MOGADISHU — A Russian warship headed for the seas off Somalia Saturday after pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter carrying 33 tanks, munitions and other weaponry, officials said. The Faina, with a crew of 21, including three Russians, was hijacked on Thursday as it neared the Kenyan port of Mombasa with a cargo of T-72 battle tanks, grenade launchers, ammunition and spares for the Kenyan military, they said. The frigate Neustrashimy (Fearless) was ordered to the region in response to ‘the rise in pirate attacks, including against Russian citizens,’ Russian navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said Friday. ‘Russia’s navy will send ships for temporary missions to areas made dangerous because of maritime piracy to protect Russian citizens and guarantee the safety of shipping,’ he said. The frigate, armed with missiles and guns and carrying a crew of up to 200, will stay near Somalia ‘for more than two months in order to guarantee the safety of Russian ships,’ RIA Novosti news agency quoted the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Viktor Mardusin, as saying. Ukraine’s foreign ministry said late Thursday there were 17 Ukrainian nationals, three Russians and one Latvian aboard the Belize-flagged vessel. ‘The captain reported […]
China has overtaken the United States as having the largest number of broadband lines in the world, a market research firm said Friday. As of the end of August, the U.S. and China each had about 78 million high-speed lines, British researcher Point Topic said. But with the number of Chinese lines increasing at twice the rate of the U.S., China has since taken the crown. ‘This is a major milestone for China,’ Oliver Johnson, chief executive of Point Topic, said in a statement. ‘Launching people into space is spectacular, but having the biggest broadband market down here on earth means a lot more for building a modern, hi-tech economy.’ China Thursday night launched three astronauts into space. China’s third manned space mission in five years is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk, The New York Times reported. When broadband use first surged in China, experts predicted the country would overtake the United States in 2006. However, growth in China leveled off, while the U.S. saw a speed up in the number of broadband lines, Point Topic said. Broadband grew in parallel for 18 months until the first quarter of this year, […]
WASHINGTON – Pakistani forces Thursday fired at U.S. helicopters and traded shots with U.S. troops and Afghan police on the Afghan-Pakistan border in the latest blow to cooperation between Washington and Islamabad, U.S. officials said. Neither side reported casualties in the incident, which occurred when the helicopters crossed into the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan, the Pakistan army said. In New York, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said that Pakistani soldiers only fired ‘flares’ to demarcate the mountainous border for the helicopter pilots. ‘Sometimes the border in so mixed that they don’t realize they have crossed the border,’ he told reporters as he sat down to talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice agreed that the border ‘is very, very unclear.’ According to the U.S. military, Pakistani troops in a hillside border checkpoint fired at two U.S. OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters providing cover for Afghan police and U.S. military trainers patrolling inside the Tanai district of Khost Province. The Afghan police and U.S. soldiers ‘observed fire coming from the Pakistani checkpoint at the helicopters. Our guys then fired suppressive rounds into the ground down the hill from the checkpoint,’ said Adm. Gregory Smith, […]
Babies given fish to eat within the first nine months of their lives are less likely to develop eczema, research reveals. Introducing fish into the diet cut the chance of a baby developing the skin condition by 24 per cent. Eczema affects one in five babies before they are a year old and its incidence has been rising across the Western world. The researchers from Sweden found that it did not matter whether babies ate lean and white fish or oily types, such as mackerel and fresh tuna, according to the study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood. Keeping pet birds in the home also reduced eczema by 65 per cent. Previous studies have suggested contact with feathers can prevent allergies, possibly by exposing infants to toxins. The study included almost 5,000 families who were interviewed after the birth of their child and when their offspring was a year old. The strongest factor affecting the incidence of eczema was family history. Children with a sibling or mother who suffered from eczema were twice as likely to suffer from the condition themselves. Breastfeeding, the age at which dairy products were introduced into the diet and keeping a […]
BARNWELL, S.C. — Tubes, capsules and pellets of used radioactive material are piling up in the basements and locked closets of hospitals and research installations around the country, stoking fears they could get lost or, worse, stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs. For years, truckloads of low-level nuclear waste from most of the U.S. were taken to a rural South Carolina landfill. There, items such as the rice-size radioactive seeds for treating cancer and pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges were sealed in concrete and buried. But a South Carolina law that took effect July 1 ended nearly all disposal of radioactive material at the landfill, leaving 36 states with no place to throw out some of the stuff. So labs, universities, hospitals and manufacturers are storing more and more of it on their own property. ‘Instead of safely secured in one place, it’s stored in thousands of places in urban locations all over the United States,’ said Rick Jacobi, a nuclear waste consultant and former head of a Texas agency that unsuccessfully tried to create a disposal site for that state. State and federal authorities say the waste is being monitored, but […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
