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October 17, 2005
Wars 'less frequent, less deadly'
"A lot of the data we have in this report is extraordinary," its director, former UN official Andrew Mack, said.
It found the number of armed conflicts had fallen by more than 40% in the past 13 years, while the number of very deadly wars had fallen by 80%.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Wars 'less frequent, less deadly'
Posted by thdyck at October 17, 2005 | Comments (0)
October 6, 2005
Alan Alda
(CNN) -- Alan Alda is doing this celebrity memoir thing all wrong.
For example, on Page 74 of his new book, "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (And Other Things I've Learned)" (Random House), he writes rapturously of meeting a woman named Arlene.
Within a few pages, they're taking walks in Bronx Park, stealing time from Alda's military service at Fort Benning, Georgia, and getting married. The book is 224 pages, so you wait for the other shoe to drop: petty arguments, ugly affairs, divorce.
Nothing. They've been married for 48 years.
CNN.com - The truth about Alan Alda - Oct 6, 2005
Posted by thdyck at October 6, 2005 | Comments (0)
Story behind Tiananmen Square photo
In May, 1989, as a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine, I was sent to Beijing where daily student protests had continued to grow in size.
Two of the magazine's other photographers, Peter Turnley and Andy Hernandez, had already put in some time there. A few days after I turned up, the protests seemed to have peaked out. Protest crowds and activity thinned to such a degree that a lot of the photographers and writers began to head back to their respective bases in the Asian region.
The protesters disabled the APC, tore its crew from the vehicle, killed them, and torched the vehicle I was told by Newsweek to stay on. On the evening of 3 June, after a day of tense confrontations between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the demonstrators, the army began to encircle the inner city and eventually began to try to move tanks and Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) down into the heart of Tiananmen Square.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Picture power: Tiananmen stand-off
Posted by thdyck at October 6, 2005 | Comments (0)
October 5, 2005
87-year-old virus lives again
A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mice.
The virus is contained at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under stringent safety conditions.
It is hoped to carry out experiments to further understand the biological properties that made the virus so virulent.
The virus was recreated from data produced by painstaking research by a team from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
Working on virus samples from the remains of victims of the 1918 pandemic, the researchers were able to piece together the entire genetic sequence of the virus.
They found the virus contained elements that were new to humans of the time - making it highly virulent.
And analysis of the final three pieces of the virus' genetic code has revealed mutations that have striking similarities to those found in flu viruses found only in birds, such as the H5N1 strain currently found in south east Asia.
BBC NEWS | Health | 1918 killer flu 'came from birds'
Posted by thdyck at October 5, 2005 | Comments (0)