he powerful blasts at the Boston Marathon finish line Monday underscore why the Federal Bureau of Investigation has spent years refining its “tripwire” system for catching would-be bomb makers before they can build a deadly device. For years, federal agents have asked businesses that sell materials useful in making bombs to alert authorities to any suspicious orders. The types of tripwires in place have shifted over the years. In the […]
In Pic :Nek Muhammad, center, was a Pashtun militant who was killed in 2004, in the first C.I.A. drone strike in Pakistan. Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed. On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s […]
In Pic :A photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on March 11 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun, center, on Wonae island, about six miles from the South Korean island of Baengnyong. SEOUL—North Korea said on Tuesday it would restart its only nuclear reactor to provide plutonium for its weapons program, an announcement that added to already-heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula and drew swift international […]
A rare giant bird egg is being auctioned at Christie’s auction house in London. It was laid by an Elephant Bird in Madagascar and is thought to have been discovered by archaeologists in the late 19th or early 20th century. The species became extinct sometime between the 13th and 17th centuries. James Hyslop, scientific specialist at Christie’s said, “the egg is the largest egg ever laid by any animal, they […]
In a horrific act of violence, three young sisters were raped and murdered in India, police told reporters Tuesday. The bodies of the girls, who went missing on Feb. 14, were discovered two days later in a well near their native village in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district. According to the Press Trust of India, the deaths of the three girls — ages 11, 9 and 6 — sparked an outcry from […]
Thirteen-year-old Sanjay Chhetri has a recurring fear: that one day, the dark, dank mine where he works will cave in and bury him alive. Like thousands of children in India’s remote northeast, Chhetri begins work in the middle of the night, ready to dig pits, squat through narrow tunnels and cut coal shards. At four feet six inches, the skinny teenager is the perfect fit for a job in the […]
An asteroid as large as an Olympic swimming pool will race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200mi) – the closest ever predicted for an object of that size. It will pass closer even than the geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth, but there is no risk of impacts or collisions. Its closest approach will be 19:25 GMT. For regions in darkness around that time, […]
The theory that public smoking bans cut the number of children born prematurely has been strengthened by new research. The study of 600,000 births found three successive drops in babies born before 37 weeks – each occurring after a phase of a public smoking ban was introduced. There was no such trend in the period before the bans were put in place, the British Medical Journal reported. The study, by […]
The temple was discovered in one of the wings of the main pyramid at the ancient site of El Parais. Archaeologists in Peru say they have discovered a temple at the ancient site of El Paraiso, near the capital, Lima. Entry to the rectangular structure, estimated to be up to 5,000 years old, was via a narrow passageway, they say. At its centre, the archaeologists from Peru’s Ministry of Culture […]
As a major winter storm made its way up the Atlantic Coast on Thursday, local authorities from New York City to Maine began to make preparations for what forecasters said could be the heaviest snowfall for some cities in the Northeast in a century. Airlines began announcing the suspension of flights out of New York and Boston airports starting Friday night, as thousands of workers readied their plows, checked their […]
