In light of the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration has announced new enhanced “guidelines” requiring airline passengers traveling from (and through) 14 different countries to undergo especially rigorous security screening before being able to fly into the United States.
Scoops
Dreaming India
After a narrow escape from a fatal form of cancer, New York writer Katherine Russell Rich spent a year in India learning Hindi. She had no idea just how radically the language would change her life, her mind, her very being.
Who Flu Over Cuckoo’s Nest?
Every few decades, a flu pandemic spreads westward from Asia. The last one, in 1968, was relatively mild - and we have yet to see the full damage caused by the swine flu outbreak. But the next pandemic is inevitable - and it’s likely to come from China.
Kashmir Ambush
The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan has long transcended regional boundaries. But since 9/11, and especially since the 2008 Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Kashmiri ‘Paradise on Earth’ has become much less geopolitically important than the West’s war against Islamic extremism. To win that battle, Pakistan must not no longer be allowed to use Kashmir as a weapon of regional terrorism.
India Shining?
What does Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, have in common with the Democratic U.S. Surgeon General-designate Sanjay Gupta? They’re both Americans of Indian descent.
Tiananmen Square Lessons
The Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989 was a defining moment in Chinese history, widely interpreted as a sign of China’s impending doom. It has proven to be anything but.
Tibetan Blunder
Tibetans and their supporters worldwide have taken to the streets in record numbers lately to protest human rights abuses in China and the 58-year-old Chinese occupation of Tibet. Over the years, a lot of things have stood between Beijing’s dictatorial rule and Tibet’s freedom — but you’d never guess the most formidable barrier: The Dalai Lama himself.
China Syndrome
Tibet has been a thorn in China’s side ever since Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army invaded the Roof of the World in 1950. The recent unrest in Lhasa resulted in a Chinese crackdown that has effectively transformed the Beijing Olympics into what some are calling the “Human Rights Games.”
Muslim true/false
As blogger Scott Adams aptly put it, ask a devout Christian who he’d rather live next to–a bearded Muslim possibly plotting an attack or an atheist possibly skilled at setting up wireless networks–and the answer would be clear: The Christian will pick the atheist over the Muslim.
Bound-Foot in China
In a remote village in southwestern China live 300 women whose feet were crushed long ago to the size of a child’s. They are the last survivors haunted by a mutilating tradition that lasted a millennium — solely for men’s pleasure.
