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WITH a tin can, some copper wire and a few dollars’ worth of nuts, bolts and other hardware, a do-it-yourselfer can build a makeshift directional antenna. A mobile phone, souped-up with such an antenna, can talk to a network tower that is dozens of kilometres beyond its normal range (about 5km, or 3 miles). As Gregory Rehm, the author of an online assembly guide for such things, puts it, homemade antennae are “as cool as the other side of the pillow on a hot night”. Of late, however, such antennae have proved much more than simply cool. According to Jeff...

The Army is picking off Pakistani infiltrators left and right, because - as we have said many times - it has finally gotten its act together and is completely prepared. The infiltrators are not a problem now. But the civil police have not been able to switch to non-lethal means to control protestors. Another four demonstrators were shot when they stoned a police chief's convoy. Well, we feel bad for the people of Kashmir, but having made their bed they must now lie in it. India pulled out the Army, and most of the Border security Force, leaving local and...

BAGHDAD | Thu Sep 9, 2010 3:31pm EDT BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed the house of a Sunni cleric Thursday and cut his head off before setting him alight in an attack that bore the hallmark of insurgents, a police spokesman said. In a separate attack Thursday, four men wearing women's clothes entered the house of a policeman in a village northwest of Baquba, the Diyala capital, and beheaded his wife when they failed to find the officer, an interior ministry source said. Jabbar Saleh al-Jibouri was killed shortly before dawn at his house in a village near Muqdadiya town,...

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, the so-called Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza, which was intercepted by the Israeli Navy in international waters on May 31, 2010, consisted of three cargo ships and three passenger ships. 2.Most of the casualties were reported on Mavi Marmara, a passenger ferry, one of three ships provided by Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), a Turkish humanitarian organisation, which is also known as the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom and Humanitarian Relief –IHH. It is banned in Israel, which accuses it of links to Hamas and Al Qaeda. The...

I'm all for Liberty but I'd sacrifice some rights for a tough love leader and a law against Big Gulps. ......And people love a good dictator — or at least get over their hatred of one pretty quickly — provided that the dictator doesn't put up too many pictures of himself. We instinctively object to new forms of paternalism, but we also quickly accept them: ......President Obama should probably get a little bit dictatorial up in here. He's the only person in the U.S. unaware that we elected him dictator, giving him both houses of Congress and the major television...

IT’S the health and safety measure Iraqis have not been waiting for. The government in Baghdad last week banned smoking in public buildings. Anyone found lighting up will have to pay a fine equivalent to $4,300, enough to buy 17,200 packs of cigarettes at the local price of about 25 cents. “Do the politicians have nothing better to do?” asks Abu Yasser, as he takes a drag while filling up his car at a petrol station. “My cousin was recently murdered by terrorists, my neighbour was tortured by the police, my electricity is cut for most of the day, the...

Ooooooh, the CIA is so mean that we want to beat them with a flower, and beat them every hour. What did CIA do now? They interrogated a suspect, brandishing a power-drill and a handgun, and fired a single shot in an adjoining room to get the suspect to believe another suspect had been executed. Media is in a flap, CIA is in a flap, and surely it's just a matter of time before Congress is in a flap. Let the denials, different versions, excuses, recriminations, special prosecutors etc. begin. So here we have a suspect refusing to talk, what...

ECONOMISTS have long recognised the arguments for imposing special taxes on goods and services whose prices do not reflect the true social cost of their consumption. Such taxes are known as “Pigouvian” after Arthur Pigou, a 20th-century English economist. Environmental taxes are an obvious example. There is also a Pigouvian case for duties on cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. Smoking increases the risk of cancer for those in the vicinity of the smoker; alcohol abuse and gambling are strongly associated with violence and family breakdown. Moreover, all three habits lead to higher medical costs. In theory governments can make up these...

Stay on top of breaking news! Sign up for ABC 13 e-mail alerts. Your Email: related stories: Store Robbed at Gunpoint Danville, VA - In Danville Tuesday evening, a convenience employee was held at gunpoint, but before the would-be robber could make a move, her husband tackled him to the ground. The incident happened at the Super Test Joy Food Mart on West Main Street around 8:00 Tuesday. When police got to the store, they found 27-year-old Floyd Haizlip wrestling with the store owner on the sidewalk. It was all caught on surveillance video (click the video link to see)....

ENTER the main cardiac operating-room at Bangalore’s Wockhardt hospital on a typical morning, and you will find a patient on the operating table with a screen hanging between his head and chest. On a recent visit the table was occupied by a middle-aged Indian man whose serene look suggested that he was ready for the operation to come. Asked how he was, he smiled and answered in Kannada that he felt fine. Only when you stand on a stool to look over the screen do you realise that his chest cavity has already been cut open. As the patient was...

