Free Republic

If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by "cutting off...

WASHINGTON: One of the most perplexing mysteries in the war on terror returned centerstage on Monday with the announcement by US authorities of the arrest in Kabul of a Pakistani-American woman scientist whose sudden disappearance in 2003 caused many to think she was in American or Pakistani custody and underscored the disturbingly clandestine nature of the war. Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT alumna with a doctorate in neurosciences, and a mother of three children, vanished while on a visit to Karachi nearly five years ago. She was believed to have been taken into custody by Pakistani and/or US intelligence agencies because...

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- India's Ministry of Coal has received 22 applications in response to the bidding process it commenced early last month for the allocation of captive coal blocks for coal-to-liquid (: 36.06, -0.16, -0.44%) projects. Industry majors hopeful of securing captive coal mines include the Tata Group (Mumbai), Reliance Industries Limited (BOM:500325) (Mumbai) and Reliance Power Limited (BOM:532939) (Mumbai). RIL had sent in an $8 billion investment proposal to set up a CTL project with a capacity of 80,000 barrels per day (BBL/d) of oil and requiring 1.5 billion tons of coal...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India announced fresh aid of $450 million to Afghanistan for development projects on Monday and both countries vowed to fight terrorism, weeks after a deadly attack at the Indian embassy in Kabul. Afghanistan, India and the United States have accused Pakistan's spy agency of being involved in the July bombing that killed at least 58 people, including two Indian diplomats. [SNIP] India said after the Kabul attack that the peace process with Pakistan was "under stress" because its traditional foe was "inciting terror" inside India and trying to hit its interests abroad. Analysts say that Pakistan...

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who broke into military computers looking for evidence of UFOs in the "biggest military hack of all time," did so using his home computer and a 56k modem. I think we just lost our rights to complain about not having Japan-fast broadband. Using his own computer at home in London, McKinnon hacked into 97 computers belonging to and used by the U.S. government between February 2001 and March 2002.McKinnon is accused of causing the entire U.S. Army's Military District of Washington network of more than 2,000 computers to be shut down for 24 hours.Using...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 1: Pakistan on Friday angrily rejected a report that the United States had accused its main spy agency – ISI – of helping to plan a fatal bombing at India’s embassy in Kabul last month. Citing unnamed officials, the New York Times said intercepted communications had provided clear evidence that the ISI was involved in the July 7 suicide attack on the Indian mission, which killed around 60 people. “It’s rubbish. We totally deny it,” Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said. “This is a baseless allegation that the New York Times keeps on recycling using anonymous sources. These...

Vienna - India's nuclear trade deal with the United States might create a precedent for Israel, an Iranian diplomat warned on Friday, as the UN nuclear watchdog prepared to approve an inspection plan for India that is part of the bilateral deal. Under its 2005 deal with the US, India is to receive nuclear supplies in return for opening its nuclear energy sector to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, despite the fact that - like Israel - it is a nuclear weapons country not party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "There is serious concern that the United States has...

ISLAMABAD: An "annoyed" US president, George Bush, has confronted Pakistan's PM over ISI leaking intelligence, shared by Washington, to militants and quizzed him on who was controlling the spy agency. Pakistan, which has reacted angrily to recent calls for direct US military strikes or "hot pursuit" of militants thriving in its tribal areas, has been harping on the need for the American intelligence agencies to share information so that it can carry out operations against the extremists. However, Bush during his meeting with prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday said that Washington is reluctant to share intelligence with Islamabad...

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the IAEA meeting on Friday, Pakistan has demanded nuclear deal similar to the one Washington has made with India. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said at a gathering under the aegis of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Middle East Institute: "there should be no preferential, there should be no discrimination. And if they want to give civilian nuclear status to India, we would also expect the same for Pakistan too". "For us, national security is supreme and the government will do everything in its power to defend it," says Mohammed Sadiq, spokesperson, Pakistan...

WASHINGTON: Chinese people are confident about their nation’s place on the world stage but a poll highlights "significant tensions" between China and other rival powers, including India with 24% viewing New Delhi as an "enemy". Overwhelmingly, the Chinese think their country is popular abroad with roughly three-in-four (77%) believing people in other countries generally have favourable opinions of China. However, the 2008 survey by the Pew Research Centre’s Pew Global Attitudes Project highlights significant tensions between China and other rival powers. Views about India are "mixed at best" with 25% viewing India as a partner, while a similar number 24%...

