When comets attack

Mike Solontoi / Univ. of Washington

A long-period comet called 2001 RX14 (Linear) streaks across the sky in an image
captured in 2002 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's telescope in New Mexico.

The black eye that Jupiter suffered this month has sparked a host of questions for astronomers as well as for the rest of us: What exactly hit the giant planet, and why didn't we see it coming? Why is Jupiter's bruise expanding? How often do these things happen, and how vulnerable are we to a similar cosmic pummeling? Astronomers are closing in on the answers - and helping the public get a better sense of perspective.
The first question is a toughie: What was it that caused Jupiter's "Great Black Spot," which was first noticed by an amateur astronomer in Australia back on July 19? "I'm not sure we'll ever know precisely," said Glenn Orton, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is a member of the team studying the impact and its aftermath.
Orton addressed the "whatdunit" mystery on JPL's Weblog and expanded upon the subject in a phone interview. The best guess is that the impactor was a comet that measured perhaps a quarter of a mile (half a kilometer) wide. Why a comet and not an asteroid? "Almost everything in that part of the solar system is icy," Orton noted.
A comet that small might not have been noticed from Earth, particularly if it came directly at Jupiter from the outer reaches of the solar system, essentially hitting the giant planet from behind. That would explain why any observers who were watching Jupiter at the time missed seeing the impact.
"The impact almost certainly appeared on the far side in the preceding 10 hours," Orton said.
By the time the impact area came into view, all observers could see was a darkish cloud in Jupiter's dense atmosphere. You could call it a scar, or a bruise, or a black eye. On the Unmanned Spaceflight Web forum, some folks have used the term "astrobleme" - coming from the Greek words for "star wound."

H. Hammel (STScI) / NASA / ESA / Jupiter Impact Team

The black-and-white picture at left provides a wide-angle view of Jupiter. The white box outline shows the area taken in by the color picture at right.

Over the past week, the wound has widened, and Orton said that's due to wind shear at different cloud levels. "The upper part of the scar is moving westward, and the lower part is moving eastward," he told me.

As time goes on, astronomers can use those darkish particles to trace the flow in Jupiter's atmosphere. That's something they couldn't do nearly as well 15 years ago when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up into scads of pieces and smashed into Jupiter. The multiplicity of impacts made it difficult to figure out which material was going where. In the current case, there appears to have been just one piece, which makes the tracing job much easier.
In weeks to come, astronomers will be analyzing the chemical composition of the material left behind by the cosmic smackdown, the composition of the material dredged up from the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere, and the way all that material diffuses into the clouds.
That means Orton and his colleagues are in for a hectic few weeks. "My days and nights are filled with asking for telescope time, and pulling data down from telescopes," he said.
Virtually every day, astronomers have been posting pictures of Jupiter and its Black Spot on forums such as Unmanned Spaceflight, the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory, ALPO and ALPO-Japan.
Could it happen here?
Meanwhile, the impact has led many to wonder about the chances that something similar might hit Earth instead. Fortunately, Jupiter is so much larger than our own planet that it acts as a gravitational attractor for cosmic debris. That makes Jupiter "our friendly big brother," Orton said.
It so happens that research newly published by the journal Science provides more data on the likelihood of killer comets - specifically, the chance that a shower of long-period comets might be pushed toward Earth.
The bad news is that computer simulations indicate such a comet shower is indeed possible. The good news is that the same simulations suggest Earth should experience a comet shower only once every 500 million years.
Long-period comets are among the wild cards in a thick deck of cosmic threats. In contrast with short-period comets, such as Comet Halley and Comet Tempel-Tuttle, long-period comets trace insanely eccentric orbits that range out beyond Neptune, Pluto and the Kuiper Belt to a little-understood region on the solar system's edge known as the Oort Cloud. The best-known example is Comet Hale-Bopp (which pays us a visit every 4,200 years).
University of Washington researchers Nathan Kaib and Thomas Quinn ran computer simulations of solar system interactions to see how long-period comets could be knocked loose from the inner Oort Cloud, a region that spans the zone between 1,000 and 20,000 AU away from the sun. (One AU, or Astronomical Unit, is equivalent to the distance between Earth and the sun - that is, 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers).
The outer Oort Cloud goes from 20,000 AU to as much as 100,000 AU, or nearly halfway out to the next star. Astronomers have long believed that comets could be jarred loose from the outer Oort Cloud by a passing star. But some of them thought the solar system was structured such that comets came only rarely from the inner Oort Cloud, in deadly bursts.
In the Science research, published online today, Kaib and Quinn report that comets from the inner Oort Cloud can indeed "penetrate Jupiter's orbit via a largely unexplored pathway" and are a "significant, if not the dominant, source" of long-period comets.
That might sound like bad news. The UW researchers see it differently, however: They say the simulations actually suggest there are fewer comets in the entire Oort Cloud, inner plus outer, than astronomers previously thought. Demystifying the inner Oort Cloud has the effect of making the whole region seem somewhat less dangerous.
"For the past 25 years, the inner Oort Cloud has been considered a mysterious, unobserved region of the solar system capable of providing bursts of bodies that occasionally wipe out life on Earth," Quinn said in a UW news release. "We have shown that comets already discovered can actually be used to estimate an upper limit on the number of bodies in this reservoir."
Back to the Black Spot
The simulations indicate that Jupiter and Saturn should be able to catch most of the long-period comets coming our way, like goalies catching soccer balls. Even in the worst-case scenario, only about two or three big comets would slip through and hit Earth, the researchers said.
Kaib and Quinn go so far as to suggest that the only time this happened in the past half-billion years or so was during a minor extinction event in the late Eocene geologic period, 33 million to 40 million years ago. It's thought that the late Eocene was marked by cometary impacts in present-day Chesapeake Bay and Siberia.
"If the late Eocene episode was caused by a comet shower, it was likely the most powerful shower since the Cambrian Explosion, implying that comet showers are unlikely to account for other observed extinction events," the researchers wrote.
The calculations published in Science make the specter of killer comet storms look a little less threatening. It's important to remember, however, that Kaib and Quinn are talking purely in terms of statistical analysis. The case of Jupiter's Great Black Spot illustrates that statistics can take you only so far.
Fifteen years ago, astronomers said Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with Jupiter was an exceedingly rare occurrence. Now we know that's not necessarily so. "The 1-in-a million chance of seeing one of these per century is clearly off," JPL's Orton said.
For years, JPL has been keeping track of potential cosmic threats as part of its Near-Earth Object Observation Program. Now the subject has spawned a brand-new Web site titled Asteroid Watch, which offers blog entries and a Twitter link as well as an asteroid widget. I suspect the Great Black Spot had something to do with all this.

