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Kajima's floor-by-floor slow demolition is one of those rare things in life that leaves you truly speechless, mouth wide-open, and pinching yourself to be sure this is real while you mutter "what the frak." After all, seeing the video of a 20-floor building submerging into the asphalt as if it was liquid is something that belongs to a sci-fi movie. The stunning process—called daruma-otoshi—is not only almost surrealistic but it helps to reduce the environmental impact. Seriously, I can watch this for hours: YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwf9LoS9Xt8 How do they do it? First they replace the support pillars at ground level...

For almost a year the Bush Administration in Washington and the Karzai Government in Kabul have been putting out feelers to India to give its aid to Afghanistan a military dimension. There are signs that elements within the coalition of Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, may be interested. So, was Monday's bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul a warning to Delhi not to deepen its involvement in Afghanistan? The attack that claimed 41 lives, including the military attaché, and injured 141 was the biggest in Kabul since the fall of the Taleban in 2002. India is involved in...

LONDON: Frozen embryos are better than fresh when it comes to producing healthier babies using in-vitro fertilisation, a new study has revealed. Researchers in Denmark have found that babies born from thawed embryos were heavier at birth and were unlikely to suffer abnormalities as compared to those born from fresh embryos. “Only very top-quality embryos survive the freezing and thawing process. And you only get pregnancies in patients with lots of good embryos to freeze,” lead researcher Dr Anja Pinborg was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying. The researchers at Copenhagen University reached the conclusion after comparing over...

After a frustrating few months of searching for a solution to the audio problems he encountered while ripping on-screen video with his Dell laptop, a ripten editor discovered that others were experiencing the same issue—and that the problem was not confined to Dell laptops. Apparently, the lack of a sound card Stereo Mix recording option is to blame—and numerous forum threads have suggested that the RIAA has put pressure on laptop manufacturers like Dell, Gateway and Pac Bell to remove it.After posting this information on ripten, a Dell representative chimed in to say that the lack of a sound card...

The attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul is a setback for a country which has been one of Afghanistan's closest allies in recent years. After the fall of the Taleban in 2001 India moved quickly to regain its strategic depth in Afghanistan. It opened two new consulates in Herat and Mazhar-e-Sharif and reopened two others in Kandahar and Jalalabad which had been shut since 1979. India also became one of Kabul's leading donors - it has pledged to spend $750m on helping rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure. Funds have been committed for education, health, power and telecommunications. There has...

KABUL: A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-filled car into the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul, leaving at least 40 people dead, officials and a witness said. ( Watch video ) "The number of deaths at this time is 28, while 141 people were wounded, half of them hospitalised," health ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim said, adding that the figure was based on information from several hospitals. The blast destroyed about four cars outside the embassy in the heart of the city, and flesh and broken limbs were scattered at the scene, an Afghan witness said. The bomber hit the...

Is the concept of jihad losing steam in India? Safdar Nagori, chief of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India who was arrested last December, revealed during his interrogation and narco-analysis tests that ordinary Muslims are disenchanted with the concept of religious war being espoused by radical clerics and terrorist outfits.Statistics with the Intelligence Bureau show that the number of Muslim youth being recruited into terror outfits have declined in the past year. From about 80 to 100 a year, the figure has come down to 30 to 40, IB sources said. The IB says there are two reasons...

KABUL: A suicide car bomb exploded near the Indian embassy in central Kabul on Monday morning, killing seven people, officials said. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the defence ministry, said five people were killed at the site of the suicide car bombing. Sayed Qabir, the chief of a Kabul hospital, said his staff had treated eight people wounded in the blast, but that two had died. The bomb went off near the Indian embassy, which sits across the street from Afghanistan's interior ministry on a tree-lined street in central Kabul. While Afghanistan has seen increasing violence in recent...

WASHINGTON: US researchers reported that they may have found a way to flush out herpes viruses from hiding — offering a potential way to cure pesky and painful conditions from cold sores to shingles. They discovered that a mysterious gene carried by the herpes simplex-1 virus — the one that causes cold sores — allows the virus to lay low in the nerves it infects. It does so via microRNAs, little pieces of genetic material that regulate the activity of many viruses, the researchers report in the journal Nature. It may be possible to "wake up" the virus and then...

LONDON: London's Brent crude oil hit 146 dollars a barrel for the first time on Thursday, as traders reacted to Middle East tensions, falling US crude reserves and the weak dollar. Brent North Sea oil for August delivery surged to a life-time peak of 146.34 dollars. New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for August delivery, meanwhile surged past 145 for the first time to reach an all-time pinnacle of 145.43 dollars a barrel. Analysts said a weaker US dollar, and data that revealed a drop in stockpiles of US crude, helped push prices higher. The US Energy Information...

