Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday the Justice Ministry was amending a controversial law which contains harsh provisions on women that critics have called a step back toward Taliban-era controls.The law, which applies to Shi'ite Muslims who make up about 15 percent of Afghanistan's population, requires women to satisfy their husbands' sexual desires. Opponents say this could be used to justify marital rape.
Other controversial passages require wives to get permission when leaving the home unless for employment, education or medical reasons, and allow a man to order his wife to wear make-up.
Karzai said the law would be changed to bring it in line with the constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women, and international treaties the country has signed.
"The law is under review and amendments will take place," Karzai told a news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
"I assure you that the laws of Afghanistan will be in complete harmony with the constitution of Afghanistan, and the human rights that we have adhered to in our constitution and in the principles of the international treaties," he added.
The legislation sparked an outcry from leaders of Western countries with troops in Afghanistan, including U.S. President Barack Obama who called it "abhorrent."
Monday, April 27, 2009
Afghan leader might make rape illegal again.
Cruise ship shoots back at pirates.
From Yahoo! News:
NAIROBI, Kenya – The small white skiff approached the Italian cruise ship Melody after dinnertime as it sailed north of the Seychelles, the pirates firing wildly toward the 1,500 passengers and crew on board.
What the pirates didn't expect was that, in the darkness, the crew would fire back.
In a new twist to the increasing scourge of Somali pirate hijackings, the private Israeli security forces aboard the MSC Cruises ocean liner fired on the pirates Saturday with pistols and water hoses, preventing them from clambering aboard, the company's director Domenico Pellegrino said.
"It was an emergency operation," Pellegrino told The Associated Press. "They didn't expect such a quick response. They were surprised."
Passengers were ordered to return to their cabins and the lights on deck were switched off. The massive vessel then sailed on in darkness, eventually escorted by a Spanish warship to make sure it made it to its next port.
"It felt like we were in war," the ship's Italian Commander, Ciro Pinto, told Italian state radio.
None of the roughly 1,000 passengers were hurt and by Sunday afternoon they were back out on deck sunning themselves, Pellegrino said.
RUW: Philadelphia surrenders to our future robot masters.
Robots are gaining on us.Thanks to exponential increases in computer power - which is roughly doubling every two years - robots are getting smarter, more capable, more like people.
Matching human skills and intelligence, however, is an enormously difficult, perhaps impossible, challenge.
Nevertheless, robots guided by their own computer "brains" now can pick up and peel bananas, land jumbo jets, steer cars through city traffic, search human DNA for cancer genes, play soccer or the violin, find earthquake victims, or explore craters on Mars.
At a "Robobusiness" conference in Boston last week, companies demonstrated a robot firefighter, gardener, receptionist, tour guide, and security guard.
You name it, a high-tech wizard somewhere is trying to make a robot do it.
A Japanese housekeeping robot can move chairs, sweep the floor, load a tray of dirty dishes in a dishwasher, and put dirty clothes in a washing machine.
Raindrops splash before they hit the ground.
More proof that rain comes from the tears of angels. From New Scientist:When does a raindrop splash? Surprisingly, the process begins before it makes contact.
A liquid drop hitting a surface often flattens into a thin sheet that then bounces to form a crown shape. Previous experiments have suggested the surrounding air plays a role: a droplet doesn't splash so easily when the air pressure is low, instead spreading out into a thin pancake.
Shreyas Mandre of Harvard University and colleagues ran computer simulations of liquid drops hitting a solid surface, accounting for factors such as air pressure and the drop's surface tension. Their results showed that a typical raindrop - roughly 2 millimetres wide and travelling at a few metres per second - compresses air in front of it a few microseconds before hitting a solid surface. This creates an air cushion that causes the raindrop to flatten and spread out, which the team believe would be less likely if the drop was striking a higher friction surface, and may help the splash evolve into a crow.
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to fight UFOs.
