Free Republic

>>> An initiative by Jerusalem's Mayor Nir Barkat intends to take advantage of the wide coverage to unleash a public relations barrage and to present to them "Jerusalem's other side." According to the plan, journalists will be taken on tours around Jerusalem and will visit the main historical sites, such as City of David and the Western Wall Tunnel. They will also be taken to an Israel Museum's exhibition about King Herod and to the Ice City, where they will see a custom built ice sculptor in Obama's image. <<<

To take a block of ice and sculpt it into art, you need a few things. A chain saw, some customized tools and a Zen master's grasp of impermanence. In a nippy parking lot off of Delmar Boulevard in the Loop on Saturday, Sean Leahy wielded a Stihl MSE 180 C and deftly buzzed through a 300-pound block. He wore heavy ski pants to seal off the cold, but only thin cotton gloves to give him a better grip on the ice. He heaved the pieces around or pushed them along the ground with his hiking boots, then sliced some...

The annual Ice and Snow Festival has opened in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in northeast China. The festival is one of the largest of its kind in the world.Thousands of tourists from China and elsewhere brave the sub-zero temperatures to admire the ice sculptures, some of them large enough to walk through.Some of the structures are created by piling ice blocks up to make huge models of buildings. Lights are frozen in the middle of the blocks.Other sculptures are gigantic creations of snow made to resemble geographic features such as Canada's Niagara Falls.Smaller sculptures are carved from blocks of...

<p>THERE'S nothing genteel about this finger food. Corporate bigwigs are forking over as much as $700 a head for dinner parties where guests are served sushi off a naked woman.</p> <p>The secret gourmet trend has taken off in the past six months in L.A., and now New York is getting on the act.</p>