A spy camera, estimated to cost £10,000 and designed to catch fly-tippers, was cleared by council workers after it was concealed in a rubbish bag. The expensive camera was placed inside a black bag beside a notorious illegal fly-tipping site. The disguise was so good that workers for Chichester District Council, West Sussex, cleared the camera believing it was genuine rubbish. "Because the camera had been hidden in something that looked like rubbish, they cleared that away as well," said John Cherry, the deputy council...

The Indian general who commanded the military campaign that led to the creation of Bangladesh has died at the age of 94. Sam Manekshaw, whose career spanned four decades, was one of India's best known and well-respected soldiers. Under the British, he was decorated for gallantry in World War II for his part fighting the Japanese army in Burma. After India gained independence, he became chief of the army in 1969 and in 1973 was made field marshal. 'The brave' Under his command, India went to war with Pakistan in 1971, supporting Bengali nationalists in what was then East Pakistan....

Japan's second most dubiously famous technological predilection (behind panty-vending machines) is its highfalutin' toilets, which warm, wash, blow dry and deodorize your bum, just to cover the basics. Japan is also well regarded for taking the lead on going green—average energy consumption per person is half ours. Tragically, the Japanese desire for a pampered and squeaky clean butthole is killing that ethos—and the planet. Super-deluxe-awesome-o toilets are always on, constantly sipping power—they now make up four percent of household energy consumption, more than dishwashers or clothes dryers. And they're in 68 percent of homes. One expert says it's the Japanese...

A majority of people in India feel that use of torture on terrorists is justified if it could help save innocent lives, a new survey of 19 nations shows.      India bucks the trend in the poll, which saw most people favouring an unequivocal rule against torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save lives of innocent people.      But four nations, including India, lean toward favouring an exception in the case of terrorists, according to the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 19,063 respondents, released ahead of the International Victims of Torture Day on June 26.     ...

MUMBAI: Shweta Kumari is waiting impatiently for the new Nano by Tata Motors to hit car showrooms here later this year. With a price tag of about $2,500, the Nano will cost about half the price of the least-expensive car on the market, easily affordable for Kumari, who works as a software developer. "I can drop my kid at school, go to work and go shopping more comfortably," said Kumari, who now shares a car with her husband. But some environmentalists are dreading the prospect of hundreds of thousands of low-cost cars hitting polluted and overcrowded roads around the world...

  In a move that will cheer up lovers of vehicles that can travel on both water and (very flat) land, students at a German engineering university have built a one-person hovercraft that uses an air thrust system to move and steer.Folks over at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences use a pneumatic propeller that pushes air through two channels. Each of the channels has a pair of flaps that behave like the thrust-reversing system of a turbo-drive to help a user easily maneuver left or right, go in reverse, and brake.The way the project is set up hints that...

Italian police have freed a woman who had been imprisoned for 18 years by her family after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Maria Monaco, 47, was said to be suffering severe psychological trauma after being kept in "indescribable" conditions. She has been taken for treatment to a hospital in Naples. Ms Monaco's 80-year-old mother, Anna Rosa Golino, her 44-year-old brother, Prisco, and 54-year-old sister, Michelina, were all arrested on charges of kidnapping and mistreatment. The police said Ms Monaco's family, who live in the small southern town of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, had "punished" her because she was unmarried when...

  NASA just awarded its future spacesuit contract to Oceaneering International. The US firm must now design, test, and produce two suits -- the default suit (pictured after the break) worn on-board for launch and landing and a second, more versatile, cheese-proof suit worn during space walks and upon the surface of the moon. The suits must be ready for the first scheduled launch of the Orion Space Capsule in 2015. The contract is valued at the government special price of just $745 million. Hey, we have to keep up appearances at the International Space Station, you know.  

NEW YORK: The popularity of the United States in India has shot up dramatically since 2002, in a period in which Uncle Sam's image took a beating globally, a survey has said. America turned out to be the most popular in India, with its ratings rising up to 71 per cent, up from 54 per cent in the summer of 2002, in the survey conducted by an independent body - the Pew Research Centre - over 16 nations to assess favourabilty ratings of five major countries. Besides, India is the only country outside the US where a majority of people...

HELSINKI: If you can bear dark snowy winters lasting anywhere between three and seven months and are prepared to stand out in a crowd of Finns – tall, blonde and speaking Suomi or Swedish – there is a chance Finland's 'silver economy' needs you. In an extraordinary attempt to lure immigrants to their rapidly-ageing country, Finnish universities have government approval to hawk their wares to Indian and Chinese students. On offer is a world-class education in one of Europe's most wired and well-developed economies and the chance of a good job afterwards. Finland's 'look east' policy is born out of...