Sunday Times 2
U.S. drone strikes violate Pakistan’s sovereignty : UN
UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (Reuters) – The United States has violated Pakistan’s sovereignty and shattered tribal structures with unmanned drone strikes in its counterterrorism operations near the Afghan border, a UN human rights investigator said in a statement on Friday. UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, Ben Emmerson, visited Pakistan for three days [...]
Sunday Times 2
When in doubt, wear a sari
By Arnika Thakur New Delhi (Reuters) – Just when you think that there is nothing more that you can do with a sari, someone will prove you wrong. On the first day of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi, we saw saris with lipstick prints and telephone booth imprints, a sari wrapped [...]
Sunday Times 2
Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch hit by 600 fresh claims
LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) – British police are investigating an estimated 600 new allegations of phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World newspaper, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said on Friday. The news comes at a sensitive time for the British media, with a divisive parliamentary vote on how to regulate Britain’s famously [...]
Sunday Times 2
US to bolster missile defences to counter N.Korea threat : Hagel
WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) – US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans on Friday to bolster US missile defences in response to “irresponsible and reckless provocations” by North Korea, which threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States last week. Hagel said the Pentagon would add 14 new anti-missile interceptors at Fort Greely in [...]
Sunday Times 2
UN agrees to ‘historic’ statement on women
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (AFP) -Muslim and western nations on Friday overcame deep divisions to agree on a historic United Nations declaration setting out a code of conduct for combatting violence against women. Iran, Libya, Sudan and other Muslim nations agreed to language stating that violence against women and girls could not be justified by [...]
Sunday Times 2
Wang is new China foreign minister
BEIJING, March 16, 2013 (AFP) -China’s parliament on Saturday announced Wang Yi, a former ambassador to Japan and currently in charge of Taiwan affairs, had been nominated as the country’s new foreign minister. Wang replaces Yang Jiechi, who has served since 2007. Yang was nominated to the State Council, according to an announcement by the [...]
Sunday Times 2
Ahmadinejad under attack for ‘sinful’ hug
Muslim clerics accuse Iran’s president of breaking Islamic law that forbids touching women outside immediate family By Steve Robson A photo of Iranian President Ahmadinejad hugging Hugo Chavez’s mother at the late Venezuelan leader’s funeral has sparked controversy among conservative Muslim clerics. The image shows Ahmadinejad and Elena Frias de Chavez touching cheeks during a [...]
Sunday Times 2
Elephant day
Introduced to raise awareness, 52 Thai elephants celebrate national day in their honour with all-you-can eat buffet By Sara Malm Elephant fans have gathered in Thailand to celebrate the annual National Elephant Day honouring the tusked beasts. In Pattaya resort, Chonburi province, 52 elephants were treated to an all-you-can-eat fruit buffet to mark the day. [...]
Sunday Times 2
Bushfire forces protester to abandon her 457 day sit-in
By Richard Shears An environmentalist has been forced to come back down to earth following a record-breaking 457 day treetop protest after the forest she was trying to protect was threatened by a bushfire. Miranda Gibson, 31, climbed down from the 100ft tall, 400-year-old eucalyptus tree in Tazmania to a hero’s welcome, as the fire [...]
Sunday Times 2
Panda porn
Conservationists in China are celebrating after a shy pair of pandas successfully mated while watching another duo on video By Amanda Williams When a shy pair of giant pandas proved reluctant to join in a breeding scheme, it was decided they needed a lesson in love. Vets played five-year-old Ke Lin and her male companion [...]
Sunday Times 2
Reuters editor is charged for assisting ‘Anonymous’
Federal officials on Thursday charged a social media editor for the Reuters news service with conspiring with the group ‘Anonymous’ to hack into and alter an online Los Angeles Times news story. Matthew Keys gave Anonymous members log-in credentials to the computer network of Tribune Co., which owns the Times, in December 2010, the FBI [...]
Sunday Times 2
Israeli kids hurt by teachers’ e-mail
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Students at an Israeli high school were in an uproar on Monday after a teacher mistakenly sent them an internal email that spelled out what faculty members really thought about them. “Not too bright”, “Liar”, “Tactless”, “Big Baby”, “Anti-social”, “Has a thing for boys” and “Sick-o” were some of the descriptions on [...]
Sunday Times 2
Japan unveils robot car
By Damien Gayle When Jeremy Clarskon showed off his personally-designed robotic car on a recent episode of Top Gear it was described as the world’s smallest. But inventors in Japan have gone one better – developing a tiny car that can automatically take passengers from A to B without them having to do a thing. [...]
Sunday Times 2
Amazon aiming to take a bite out of Apple with new big screen Kindle
Amazon has launched a low cost, big screen Kindle tablet to take on the iPad. The new Kindle Fire HD has an 8.9inch screen – just slightly smaller than Apple’s 9.7inch iPad screen. It also boasts stereo speakers, and can be plugged directly into a HDTV to show films on a big screen. The tablet [...]