Sex, eroticism and the allure of the East

Two look at the window display of an adult novelty shop in Singapore, Oct. 24, 2008. The sign reads: "Sex Life, Sex Hobby." (Edgar Su/Reuters)

Sex, eroticism and the allure of the East

It's nothing new, according to a new book.

HONG KONG — Veteran reporter Richard Bernstein opens his latest book with an anecdote about a young man known as "ChinaBounder" who, in 2006, kept a blog called "Sex in Shanghai: Western Scoundrel in Shanghai Tells All."
The man, now believed to be an English teacher from Britain, claimed to be sleeping with a bevy of Chinese women, including a married doctor and a coterie of former students. He recounted his exploits with great detail and his boastful blogging struck a nerve. Netizens denounced him, calling him a "white ape" and labelled his partners "bitches" bent on mocking Chinese manhood.
To the extent that ChinaBounder's story raises uncomfortable questions of history, gender, sex and power, it is a fitting introduction to "The East, The West and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters," Bernstein's provocative account of how, since the days of European colonial conquest, the East has held a particular erotic lure for Western men.
Where some authors, most notably Edward Said, have dismissed tales of the "exotic East" as racist fantasy, Bernstein sees kernels of truth in these stories. The sexual culture of the East, he argues, is — or was — different from the Christian West. And centuries worth of soldiers, seamen and teachers have used their wealth and power to take full advantage of the erotic possibilities the exotic East could provide.
Emily Rauhala spoke to Richard Bernstein about the book and the backlash. Here are the highlights:
You identify a common thread in non-Western cultures that you call "the culture of the harem." What do you mean by that?
Unlike in what I call "Christendom," male pleasure [in the East] was not associated with sinfulness. This doesn't mean that these cultures practiced 1960s-like free love or that they were sexually permissive. Actually, they were very conservative, especially when it came to the sexuality of women.
When it came to the sexuality of men, these cultures found it perfectly normal and expected that more than one woman would serve their sexual needs — the women of the harem, the seraglio, the inner palace, whatever it was called. There was no particular requirement of monogamy, no sense that you would suffer eternal perdition if you did the wrong thing.

