Afghanistan responsible for more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin.
United Nations’ early assessment of the 2013 crop found farmers were planning to plant more poppy than last year, marking the third annual rise in the drug’s cultivation. UN officials predict the increase will push this year’s crop close to 2007’s record level and again see Afghanistan responsible for more than 90 per cent of…
United States IRS Agents Probe Deeply into Everybodys E-mail
The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications. Internal Revenue Service doesn’t seem to believe it needs a search warrant before reading your e-mail. Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in…
Resistant Infections, a crisis of paralysis of modern medicine
The combination of the Arab Spring and the economic crisis in southern Europe has led to a quiet panic spreading in hospitals across the Mediterranean Basin. “With the disorganization of medical services, the number of infections resisting most known antibiotics has literally exploded,” says professor Patrice Nordmann, chief of the bacteriology-virology-parasitology department at the…
America`s Depression Hysteria
A new book reveals why a third of Americans convinced themselves they’re depressed—and what we can do to get sensible diagnoses. In his new book How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown, the University of Toronto historian of psychiatry Edward Shorter takes aim at the what he sees as the…
Challenges of Modern India
NOBODY doubts that China has joined the ranks of the great powers: the idea of a G2 with America is mooted, albeit prematurely. India is often spoken of in the same breath as China because of its billion-plus population, economic promise, value as a trading partner and growing military capabilities. All five permanent members of…
Kim Jong Un…First manufacture a crisis…then get paid for resolving the crisis
IT seems paradoxical to say it, given Pyongyang’s almost daily exercises in escalation, but the North Korean leadership almost certainly does not want to go to war. Not that it would flinch at a massive loss of life if it meant propping up the regime. That, after all, has been the logic by which the…
So what motivates 120 million Americans to attend a church, synagogue or temple?
I carried a lot of crosses as a Catholic altar boy. I also learned to mumble phrases in Latin and breathed in enough incense to choke an elephant. There is something serene about being behind a ritual. It lets you observe and reflect. And wonder why in the world people show up. Roughly six…