Sunday Times 2
The £1billion ‘time machine’
World’s largest telescope will finally be turned on in the hope that it will finally reveal mysteries of the universe By Fiona Macrae It looks like it belongs in a science fiction film but this ‘time machine’ could provide us with the facts about where we came from. To be switched on, the Atacama Large [...]
Sunday Times 2
Green tea: The key to preventing a stroke
By Nick MeDermott When it comes to choosing between tea or coffee, the best answer may be to opt for both. Scientists have found that individuals who enjoy a daily cup of coffee were 20 per cent less likely to have a stroke compared to those who shunned the drink. And those that drank at [...]
Sunday Times 2
Average smoker makes four failed attempts to give up the habit
The average smoker has made four failed attempts to quit and nearly a quarter have lost count of the number of times they have tried to give up. Despite a decline in smoking across the UK, 20 per cent of smokers said they simply cannot quit, according to research. A study carried out by the [...]
Sunday Times 2
Pope Francis I: Perfect conclave candidate
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The cardinals who elect the pope are sworn to secrecy about their deliberations, but details began to filter out on Thursday about how rank outsider Jorge Bergoglio quickly emerged as a frontrunner to replace Pope Benedict. Bergoglio was a runner-up to the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the 2005 conclave that [...]
Sunday Times 2
Was this the new Pope’s first – and last tango?
Childhood sweetheart turned down his marriage proposal, so he became a priest By Tom Leonard The first Latin American Pope may have been a Latin Lover first it emerged last night after a childhood sweetheart claimed she may have driven him into the church. Amalia Damonte, 76, who grew up in the same Flores neighbourhood [...]
Sunday Times 2
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 emerges to do battle
NEW YORK/SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co premiered its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, which sports a bigger display and unconventional features such as gesture controls, as the South Korean titan challenges Apple Inc on its home turf. The phone, the first in the highly successful Galaxy S-series to make its global debut on [...]
Sunday Times 2
HIV ‘cure’ may be possible
By Emma Innes A ‘functional cure’ for HIV/AIDS can be achieved for some patients diagnosed early, according to new research. Treating people with HIV rapidly after they have become infected with the virus that causes AIDS may be enough to achieve a ‘functional cure’ in a small proportion of patients, according to the research. However, [...]
Sunday Times 2
China’s hidden democratisation
By Jun Zhang and Gary H. Jefferson SHANGHAI – Since Xi Jinping was anointed as China’s new president, reports of official repression of dissent have hardly abated. But, while criticism of China’s human rights record clearly has merit, it is important not to lose sight of the extent of genuine political change in China. Since [...]
Sunday Times 2
Responsibility to protect and the myth of large numbers
The United States often uses exaggerated civilian casualty numbers to make a case for military intervention in strife-torn regions By Vijay Prashad Since the 1990s, the West has justified its military interventions on liberal grounds – to remove noxious leaders who oppress their people or who have begun to conduct policies that appear genocidal. Buoyed [...]
Sunday Times 2
Rise of South ‘unprecedented in speed and scale’
IPS UN Bureau Chief Thalif Deen interviews Khalid Malid, lead author of the 2013 Human Development Report UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – The world’s 132 developing nations, largely part of the global South, are ascending at a pace “unprecedented in its speed and scale”, according to the latest Human Development Report (HDR) released Thursday by the [...]
Sunday Times 2
Malaysian novelist wins top Asian literary prize
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng won the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize on Thursday for a novel dealing with the aftermath of Japan’s wartime occupation of his country, becoming the first Malaysian to claim one of Asia’s main literature prizes. Tan, born in 1972, beat out four other authors, including Turkish [...]
Sunday Times 2
World’s most radioactive man
Japanese farmer who refused to leave area near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant so he can take care of his animals By Daniel Miller They call him Radioactive Man, the Japanese farmer who refused to leave his home town despite it being less than six miles away from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Defiant Naoto [...]
Sunday Times 2
Indian multimillionaire at war with surfers
A prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist is now pitted against a group of angry surfers who are protesting his ownership of a California beach and his decision to keep them off the waves. In a lawsuit filed this week, the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal protection group, alleges that the owner of a beachfront property south [...]
Sunday Times 2
Bollywood spreads its wings
ka Srivastava Prominent Bollywood blockbusters will be finding their way to Japan’s theatres soon, as the industry sets out to seduce a new market. Last week, Kabir Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger with Japanese subtitles saw a roaring response at the premiere, while Farah Khan’s 2007 blockbuster Om Shanti Om is set to release on March [...]
Sunday Times 2
Squalid, illegal children’s home in India
29 Indian girls as young as five were found with 600 empty liquor bottles, one broken toilet and in the care of a teenage boy By Steve Nolan Almost 30 young children were found living in one room and sharing one broken toilet between them after an illegal care home for poor tribal girls was [...]
Sunday Times 2
IPS releases migration profile of Sri Lanka
Dilan Perera, Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare, recently released the “Migration Profile: Sri Lanka” in the presence of Mr. Nissanka Wijeratne, Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare; Richard Danziger, Chief of Mission – IOM; Dongi Li, Country Director – ILO; Amal Senadilankara, Chairman – Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment; Dr. [...]