The majority of the world's cultures were cultures of the harem. We Westerners tend to make the mistake, especially in the 19th and 20th century, of thinking that our way of organizing love and sex is universal. But for most of history, that has not been the case.
I find it surprising that this would be an Asia-only phenomenon.
It's not. What I mean by "the East" is the non-West, particularly the non-West that was explored, colonized, invaded or otherwise interfered with or dominated by the West during the centuries of colonialism and post-colonialism right up to the Vietnam War. These places are very different from each other. The one thing they do have in common, from the standpoint of the Western visitor, is the non-Christian attitude toward sex and sexuality.
Was the institution of slavery in America an exception to that?
Yes, in a way it was, but only in a way. Lots of white slave owners took sexual advantage of the women they owned, but the practice was regarded as sinful and illicit, indeed worse than sinful, it was seen as bad taste, because of the deep racism of whites with regards to blacks.
It is only in the culture of the harem that these temptations and these impulses created a fully recognized institution with rules, a bureaucracy, with a whole way of life that was not all considered sinful, was not disapproved of, it was just a way of life.
How does the "culture of the harem" operate today?
By the time we get to contemporary China or Vietnam or even contemporary Thailand, we are no longer operating in an official culture of the harem. The age of official polygamy is over.
But, I think that the culture of the harem has had a kind of afterlife in these countries where there is less of an expectation of monogamy, a little bit more of an understanding that men, but not women (except for prostitutes) are going to have multiple sexual partners. As one Thai anthropologist put it, "we are a culture of multiple sexual partners."
How is your book a challenge to the idea, expressed by Edward Said and others, that "the exotic orient" is, in large part, a Western fantasy?
There really was a very substantial difference in this regard, between East and the West. There may have been elements of fantasy involved, there always are, but that the experience, the opportunities that Western men had when they went East, were not fantasy. They really did encounter a culture that was different from the one back home. And it led to a way of life for Western colonialists and soldiers that was unimaginable back home. This was real, it wasn't a fantasy.
How much power do women have in the culture of the harem?
The harem was a sexist institution, there is no question. It was designed for men by men, and the women were left to cope as best they could. That said, women did find ways of coping. They had relations with each other — I'm thinking here of the Turkish Harem, it was the subject of hundreds of years of writing by both male and female scholars — and they formed relations with figures of power. Emperors and sultans fell in love with certain members of the harem. When they were able to have a son, in particular, they became involved in the political maneuvering within the palace to have their son inherit power.

So the women had power?
Some women of the harem achieved great power, but they were the exceptions. But let's not talk only about the harem. There are many relationships here and many of them took place outside the harem and the brothel. The bibi, the Indian mistress of a British official in India, was not a prostitute, but she was often a woman who in becoming a bibi often improved her own situation and the situation of her family. She acquired a type of secondary power, reflected power.
How does Asia's sex trade, in Bangkok and other places, play into these ideas?
Some of my critics accused me of glossing over the horror and virtual enslavement of the Thai women that are in the sex trade today. In those grim situations, and they exist all over the world, where women are sexually enslaved, I don't gloss over it. But I also don't accept a simple black and white, Manichean portrayal of the situation. There is a certain moralism that is so lofty, that the moral person is unable to see the ground of reality, where things are morally ambiguous, below him.
I certainly don't think that the women in the Thai sex-tourism trade are fortunate, or that they would choose this way of life if they had better alternatives. Their condition is one of rural poverty, and the choice they have is to live in poverty, often with men who abuse them back home, or perhaps to work in sweatshops for meager wages, or dance half-naked around a pole at some club and make money off of foreign tourists. They are agents of their condition in the sense that they do choose to be bargirls because they can earn a lot of money that way, and they use all their considerable charm to get foreign men to pay them for sex.
Several reviews criticized the language you used to describe women. What do you make of the critique?
Some critics seem to think I am making an apologia for the system. And that surprises me because in my mind and in my heart, I am not making an apologia for anything — I am describing a world that existed.
Where the writing might seem enthusiastic, I am trying to convey the excitement that the discovery of Eastern sexuality created in the minds of the discoverers. When I talk about slender, seductive Asian women, which I do, briefly, perhaps twice in more than 300 pages, I am trying to see these women through the eyes of the visitors, who do find them irresistibly seductive. But I am not trying to make a judgment of my own. Some of it these stories are ugly, some are not. I tell them without putting moral labels on them.

A heaven on earth? Not so much

Kashmiri men manually remove weeds from Dal Lake in Srinagar, June 23, 2009. India will spend more than $290 million cleaning up two iconic lakes in Kashmir, which have been polluted during decades of neglect and a separatist revolt. (Fayaz Kabli/Reuters)

With the tourists frightened away by Kashmir's separatist struggle, the famous Dal Lake is slowly succumbing to pollution.

