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House Maids, Blessings Or Curses
Mini advertising boards are dotted all over city street comers, talking about agents and what they are offering the public. A message on a not-too-appealing board stuck to a tree trunk in Accra reads: 'Agent for house-helps'. I was taken aback, asking myself what exactly this so called agent was up to. Other questions darted through my mind. I tried to figure out the agent's mode of getting the 'goods', whether they go round knocking at doors asking parents if they've surplus girls between this-and-that age to be given out into labour for a handsome remuneration.
2008-11-30 21:00:00
Fears for missing Russian student
Fears are raised over a missing Russian student thought to be in a distressed state of mind.
2008-11-30 09:37:12
Mark Viduka fails to lift tedium
FOG ON THE TYNE is traditional and so is smog on the Tees. It descended yesterday; a thin cloud lingering on the pitch like dry ice left on stage after the finale of a magicianâ€™s act. Sadly, nothing else about this game brought conjuring or showmanship to mind. It was not a bad match, just a boring one, 90 minutes which neutrals will quickly lose in the mists of their memories. Partisans were happier. â€œVery much a point earned, one that was hard-earned but well deserved,â€ said Gareth Southgate.
2008-11-30 03:05:33
Jim Wallis on the election, religion and where we're going from here
Although the hot topic in the recent presidential election was solving the nation's economic mess, religion continued to be on people's minds. Some of it showed up as the same old red state-blue state divisiveness but there were also some major detours from...
2008-11-29 14:38:13
Mind your manners on Muni: It takes a busload
EXHIBIT A: On a commute-hour Muni, two teen girls are having a giggling good time trying to pull the shade sheeting off the bus window. Nobody, including me, says a thing. DON'T WE KNOW: Our silence tells these soon-to-be adults that they're free to do...
2008-11-22 03:06:28
IBM to build computer circuits that mimic brains
London, November 22 ANI: An Indian-origin IBM expert has revealed that the company is all set to lead a U.S. Government-funded research project that aims at inventing electronic circuits that mimic brains. Dharmendra Modha says that "cognitive computing" is a part of the research project that will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. He is of the opinion that the the technology resulting from the team's efforts might prove useful for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition. "The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," the BBC quoted Modha, who is heading the collaboration, as saying. "There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs. "The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain," he added.Five American universities are participating in the ambitious project, aimed at integrating what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The researchers will later aim to produce the first electronic system that behaves as the simulations do. Modha has revealed that the team's longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain. He points out that past studies on simple animals have helped scientists learn much about the inner workings of neurons, and the synapses that connect them, resulting in "wiring diagrams" for simple brains. He believes that supercomputing can simulate brains up to the complexity of small mammals, using the knowledge from the biological research. Last year, a research team led by Modha had used the BlueGene supercomputer to simulate a mouse's brain, comprising 55m neurons and some half a trillion synapses. "But the real challenge is then to manifest what will be learned from future simulations into real electronic devices - nanotechnology," he said. Modha says that the effort requirement of experts from various disciplines for this project shows how unprecedented it is in its scope. He admits that the goals are more than ambitious. "We are going not just for a homerun, but for a homerun with the bases loaded," he says. ANI
2008-11-22 03:00:28
Pak called a wild card in US intelligence report
Washington, Nov 22 ANI: The National Intelligence Council, an independent US Government body, has called Pakistan a 'wild card', whose northwestern territories will remain "poorly governed", as cross-border activities continue to cause instability in nearby areas of Afghanistan.The Global Trends reports, produced every four years by the National Intelligence Council, represents all 16 American intelligence agencies, in part to inform long-term thinking by new administrations. The reports project various possible sequences of events in the future; the new publication notes, between dire forecasts, that "bad outcomes are not inevitable."According to a report - Global Trends 2025 -Afghanistan will remain an essentially tribally centred nation facing continual conflict. The future of Iraq does not look much better, the Daily Times reported. China, however, is projected to emerge as the world's second strongest economic power after the United States, while the latter will have "less power in a multipolar world than it has enjoyed for many decades". Russia has the potential to be richer and more powerful, but only if it expands and diversifies its economy, predicts the report. US economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, the report projected. The outlook is intended to inform US president-elect Barack Obama of factors that will influence global events. It is based on a year-long global survey of experts and trends by US intelligence analysts. Thomas Fingar, chairman of the intelligence council and deputy national director of intelligence for analysis, said harmful outcomes were not inevitable. "It is not beyond the mind of human beings, or political systems, or in some cases the working of market mechanisms to address and alleviate if not solve these problems," Fingar told reporters. "We could have a better world in 2025." ANI
2008-11-22 03:00:00
Agenda of democracy in Pak still in an unfinished state: Aitzaz
Washington, Nov 22 ANI: Former Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan has said that while a new era of hope is dawning in the United States, in Pakistan the agenda of democracy lies in an unfinished state.In a keynote speech to the Middle East Institute's annual conference here on Friday, Ahsan said there could be no democracy without an independent judiciary. The lawyers' movement, which had spearheaded this struggle, was continuing because what had been promised, namely the restoration of the unconstitutionally deposed judges, had not been delivered, the Daily Times quoted him, as saying. He also urged the conference not to confuse terrorism with either Islam or the Middle East. Terrorism, he added, has more to do with a sense of being under occupation. He also riled against policymakers in Washington who believe that by cultivating the local elite in a third country and ignoring the people, they can achieve the objectives they have set themselves. Such a mistake was made with General Pervez Musharraf and it was time to learn from that experience, Aitzaz advised. He said even if the indigenous elite were taken in hand, the masses should not be expected to be grateful for being rained down with bombs. Ahsan emphasized that Pakistan is an embattled state and it should be clear that unless the mass of the people is behind the effort to fight terrorism, that war can and will never be won.He noted that president-elect Barack Obama is a leader who has spoken of people-friendly policies as he has stressed the need for resolving the Kashmir dispute. Ahsan also spoke in welcoming terms of the Biden-Lugar Bill aimed at spending money to win the hearts and minds of the people in Pakistan. Ahsan said had it not been for the lawyers' movement, Musharraf would not have even begun to negotiate with Benazir Bhutto or let Nawaz Sharif and her return to Pakistan. He regretted that while Musharraf was trampling upon the people's rights and violating the constitution, not a single word of disapproval, not a syllable, not a decibel had been heard from Washington. ANI
2008-11-22 03:00:00
Jacko's nanny tells court Arab sheikh paid his bill
New York, Nov 22 ANI: Michael Jackson's nanny revealed during a hearing in London High Court that an Arab Sheikh had paid the king of pop's utility bills.Grace Rwaramba said that the 'Thriller' star was so broke that he needed a sheikh to pay his utility bills.Rwaramba, said that she was "flabbergasted" when Jacko's benefactor, Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al-Khalifa transferred 35,000 dollars into her account to cover the bills for Neverland Ranch in California.When he followed up with a transfer of one million dollars, "it blew my mind," Rwaramba said.She also said that the 33-year-old sheikh, the son of the king of Bahrain, made the initial 35,000 dollars payment before he ever met Jackson.She said that the sheikh never asked the singer to repay him."It was a gift. He'd say, what can I do for my brother, what can I get the children," the New York Daily News quoted her as saying.Al-Khalifa is suing the Thriller singer for 4.3million pounds for not sticking to his record deal of an autobiography, two albums and a musical. ANI
2008-11-22 03:00:00
NJ inmates vs. Princeton students: Prison chess AP
AP - David Wang is a young man who's clearly going places. The Princeton University sophomore is gifted with a brilliant mind, a movie-star smile and an understated self-confidence.
2008-11-19 19:00:17