Tag Archives: india

Richard Gere’s Scandalous Smooch

How can the country that gave the world the Kama Sutra be so prudish? It’s a longstanding cliché to note that India has produced both the world’s most famous guide to love and erotic pleasure and some of the most conservative social rules this side of Saudi Arabia on such questions as kissing in public. That paradox was on display once again this week in the firestorm that swept India following a seemingly innocuous — and obviously staged — celebrity kiss on the cheek at an AIDS-awareness event.

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Lung cancer vaccine ‘extends terminal patients lives’

Terminal lung cancer patients are living longer thanks to the world’s first registered lung cancer vaccine, a leading Cuban scientist says. Dr. Gisela Gonzalez has spent years researching the vaccine which the Cuban government approved for the use of the general public last year.

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In Protest, Tibetans Refuse to Celebrate New Year

When asked how his New Year celebrations have been, the pilgrim — a middle-aged businessman wearing a heavy winter coat against the bitter winds that knife through the monastery’s narrow alleys — immediately glances up and then over his shoulder. It is the universal, instinctive reaction of Tibetans I talked to on a recent trip to China’s far western province of Qinghai, where ethnic Tibetans make up the majority of the population in the areas closest to the Qinghai-Tibet border

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India: 70,000 trapped in Sri Lanka war zone

India on Wednesday urged Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels to "release" civilians, who it said numbered about 70,000 in Sri Lanka’s war zone. India is ready to help evacuate them, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Indian parliament. “Estimates on the number of civilians trapped vary, but 70,000 or so are estimated to be there now.

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Will Pakistan’s Shari’a Pact Calm or Inflame a Troubled Region?

In a desperate move to deal with an intractable radical insurgency, the Pakistan government says it will impose a form of Islamic law in the area of Swat Valley in the northwestern corner of the country. As a result, Islamabad’s faltering military campaign there has been put on hold, and the militants have agreed to a tentative ceasefire.

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Founder of Islamic TV station accused of beheading wife

The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said. Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, at the Bridges TV station in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, said Andrew Benz, Orchard Park’s police chief

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And the Emmy Goes To …

The members of the Motion Picture Academy are still filling out their ballots, but right now the Anglo-Indian melodrama Slumdog Millionaire is the strong favorite to win the Oscars for Best Picture, Directing and Adapted Screenplay. It has already snagged top prizes from the producers’, directors’, writers’ and actors’ guilds. It’s also earned nearly $80 million at the domestic box office–far more than the combined take of three of its Best Picture rivals, The Reader, Frost/Nixon and Milk.

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Why Chemical Warfare Is Ancient History

The prospect of chemical and biological warfare in this age of anthrax scares and WMD can feel — like the threat of nuclear Armageddon before it — like a uniquely modern terror. But a British archaeologist’s recent find offers a reminder that chemical weapons are nothing new — in fact, they are nearly 2,000 years old. Simon James, a researcher at the University of Leicester in the U.K., claims to have found the first physical evidence of chemical weaponry, dating from a battle fought in A.D

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