By Jason Overdorf

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — From the shores of Srinagar's Dal Lake, once described as heaven on earth, the water looks dull and brackish. The storied houseboats that were the summer playgrounds of India's British colonizers are lined up across what from this vantage appears to be a weed-choked pond, no larger than a football field.
The boats' garish decorations and cheery names — “New Australia,” “Sansouci,” “Young Dreams,” “The Golden Fleece” — hint at a Gatsbyish heyday of long, lazy afternoons and parties that echoed across the water through the night. But packed chock-a-block, in all their faded grandeur, most of the boats lie empty.
Dal Lake is dying, and along with it a remarkable culture.
“If you had seen Kashmir 20 years back, 30 years back, then half of the population lived in boats,” Rashid Dangola, owner of a houseboat named “Hilton Kashmir” tells me. “In the next 20 years, day by day, this culture will go.”
In fact, the football field-sized parcel where the Hilton Kashmir lies moored is only a tiny portion of the real Dal Lake, which spreads over six square miles but which over the last 30 years has shrunk to half its original size. It has been reclaimed by weeds and eventually land, paved over by the government in an effort to improve roadways and accommodate Srinagar's growing population, or simply converted to real estate and farmland by people in need of a place to live.
Only a small part of the remaining lake can be seen from the shore, because at its heart it is a sort of floating, rural Venice — a maze of canals, vegetable gardens and lotus-root farms where houseboats have been converted into souvenir stores and papier mache factories, and islands have been reclaimed to erect towering colonial brick houses.
These islands, and the “floating land” that an estimated 40,000 farmers use to grow eggplant, squash and tomatoes, multiplies every year. So do the people. And so does the waste they create. Garbage spills into the water from the Dal's banks, and a thick green scum covers canals that 20 years ago were splashing playgrounds for local children.
“[The] Dal has become a vegetable garden; where is the water body?” an exasperated high court Chief Justice Bashir Ahmad Khan reflected recently, as he issued a stern warning to the Lakes and Waterways Development Authority (LAWDA) and the Srinagar Development Authority (SDA), which have failed to arrest the lake's decline despite investments of some $125 million over the years.
As a rented shikhara — India's version of the gondola — ferries us through the lake's floating villages, Dangola tells me: “I was proud to bring people to this side, so they would understand how we live. But now it is all spoiled.”
Conventional wisdom once blamed the pollution problem on the lake's 1,200 houseboats, but in reality these boats account for only about 3 percent of the waste released into the lake. The real culprits are a succession of poor planners and the city of Srinagar itself — with a population of about a million — which releases tons of raw sewage into the waters of the Dal through 15 different drains along the shore. Moreover, due to a poorly thought out decision to pave over the network of canals that once linked the Dal Lake to several other bodies of water surrounding Srinagar and the fast-flowing River Jhellum, the waters here are now stagnant.

In June, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh committed another $225 million — $60 million of which the central government has already rubber stamped — to build sewage treatment plants, purchase de-weeding machines and resettle nearly 10,000 families who live on the lakes network of islands. But Kashmir has been throwing money at the problem for years, and resettling the families who live in the lake would be tantamount to destroying it.
A two-hour shikhara ride along the shore and through the winding canals reveals that while claims of the lake's great beauty are somewhat exaggerated — it is by no means a crystal clear, glacial teardrop like Lake Tahoe — it boasts a unique and vibrant culture.
The enormity of the task at hand is also clear. Everywhere, clawing weeds choke the passages, and the water is covered with tiny specks of green algae, massing like something out of B-grade science fiction. The reason the plant life is so prolific — excessive fertilizer in the water — is evident, too.
From secluded pipes that are easy to spot from inside the lake, the coffee brown sewage of the city of Srinagar glugs untreated into the water. Though some years ago 6,000 families deemed to be “encroachers” without legitimate claim to houses in the lake were pushed out, the cleanup effort now appears to be limited to half-a-dozen dredging and weeding platforms — which patrol the waters, belching smoke, when the whim strikes their operators.
According to locals, it's a haphazard, rearguard action with little hope of success. The 6,000 displaced families have been replaced by some 20,000. The city's much discussed sewage system shows no signs of building itself. And even the dubiously expensive deweeding machines, parked in convenient proximity to shore while I was in town, seem to remain idle most of the day.