From the Christian Science Monitor:Charlie Rose had the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz on his program this past Tuesday night. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Gorbachev got a laugh when he said he wasn’t all that impressed with Reagan’s historic challenge to “tear down this wall”. But went on to say that he believed Reagan “was a great president.”
Shultz was talking about the Lake Geneva summit and mentioned the two leaders ducked out of a meeting to take a walk to a nearby cabin.
“I wasn’t there…,” Shultz said before Gorbachev cut him off.
“From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’
“I said, ‘No doubt about it.’”
“He said, ‘We too.’”
“So that’s interesting,” Gorbachev said to much laughter.
He then said to Shultz, “I’m sorry for having interrupted you, but it was an interesting moment.”
Japan unveils 11-point initiative for nuke-free world.
Japan unveiled an 11-point initiative Monday to achieve a nuclear-free world, including a call for the imposition of "effective global restrictions" on North Korea's ballistic missile development and a plan to hold an international conference in Japan early next year on global nuclear disarmament.In a speech titled "Conditions towards Zero -- 11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament," Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone urged China and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to ensure transparency regarding their arsenals, which he described as "vital" for advancing global nuclear disarmament.
"Without transparency in its strategic direction, China is continuing to modernize its nuclear arsenals and has undertaken no nuclear arms reduction until today," Nakasone said. "Nor does the country disclose any information on nuclear arsenals."
Nakasone made the pitch ahead of Prime Minister Taro Aso's two-day visit to China from Wednesday.
The speech came amid a growing mood for nuclear disarmament around the world after U.S. President Barack Obama laid out an ambitious vision April 5 for a world without nuclear weapons, saying Washington has "a moral responsibility to act" as the only power to have used a nuclear weapon.
Physics of pizza tossing finally discovered.
No word yet on the psychology behind the pineapple and ham topping combination. From EurekAlert:
Monash University scientists have unlocked the physics of the perfect pizza toss and will use it to design the next generation of micro motors thinner that a human hair.
Mr Daniel (Kuang-Chen) Liu, a PhD student supervised by Associate Professor James Friend and Senior Lecturer Leslie Yeo, videotaped a professional pizza tosser at work. The team from Monash's Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory, then calculated how best to describe the way the dough travels through the air – including how much the dough rotates, how quickly it spins, its stability and the energy efficiency of the toss itself.
The result is a set of nonlinear differential equations that captures the art of pizza tossing.
"In brief, if you toss a pizza dough one toss at a time – that is, if you toss then catch – your hands should move in a helical fashion, like they are moving along a spiral, a curved line laid along a cylinder," Associate Professor Friend said.
"If you are tossing the pizza continuously, not stopping to catch it and stop every time, then your hands should move in circles."
The model could help researchers to design the next generation of standing wave ultrasonic motors (SWUMs), which operate on similar principles as pizza tossing.
Zombie Watch: Spiders resurrect after drowning.
Zombie spiders we can take. But Zombie WOLF Spiders?!! We are doomed.From National Geographic:
Like zombies, spiders in a lab twitched back to life hours after "drowning"—and the scientists were as surprised as anyone. The spiders, it seems, enter comas to survive for hours underwater, according to a new study.The unexpected discovery was made during experiments intended to find out exactly how long spiders can survive underwater—a number of spiders and insects have long been known to be resistant to drowning.
[...] Scientists at the University of Rennes in France collected three species of wolf spider—two from salt marshes, one from a forest. The team immersed 120 females of each species in seawater, jostling the spiders with brushes every two hours to see if they responded.
As expected, all the forest wolf spiders (Pardosa lugubris) apparently died after 24 hours. The two salt marsh-dwelling species took longer—28 hours for Pardosa purbeckensis and 36 hours for Arctosa fulvolineata.
After the "drownings," the researchers, hoping to weigh the spiders later, left them out to dry. That's when things began to get weird...
Oklahoma governor intervenes in Flaming Lips flap.