2. The Arabs constitute a minority in the Islamic world. Non-Arab Muslims living in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia constitute the majority. The issues, which agitate them, are different from the issues which agitate the Arab world. Osama bin Laden understands this better than Obama and his advisers. That was why in his audio message released through Al Jazeera a day before Obama’s Cairo address, bin Laden focused on issues of immediate concern to the non-Arab Muslims in the Af-Pak region such as the large-scale displacement of Pashtuns from the tribal areas of Pakistan. By...

Hub bar and restaurant owners are burning up over the city’s sudden crackdown on puffing patrons on rooftop decks or in sidewalk cafes as part of the city’s tough new workplace smoking rules. “We used to have a patio full of people, smokers and others who don’t smoke but are socializing with them,” said George Lewis, owner of The Foundation Lounge at the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square. “Now it’s empty.” Lewis is among a group of tavern owners considering challenging the new smoking restriction in court. They fear the ban, coupled with an increased meals tax, will scare away...

With increasing frequency your editor reads these days that the Taliban is composed mainly of men who are fighting for the money. The implication is that if we give them money in the form of jobs, they will give up the Taliban. ....... Remember also: possibly the majority of these youngsters are coming from the madrassas, religious schools in which they have been enrolled since age 6, 10, 14, or whenever their families decided there were too many mouths to feed. By the time they reach 16-18, these kids are possibly the most heavily indoctrinated kids in the world. On...

Thanks to the Indian media's inability to tell a coherent story, it is only now we understand how the top officers of the Anti-Terror Squad died. Earlier the impression given by the media was that they were killed at one of the hotels while leading the counterattack. Since two of the terrorists went to shoot up a hospital, and were killing randomly on the way, the two top Anti-Terror Squad officers plus the senior most officer responsible for South Bombay got into a van with three constables and a junior officer and rushed to the hospital. They were ambushed in...

Having an Obama In Its Future--- Good Or Bad For US? By B. Raman The world has seen made-in-the-Internet scholars, made-in-the-Internet stock-brokers, made-in-the-Internet lovers and even made-in-the-Internet terrorists. If Senator Barrack Obama is elected the President of the United States on November 4, the US and the rest of the world will be seeing for the first time a made-in-the-Internet President. The way his advisers and entourage have effectively used the Internet to make him known to the people, to collect funds for him and to project him as a right-thinking person, who will take the US into a brave...

ISLAMABAD, Oct 16: Terrorists could launch a fresh wave of attacks in the national capital, targeting President Asif Ali Zardari’s residence and the US embassy, Pakistani intelligence agencies have warned. Terror masterminds have drawn up plans to hit Zardari House, the Presidency, Parliament House and the US mission in the near future, sources in the Interior Ministry told The News daily. The strikes could come after a special session of Parliament discussing the Government’s anti-terror policy concludes. The agencies have said that terror groups are awaiting the outcome of the Parliament debate and what the lawmakers decide on continuation of...

Twelve Republicans used the excuse of an inflammatory speech by the House Speaker, Congressperson Nancy Pelosi, to vote "no" whereas previously they had indicated a "yes". We heard parts of the speech, and inflammatory it was; though all the facts were correct as to how President Bush had wrecked the US budget over 8 years. But if she sought to blame the mess on President Bush, that would definitely be a no-no: this nonsense started during President Clinton's time, and strange as it may seem, there are Democratic Wall Street people as much as Republican Wall Street people. The Democrats...

why is it so hard to get any straight information out of the Americans and Pakistanis? Turns out Pakistanis did not give permission for the latest strike in South Waziristan which killed six insurgents and destroyed a container load worth of arms/ammunition. By saying the strike developed as a result of Pakistan-US information sharing, US was implying - to our mind, at least - that all was on the up and proper. Moreover, Pakistan intelligence sources said they had been notified of the strike. But now it turns out the Pakistan government was not in the loop, and the Pakistani...

to report that there's a nice view to be had of the crescent-topped mosque dome silhouetted against the distant skyline, but not high enough to tell you what it would be like if you were the muezzin who had to go up there five times a day to chant the call to prayer. Of course, the muezzin can't tell you either -- he's no fool -- they're going to broadcast the prayer summons (which will only happen during the day out of respect for the neighbors) by loudspeaker. --Michael Paulson That they're going to broadcast the call to prayer at...

JAMMU, Sept 11: Militants chopped off nose of a civilian at Kaka Hill in Bhata, Dessa area of Doda district last night. Reports said the victim Manzoor Ahmed son of Sikandar Parray R/o Bhata, Dessa, had gone to the house of his brother-in-law Mohd Sultan at Kaka Hill where two militants kidnapped him last night. The militants took Manzoor Ahmed to a nearby forest where they fired some shots in air and later chopped off the nose of Manzoor with a sharp-edged weapon. The ultras escaped after the incident. A search party of police found the victim lying in an...