Wi-Fi hits the highway
May 18, 2009
Despite its importance in daily life, Internet access is still mostly an indoor activity. Wireless routers might stretch the Web to your front yard. But once you hit the road, say bye-bye to Wi-Fi.
That is, unless you drive a Cadillac.
In April, the luxury General Motors division launched a branded Wi-Fi service in its CTS sports sedan, a model that spokesperson David Caldwell says is Cadillac’s “centerpiece brand.”
This early example of dealer-installed wireless joins the several burgeoning plans that want to bring the information super Read more
India revels in acclaim for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
January 25, 2009
Some see hope for change as the film, with four Golden Globe awards and 10 Oscar nominations, spotlights the desperation of slum life.
By Anuj Chopra
Oscar-nominated film "Slumdog Millionaire" has given hope to some residents of Dhavari, Mumbai, where more than 1 million people live in desperate poverty, that the world will take notice of their desperate situation. - Gautam Singh/AP
MUMBAI, INDIA – John D’souza hasn’t yet seen the much-feted film “Slumdog Millionaire.” But he is convinced the film has the power to transform his life.
Mr. D’souza, a social worker who has lived all his life in Dharavi, a grubby slum in Mumbai (Bombay) that is touted as Read more
Closing Guantánamo: Will Europeans take detainees?
January 25, 2009
Europeans, who have long pushed to close the controversial facility, are hesitant to take some of its inmates.
By Robert Marquand
Closing: Guards at Guantánamo’s Camp 6 detention center Wednesday. The war-crimes court has been suspended for review. President Obama has ordered the camp to shut within a year.-- Brennan Linsley/AP
Paris – On no single issue has Europe been more in disagreement with America than the Guantánamo detention center. The camp was a focus of anti-US protest here, synonymous with the image of a bullying world power Read more
The curse of Nigerian oil
January 5, 2009
Attacks on oil industry facilities and kidnappings for ransom are frequent in the creeks of the Niger Delta, which is home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry.
The BBC’s Sue Lloyd-Roberts argues that Nigeria’s “black gold” has brought wealth to a few but fuels greed and corruption on a grand scale.
After spending just two weeks in Nigeria, I had come to a sweeping – and therefore probably wrong – conclusion about the country.
I was therefore gratified to find my view confirmed by the Nigerian woman whom I sat next to on the flight back from Abuja to London. I told her that I had spent most of my time in the Delta region filming the consequences of oil exploration.
“Oh, I come from there”, she said. “I wish you had come to my country before oil was discovered. Oil has ruined Nigeria.”
Academics call it Read more
Young women ‘have more sexual partners’ than men
December 17, 2008
Young women are more promiscuous than men, according to a survey that claims the average 21-year-old has had nine sexual partners compared with seven for men.
By Martin Beckford
The poll of 2,000 by the magazine More also found that one in four young women has slept with more than 10 people, compared with one in five men who had done the same.
In addition, half of those questioned admitted they had been unfaithful, whereas only a quarter said they had been cheated on by a boyfriend.
It comes just a week after an academic study branded Britain one of the casual sex capitals of the Read more
The Olympic spirit and today’s Games
August 7, 2008
A Christian Science perspective on daily life.
Perhaps one has to go back – way back – to get a sure fix on it. Maybe that’s the only way to find what has always been at the heart of the Games. Because at their very core there has always been what’s often termed the Olympic spirit. What is it? A kind of common bond centered on love of sport. A shared union among all who savor excellence on the athletic field regardless of the origin or nationality of the individual athletes.
At its best, this Olympic spirit transcends the backstabbing and bickering, the political maneuvering and international one-upmanship that seem to swirl around our planet almost all the time, but become especially noticeable when the Games are about to begin.
The build up to the Olympics
August 7, 2008
In the build up to the Olympics city officials hired some of the worlds leading architects and if you’re looking for a conversation here in Beijing just mention some of the new buildings that have sprung up.
First up and for many, the first entrance to the middle kingdom is the new terminal three at Beijing Capital International Airport. On entering T3 one is met by a reddish orange glow shining down from the sunlit ceiling, always a lucky color in Chinese culture. Passengers here are lucky too, with the amount of space and room – T3 is the world’s biggest passenger terminal and in this the Olympic year is expected to handle more than 60 million passengers.
And out the front in time for the games a new rail link has opened running direct to downtown Dongzhimen
Next up, travelling along the newly opened subway line 10, get off at Jintaixizhao Station, in Beijing’s Chaoyang Central Business District and the soon to be complete CCTV tower. Coming in at over 230-metres high once finished, it’ll become a workplace for more than 10,000 people.
From the CCTV tower we now cut across town into the heart of old Beijing into the soul of the city’s ancient past and the arts – paying a visit to the national theatre tucked neatly next to Tiananmen Square. This luminescent bubble serves as an opera house seating up to 6,500 people. Up close the titanium and glass dome floats like a lily pad on a lake blending the organic with the futuristic.
Let’s leave the arts and travel north to the centre of the city’s sports where one arrives at The National Aquatic Centre, the location for the swimming, diving, and synchronized swimming Olympic events. Structured like a soap bubble it glows a translucent blue at night.
And finally our tour finishes arriving at what has been referred to as the defining landmark, not just of the Olympics, but of the new China — the National Stadium, or the Birds’ Nest.
Perhaps no insight into contemporary Beijing would be complete without looking at the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest. These two locations add to the city in a way that is just as fascinating as any visit to the Great Wall.
And perhaps, years later, visitors to the city will still be coming here and commenting on the legacy that was left behind in the build up to the Olympics.
Courtesy: China Daily
Gorgeous women in sport
August 6, 2008
By Nitin Nair, Senior Features Writer.
Hugh Hefner may be the luckiest man alive, but don’t say that to the guy who gets to referee a women’s beach volleyball gig featuring teams from Brazil and Italy during the Olympics in Beijing this month.
If there’s one thing men love more than sport, it’s watching the gorgeous women in it. And I mean this in a totally non-sexual way, mostly.
Unlike fashion models and the airheads in show business, these women are real – their medals a result of hours of getting down and dirty on the field.
Okay, so they are hot and sweaty and wear short, slinky outfits, but over the next eight pages you will learn that these women have gotten to wherever they are because of true grit, grace and perserverance.
Fun, games and money
August 5, 2008
THE BUSINESS OF SPORT
From The Economist print edition
Sport has become a global business as well as a recreation for billions, says Patrick Lane. But how to make it faster, higher, stronger?
Reuters.
EVEN in China, a century is a long time to wait. In 1908, as the fourth modern Olympic games took place in London, a magazine called Tianjin Youth posed three questions. When would a Chinese athlete take part in the games? When would the country send a team? And when would it stage the games?
The brave new world of e-hatred
July 29, 2008
Cyber-nationalism
The brave new world of e-hatred
From The Economist print edition..
Social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together