The London 2012 Olympic Games will see the UK's biggest mobilisation of military and security forces since the second world war – and the effects will linger long after the athletes have left.
I'd just go in blind for this one...
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| 155 views | www.rockpapershotgun.com
Certainly not a surprise to anyone, and really the only news here is that GTA V exists. Oh, and a trailer in a week. The rest will be speculation. So I shall speculate the desperate hope that they do something radically different this time. Not in a “stuff in anything we can think of” way like San Andreas, but a completely different approach to their epic, extraordinary games. What do you reckon? Where would you like to see V heading? (Apart from to PC, in a working form.)
Medieval Muslim artists often created paintings and illuminated manuscripts depicting Mohammed in full. Several examples are presented here. Other artists of the era drew Mohammed, but left his face blank so as to technically comply with a sporadically enforced Islamic ban on depicting the Prophet.In 1999, Islamic art expert Wijdan Ali wrote a scholarly overview of the Muslim tradition of depicting Mohammed, which can be downloaded here in pdf format. In that essay, Ali demonstrates that the prohibition against depicting Mohammed did not arise until as late as the 16th or 17th century, despite the media's recent false claims that it has always been forbidden for Muslims to draw Mohammed. Until comparatively recently in Islamic history, it was perfectly common to show Mohammed, either in full (as revealed on this page), or with his face hidden. Even after the 17th century, up to modern times, Islamic depictions of Mohammed (especially in Shi'ite areas) continued to be produced.
Among multiple layers of deception and newspeak, the official Washington spin on the strategic quagmire in Afghanistan simply does not hold. No more than "50-75 'al-Qaeda types' in Afghanistan", according to the CIA, have been responsible for draining the US government by no less than US $10 billion a month, or $120 billion a year. At the same time, outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been adamant that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan is "premature". The Pentagon wants the White House to "hold off on ending the Afghanistan troop surge until the fall of 2012."
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| 237 views | www.bbc.co.uk
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has unveiled plans to reverse Russia's declining population. The government will spend 1.5tn roubles ($53bn; £33bn) on raising the birth rate and extending life expectancy. He announced the plan in a key speech to the Duma on the economy ahead of presidential elections in March 2012.
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| 186 views | www.buzzfeed.com
Alternate title: 25 Records Made By People You Wouldn't Be Surprised If It Turned Out They Were Actually Sex Offenders.
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| 151 views | www.channel4.com
the villagers were shot when a US helicopter picked up the pilot who had ejected from the F-15E Eagle plane after it experienced a mechanical failure.
The US aircraft crashed on Monday night and was found in a field outside Benghazi and landed in rebel-held territory. The local Libyans who were injured in the rescue mission are currently in hospital. They are the first confirmed casualities of allied operations, almost four days after operations began. At the time of writing, no one had died as a result of the gunfire.
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| 68 views | www.rawstory.com
Former British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove gave a speech not long ago where all recordings were prohibited. During that talk, he credited secrets outlet WikiLeaks with helping spark revolutions across the Middle East, saying they provide a stark example of the ways technology is changing how people relate to their governments. Unfortunately for Dearlove, someone in the audience was recording, and now the whole world gets to see his formerly restricted speech.
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| 124 views | www.guardian.co.uk
The Guardian's man in Cairo tells of his beating and arrest at the hands of the security forces.
A Russian-language version of WikiLeaks came under cyber attack and was inaccessible to Russian visitors Wednesday after the site published leaked photographs allegedly depicting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's lavish, sprawling estate.Russian media had in recent days been discussing the alleged value of Puntin's so-called "pleasure complex," with one estimate suggesting the cost exceeded $1 billion.
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| 57 views | totallycoolpix.com
It used to be called The Paris to Dakar Rally as it was a race from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal, but after the need to cancel the 2008 version due to security threats in Mauritania the rally moved from Africa to South America in 2009 and rebranded itself The Dakar Rally. The Dakar Rally is one of the most gruelling for man and machine. It spans two weeks of cross country driving over wet, dry, mountainous and sandy terrain. Asking as much from the cars, bikes, trucks or quads as it does from the human body and mind.
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| 127 views | www.guardian.co.uk
Police in the Philippines investigating the fatal New Year's Eve shooting of a local official did not have to look further than the last photograph he took. It led to the arrest of two suspects. The picture, taken outside the man's house in Manila, shows a man aiming his gun from behind the victim's smiling three-member family, seconds before he was shot.