Showing love and desire in Arab films

Madrid's Casa Arabe featured "Labyrinth of Passions: Love and Desire in Arab Films", an Arab movie series about love and sex, in its outdoor summer theater. The initiative inspired so much interest it was difficult to get a chair.

Outdoor movie theaters are part of Spain's summer landscape — this year, with a risque twist.

By Cristina Mateo-Yanguas

MADRID — When the sun goes down and the heat lets up, Spaniards like to enjoy a film under the summer stars. This year, passions were burning high at one outdoor theater showing a series of films about love and sex.
Such a topic is not too surprising in progressive Spain, except that the venue was none other than Madrid's Casa Arabe, or Arab House. The summer theater installed on its patio showed a five-movie series during July called “Labyrinth of Passions: Love and Desire in Arab Films.”
Organizers say they are trying to challenge cliches about Arab and Islamic societies and that they believe Spain is uniquely positioned to promote relations with the Arab and Islamic world.
The Moors’ almost 800-year presence in these lands, a time of alternating peace and war, left a rich legacy in Spanish language and architecture. Many Spaniards have last names of Arabic origin and Morocco is only nine miles from the Spanish coast.
“In Arab and Islamic imagery, Spain is the most credible and friendly country in all of Europe," Casa Arabe's website states. "Spain refrained from participating in the colonial adventure of the great empires."
Casa Arabe's director, Gema Martin Munoz, said they wanted to show how Arab societies treat love and desire. "It may surprise some because the stereotype that the Arab world is monolithically puritanical and ultraconservative is widespread, but that’s only one aspect, though the most publicized in our societies,” she wrote in an email. “Often the tendency is to think that what is not known does not exist.”
The showings are free of charge and were standing room only. The movies — "A Cup and a Cigarette" ("Sigara wa kaz"), "Insomnia" ("La anam"), "Dunia," "Marock" and "Satin Rouge" come from Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and France. They explore love, desire, jealousy and complex relations.
“Satin Rouge” played to an audience that waited up to an hour in line for a seat. Once the movie started at 10 p.m., some unlucky souls stayed on to watch through the wrought-iron fence surrounding the complex.
“Satin Rouge” is a 2002 Tunisian film directed by Raja Amari which tells the story of a widow and strict mother, Lilia (Hiam Abbas), who rediscovers her sensuality while belly dancing in a cabaret. She leaves her house silently at night to conceal her dancing from family and neighbors living in a conservative society.
In an early dressing room scene, a cabaret friend recalls how her custom-made bra burst in the middle of her dance. “It must have been horrible,” Lilia says. “No way, men loved it. A piece of tit, 147 dinars,” quips her friend, laughing.

Spanish women fanned themselves as hushed comments passed from ear to ear among the moviegoers. A soft breeze shook the trees in the patio. The hum of traffic outside the gates droned in the background, broken occasionally by a passing siren.
The plot soon thickened. Lilia winds up having sex with her daughter’s boyfriend. No explicit nudity is shown, but the gasping of the passion scene silenced spectators’ whispers. Desire pouring out of the outdoor sound system enveloped the whole patio.
“The sex scene totally took us by surprise,” said 30-year-old Laura Chapado, after the movie. She and her friend, Paloma Gonzalez, also 30, said they liked the initiative so much they were planning to attend other movies that week. “This is a delicious environment. It’s so nice to watch a movie outdoors, in this beautiful patio, while having a tea to connect with the culture of the film we’re watching,” Gonzalez said.
Others went for the cold beer, which can be purchased in the cafeteria housed within the Casa Arabe’s ornate, neo-Mudejar brick building dating from the 1880s.
“The Tunisian society in the film is no different from the one I lived in here, in Spain, when I was a kid,” reflected 57-year-old Juan Goberna. “Spain has changed a lot in two generations, but our traditional Mediterranean society was very similar to the one in the movie,” he said. “This goes to show how a person can see a very deep change in society within his lifetime.”
Robert Batal, a Lebanese man here with his 18- and 20-year-old daughters, said the movie was “excellent.” He and his daughters sometimes attend activities at the Casa Arabe.
The Casa Arabe and the International Institute of Studies of the Arab and Muslim World was inaugurated a year ago as a meeting point for Arab and Muslim countries and Western nations — “a space of mutual awareness and shared reflection,” reads its website, to contribute to countering “stereotypes, bigotry, fears and suspicions [that] have all made inroads in the last few years, aided by such theories as the clash of civilizations.”
The house features an Arabic-language center, a sociopolitical observatory and a socioeconomic forum. With one center in Madrid and another in the Andalusian town of Cordoba, Casa Arabe and the institute do research, hold economic and business forums, teach courses and house exhibits and seminaries.
The 13-part documentary series “Nexos,” about Muslims around the world and inspired by the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations, was presented here a couple of months ago. Spaniards as well as embassy officials from some of the Arab countries that will broadcast the series attended. After the presentation, hors d'oeuvres were served. No Spanish cured ham in the canapes, though no shortage of wine and beer in this meeting ground of cultures.

