A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and landed in the Red Planet’s northern polar region on Sunday to begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life. Cheers swept through mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the touchdown signal from the […]
Helmand Gripped by Opium Harvest
By Matiullah Minapal and Aziz Ahmad Tassal in Helmand (ARR No. 288, 09-Apr-08) The distinctive red, white, and pink poppy flowers have all but gone from the fields in Helmand province, leaving in their place the bare pods containing valuable opium paste. With harvest season, or “nish”, in full swing, the schools are empty, the […]
GUNS FOR DRUGS VIS-A-VIS TERRORISM : AFGHANISTAN TO EUROPE
DRUGS AND GUNS VIS-À-VIS TERRORISM Russian gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain and Europe are bying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns.Smugglers told The Independent how Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug lords at a bazaar near old Afghan-Soviet border,deep in Tajakistan’s desert.The bazaar exists solely to trade Afghan drugs […]
As Jobs Disappear, So Does Health Insurance
A big part of the American Dream is based on the premise that if you work hard, you can provide for yourself and your family. But in today’s economy, good jobs are disappearing. To survive, America’s workers are forced to take low-paying jobs that rarely offer health care or retirement security—and that’s not right, says […]
From a Train Journey
The first time I boarded a train was in 1965 to travel from Delhi to Howrah. The train in question was the Toofan Mail as it was then called and unlike today, where the train still remains a shadow of its former self, in those days it was still in spurts able to run like […]
Jodhaa Akbar stumbles in India, races ahead abroad
Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar would have become a loser at the box office if it had not done brilliantly overseas. Produced at the cost of Rs 40 crores, the film first ran into trouble when a section of the Rajput community banned it in Rajasthan. Gowariker called for a hurried press conference on February 16, […]