Putin revives long-range bomber patrols | Russia | Guardian Unlimited

Putin revives long-range bomber patrols | Russia | Guardian Unlimited: "The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday announced Russia had resumed long-range flights of strategic bombers capable of striking targets deep inside the United States with nuclear weapons. Mr Putin said Russia had restarted the Soviet-era practice of sending bomber aircraft on regular patrols beyond its borders. Speaking after Russian and Chinese forces completed a day of war games in Russia's Urals, Mr Putin said 14 Russian bombers had taken off simultaneously yesterday on long-range missions."

San Jose Mercury News - Skype struggles to return to full service

San Jose Mercury News - Skype struggles to return to full service: "del.icio.usdel.icio.usDiggDiggRedditRedditYahooMyWebYahooMyWebGoogleGoogleThese icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.What's this? RePrintPrint Email Skype struggles to return to full service By Sarah Jane Tribble Mercury News Article Launched: 08/18/2007 01:41:12 AM PDT As users of Skype - the world's most popular Internet telephone service - struggled to get online Friday, the company continued to ask for patience. Skype, which is owned by eBay, first reported outages Thursday, blaming a software glitch. By Friday morning, Skype had updated its Web page to tell users it was 'on the road to recovery.' 'Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day,' the heartbeat.skype.com blog stated. 'An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.'"

Jeremy Scahill: The Mercenary Revolution

Jeremy Scahill: The Mercenary Revolution: "If you think the U.S. has only 160,000 troops in Iraq, think again. With almost no congressional oversight and even less public awareness, the Bush administration has more than doubled the size of the U.S. occupation through the use of private war companies. There are now almost 200,000 private 'contractors' deployed in Iraq by Washington. This means that U.S. military forces in Iraq are now outsized by a coalition of billing corporations whose actions go largely unmonitored and whose crimes are virtually unpunished."

Iraq bombs: 500 die in worst terror attack - Telegraph

Iraq bombs: 500 die in worst terror attack - Telegraph: "The death toll in the co-ordinated suicide bomb attack on the minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq could be as high as 500, medics have said."

U.S. actions against Iran raise war risk, many fear - Yahoo! News

U.S. actions against Iran raise war risk, many fear - Yahoo! News: "Designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group 'is the State Department trying to do something short of war,' said former U.S. diplomat Charles Dunbar , a professor of international relations at Boston University ."

Ahmadinejad to join Chinese, Russian leaders for regional security summit - International Herald Tribune

Ahmadinejad to join Chinese, Russian leaders for regional security summit - International Herald Tribune: "BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Wednesday in Kyrgyzstan to join the leaders of Russia and China for a summit of a regional group seen as a platform for countering U.S. interests in strategic, energy-rich Central Asia."

'We have broken speed of light' - Telegraph

'We have broken speed of light' - Telegraph: "Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled 'instantaneously' between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences."

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’ - Times Online

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’ - Times Online: "Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. "

China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People - New York Times

China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People - New York Times: "Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card."

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife? - WSJ.com

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife? - WSJ.com: "'Our brains are not specialized for 21st-century media,' says Prof. Reeves. 'There's no switch that says, 'Process this differently because it's on a screen.' '"