ISI sought to intercept all communications passing through the country in 2013, the most significant expansion of its capacity to conduct mass surveillance to date and rivalling that of the United States and UK.
In northern Thailand, hundreds of international rescue workers have been spending their last waking hours for the past 11 days trying to get a group of 12 boys, ages 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old soccer coach who have been trapped in a cave after flooding caused by relentless monsoon rains. On July 2, rescue teams discovered all of the boys and their coach alive and in relatively good health, sheltering deep inside the cave complex. Outside, family and friends, who had gathered, welcomed the news. While the boys have been found, extracting them from the cave still remains a difficult task -- much of the return trip is underwater and even though pumps are lowering the water level, the rainfall is not letting up. Here's what's happening and what officials are planning to get them out.
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be anxious for a farewell visit to Washington in October,' says retired Ambassador K C Singh, 'but bending backwards on America's PRISM policy is going to earn him scorn at home and contempt abroad.'
The Sino-Pakistan relationship remains fundamentally asymmetrical: Pakistan wants more out of its ties with China than China is willing to offer. Today, when Pakistan's domestic problems are gargantuan, China would be very cautious in involving itself even more, says Harsh V Pant.
Can we make high speed 4G Internet available at 10 cents per GB, and make all voice calls free of cost -- that too in a large and diverse country like India? Can we make high-quality but simple breast cancer screening available to every woman, that too at the extremely affordable cost of $1 per scan? Can we make a portable, high-tech ECG machine which can provide reports immediately and that too at the cost of 8 cents a test? Can we make an eye imaging device that is portable, non-invasive and costs 3 times less that conventional devices? Can we make a robust test for mosquito-borne dengue, which can detect the disease on day 1, and that too at the cost of $2 per test? Amazingly, says Dr R A Mashelkar, the eminent scientist, all this has been achieved in India, not only by using technological innovation but also non-technological innovation.
November 12 marks 25 years of the beginning of the World Wide Web. Shivanand Kanavi gives us the story of how it all began.
A number of Xooglers are employing lessons and practices learnt during their stint at Google to branch out into innovative ventures.
How to deal with a country that has made export of terror a reason to make the world notice and fund it? Rediff.com contributor Sanjeev Nayyar offers a few suggestions
Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad believes governance finally on track. An exclusive chat with Rashme Sehgal.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
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