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| 210 views | macedoniaonline.eu
Dragan Stevic of Serbia is the new Egyptian hero who killed a large shark which had previously terrorized numerous tourists (injured 4 and killed 1) at the famous Egyptian resort Sarm El Sheikh.The Serbian hero was too drunk to remember what had happened, though one of his friends who witnessed the incident explained it all for the Belgrade based media.
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| 151 views | freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
Hans Rosling, a guru of data animation, is at it again. Here is a very cool video showing 200 years of mortality/wealth progress in just four minutes
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| 71 views | www.guardian.co.uk
Nasa's Cassini probe has scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of Rhea – the first time the gas has been detected directly on another world.
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| 113 views | www.borderlandbeat.com
When Mexican Marines arrived at the San Jose Ranch, 15 kilometers from Victoria, Tamaulipas, the scene was bleak: The austere main house was practically destroyed by grenades and heavy gunfire. Outside of the home, they found four bodies. Cautiously, and with their weapons drawn, the troops continued inspecting the exterior and found two more gunmen, wounded and unconscious, but alive. Inside the house only one body was found, riddled with bullets and with two weapons by it's side. The body was identified as Don Alejo Garza Tamez, the owner of the ranch and a highly respected businessman in Nuevo Leon.
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| 97 views | www.guardian.co.uk
The government will announce today that it will pay millions of pounds in compensation to former Guantánamo Bay detainees following weeks of negotiations between lawyers for the government and the former prisoners. Ministers appear to have decided on the advice of the security services that they could not afford to risk the exposure of thousands of documents in open court on how Britain co-operated with the US on the so-called extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects.
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| 118 views | totallycoolpix.com
A little while back Den Efremov, an amateur photographer from Russia, provided us with his set entitled Abandoned Soviet Military Hardware. The response was very good and Den said he had some other sets about left over Soviet hardware. No planes and helicopters this time, but old communist ships. Decaying and rotting away, waiting for someone to slice them up for scrap metal and still managing to look gracefull.
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| 92 views | www.boingboing.net
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a building in Shanghai, November 15, 2010. A 30-storey residential building caught fire on Monday, local firefighters said in a Xinhua News Agency report. At least 12 are dead and dozens more injured, according to Reuters. Some great pics in this collection.
The 11th of November marks Veterans Day in the US and Armistice Day (or Remembrance Day) in many Commonwealth countries. It marks the end of the First World War in 1918, but has since grown into a day to remember all those who have fought and fallen in the wars that have come and gone. And those who are still fighing in wars such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. In the almost 100 years since the end of the First World War a lot has changed. Better and deadlier weapons, better communications and better medical aid, but one thing has not changed. Fighting a war is as much about firing your weapons as it is about winning the war of the mind. It was like that in the muddy trenches of Flanders and it is still like that in the dust of Afghanistan. One such battle of the mind is fought through the use of graffiti.
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| 85 views | www.guardian.co.uk
Highly enriched uranium which could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia. At the centre of the case are two Armenians, a businessman called Sumbat Tonoyan and a physicist, Hrant Ohanyan. Both have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.
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| 125 views | totallycoolpix.com
The female soldier is still as controversial as ever. Women are meant to stay at home, look after the kids and provide a warm home for when their men return from the frontline. Not that this conservative notion is stopping these female soldiers from picking up arms and fighting for their country and beliefs. And a bullet fired by a female soldier will kill you just as quickly as one fired by a male soldier.
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| 83 views | www.bbc.co.uk
North and South Korean troops have exchanged fire across the border, South Korean officials say. North Korea fired two rounds towards a frontline unit and South Korean soldiers returned fire three times. The shooting occurred in Hwacheon, some 90km (56 miles) north-east of the South's capital, Seoul, according to reports from South Korea's YTN TV.
The expansion will include a dock for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a missile defence system, live-fire training sites and the expansion of the island's airbase. It will be the largest investment in a military base in the western Pacific since the Second World War, and the biggest spend on naval infrastructure in decades.
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| 93 views | totallycoolpix.com
Drugs are big business and big business means big money means stiff competition. In a normal industry you’d simply try to beat the competition by making a better product or by building a good brand. In the drugs business you simply try to do away with the competition by killing them. Pablo Escobar did it and the Mexican drug gangs have been at it a while too. This year alone thousands of people have been killed in Mexico due to the drug wars and the town of Ciudad Juarez is often the battlefield. As long as the demand is there the supply will keep on coming and death, destruction and wealth with it. GRAPHIC CONTENT.
Wikileaks has released over 400,000 Iraq War Logs. More links in comments.
