Pakistan News update
news update
With Mubarak Gone, Egyptians Cheer — and Mourn — in Tahrir Square
Dec 4th
Tens of thousands of Egyptians gather during celebrations of Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power to pray — and to maintain pressure on the current military rulers — in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2011
Kamel Abdullah took the pages of the free antigovernment newspaper he’d just been handed and carefully laid them on the ground in front of him as a makeshift prayer mat. The beefy 50-year-old with a prominent zabibe, or callused prayer bump, on his forehead stood shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of thousands of other Egyptians who poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday, Feb. More >
Royal Wedding Coverage Making You Feel Queasy? Buy Yourself a Souvenir Barf Bag
Dec 4th
Lydia Leith’s Royal Wedding barf bag
Lydia LeithFor fans of Prince William and Kate Middleton, this might just make you throne up.
If you thought the royal wedding condoms was a cash-in too far, may we humbly present to you the “royal wedding sick bags,” which are the brainchild of British graphic designer Lydia Leith.
(More on TIME.com: Photos: Introducing Kate Middleton.)
Here’s the deal: the royal blue or pillar-box red barf bags show the happy couple on their engagement day, above the tag line, “Keep this handy on April 29, 2011.” Each one costs £3 ($4.85) which, we’re sure you’ll concur, is a little More >
Suicide Bomb in Khost: Afghanistan’s Taliban Claims Lives
Dec 3rd
A wounded man, left, looks at the site of a suicide bombing that killed nine people, including one police officer, and injured 40 others in Khost, Afghanistan, on Feb. 18, 2011. The incident was the latest to target Afghan police, who, along with the country’s army, are due to take control of the nation from international troops by 2014
Rasool Adil / AFP / Getty ImagesIt was carnage. There was a momentary crackle of gunfire and then, as a powerful car bomb detonated in Khost, a city in southeastern Afghanistan, a shock wave splintered trees and scattered body parts across 50 More >
No Diplomacy Between France and Mexico Over Kidnapping Case
Dec 3rd
Florence Cassez of France (C) walks with Mexican boyfriend Israel Vallarta (R) after their arrest by members of Mexico’s Federal Investigative Agency’s (AFI) on a ranch outskirts of Mexico City in this December 5, 2009 photograph.
France and Mexico have escalated an increasingly bitter diplomatic feud over the fate of a Frenchwoman serving a 60-year sentence in a Mexican prison for kidnapping. The long-simmering row exploded this week in a flurry of swipes from both sides of the Atlantic that included a respected Mexican figure accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of acting “like the dictator of a banana republic” for having More >
Stabbing Pains: Chinese Man Has Knife in His Head for Four Years
Dec 2nd
dailymail.co.uk
What are the chances you wouldn’t notice a blade stuck in your head for several years?
Sounds pretty unlikely, no? Well, a 37-year-old man in Yunnan Province, China went four years without realizing a knife was wedged in his cranium.
After Li Fu complained of a headache, his doctor X-rayed his head, finding the knife — the remnant of a robbery attack in 2006 — had been sitting in his brain unnoticed. Fu was treated by doctors following his attack, leading him and his family not to believe that the metal blade had been in his head for so long.
(More on TIME.com: More >
NASA Accidents: Challenger Space Shuttle, Apollo 1 Fire and Their Legacies
Dec 2nd
Apollo 1 astronauts prepare in a flight simulator
Every national tragedy develops its own traction. All human lives may be equal, but the loss of some cut us more deeply than others. Four American presidents have been assassinated. The death of two of them — Lincoln and Kennedy — shook the country to its roots. Garfield and McKinley? Not so much. They were merely murdered; the other two were martyred.
There’s a similar if subtler gap separating other cases of national loss. Hideous as the Virginia Tech murders were, Columbine somehow hit us harder. Was it the age of the More >
A Giant Hidden Planet In Our Own Solar System?
Dec 1st
The quest for Planet X always starts out with celestial objects behaving badly. Astronomers notice that a known planet, or a bunch of comets, begin moving in ways Newton’s laws of motion can’t explain. They propose that it’s caused by the gravity of something massive and still undiscovered lurking out in the Solar System, and they head to their telescopes to search for it.
Most often it’s all a big mistake; the unexplained motion turns out to be just an incorrect measurement. (The great exception concerned Neptune, spotted in 1846 after observers noticed Uranus wandering from its predicted path). More >
Gibbons communicate with regional dialects
Dec 1st
A one month old baby Siamang Gibbon sits with its mother Salome at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol, England
You’ve got to love gibbons. Part of a genus of primates known as small apes, they comprise seven species with such irresistible names as the northern white-cheeked gibbon, the southern buff-cheeked gibbon and the eastern black gibbon. They also sing — conducting long-distance dialogues that primatologists call “duets.” Now it appears those duets are also sung with what amounts to dialects — or at least regional accents — a decidedly human trait in a decidedly nonhuman critter.
All species of More >
Why Abdominal Pain Is Such a Headache for ER Doctors
Nov 30th
There it was, glowing on the computer screen next to each patient’s name, and repeated again, up on the emergency-department tracking board: “Abd Pn,” the abbreviation for abdominal pain. It appeared again and again, 12 times.
As other ER staff around me examined the board, the groans began. Anyone who works in an emergency department knows why: treating patients with belly pain is the ER doctor’s booby prize. Invariably, care involves dealing with bodily fluids, internal exams and choosing between a dizzying array of diagnostic tests and therapies. Diagnosis is not easy. (See Healthland’s five new rules for good health More >
Arched fossil explains Lucy’s posture
Nov 30th
Painting depicting Australopithecus robustus defending territory.
National Geographic Society / CorbisA series of slightly disturbing videos have been making the rounds, showing a gorilla named Ambam walking upright. Gorillas and chimps can walk on two legs, but only for short stretches, and with a kind of bent-over posture. This one, who lives at a wild animal park in Kent, England, stands fully erect. Ambam’s odd posture may be learned simply from observing and copying his keepers, but no matter the reason he can do what he does, a gorilla that walks like a human is eerie to watch.
Yet More >