Oklahoma lawmakers who voted against making a Flaming Lips tune the official state rock song represent a minority of "small-minded religious wackos," the band's lead singer says.Most state House members voted for a resolution recognizing 2002's "Do You Realize??," but conservatives who said they were offended by the band's clothing and language mustered enough votes to keep it from being adopted.
"Me, I just say look, it's a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that," frontman Wayne Coyne told Tulsa World in an interview Friday.
Gov. Brad Henry resolved the issue by announcing he would sign an executive order proclaiming "Do You Realize??" the official rock song of Oklahoma. The song earned more than half of the 21,000 votes cast in an online contest.
The Grammy-winning group, formed in Norman in 1983, is known for its psychedelic rock and lyrics.
Obama shook hands with swine flu victim who soon after died.
Damn you, swine flu! From the Daily Mail:
A man who shook Barack Obama's hand in Mexico died the next day from symptoms similar to those of swine flu.
The White House insisted the President's health was not in any danger, but he was said to be taking the threat of an epidemic 'very seriously'.
The President's health advisers were already concerned about his visit south of the border after learning the contagious virus first struck in Mexico City on April 13 - three days before Mr Obama flew in to meet government officials.
Their alarm grew after learning that Felipe Solis, director of the National Anthropology Museum, had died from pneumonia.
Taxpayers, unions to own General Motors.
I think I'd rather own a flat tire than any part of GM. From CNN:General Motors announced plans Monday to cut 23,000 U.S. jobs by 2011, drop its storied Pontiac brand and slash 40% of its dealer network in its latest bid to stay out of bankruptcy.The new restructuring proposal will leave the Treasury Department, and thus U.S. taxpayers, owning a significant stake in GM. Treasury would accept GM stock, rather than cash, for repayment of about $10 billion that the government has already lent to GM.
Trust funds controlled by the United Auto Workers union would also hold a significant stake in the company. Between them, Treasury and the unions would own 89% of GM.
Man in 40s shot 10 times, still survives.
Whoa. The last middle-aged guy to take 10 bullets and still live is Jack Bauer every week. From the Chicago Sun-Times:A man was shot ten times and survived the attack, which occurred after he argued with three other people late Sunday in the Calumet Heights community on the Far South Side.
The incident began when the victim became involved in an argument with three “offenders” on the 9100 block of South Oglesby Avenue, according to South Chicago District police.
At 9:08 p.m., ten shots were fired and the man -- who is in his 40s -- took ten bullets, four in the buttocks and six in the left leg, according to police.
The man was taken in serious condition to Advocate Trinity Hospital, but he was later “stabilized,” according to police.
A motive was not known and Calumet Area detectives are investigating.
Clog show canceled due to bad feng shui.
Having to wear wooden clogs does seem to be bad luck... From Breitbart:One of Hong Kong's tallest skyscrapers has refused to host an exhibition of clogs put on by a Dutch charity because of worries the clunky footwear will bring bad luck, a report said.The Cheung Kong Center refused to give the go ahead to the show, which was organised by the Dutch consulate, because of feng shui, a diplomat told the Sunday Morning Post.
The tower's management said the wooden footwear show would cause bad luck, because the Cantonese word for shoes -- hai -- sounds similar to a sigh of exasperation, the English-language paper said.
"Cheung Kong Center rejected the exhibition because of the Chinese meaning of wooden shoes. I don't understand. It is difficult to explain as I don't know how to say shoes in Chinese," an unnamed member of staff at the consulate told the paper.
Trend Spotting: Naked hiking.
Hey baby, wanna see my Matterhorn? From BBC:
The tiny Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden has voted to prohibit the phenomenon of naked hiking.
Anyone found wandering the Alps wearing nothing but a sturdy pair of hiking boots will now be fined.
Appenzell is considered one of the most conservative regions of Switzerland; it gave women the vote only in 1990.
Locals have been outraged by an apparent upsurge in hikers who think the best way to appreciate the mountains is with their clothes off.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Coozer-Bits.
