Slight respite from cold conditions in Kashmir Valley

SRINAGAR: Residents of Kashmir got a slight respite from the bitter cold conditions as the night temperatures across the Valley registered an increase of several degrees. The weather has remained dry even as the met department predicted light rainfall or snowfall for Wednesday and Thursday. Most of the water bodies across the Valley, including the world famous Dal Lake, continued to be partially...

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The Promise and Perils of Mining Asteroids

Encouraged by new space technologies, a growing fleet of commercial rockets and the vast potential to generate riches, a group of entrepreneurs announced Tuesday that they planned to mine the thousands of near-Earth asteroids in the coming decades.The new company, Deep Space Industries (DSI), is not the first in the field, nor is it the most well-financed. But with their ambition to become...

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Al Qaeda Commander Killed for the 3rd Time

The second in command of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Yemen in December, according to a news report by Arabic television network Al Arabiya, the third time the former Guantanamo detainee has been reported dead since 2010.According to the report, Said al-Shihri died last month after sustaining severe injuries from a joint U.S.-Yemeni airstrike...

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At second inauguration, Obama relishes the rituals, as well as the smaller moments

The second time seemed to charm him. The choreography of President Obama’s ceremonial inauguration Monday was nearly identical to that of his swearing-in four years ago: church, motorcade to the Capitol, invocation, oath, address, luncheon, parade, dancing. This time, however, the man taking the oath of office was an experienced president, not a first-term senator. And Obama seemed...

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RP's Jeyaretnam to hold Meet-the-People session on Wednesday

SINGAPORE: Reform Party candidate Kenneth Jeyaretnam has said he plans to hold a Meet-the-People's session on Wednesday evening.He met Punggol East residents at Rumbia LRT Station at 7.30am on Tuesday, a day after he cancelled a feedback session with residents due to flu.Speaking to Channel NewsAsia after breakfast, Mr Jeyaretnam said he will continue to walk the ground. So far, he has...

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Cold wave continues to sweep Rajasthan

JAIPUR: Cold wave conditions on Tuesday continued to sweep Rajasthan where Sriganganagar recorded a low of 2.3 degrees Celsius. Churu, Pilani, Chittorgarh, Dabok and Jaipur shivered at 2.8, 3.1, 3.5, 3.8 and 4.4 degrees Celsius respectively. Other places recorded a low between 4.5 and 9 degrees Celsius, according to a MET report here....

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and...

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Inauguration: 7.5 Things You Should Have Seen

A presidential inauguration is a big, long event that lasts all day and into the night–and who has time to really watch it? People have jobs, ones that don’t let you off for a federal holiday.Everyone (or, at least, some) will be talking about it, which means potential embarrassment for anyone who doesn’t know what happened. Thankfully, ABC employs  news professionals stationed in Washington,...

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After the first black president, who will be second?

President Obama’s historic election in 2008 and his reelection last year proved decisively that race is no longer an insurmountable hurdle to high political office in the United States. But the current pool of possible candidates suggests that the next black president will not be taking the oath of office anytime soon. “In the shadow of Barack Obama, there’s not been a lot of growth,”...

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China labour camps set for abolition: legal official

BEIJING: China's hugely controversial "re-education" labour camps are set to be abolished this year, state media Monday quoted a senior legal official as saying.It is another signal that the widely criticised system -- where people can be sentenced to up to four years' "re-education" by a police panel, without an open trial -- is coming to an end.The comments come after the Communist Party's...

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