BIG NEWS: Two US-born babies

BIG NEWS: Two US-born babies have now reportedly been cured of HIV, and a leading researcher says there could be five more international cases where infants have been cured thanks to aggressive drug treatment within the first 30 hours. A clinical trial will soon begin to test whether this treatment works for other babies. If successful, it could help doctors treat the 250,000 infants born with HIV each year.

casino.us.org

Just in case you missed this: A snake

Most probably a python, won a battle with a crocodile in northern Queensland. Local residents captured all the action on camera and managed to get some pretty interesting footage of the fight. The snake wrestled, constricted and finally ate the croc after a few hours of gruesome battle.


                  

Not everybody is going crazy for the Indian Premier League.

Picking an All-Conquering T20 XI from Players Outside IPL

 In fact, this hypothetical team of players would probably beat most of the actual IPL sides despite none of its XI wanting any part in this year's Indian extravaganza.

But to be fair, under different circumstances, most of them would, of course, have thrown their names (and wallets) into the ring. Indeed, some of them did initially—only to change their minds or be ruled out through injury.

Anyway, this team has aggressive batsman, experienced middle-order campaigners, a fearsome pace attack and even multiple match-winning options in the slow bowling department and would take some beating.

Read on to see the Bleacher Report Players Outside the IPL XI.


                  

দক্ষিণ সুদানের পরিস্থিতি নিয়ে উদ্বিগ্ন জাতিসংঘ

 

 Source: http://bbc16.blogspot.com/2013/12/blog-post_3185.html

তালেবানের নাকের ডগায় চলছে পর্নো ছবি

 

Source: http://bbc16.blogspot.com/2013/12/blog-post_7926.html

বাংলাদেশের বিজয় দিবসে মানব পতাকায় বিশ্ব রেকর্ড

 

 দৈর্ঘ্যে ৪৩০ এবং প্রস্থে ২৮৫ মিটার আয়তনের এই মানব পতাকা তৈরি

 

                                                            ২৭,১১৭জন স্বেচ্ছাসেবক।

 

 

 

‘সবচেয়ে বড় পতাকা’

বিজয়ের এই দিনে গিনেজ বুক অব ওয়ার্ল্ড রেকর্ডসের মধ্যে ঢুকে যাচ্ছে বাংলাদেশ৷ দুপুরে লাল আর সবুজ বোর্ড মাথার ওপর তুলে ধরেন ২৭ হাজার ১১৭ জন কিশোর-তরুণ৷ শেরেবাংলা নগরের প্যারেড গ্রাউন্ড থেকে সূর্যের দিকে মুখ তুলে হাসলো বাংলাদেশের পতাকা৷

গিনেজ বুক অব ওয়ার্ল্ড রেকর্ডসের অনুমোদিত পর্যবেক্ষকদের উপস্থিতিতে ‘বিশ্বের সবচেয়ে বড় মানব পতাকা' তৈরির এ আয়োজনের উদ্যোক্তা মোবাইল ফোন অপারেটর রবি৷ আর ‘লাল-সবুজের বিশ্বজয়' শিরোনামের এ আয়োজনে সার্বিক সহযোগিতায় ছিল বাংলাদেশ সেনাবাহিনী৷

রবি'র ভাইস প্রেসিডেন্ট সৈয়দ তালাত কামাল জানান, ‘‘গিনেজের সব নিয়ম মেনে সুষ্ঠুভাবে মানব পতাকা তৈরি হলো কি না, তার প্রমাণ হিসাবে তথ্য ও ছবি পাঠাবে দায়িত্বপ্রাপ্ত অডিট প্রতিষ্ঠান৷ নতুন রেকর্ড হলে গিনেজ কর্তৃপক্ষই সে ঘোষণা দেবে৷''

Edward Snowden leaks: NSA amnesty 'considered'

 
The US National Security Agency is considering offering an amnesty to fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden if he agrees to stop leaking secret documents, an NSA official says.

                            Edward Snowden fled to Russia in June after leaking details of US espionage

The man in charge of assessing the leaks' damage, Richard Ledgett, said he could be open to an amnesty deal.Disclosures by the former intelligence worker have revealed the extent of the NSA's spying activity.

But NSA Director Gen Keith Alexander has dismissed the idea.Mr Ledgett spoke to US television channel CBS about the possibility of an amnesty deal: "So my personal view is, yes it's worth having a conversation about.

"I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high, would be more than just an assertion on his part."

