Arfa Karim Randhawa Remembered

Wise beyond her years, but Arfa Karim Randhawa is now gone.

“If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind,” she said. “If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.”

North Korea Punishing Insincere Mourners

Why yes, North Korea is still ruled by an immoral totalitarian regime. Remember?

North Korean authorities are punishing mourners who failed to exhibit sincere sadness and despair after the death of Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17, the Daily NK reported Wednesday.

The online North Korean newspaper, which is published by opponents of the governing regime, said a source in North Hamkyung Province revealed the information. The source told the paper “authorities are handing down at least six months in a labor-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organized gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine,” according to the Daily NK.

There are an estimated 200,000 offenders and families held in North Korean prison camps, according to a May 2011 report from Amnesty International. The report details two types of camps known as “zones.” One zone, known as a Total Control Zone, is for people who have committed “serious crimes.” People in these camps are never released.

The second type of zone, called a Revolutionary Zone, are camps for people who have committed what North Korean authorities perceive as less serious crimes. These crimes may include making critical comments toward government policy or trying to cross the border. Sentences in Revolutionary Zone camps can range from a few months to 10 years.

American Navy Rescues Iranians

You’re welcome, Iran.

Just days after Iranian and American military officials traded warnings over a U.S. Navy vessel’s departure from the Persian Gulf, the United States Navy has rescued 13 Iranian fishermen and their fishing dhow from Somali pirates in the north Arabian sea, the Pentagon said Friday. And in a side irony that punctuates the rare instance of Iranian-American co-operation, the rescue operation was carried out by a ship belonging to the very U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group that Iranian army officials had earlier boasted of evicting from Gulf waters.

Iran Produces Nuclear Fuel Rod

Lovely.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian scientists have produced the nation’s first nuclear fuel rod, a feat of engineering the West doubted Tehran was capable of, Iran officials said Sunday.

The announcement comes after Iran has said it was compelled to manufacture fuel rods on its own since international sanctions banned Tehran from buying them on foreign markets.

Becket’s Murder

Thomas Becket was murdered 841 years ago today.

Then, with another blow received on the head, he remained firm. But with the third the stricken martyr bent his knees and elbows, offering himself as a living sacrifice, saying in a low voice, “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church I am ready to embrace death.” But the third knight inflicted a grave wound on the fallen one; with this blow he shattered the sword on the stone and his crown, which was large, separated from his head so that the blood turned white from the brain yet no less did the brain turn red from the blood; it purpled the appearance of the church with the colors of the lily and the rose, the colors of the Virgin and Mother and the life and death of the confessor and martyr. The fourth knight drove away those who were gathering so that the others could finish the murder more freely and boldly. The fifth - not a knight but a cleric who entered with the knights - so that a fifth blow might not be spared him who had imitated Christ in other things, placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr and (it is horrible to say) scattered the brains with the blood across the floor, exclaiming to the rest, “We can leave this place, knights, he will not get up again.”

Samoa Cancelling December 30th

I think Wisconsin should switch too.

The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa will jump forward in time on Thursday as it crosses westward over the international dateline to align itself with its other 21st century trading partners throughout the region.

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa will leap forward to Dec. 31 — New Year’s Eve. For Samoa’s 186,000 citizens, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.

The time jump back to the future comes 119 years after some U.S. traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands’ time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.

But the time zone has proved problematic in recent years, putting Samoa nearly a full day behind neighboring Australia and New Zealand, increasingly important trading partners with the island nation.

In a bid to remedy that, the government passed a law in June that will move Samoa west of the international dateline, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Under a government decree, all those scheduled to work on the nonexistent Friday will be given full pay for the missed day of labor.

Trashing Mexico City

Yet another green initiative goes awry.

Mexico City’s largest landfill shut down on Monday, part of a planned shift to recycle more of the city’s garbage, but the green effort left piles of trash across the city. With locals complaining, garbage truck drivers counter that they’re unable to move as much trash as before since they’re having to drive farther to get rid of it.

The new system requires drivers to haul their trash 3 to 4 hours away from downtown, whereas previously it only took an hour. “The trucks take a while to get there,” driver Joel Gara Murillo told the city’s Canal 11 TV station.