Tea101: What is Indian tea?

Assam tea gardem photo by Kaushik

The words “Indian Tea” usually refer to teas made from the leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis var. assamic. This is because the plant originated in Assam, India.
Unlike the Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, which grows as a bush, the assamica variety is a tree growing from twenty to sixty feet tall. The have a shorter life span than their var. sinensis cousins, living about forty years as opposed to the 100 years that can be expected of the var. sinensis. They make up for this by having larger, broader leaves that produce tea with a richer, stronger flavor than most of the Chinese variety.
There are five recognized subvarieties of the assamica variety: tender light-leaved Assam, dark-leaved Assam which is less tender, hardy Manipuri and Burma, and the very large-leaved Lushai that grows in the hills between India and Burma.
But not all teas that come from India are of the assamica variety. Darjeeling grows in the foothills of the Himalayas in West Bengal, India, but it comes from the sinensis variety. The climate and the soil in which it is cultivated give it a unique flavor reminiscent of a muscatel grape.
Though the Camellia sinensis var. assamica has been used to make some green and oolong teas, it is primarily used to make black tea. Some of these black teas are Assam, Munnar, and Nilgiri
For more info:
Quidk Fax: 10 thngs to know about Indian tea
Chai and how to make it
A chai recipe
A review of an Assam tea

10 buses, two trucks damaged in hills bandh

Imphal, July 17 2009: Windshields of more than 10 inter-state passenger buses and two goods carrying trucks were damaged on the NH-39 at Kangpokpi by miscreants suspected to be supporters of the 12-hour general strike in the hills imposed by Indigenous Democratic Front (IDF).

Normal life was affected due to two different general strikes called by different students and civil organizations.

Around 20 goods ferrying trucks were also stranded at Khuzuma gate of Nagaland bordering with Manipur owing to the indefinite economic blockade imposing by the All Tribal Students Union, Manipur (ATSUM), commenced from Thursday.

Amidst the 120 hour general strikes imposed by Democratic Students Alliance of Manipur (DESAM) commenced from yesterday and another 12 hour general strike across the five hill districts imposed by Indigenous Democratic Front (IDP) affected the normal life in the state.

Bandh supporters pelted stones and broken down windshields of as many as 10 inter-state buses at Kangpokpi on the Imphal-Mao section of the NH-39 this morning at around 8 am.

Most of the smashed buses were heading Imphal from Dimapur side except four leaving Imphal this early morning for their respective destinations outside the state.

No severely injuries reported to the passengers travelling with the buses but many of them received minor injuries by the broken glass pieces falling inside the buses and by the stones.

Buses were travelling with security escorts but strike supporters performed the attacks with catapults from windows of the houses located nearby the highway.

Stones were thrown from inside the house using catapult.

One of the stones hit me at my right shoulder after breaking the windshields on my side," said passengers who were the bus, suffered damaged in the stoning.

They also blamed the security forces of doing nothing to prevent the strikers attacking the buses even though they witnessed the stoning.

Two loaded trucks were also smashed by the suspected blockade supporters at Kangpokpi areas this morning.

The trucks were coming together with buses, reports said.

Meanwhile, around 20 trucks loaded with essential commodities were stranded at Khuzuma near Mao gate on the NH-39 owing to the indefinite economic blockade imposed on the national highways passing through the state.

Some of them stranded since yesterday while others arrived today, a police report from Moa gate said.

Life was severely affected in the hill districts of the state due to the 12-hour general strike in the hill districts commenced from 5 am this morning colliding with the 120-hour state-wide general strike, reports received from the district headquarters said.

Inter-district buses have not been arriving from Imphal from yesterday and all business establishments, shops and marketing places remained closed apart from plying only a few private vehicles, reports received from Churachandpur, Tamenglong, Senapati said.

However, less affective bandh reported from Ukhrul and Chandel district.