But Gen Alexander, who is retiring early next year, rejected the idea of any amnesty for Mr Snowden.

"This is analogous to a hostage taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10, and then say, 'if you give me full amnesty, I'll let the other 40 go'. What do you do?"

                                  The NSA has been making efforts to be seen as more transparent

 In an earlier interview with the Reuters news agency, Mr Ledgett said he was deeply worried about highly classified documents not yet public that are among the 1.7 million files Mr Snowden is believed to have accessed.

Mr Snowden's disclosures have been "cataclysmic" for the agency, Mr Ledgett told Reuters.

Earlier this month, a UK newspaper editor told UK MPs only 1% of files leaked by Mr Snowden had been published by the newspaper.

The state department says its position has not changed and that Mr Snowden must return to the US to face charges, says the BBC's Suzanne Kianpour.

The US has charged Mr Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.

Each of the charges carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

At the weekend, the NSA allowed a CBS television crew into their headquarters for the first time in its history, in an effort to be more open about what the agency does with the data it collects.

Chinese unmanned spacecraft lands on moon

 
China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon on Saturday, state media reported, in the first such "soft-landing" since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union in managing to accomplish such a feat.The Chang'e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys.

 China has been increasingly ambitious in developing its space programs, for military, commercial and scientific purposes.

It has moved in lock step with its emergence as a major global economic and political power.

"The dream for lunar exploration once again lights up the China Dream," Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

In its most recent manned space mission in June, three astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory, part of Beijing's quest to build a working space station by 2020.

 The official Xinhua news service reported that the spacecraft had touched down in the Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, after hovering over the surface for several minutes seeking an appropriate place to land.

A soft landing does not damage the craft and the equipment it carries. In 2007, China put another lunar probe in orbit around the moon, which then executed a controlled crash on to its surface.

China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast images of the probe's location on Saturday and a computer generated image of the probe on the surface of the moon on its website. The probe and the rover are expected to photograph each other tomorrow.

The Bay of Rainbows was selected because it has yet to be studied, has ample sunlight and is convenient for remote communications with Earth, Xinhua said.

The rover will be remotely controlled by Chinese control centres with support from a network of tracking and transmission stations around the world operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

For more than a decade, China has been modernising its economy and developing in areas long dominated by the West particularly the United States.

 The moon landing will be seen as a demonstration of China's ability to engage in sophisticated space operations with dual use potential.

China is also developing its own satellite system to rival the US GPS system and has sold satellites to other countries.

The landing will also be a point of national pride in the country, which is undergoing difficult economic transitions.

Pakistan's grief over Molla

 


He said the Jamaat leader was undoubtedly hanged “because of his loyalty and solidarity with Pakistan in 1971”.

“Till the very end before creation of Bangladesh, he (Molla) remained a supporter of a united Pakistan and today every Pakistani is saddened and grieved by his death,” he said in a statement, reports Dawn.

The Pakistan interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has expressed “deep grief” and concern over the execution of Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla.
He said abiding by the demand of international relations, solidarity of international Islamic community and wisdom, conditions and events of the past should be put behind, starting a new era.

“But with this unfortunate incident, an effort is made to revive old wounds of the past.”

US, Chinese warships narrowly avoid collision in South China Sea

 
A US guided missile cruiser operating in international waters in the South China Sea was forced to take evasive action last week to avoid a collision with a Chinese warship manoeuvring nearby, the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement on Friday.

The incident came as the USS Cowpens was operating near China's only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and at a time of heightened tensions in the region following Beijing's declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone farther north in the East China Sea, a US defence official said.

Another Chinese warship manoeuvred near the Cowpens in the incident on December 5, and the Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision, the Pacific Fleet said in its statement.

"Eventually, effective bridge-to-bridge communications occurred between the U.S. and Chinese crews, and both vessels manoeuvred to ensure safe passage," said the defence official.

The near miss was the most significant US-China maritime incident in the South-China Sea since 2009, said security expert Carl Thayer at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Heightened tensions over China's military assertiveness have raised concerns that a minor incident in disputed maritime waters, the South China Sea and East China Sea, could quickly escalate.


Both Japan and China lay claim to islands in the East China Sea and have scrambled aircraft in recent months over the disputed seas and conducted naval patrols.

China and several ASEAN nations have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The US has raised the latest incident at a "high level" with the Chinese government, according to a State Department official quoted by the US military's Stars and Stripes newspaper.


