There’s been only one incident of a NASA crew member being impaired by drugs or alcohol close to a launch, but never on a launch day, according to a new survey of active-duty astronauts and flight surgeons.
NASA has called reports of astronauts who were drinking or hung over on launch day an “urban myth.”
The person was seen to be impaired in the time leading up to the launch because of an apparent interaction between prescription medication and alcohol.
Less than a dollar a day is a phrase we are all familiar with, but what does it really mean?
Almost half the world’s population lives on less than a dollar a day, but the statistic fails to capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that is the daily lot of the world’s poor.
In this series, Mike Wooldridge looks at what it’s really like to have to live on a dollar a day and how it can mean different things in different countries, and asks whether the global target of halving world poverty by 2015 can really be achieved.
It isn’t all about desperation and gloom, though: Mike meets people of incredible energy and determination, living in vibrant communities and having a diversity of experiences.
“When the state bows to Islam, all other people who are believers in such
other religions as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, or are atheists and/or
sons and daughters of people who do not believe in Islam but in other
religions, must necessarily live as second-class citizens. Anyone willing
to become a faithful Muslim can learn from the Holy Quran where it is
clearly declared that wherever one finds kafirs, or un-Islamic people, one
should destroy them, kill them, and wherever one finds a person who is
unfaithful and an unbeliever, one should immediately slice off his left
foot and right arm, and then his right foot and left arm. It is not that
the Musalmans themselves will lead a life of happiness. The bulldozer of
religion will crush women relentlessly. Women will not remain women; they
will be rendered into pieces of raw, bloody flesh.
The CIA believes a Pakistani tribal leader’s network was behind the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Supporters of slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto light candles in tribute to their former leader.
Baitullah Mehsud is an extremist with strong ties to al Qaeda and is based in the federally administered, lawless tribal area of Pakistan, along the Afghan border. He has been blamed for an organized campaign of assassinations of Pakistani officials and suicide bombings in the country.
The CIA arrived at the conclusion that Mehsud was behind the December 27 killing of Bhutto shortly after it occurred, according to an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The U.S.-led push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by year’s end has hit turbulence as U.S. President George W. Bush winds down his eight-day Mideast trip.
A man inspects the car destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City Wednesday.
1 of 3 Israel strengthened its military campaign against Gaza militants Wednesday while the withdrawal of a right-wing Israeli party further weakened the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Military incidents Wednesday included a stray Israeli missile in Gaza City killing three people, Israeli troops shooting a senior Islamic Jihad leader and Palestinian militants firing rockets into a central Israeli town — all 24 hours after Israeli operations caused several fatalities in Gaza City.
Avigdor Lieberman announced Wednesday he was pulling his Israel Beiteinu party out of Israel’s coalition government because the new push to peace was taking the focus off more pressing issues, such as the perceived nuclear threat from Iran.
OSCHATZ (GERMANY): A German court on Monday handed down a six-month suspended sentence to a 22-year-old German accused of chasing and beating up Indian nationals last year in the town of Muegeln.
The man was convicted of incitement to racial hatred for his role in the attack. Through his lawyer, the man told the court in the town of Oschatz he could not remember what happened last August.
He was the third person convicted in the attack. Last month, a court sent a 23-year-old man, described as the leader of the mob, to jail for eight months.
The racist violence, in which 50 men pursued eight Indians across a street after a brawl during a town festival, made headlines round the world. Prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge an additional four suspects.
The angry crowd yelled racist slurs and tried to break into a pizza parlour where the Indians had taken refuge on August 18.
The police dispersed the attackers. The Indians suffered bruises and black eyes
It was waiting to happen all these days and it happened on New Year’s Day. Nobody quite knows for sure how many of them were there — some say there were four jihadis, others say there were three — but there is little dispute over the ease with which they walked up to the sentry box of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Group Centre at Rampur after killing a rickshaw-puller sleeping nearby, hurled grenades, stormed the control room and mowed down seven jawans. It was only then that they faced some resistance. It is believed one of the terrorists was injured in the shootout that followed, but that did not stop his escape. The others escaped, too, leaving behind no clues. Since then, it has been a guessing game, although the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh is working on the theory that one or more militants-turned-jawans, who were inducted into the CRPF after they surrendered to security forces in Jammu & Kashmir, based at the centre may have provided crucial information to those who planned the attack. But any speculation at this point would be premature.
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In the course of the Moplah riot of 1921 anything was practised from
arson to conversion to pregnant women being cut into pieces with
unborn babies protruding from the mothers’ corpses. Smt Annie Besant,
the Irish lady, and the 1913 president of the Congress, after her
visit to Malabar, exhorted Gandhiji to see for himself the ghastly
horrors.
Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have perpetrated any numbers of blasts
Twenty-five thousand years ago, haplogroup R2 characterized by genetic marker M124 arose in southern Central Asia. Then began a major wave of human migration whereby members migrated southward to present-day India and Pakistan (Genographic Project by the National Geographic Society; http://www.nationalgeographic