Missing Mary Road

The Times/UK launches a brilliant piece of investigative journalism that confirms what we’ve already known – that US forces have been pursuing the Global War on Terror from inside Pakistani territory as early as October 2001. What they judiciously add to the global knowledgebase is an exact location within Pakistan and composition of those forces.

The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, a Times investigation has found.

The Pakistani and US governments have repeatedly denied that Washington is running military operations, covert or otherwise, on Pakistani territory — a hugely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country.

The Pakistani Government has also repeatedly demanded that the US halt drone attacks on northern tribal areas that it says have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and fuelled anti-American sentiment.

But The Times has discovered that the CIA has been using the Shamsi airfield — originally built by Arab sheikhs for falconry expeditions in the southwestern province of Baluchistan — for at least a year. The strip, which is about 30 miles from the Afghan border, allows US forces to launch a Drone within minutes of receiving actionable intelligence as well as allowing them to attack targets further afield.

It was known that US special forces used Shamsi during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but the Pakistani Government declared publicly in 2006 that the Americans had left it and two other airbases.

Birds don’t fly as far south as they used to. They aren’t lazy, they are warning us about global warming.

One ambition was fixed in Ali Moeen Nawazish’s mind as he made his way through school in Pakistan. He wanted to win a place at Cambridge.

Sitting seven A-levels might easily have done the trick, even though he had started to study some of the subjects only three days before the exam.

But he was determined to get some good grades. So he sat another three, and three more. Then another nine. Just in case, he took a couple of AS levels along the way.

Bob McDonald writes about plastic in Rwanda on the Q & Q blog.

It’s normal to be stopped at international airports to have your documents and luggage checked by officials, but I’ve never been stopped for carrying plastic. After landing in Rwanda last month and passing through customs at Kigali airport, I was just about to leave the building when an official intercepted me, pointed to the duty free items I was carrying and said, “You can’t have those.”

Thinking I was about to lose my new purchases in some African tourist scam, I watched the man take a pair of scissors, cut the plastic bags open, put the items in a paper bag and handed them back to me. Plastic bags are illegal in Rwanda.

The ubiquitous white plastic shopping bag, found rolling across roadways, poking through landfills and littering beaches everywhere, has been banned in Rwanda since 2006, an option Canada might consider.

Sometimes there are words that cannot be translated into another language without losing some of its meaning. According to the BBC and 1,000 linguists, the most difficult word to translate is “ilunga”. A word in the Tshiluba language, which is spoken in south-east Congo. “Ilunga”, when attempted to translate into English means “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time”.

In second place was shlimazl which is Yiddish for “a chronically unlucky person”. Third was Naa, used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone. Although the definitions seem fairly precise, the problem is trying to convey the local references associated with such words, says Jurga Zilinskiene, head of Today Translations, which carried out the survey.

Microsoft’s decision to limit Windows 7 Starter Edition to running only three concurrent applications could force up the price of netbooks as many manufacturers opt for the more expensive Home Premium. The three-app rule includes applications running in the background but excludes antivirus, and the company claims most users wouldn’t be affected by the limit. ‘We ran a study which suggested that the average consumer has open just over two applications [at any time]. We would expect the limit of three applications wouldn’t affect very many people.’ However, Microsoft told journalists at last year’s Professional Developers Conference that 70% of Windows users have between eight and 15 windows open at any one time.

Did somebody suddenly rewind the clock 15 years? Has Microsoft lost its mind? Even novice users run far more than three applications during one sitting.

Here’s how I can see this playing out.

- Educated customers will reject Windows 7 Starter because of the three application limit. Instead, they’ll opt for higher-end Windows 7 notebooks or jump to Linux netbooks.
- Unsuspecting customers will eagerly purchase low-cost netbooks with Windows 7 Starter, only to learn about the three-application limit. They’ll return the systems, causing a PR and financial nightmare for Microsoft and its OEMs.
- Ultimately, Microsoft will be forced to (A) discontinue Windows 7 Starter or (B) eliminate its three-application limit.

Vigneswari and Masiakanni wore traditional Indian bridal saris and gold jewellery in a lavish double wedding in their remote village home in Tamil Nadu. Then they married two frogs.

Damn Commies!