In Beijing, the Chinese foreign and defence ministries have yet to respond to questions about the incident, while China's often-nationalistic on-line platforms were filling with debate about the near-miss.

One poster demanded the Chinese navy follow-up by blazing an "independent sea lane" to Hawaii.

Beijing routinely objects to US military surveillance operations within its exclusive economic zone, while Washington insists the United States and other countries have the right to conduct routine operations in what it says are international waters.

Mandela's body begins journey to funeral site in ancestral village

 

Nelson Mandela's body was being flown on Saturday to South Africa's Eastern Cape region, headed for a state funeral on Sunday in his ancestral village after a send-off for the anti-apartheid hero by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

With revolutionary songs, some raised fists and tributes to "Comrade Mandela", the former liberation movement to which Mandela had dedicated his life said farewell at the Waterkloof airforce base in the capital of Pretoria.

"Go well 'Tata', you have played your part," South African President and ANC leader Jacob Zuma said in a eulogy using the Xhosa word for "father". He recalled Mandela's life as a freedom fighter in the armed struggle against white minority rule, for which he was put in jail for 27 years.

"We will always remember you," Zuma said, before bellowing the ANC struggle slogan of "Amandla" (Power).

The ANC send-off led by Zuma, attended by Mandela's widow Graca Machel and his former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, came after nine days of intense and emotion-charged mourning and memorial activities held in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

 This included three days of lying in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria from Wednesday to Friday in which more than 100,000 people queued for hours to say a last personal goodbye to the nation's first black president.

One of Mandela's grandchildren, Mandla, thanked those who had come to pay their respects to the Nobel peace laureate.

"I have witnessed his army, I have witnessed his people, I have witnessed ordinary South Africans who walked this long walk to freedom with him and I can assure the African National Congress today that the future of this country looks bright."

Escorted by fighter jets, Mandela's body was being flown by South Africa's airforce to his Eastern Cape home region, where it would be taken to the family home at Qunu, a village among rolling green hills, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg.

There, a state funeral will take place on Sunday combining military pomp and traditional rites of Mandela's Xhosa abaThembu clan. It will be attended by family members, national leaders and foreign guests including Britain's Prince Charles and US civil rights activist Reverend Jessie Jackson.

In Saturday's ANC homage, the most overtly political event of the mourning period since Mandela died on December 5 aged 95, leaders of the ruling party and allied trade unions hailed Mandela as a determined "soldier" and revolutionary.

They spoke before Mandela's coffin, draped in the green and yellow ANC flag in an airport hangar prepared for the event.

The ANC event was in deep contrast to Tuesday's mass public memorial in Johannesburg where Zuma, who has ruled since 2009, was subjected to a humiliating barrage of boos and jeers, a worrying sign for the ruling party six months before elections.

"WE NEED MORE MADIBAS"

There was no such dissonant note on Saturday, with speaker after speaker hailing the lifelong link between the former president and the ANC which will be one of the party's strongest campaigning pillars for the coming elections.

Representatives from left-wing parties, such as Angola's MPLA, and Ireland's Sinn Fein, attended Saturday's homage.

Zuma, who is widely criticized for being weak and ineffective, addressed the leadership issue in his speech.

"The question is, can we produce as ANC other 'Madibas'?" he asked, using Mandela's Xhosa clan name.

"We need more Madibas so that our country can prosper. Yes we are free, but the challenges of inequality remain."

It is precisely his government's perceived failure to tackle this inequality, manifested in still widespread poverty and chronic joblessness, which has fed dissatisfaction with Zuma and the ANC that will erode their support in the coming vote. But the party that has governed since the end of apartheid in 1994 is expected to comfortably win the elections.

Sunday's funeral at Qunu, planned as more intimate than the mass memorial held on Tuesday attended by a host of world leaders, will bring together members of Mandela's family and Xhosa abaThembu clan and a smaller group of dignitaries.

These include African and Caribbean leaders, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Shariatmadari, Lesotho's King Letsie III and former French Prime Ministers Lionel Jospin and Alain Juppe.

Mandela's casket will be taken in military procession from Mthatha in the Eastern Cape about 45 km to Qunu, allowing locals a chance to say goodbye to their most famous son.

The week of mourning since Mandela's death has not been without controversy.

Besides the booing of Zuma, there has also been a storm of outrage over a sign-language interpreter accused of miming nonsense at the same memorial. The signer has defended himself, saying he suffered a schizophrenic episode.