On top of that, long lines have formed at the new transfer stations while the drivers and station workers get used to the new system.

Kim Jong-il Dead

Good. Let’s hope the people of North Korea will be free at some point.

Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.

Iran Hijacked Drone?

Wow. If this is true, it’s a HUGE deal.

Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone’s systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

“The GPS navigation is the weakest point,” the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran’s “electronic ambush” of the highly classified US drone. “By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.”

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

Tudors

I’ve been watching The Tudors on Netflix for the past few months and finally finished the series. I must say that I am quite impressed. As a history junkie, the production did an admirable job of capturing the reign, characters, and the age. It took some liberties as necessary with the medium, but stayed very true to the subject. Surely this was a relatively easy task given the natural drama manifest in the reighn of Henry VIII.

The one thing that I did find very interesting was the treatment of Henry VIII’s weight. They graphically showed the ulcers and infirmaties that led to the king’s obesity, but never showed the result. The production never had Henry’s girth reach its legendary and historically known proportions. In the end, I think that it was OK because excessive makeup and fat suits would have distracted from the character portrayal, but it was a risky move since everyone knows the historic portraits of Henry the Portly.

In any case, I highly recommend The Tudors if you are so inclined.

No Aloha Shirts

Yeah, I’m OK with this.

HONOLULU (AP) — President Barack Obama says the colorful Hawaiian aloha shirts are out when it comes to world leaders.

Obama on Sunday chose not to continue a tradition started by President Bill Clinton nearly two decades ago.

The 21 leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Obama’s native Hawaii were photographed together in the customary, stodgy presidential wear — neckties and dark suits — not the casual aloha shirts that many were hoping to see them in.

There wasn’t even a single floral lei.

“I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings and some of the garb that appeared previously and I thought this might be a tradition that we might want to break,” Obama said late Sunday. “I suggested to leaders, we gave them a shirt and I promise you if they wanted to wear it that would have been fine but I didn’t hear a lot of complaints about breaking precedent.”

I’m sure it was done for the optics of the situation. Nobody wants their leaders to look frivolous in the midst of worldwide economic turmoil. But nonetheless, I’m OK with my president looking presidential when meeting other world leaders.

Obama and Sarkozy Dislike Netanyahu

When will people learn to always assume that the mic is hot?

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a liar” in a private conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama that was accidentally broadcast to journalists during last week’s G20 summit in Cannes.

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.

“You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,” Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.

Rule of Male Succession To Be Abolished

Stories like this serve to remind me how far advanced the United States is. A monarchy? Really? How very 16th century of you

At a meeting of the British Commonwealth in Perth, Australia, all 16 countries that claim Queen Elizabeth II as head of state unanimously voted today to change the rules of succession.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the constitutional changes to remove gender discrimination had been agreed upon by the Commonwealth nations.

The current rules discriminate against females, and prevent future monarchs marrying Catholics.

Individual parliaments must now pass appropriate legislation. Cameron plans to pass the law in the United Kingdom before the next general election.

The change means that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child will be the monarch, regardless of gender.

Qaddafi Dead

A dead tyrant is a good tyrant. I guess now that he’s dead, we can say that that was the purpose of the war.

According to the Pentagon, that was the cost to U.S. taxpayers for Muammar el-Qaddafi’s head: $1.1 billion through September, the latest figure just out of the Defense Department.

And that’s just for the Americans.

The final totals will take some time to add up, and still do not include the State Department, CIA, and other agencies involved or other NATO and participating countries. Vice President Joe Biden said that the U.S. “spent $2 billion total and didn’t lose a single life.” NATO does not track the operational costs to each member country, but the funds directly taken from a common NATO account for Libya operations have totaled about $7.4 million per month for electronic warfare capabilities and $1.1 million per month for headquarters and command staff, a NATO spokesman said.

Is That a Catapult In Your Pocket?

Those lovable Brits.

Some 371 knives were recovered between January 2009 and September 2011, along with a cosh and a truncheon, the broadsheet reported, citing information obtained from the parliamentary authorities.

This year, in July, one person attempted to bring a catapult into the lower House of Commons.