BEIJING — South Korean President Lee Myung-bak issued a scathing condemnation of the North Korean regime Monday and announced trade restrictions that ratcheted tensions to their highest level in years on the Korean peninsula, which is home to more than 25,000 U.S. troops. The White House said in a statement that it fully backed Lee, and that President Barack Obama ‘has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression.’ In a national address, Lee said North Korean ships no longer would be allowed in South Korean-controlled waters and that almost all inter-Korean trade was being canceled. The moves followed a South Korean investigation that held North Korea responsible for torpedoing a South Korean warship in March and killing 46 sailors. While most experts say that neither side wants war _ the erratic regime of Kim Jong Il has a nuclear weapons program, and South Korea has U.S. military backing _ there’s no denying the heightened sense of risk. The two countries never signed a peace treaty formally ending hostilities after their 1950-53 war. ‘The tension is very high … but […]
Her day begins with a knock on the door. At 6am in Kabul, 10-year-old Nargis goes house to house begging for bread on the richest of streets in the Afghan capital. The neighbourhood of Sherpur, famous for its ostentatious mansions, lies at the end of the hill where she and her family live in one room in a mud brick house. On the day I meet her, everyone who answers her knock says they have no bread to give. ‘Today, a little boy has been out ahead of me. He got it all,’ she explains in a whisper of a voice, before returning home without anything for her family to eat. This waif, in a pink tunic trimmed with silver sparkles, is the breadwinner for a family of seven children. In Afghan society sending Nargis’ teenage sisters onto the streets would bring dishonour, and her younger siblings are too small. Her father cannot or will not work. He is a drug addict. So it is down to Nargis. Nargis is just one of tens of thousands of street children in Kabul. […]
With religious chastity under scrutiny, a new book throws light on Gandhi’s practice of sleeping next to naked girls. In fact, he was sex-mad, writes biographer Jad Adams It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; ‘abnormal and unnatural’ was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi’s advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls. But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi’s beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history. Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of […]
Google has begun rolling out an encrypted version of its search engine in an effort to protect Internet users from having their searches sniffed by others on their network. The new version of Google is SSL encrypted and located at https://www.google.com. Like many of Google’s other changes, it’s being rolled out slowly to all users who choose to search securely. SSL search means that an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google’s servers. When you perform a search, your search terms and whatever results come back from them will only be visible to you-anyone who might be sniffing packets on your network (such as, say, Google!) won’t be able to see that you’re looking up cures for hemorrhoids, the lyrics to every song in the musical Cats, or something worse. Google’s encrypted search launch comes in the wake of the company’s own WiFi data sniffing debacle, for which it may face probes in both Germany and the US (as well as a class-action lawsuit). This privacy slip-up is a stark reminder that much of our regular WiFi traffic can be snooped on by others on the network-doubly so if the network is open or shared, like […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
