China: The electronic wastebasket of the world
May 31, 2013 -- Updated 0054 GMT (0854 HKT)
Guiyu, China (CNN) -- Did you ever wonder what happens to your old laptop or cellphone when you throw it away?
Chances are some of your old electronic junk will end up in China.
According to a recent United Nations report, "China now appears to be the largest e-waste dumping site in the world."
E-waste, or electronic waste, consists of everything from scrapped TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners to that old desktop computer that may be collecting dust in your closet.
Many of these gadgets were initially manufactured in China. Through a strange twist of global economics, much of this electronic junk returns to China to die.
Middle East
May 31, '13
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Moscow remembers Charlie Wilson's War
By M K Bhadrakumar
Charlie Wilson claimed to be on United States government business even while entertaining the then Egyptian defense minister with a Texan belly dancer he brought along to Cairo with the hope of persuading him to agree to a deal to supply weapons to the Afghan mujahideen in the early 1980s.
George Crile details in the riveting book Charlie Wilson's Wars, how the colorful congressman from Texas virtually formed part of the CIA's Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, which ensured a steady supply of sophisticated weapons such as the Stinger missiles reaching the mujahideen fighting the Soviet Army.
Indeed, the CIA funded the travel expenses of girl friends who
accompanied Charlie Wilson on his numerous trips to Pakistan. The agency later conferred on him the Honored Colleague Award for his role in the Afghan jihad.
Three Westerners killed in Syria fighting
May 31, 2013 - 12:36PM
Washington: A 33-year-old American woman and convert to Islam, Nicole Mansfield, was killed in Syria fighting with opposition forces in the country's civil war, her family said on Thursday.
"I'm just devastated," the woman's aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman, told Reuters. She said that the FBI had informed her of the death of her niece, who was from Flint, Michigan on Thursday afternoon.
"I'm just devastated," the woman's aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman, told Reuters. She said that the FBI had informed her of the death of her niece, who was from Flint, Michigan on Thursday afternoon.
Mansfield was killed with two other Westerners, including a British man, also understood to be a Muslim convert, in northwest Idlib province near the Turkish border, a monitoring group says.
Protesters surround ECB office in Frankfurt
Crowd estimated by police to be roughly 2,500
Thousands of demonstrators from the anti-capitalist Blockupy movement cut off access to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt today to protest against policymakers’ handling of Europe’s debt crisis.
Clasping signs with slogans such as “humanity before profit”, the protesters gathered in the rain to block roads including those leading to Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in the city’s financial district.
The crowd, estimated by police at roughly 2,500, was met by armed police wearing helmets and riot gear and accompanied by Alsatian dogs. Trucks with water cannons stood by and a helicopter hovered overheard.
The first people to make the perilous journey to Mars will have to cope with long periods of boredom, the constant worry of returning home safely and the joy and pain of each other's company.
According to the latest research into long-duration space travel, they will also endure the sort of radiation exposure that few people of Earth have experienced.
A study has found that astronauts will receive more than half a lifetime's radiation dose during the return journey of a future manned mission to Mars - a calculation that does not taking into account the time spent on the surface of the Red Planet.
Pakistan's movie-makers dig deep to revive film industry
Big new multiplexes and distinctive drama signal revival amid chronic DVD piracy and lack of funding
On the fifth take, everything appeared to have come together. The script monitors confirmed that the two actors had got their lines right, the woman in charge of the set was pleased with how the crumbling apartment in a Karachi slum had been dressed, and the camera operator was content with the shot.
But the distant screech of a motorbike from the teeming streets outside wrecked the take (barking mutts, the bane of earlier attempts, had been successfully shooed away by the crew's "dog team").
"OK, again," sighed the director, Jamshed Mahmood. "Sound is our biggest problem in Pakistan," he said.
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