Troops returning home to strained veterans-affairs system
By Rebecca Ruiz
President Obama may face challenges to deliver on his promise that the U.S. will look after troops and their families as combat operations in Afghanistan come to an end.
“When you get home, we are going to be there for you when you’re in uniform and we will stay there for you when you’re out of uniform, because you’ve earned it,” he told troops at Bagram Air Base on Tuesday.
Fulfilling the president's promise will require the cooperation of a system that is already strained by current demand for veterans’ services and benefits.
Chen Guangcheng wants to leave China on Hillary Clinton's plane
Blind activist who escaped house arrest 'fears for his health and his family's safety', as Clinton visits country for annual talks
Tania Branigan in Beijing and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 May 2012 08.19 BST
Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese activist at the centre of a growing international storm, has said he wants to leave the country on Hillary Clinton's plane when she flies out of Beijing at the end of this week.
There has been mounting concern over his future amid confusing accounts, including from Chen himself, on his decision to leave US diplomatic protection and remain in China, and his subsequent change of heart. But his friend Teng Biao, a well known rights lawyer, said via Twitter that Chen's communications with the US embassy were now going smoothly and that his family had explained why they had changed their minds and wanted to leave for the US.
Will scientists ever discover the secret of immortality?
How close is science to being able to scan the contents of a human brain for future use? Mark Piesing asks if we're really going to be able to live for ever.
Thursday 03 May 2012
When you think of the word "immortality" it is hard not to feel a tingling excitement, even if those feelings are quickly followed by a sense of something more biblical, almost God-like, and then by something darker lurking in the shadow of the word.
As Western science still has not found the immortality gene, it is perhaps not surprising that in Silicon Valley and on the outskirts of Moscow the eccentric wealthy (and it always is the eccentric wealthy) are now turning their attention – and their money – to projects that are promising to deliver a new version of the age-old fantasy (or folly) of everlasting life: digital immortality. And this time it may actually work.
Travels in the Empire of Kim Jong Un
North Korea may have a new leader, but it still has many of the same old problems. Despite efforts to modernize the capital Pyongyang ahead of 100th birthday celebrations for Kim Il Sung, the country still suffers from shortages of food, electricity, heat and hope.
By SPIEGEL Staff
The followers of the "Juche" ideology had come from 47 countries, perhaps 400 or maybe even 500 of them, the last remaining believers in an idea that was once intended to bring delight to the entire world. They wanted to see the successes with their own eyes and pay homage to their hero. Kim Il Sung, the founder and "Eternal President" of the nation, which remains communist to this day, was the inventor of this philosophy meant to benefit the whole world. The festivities marking his 100th birthday were to provide the framework for adoration.
"In the transformation of the world," Kim Il Sung places the people above the principles of world communism in his pamphlets. "Humans are the masters of all things," he wrote. When inflated to form a state ideology, Juche essentially means: "Trust in your own strength."
Mali's ex-junta clamps down on state broadcaster
BAMAKO, MALI
Troops loyal to Mali's former junta fired in the air as they forced staff to evacuate the state's broadcaster's office on Wednesday, a day after the building was targeted in a failed counter-coup that left 22 dead.
Gunfire erupted at the ORTM building late on Monday, in what proved to be an assault launched by soldiers loyal ex-president Amadou Toumani Toure, who was toppled in a March 22 putsch.
The ex-junta seized the ORTM building the night they toppled Toure and have occupied it since.
Meet the UK's oldest farmers
With changes to state and company pensions, the road to retirement is getting longer. But in agriculture. a growing number of men and women are already working well into their 70s and even late 80s.
By Steven McKenzie BBC News
Elwyn Williams, 74, his brother Ceredig, 85, and their sister Nancy, 89, live together on Rhiwlug Farm and run two other farms near Llandysul, in Ceredigion, west Wales.
The Williams brothers get up at six each morning to tend the livestock, while their sister still makes her own butter.
"My brother feeds the calves and I milk a couple of cows, then we're having breakfast before going out to feed the cattle, see the sheep and doing a bit of fencing," says Elwyn.
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