| Special Report: In satellite tech race, China hitched a ride from Europe Posted: 22 Dec 2013 12:55 PM PST  By David Lague HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese leader Xi Jinping has exhorted the People's Liberation Army "to get ready to fight and win wars" and "to win regional warfare under information technology-oriented conditions." For now, China's sprawling defense industries and research laboratories are relying on a high-tech short cut. In a vast and carefully coordinated effort, China is scouring the globe for know-how that can be coupled with domestic innovation to produce strategic weapons and equipment. A year ago this month, technicians at a maker of satellite navigation gear in the Belgian town of Leuven worked over the year-end holidays to test one such breakthrough. China had help - and it came from European Union headquarters in Brussels, just down the road from Leuven.
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| Iraq's Maliki vows to act against 'Qaeda' protest site Posted: 22 Dec 2013 11:31 AM PST  Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Sunday that an anti-government sit-in has become a headquarters for Al-Qaeda, and called for protesters to depart before security forces move in. If security forces move against the site, where Sunni Arab demonstrators have gathered for almost a year, it would likely inflame widespread discontent among the minority community and could add to the already-rampant violence plaguing the country. Maliki's remarks came a day after a disastrous military operation against militants in the mostly Sunni Anbar province west of Baghdad, in which five senior officers and 10 other soldiers were killed. "I say clearly and honestly that the sit-in site in Anbar has turned into a headquarters for the leadership of Al-Qaeda," Maliki, a Shiite, said in remarks broadcast Sunday on Iraqiya state TV.
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| Army chaplain beats cancer, runs SC marathon Posted: 22 Dec 2013 07:57 AM PST  FORT JACKSON, S.C. (AP) — While deployed in Iraq in 2007, Army Chaplain Jeremiah Catlin discovered a lump growing on his chest. Evacuated to a military hospital, the 32-year-old was told he had Stage 4 melanoma cancer and that he should spend a last Christmas with his family since he had less than a year to live.
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| What the Middle East would be like without Christians Posted: 22 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST In a city heralded as the place where Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary, the church is something of a modern miracle. Thousands of Christians in Bethlehem have faced similar political and economic strife over the past few decades, leading many of them to flee the city where Christianity's central figure was born in a straw-filled manger. Christians, who once made up 80 percent of the population, now represent 20 to 25 percent. Khoury's unflinching faith is something that more Christians may have to summon – not only here in the Holy Land but across the entire Middle East. |
| Robots to the rescue at international trials in Florida Posted: 21 Dec 2013 08:57 PM PST  By Zachary Fagenson HOMESTEAD (Reuters) - As a squat, red-and-black robot nicknamed CHIMP gingerly pushed open a spring-loaded door a gust of wind swooped down onto the track at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and slammed the door shut, eliciting a collective sigh of disappointment from the audience. The robot, developed by the Tartan Rescue team from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, was one of 17 competing in the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. ...
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