Govt wary of data being revealed if experts included: BNP

BNP Vice-Chairman M K Anwar on Friday alleged that the government is not interested to include experts in the parliamentary team to visit Tipaimukh Dam.
“The government fears that experts would disclose the possible adverse impacts of the Tipaimukh Dam on the country which may go against the government interest later. And that is why the ruling party is interested not to include experts in the parliamentary team to visit the Dam site with a view to knowing the possible impact of the Dam,” M K Anwar told reporters while briefing the newsmen at the party’s
central office at Paltan
yesterday.
Anwar informed that BNP will make a presentation on the proposed Dam at Hotel Sheraton on Saturday. The huge information gathered by them will be presented by the experts there on the possible impacts of the Tipaimukh Dam.
BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia will be present at the presentation programme. Different political party leaders, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on water resources ministry, cabinet members, members of civil society, professionals and MPs from greater Sylhet have been invited to attend the presentation programme, said Anwar.
He said BNP along with the people will do everything needed to protect the interest of the country and its people. Even they will organize long march and political rallies to resist the Indian move to build Tipaimukh Dam with a view to protecting the countrymen from the massive adverse impact of the Dam.
He said the government’s steps to stop the move of the Indian government for building the Dam are not enough. He also condemned some ministers of the government as they are advocating in favour of India’s move to build the Dam.
He said BNP sticks to the demand for withdrawal of the envoy of India and the Bangladesh government should take steps in this regard considering the country’s interest.
Anwar categorically said that BNP would not compromise on the greater interest of the country and its people for the sake of keeping bilateral friendship with neighboring country.
BD News 24.com adds: Khaleda Zia on June 29 sent a list to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina containing names for a six -member representative team to visit the dam site in northeastern Manipur state.
The delegates are Anwar, former water resources minister Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, former water resources secretary Muhammad Asafuddoula, former Dhaka University vice-chancellor Moniruzzaman Miah, former director general of Water Development Board Sharif Rafiqul Islam and water specialist Prof Abdur Rob.
Among them, Anwar and Hafiz Uddin have been mentioned as “BNP representative” and the others as “technical experts”.
A 10-member parliamentary panel, headed by chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on water resources ministry Abdur Razzaq, will go to India on July 29 to gather data on India’s proposed dam over the cross-border Barak river in the northeastern state of Manipur.
BNP press conference today
BSS, Dhaka : Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) will present various information and data on India’s Tipaimukh dam project at a press conference at Sheraton Hotel in the city today (Saturday).
BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, other political leaders and professionals will be present at the press conference, said BNP Vice-Chairman and former Minister MK Anwar, while talking to reporters at the BNP central office in the city on Friday.

Your request is being processed... "Orgasm A Day" Campaign Directed At British Schoolchildren Sparks Controversy

The National Health Service of Britain has sparked controversy with their controversial sex education campaign promoting an orgasm a day:

A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a "right" to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health...
...Alongside the slogan "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away", it says: "Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes' physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?"

However, there are fears that this could just encourage underage sex without increasing the use of protection:

But family groups condemned the guidance last night, saying it would encourage children to have underage sex and could lead to rising rates of sexually-transmitted diseases

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

Jim Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.
It didn't take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama's agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked:

The world's major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

Of course, emission targets in 2050 have limited practical meaning -- present leaders will be dead or doddering by then -- so these differences may be patched up. The important point is that other nations are unlikely to make real concessions on emissions if the United States is not addressing the climate matter seriously.
With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.
I share that conclusion, and have explained why to members of Congress before and will again at a Capitol Hill briefing on July 13. Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years and more than 100 ppm higher than the amount at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil's cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.
The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.
This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won't get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.
For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.
It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.
Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."
It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the "fee-and-dividend" version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead.
A carbon fee-and-dividend would be an economic stimulus and boon for the public. By the time the fee reached the equivalent of $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton of CO2) the rebate in the United States would be $2000-3000 per adult or $6000-9000 for a family with two children.
Fee-and-dividend would work hand-in-glove with new building, appliance, and vehicle efficiency standards. A rising carbon fee is the best enforcement mechanism for building standards, and it provides an incentive to move to ever higher energy efficiencies and carbon-free energy sources. As engineering and cultural tipping points are reached, the phase-over to post-fossil energy sources will accelerate. Tar sands and shale would be dead and there would be no need to drill Earth's pristine extremes for the last drops of oil.
Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.
The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died this week, suffered for 40 years -- as did our country -- from his failure to turn back from a failed policy. As grave as the blunders of the Vietnam War were, the consequences of a failed climate policy will be more severe by orders of magnitude.
With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won't we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won't be able to create the concerted approach we need globally to prevent catastrophic climate change.