McCain and Napolitano repeating falsehoods that 9/11 terrorists came via Canada.
John McCain is the latest high-profile politician to repeat the diehard American falsehood that the 9-11 terrorists entered the United States through Canada.Just days after Janet Napolitano, the U.S. homeland security secretary, sparked a diplomatic kerfuffle by suggesting the terrorists took a Canadian route to the U.S. eight years ago, McCain defended her by saying that, in fact, the former Arizona governor was correct.
"Well, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know," McCain, last year's Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News on Friday.
The Arizona senator's remarks prompted the Canadian embassy to immediately reissue remarks made earlier this week by Ambassador Michael Wilson, who reminded Americans once again that no 9-11 perpetrators came to the U.S. via Canada.
"Unfortunately, misconceptions arise on something as fundamental as where the 9-11 terrorists came from," Wilson said.
"As the 9-11 Commission reported in July 2004, all of the 9-11 terrorists arrived in the U.S. from outside North America. They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. No 9-11 terrorists came from Canada."
The 9-11 Commission Report further points out that the only Canadian to terrorize America is Alanis Morissette.
Security problems uncovered at US bases in Iraq.
A commission investigating waste and fraud in wartime spending has found serious deficiencies in training and equipment for hundreds of Ugandan guards hired to protect U.S. military bases in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.The problems at Forward Operating Bases Delta and Hammer include a lack of vehicles used to properly protect the two posts, a shortage of weapons and night vision gear, and poorly trained guards. Both bases house several thousand U.S. military personnel.
Concerned the shortages leave the bases vulnerable, the Commission on Wartime Contracting alerted military officials in Iraq and at Central Command in Tampa, Fla.
“Incidents such as this are a concern in their own right, but they are a particular concern to the commission if they prove to be indicators of broader, systemic problems that impede the delivery of critical services to American military forces in a war zone,” said Bob Dickson, the commission’s executive director.
[...] A majority of the guards are from Uganda and other East African countries. Guard salaries are about $700 a month on average.
Photos to be released showing US abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan.
The White House vowed Friday it will not be distracted by an upcoming disclosure sure to gain attention at home and abroad: hundreds of photos showing U.S. personnel allegedly abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-Sept. 11 environment.
The images will show mistreatment at locations beyond the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where pictures emerged in 2004 of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees, some naked, being held on leashes or in painful positions. That revelation caused a huge international backlash against the U.S.
The Pentagon plans to release the latest photos by May 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The move comes after the Justice Department lost its latest round in federal court and concluded that any further appeal would probably be fruitless.
The release of the photos, while underscoring President Barack Obama’s promise of transparency, poses risks for the administration.
Politically, it could again focus attention on the troubling past and prompt more calls for investigations and prosecutions. Every bit of time and energy centered on examining misdeeds of previous years could undermine the president’s ability to rally Congress and the public behind an ambitious agenda.
Sparrow's cigarette burns down store.
A cigarette loving sparrow is being blamed for a fire that caused £250,000 of damage to a shop in Lincolnshire.Paul Sheriff, 48, who runs Crescent Stores in Leasingham, was initially at a loss as to what caused the blaze, reports Metro.
But six weeks on, insurance investigators have told him that they discovered 35 cigarette ends in the roof.
Their conclusion was a sparrow must have picked up a smouldering butt to feather its nest in the roof's eaves, causing the blaze.
Mr Sheriff, a non-smoker, said: "The shop was a total mess. All the suspended ceilings came down, all the electrics were down, all the fridges were broken, it was horrendous."
A spokesman for his insurance company AXA said: "We believe it's the first case of its kind we've ever had to deal with. We had to bring in a specialist to investigate.
'I've certainly never come across this sort of thing before. It's strange to think how such a little bird armed with such a small object could cause such chaos."
Back from Spain!
Pics and travelogue to follow, but first I gotta see what's going on in the world. Also, I just remembered I never finished my write-up on Hong Kong. Whoops.