Indian official says Islamabad could use F-16s against New Delhi NEW DELHI: The Indian defence establishment is “concerned” by the United States’ decision to divert $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counter-terrorism programmes to upgrading its F-16 fighter jets. “Acquisition of new airborne capabilities by Pakistan is definitely a matter of concern for India since it’s always primarily directed at us. If the US thinks Pakistan will only use its upgraded F-16s for counter-terrorism operations, it is sadly mistaken,” Times of India quoted a top Indian defence official as saying on condition of anonymity. India’s Western Air Command (WAC)...

It is a high ambition of the Rudd Government to greatly deepen Australia's engagement with India. Well, it is about to get the opportunity to do just that. This week, the Indian parliament passed a momentously important vote of confidence in the Government of Manmohan Singh. This vote could be a pivot point in modern history. It was all about India's nuclear co-operation deal with the US. (SNIP) India is not a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is not one of the five accepted nuclear weapons states (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China). But it possesses a...

NEW DELHI: India is hopeful that despite Pakistan's objection the safeguards agreement it plans to sign with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) next week will be done without more countries joining in to resist it. "The overwhelming mood in the IAEA Board of Governors is to support the Indian safeguards agreement," a senior official in the External Affairs Ministry said. The Indian safeguards agreement will come up for discussion and approval by the 35-member Board of Governors of the IAEA on August 1. India and Pakistan are both members of the Board. India needs to get the safeguards agreement...

HANWANG, China — The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen. Mr. Yu’s daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction. The contract had been thrust in Mr. Yu’s face during a...

Already pointed out the need to carry a camera with you at all times to catch amazing pictures. Now, here's one reason to always remember to carry a good videocamera. And survival kits and a GPS and armored suits and canned burgers and infrared goggles or a F-35 helmet. Unlike Lori Mehmen, however, these guys didn't take cover and just kept driving to this huge mother of all dust storms in Australia. Not as dangerous as a tornado, sure, but scary doesn't even start to describe it. WATCH: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a94_1216779982

LONDON: European researchers are working on mathematical foundations of programming to create fault free software in the future. People are remarkably tolerant of software that goes wrong, but when it comes to faulty cars or TV sets, they would insist that they be set right without much ado, the researchers said. "The software industry is still very immature compared to other branches of engineering," says Bengt Nordström, computer scientist at Chalmers University, Göteborg. "We want to see programming as an engineering discipline but it's not there yet. It's not based on good theory and we don't have good design methods...

Like a bad dream, the gory images have come back to haunt the land of famished fields and parched valleys veiled in dense layers of dust. Just about when the picture of a woman — covered from head to toe in a blue burqa with a narrow screen in front of her stony eyes — shot in the back of her head was turning grainy, the nightmare revisited Ghazni city last week. Two women, wrapped in blue, were asked to kneel on the ground. And then a few fierce-looking men, with hate dripping from their eyes, nudged the women's bowed...

Security researcher and author Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running. Kaspersky will demonstrate how such an attack can be made in a presentation at the upcoming Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during October. The proof-of-concept attacks will show how processor bugs, called errata, can be exploited using certain instruction sequences and a knowledge of how Java compilers work, allowing an attacker to take control of the...

Joe Pappalardo got some crisp, high quality military close-ups of the Spirit of Kansas, the $1.2 billion stealth B-2 bomber that crashed in Guam last February. We published other images of the crash scene before.  Head to Popular Mechanics to see the official timeline of the crash. [Popular Mechanics]

CHABUA (Assam): Worried at the increase in Chinese airfields along the border, the Centre is upgrading its infrastructure and fleet strength at all air force stations under the Eastern Air Command. "AFS Chabua is surrounded by 14 airfields on the Chinese side. Not all of them are now being used, but they can be made operational within a week," Commanding Officer of the Chabua airbase, Group Captain M S Venkateswara told a group of visiting newspersons here. Pointing out that the border with China was 170 km north and that with Myanmar 80 km south of Chabua airbase, he said,...