UK Envoy Resigns over Russian Sex Tape

Sleazy ... girls strip down to their underwear as one kneels in front of reclining James Hudson

A BRITISH diplomat in Russia has quit after being filmed having sex with two blonde hookers.

High-flier James Hudson, 37, resigned from his posting to the Urals in disgrace over the sordid video.

Kiss ... wearing a gown, James Hudson greets hooker

BARCROFT MEDIA

The film - thought to have been secretly shot in a classic Russian spy sting - could have left him open to blackmail.

It shows podgy, bespectacled Hudson romping with both girls in various positions after kissing them and guzzling champagne.

In one scene, as music plays in the background, a hooker asks in heavily-accented English: "Would you like it?"

In another, one of the girls is seen naked and straddling his tubby body on a bed.

The film is believed to have been shot in a brothel in the city of Ekaterinberg, where Hudson was Deputy Consul General.

Fizz ... Hudson opens bottle

BARCROFT MEDIA

It opens with him strolling into a room wearing just an open dressing gown and clutching a wine glass.

He kisses one hooker before a second appears and drapes herself on his lap. The girls strip down to their undies before the film cuts to all three of them naked on the bed together.

Video ... James Hudson

The four-minute, 18-second video was posted on a local news website.

It also accused the diplomat of indulging in drugs and gambling during office hours under the heading: "Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia."

A security source said Russia's FSB intelligence service, the modern KGB, may have carried out the sting to embarrass Britain.

The source warned: "Russian intelligence has a long history of making sex films and taking compromising photos to control people or further its aims.

"It is also virtually unthinkable that this could have been widely published online without some sort of tacit official approval."

Posting ... where James Hudson worked as Deputy Consul General

However organised crime gangs hoping to extort cash from Hudson could also have been responsible for making the video.

Last night British officials were "livid" at the scandal.

The Foreign Office confirmed Hudson had resigned, saying staff were expected to "demonstrate high levels of personal and professional integrity".

Dad-of-one Hudson joined the FO in 1994 and his postings have included Sarajevo, Havana and Budapest.

He married wife Sally in London in 1996, but they divorced the following year.

The Ural Mountains area, 1,000 miles east of Moscow, covers Russia's industrial heartland and is a key outpost for British trade.

Deadly Rains Lash Vietnam

Floods and landslides have wreaked havoc in northern Vietnam. Heavy rains are blamed for triggering the natural disaster in the mountainous regions of the communist country. So far 15 people are dead, while several homes and roads have been damaged or destroyed.

Chinese Tightrope Artist Breaks Two World Records

A Chinese tightrope artist from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region is set to break two world records. Ahdili Wuxiuer is walking a kilometer and a half-long rope at more than 1,600 meters above sea level, the highest ever.

Ahdili, known as the 'Tightrope Prince', is also set to defy the high winds by passing over his apprentice on the wire.

Ahdili’s student, Saddar, walks the rope to meet his master half-way.

While Saddar leans back on the rope, Ahdili pass over him by walking over his chest.

Tighrope walking is a traditional Uyghur art form, and Ahdili is a sixth-generation descendant of a tightrope walking family.

This is not the first time the Tightrope Prince has broken a Guinness World Record. Ahdilli spent three weeks running on a tightrope seven years ago

Bruno's Naked GQ Cover: Hotter Than Aniston's?

An impeccably waxed Sacha Baron Cohen poses as Bruno on the cover of the July GQ. Look familiar? He is striking the same pose as Jennifer Aniston did in January, when she posed for the magazine in nothing but a Brooks Brothers necktie.

(READ THE WHOLE BRUNO INTERVIEW IN GQ NOW.)

Quick Poll

Who has the hotter GQ cover?

Inside the Austrian fashionista dispenses style advice. Here's what Bruno had to say:
On the benefits of "manscaping":
It's more zan okay; it is most essential. Be careful if you do it yourself, though--yesterday ich tried to self-wax mein arschenhaller und glued meinself to ze bed. Manscaping ist important, but not as crucial as getting regular anal bleaching.

On where to store an iPhone:
Vhat ein stupid question. Keep it in your assistant's pocket, obwiously.
On the President's style:
Firstly, ich vant to say zat I find Obama an inspiration--it gives me great hope zat, after years of struggle, someone can at last get to ze White House, despite being incredibly hot. On ze other hand, it's slightly disappointing that he needed zat beard, Michelle, to help him--but vone shtep at a time.
On groom's attire for a heterosexual wedding:
If Brüno vas about to be married to a voman, I'd be vearing a noose.