German police foil plot to unleash 'massive' attack on US military base

By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Published: 06 September 2007

Germany said yesterday it had arrested three Islamic militants suspected of planning "imminent" and "massive" bomb attacks on Frankfurt's international airport and a nearby US military base, preventing what would have been the most devastating terrorist attack on an American target since 11 September 2001. continue...

Invisible arms race: The internet balance of power

Claims that China has been hacking into the West's military computers have led to concern that future global conflicts may be fought in cyberspace. Clifford Coonan investigates
Published: 06 September 2007

Somewhere here in Guangzhou, the balmy capital of the booming southern province of Guangdong, a shadowy group of computer scientists is said to be hard at work under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army, waging cyber warfare on Western military and industrial targets. continue...

Untangling the web: Japan experts publish map of the net

Navigating the internet can be bamboozling. Rebecca Armstrong and Simon Usborne look at which websites made it onto the map of the net
Published: 05 September 2007

Map of the web
Provided by Information Architects Japan

Mapping the great network that is the internet was never going to be an easy task. There would have to be as many connections as there are in the human brain. But for a group of web architects based in Japan, it is worth a go.
Modelled on the fiendishly complex Tokyo Metro map, the latest Web Trend Map (the 2007/V2 version) organises some of cyberspace's movers and shakers into an easy-to-read chart. Plotted by the Japanese firm Information Architects (IA), each line on the map represents a theme, be it news (green), tools (pink) or the brown Chinese line, which IA calls the "second internet", after the country's efforts to censor much of the content freely available in the West. continue...

Apple unveils new iPod that has wi-fi and touch screen

By Amol Rajan
Published: 06 September 2007

After a week of feverish speculation, Apple released its new iPod last night, confirming rumours that the sixth generation of the digital music player will have a 3.5in touch-screen and integrated wi-fi connection, allowing users to connect to the internet from an iPod for the first time.

The new iPod will play video downloaded direct from the internet, as well as video games, both with widescreen view. Users will still be able to transfer music on to the player direct from iTunes, Apple's music provider. continue...

Strange goings-on here in Lebanon ...

Published: 01 September 2007

Stories that just don't seem to make it into print.

Did you know that the Hizbollah "Party of God" has installed its own private communications network in the south of Lebanon, stretching from the village of Zawter Sharqiya all the way to Beirut? And why, I wonder, would it be doing that? Well, to safeguard its phones in the event that the Israelis immobilise the public mobile system in the next war. Next war? Well, if there's not going to be another war in Lebanon, why is Hizbollah building new roads north of the Litani river, new bunkers, new logistics far outside the area of operations of the Nato-led UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon? continue...

Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Published: 25 August 2007

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver". continue...

Lebanon cries victory, but is it too soon?

Robert Fisk: Lebanon cries victory, but is it too soon?
Published: 06 September 2007

The victory of the Lebanese army at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp – the killing of up to 100 al-Qa'ida-type insurgents at the cost of 163 Lebanese soldiers and 42 civilians – is being greeted in the country with "trumpetings" and "hootings" worthy of the country's greatest poet, Khalil Gibran.

For three days now, the newspapers have devoted their front pages to photographs of Lebanese troops astride their ageing US-made personnel carriers, giving "V" signs, firing in the air and succumbing to the traditional warriors' reward of rice and rose-water. continue...

Bollywood Takes On Hollywood

Anay Mann / Photoink-Contact for Newsweek
No Bluster: Screwvala (right) at work

Bigger Than Bollywood
Meet the man who is changing India's film industry—and gunning for Hollywood, USA.

By Jason Overdorf

Newsweek International

Sept. 10, 2007 issue - Ronnie Screwvala is the front runner in the race to become Bollywood's Jack Warner—the man who began the transformation of parochial U.S. cinema into its modern global form. Yet Screwvala is rarely picked out of a crowd in India, let alone in the United States. But Hollywood insiders know him well, for producing the "The Namesake," the groundbreaking hit about Indian immigrants, and for coproducing a Chris Rock comedy ("I Think I Love My Wife"). Now he is coproducing "The Happening," a new sci-fi thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by M. Night Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense") that seems destined to vault him into the big leagues. With a budget of $57 million, it will cost as much as 10 Indian blockbusters, setting a new bar for Bollywood. "Our ambition is to be a global Indian entertainment company—there's no reason we can't make big-budget Hollywood movies, too," says Screwvala. continue...

A model immigrant, betrayed by Britain

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 05 September 2007

When Damilola Ajagbonna first sat down in a British classroom eight years ago his thick Nigerian accent earned him the nickname "fresh off the boat", while in the playground he was shunned because he didn't own a tennis racket.

But Mr Ajagbonna, now 19, was determined to succeed, and last year he was offered a place at Cambridge University to study social and political science.

Today Mr Ajagbonna, described by a judge as a "remarkable" young man, faces being forcibly removed to Nigeria because he was six weeks late claiming British citizenship under immigration rules for children.

continue...

The greatest boom the world has ever seen

Published: 05 September 2007

Beijing: China's pre-Olympics economic boom has ratcheted up a few clicks. With less than a year to run, it is not just the main stadium site that is humming; the entire city is a great building site. Not only is it rushing to complete new hotels and other facilities ahead of the games, it is also sprucing itself up: fixing pavements, repainting shopfronts, opening restaurants.

You can measure the China boom in the statistics – growth running at more than 11 per cent in the first half of this year – but nothing can prepare the visitor for the actuality. This is not just the greatest boom on earth at the moment – it is the greatest boom the world has ever known. In 2005, China passed the UK to become the world's fourth-largest economy; either this year or next, it will pass Germany to become the world's third largest. It is hard not to see it passing Japan to become the second largest within about a decade, and then it is at least plausible that within a generation it will pass the United States to become the biggest.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/hamish_mcrae/article2927068.ece

Hawk on Roosevelt Island?

Video Clip of a hawk, osprey or falcon, who visited Roosevelt Island over the weekend.(LaborDay 2007)

Sales Prices: How Right Digits Affect Perception of Discounts

Science Daily

The amount of the discount may be less important than the numerical value of the farthest right digit, explains a new study from the Journal of Consumer Research. Keith S. Coulter (Clark University) and Robin A. Coulter (University of Connecticut) are the first to identify a visual distortion effect that may influence how consumers look at sale prices. continue...