReepers to wipe their feet. : )No longer the darlings of Dixie, the trio's new direction is already paying dividends This time, they brought a sense of humor. The Dixie Chicks entered the United Center on Tuesday night to the orchestral pomp of "Hail to the Chief," a not-so-veiled shot at the president whose name was not spoken all night, but whose presence has loomed large over the country-pop trio's career the last three years. "The Incident," as the Chicks once described it, occurred in 2003 when...

I thought some people might want some basics on the Dixie Chicks recent concerts. On August 5, the chicks played in Atlantic City at THE BOGATA EVENT CENTER, THE PERFECT GATHERING PLACE FOR 3,700 OF YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS. On August 8 and 9, they played at the Halifax Metro Centre - A columnless arena with a 53-foot centre ceiling height.- Maximum seating capacity of 10,000 people. On August 10, they played at 6,350 seat Harbour Station, St. John, New Brunswick. Tonite, they play in Montreal at The Bell Centre at full capacity can seat 14,000 to 21,500 people in complete...

Dixie Chicks Cancel Des Moines Concert Des Moines, August 3, 2006 - First they were coming, now they have decided not to visit the Hawkeye state. Today the country music trio, Dixie Chicks announced they will not be performing at Wells Fargo Arena. The concert was slated for August 24th. No reason was given for the cancellation, but the group released a statement that said "This is a year where we weren't sure what to expect. We were prepared for a lot of things as we figure out this new phase of our career. What we weren't prepared for, however,...

About half the seats were empty at Saturday's Mellon Arena concert... 8,500 ticket holders

Two weeks ago, I posted an article titled Dixie Chicks tickets availability http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1656916/posts I thought I would post an update. Yes, the chicks have been selling more tickets. Specifically, in Columbus Ohio, Value City Arena have sold out the floor seats and the first 15 rows in the stands. That still leaves over half the arena empty but it is a lot better than before. However, this looks more like Sony music desperately trying to fill the seats by pairing Anna Nalick, who has two hot singles out (Breathe and In the Rough), with the Chicks to avoid a huge...

The Dixie Chicks and their camp will continue their struggle this week to figure out where their own Mason-Dixon Line lies on a map of America's arenas. The reason is that ticket sales for their upcoming road run, the Accidents & Accusations Tour, have not as gone as they expected; basically, in many Southern states and Midwest markets, the Chicks have not been forgiven for perceived political sins of the past. Concert industry watchers say some radio station chiefs are extending their boycott of the group's recordings to include advertising bans for the group's concerts. "Obviously there are political overtones...

How the Dixie Chicks Hit the Charts Without Radio Support By JEFF LEEDS In February, eager programmers at the nation's top country music stations got their first chance to hear new music from the Dixie Chicks in four years. But in a suite at the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, brows soon furrowed over what would be the band's first single, the angry "Not Ready to Make Nice,"... "It took our breath away," Julie Stevens, program director of KRTY-FM, a country station in San Jose, Calif., said of the song. Before hearing it, she said, she had figured "fans...