Gift ideas are needed year-round. And gifts for geeks can be particularly tough to find — especially for the giver who might not be up to date on the latest gadgets. Here’s some help. The gift ideas below — some of them wild and wacky — should be sure-fire hits to just about any tech fan for whom you need to find a quick gift.
The United States space agency, Nasa, faced tough questions on Friday over a report that astronauts had shown up for duty drunk and also that workers found a sabotaged computer destined for an imminent mission. The troubled Nasa planned to hold a news conference later on Friday to address the alarming report.
Washington is seeking closer ties with Libya now that the Bulgarian medics case is resolved and the first tangible sign is a likely visit this year by top diplomat Condoleezza Rice. There are also other expected plans to boost cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries while increasing business links.
The United States is looking at deepening sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his supporters but will continue to provide humanitarian aid, a senior US official said on Wednesday. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Fraser also urged South Africa to push for concrete results.
The United States on Monday signed an aid pact with Lesotho in which the impoverished African country would receive -million to stem poverty. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Lesotho’s Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili witnessed the signing of the agreement.
With the recent release of reams of phone records from a woman accused of running a Washington prostitution ring, bloggers and others online have taken up the cause of hunting for links to elected officials and other prominent people. Bloggers, many of them liberal, are scouring the records and publishing what they find.
Al-Qaeda has dug a deeper foothold in North Africa than ever before with the merger in recent months of a number of terrorist cells there, the United States Defence Secretary said on Friday. Robert Gates told reporters that the terrorist groups in the Maghreb are closely affiliated to al-Qaeda.
The White House hit back on Tuesday in a bid to stem a growing Republican revolt over Iraq strategy, as Democrats drove home a searing attack on President George Bush over the war. The president’s spokesperson, Tony Snow, pushed back against reports Iraq would meet no benchmarks on political and military progress in an interim assessment due later this week.
Beverly Sills, one of the most popular American opera singers of the 1960s and 1970s, died on July 2 of cancer, New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced. She was 78. ”The soprano died in her home in Manhattan on July 2 after a brief battle with inoperable lung cancer,” the Met said in a statement, quoting her manager, Edgar Vincent.
A debate is intensifying inside the White House over whether President George Bush should try to prevent more Republican defections by announcing intentions for a gradual withdrawal of troops from high-casualty Iraqi areas, the New York Times said on Monday.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Israel and the West Bank this month to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, making her first trip to the region since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. An official said Rice hoped to ”move forward” on Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A combination of two experimental Aids drugs can help control the deadly virus in people who are infected with highly resistant forms, an international team of researchers reported on Thursday. The two drugs — called etravirine, or TMC125, and darunavir, or TMC114 — are both made by Tibotec Pharmaceuticals.
Seasoned travellers know that the key to a great vacation is great preparation. The means taking care of many details beforehand: where to go, what to pack, where to stay and how to afford it all. Thankfully, the internet makes the chore of vacation planning easier than ever before. Never has there been so much information available so readily.
Days after his departure from the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz has joined the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as a visiting scholar, the conservative think tank announced on Monday. The AEI said Wolfowitz will focus on development issues, particularly in Africa, and on public-private partnerships.
A deal between Starbucks and Ethiopia that ends their trademark dispute and offers more benefits to Ethiopian coffee farmers has been hailed as a potential model for other poor nations seeking to better use the modern trading system, especially the often-controversial intellectual property rights provisions.
A mechanical monster grabs the F-14 fighter jet and chews through one wing and then another, ripping off the Tomcat’s appendages before moving on to its guts. Finally, all that is left is a pile of shredded rubble. The Pentagon is paying a contractor to destroy old F-14s rather than sell the spares at the risk of their falling into the wrong hands.
In many respects, Michael Moore’s new documentary movie, Sicko, is like a trial for those who oversee healthcare in the United States. The industry — doctors, drug makers, hospitals and insurers — is charged with greed and putting personal interests above those of patients. But one aspect missing from the film is the defence.
Losing email can cost you both lost time and opportunity. That’s because most of us have valuable information stored in our email programs — addresses, contact information and appointments, and some of it can be difficult or impossible to replace. Backing up your email, therefore, is essential.
Facing stirrings of Republican revolt over Iraq and domestic policy disappointment, United States President George Bush can at least point to the Supreme Court for an enduring legacy. The US’s ultimate constitutional arbiter has tilted rightwards under Bush — a shift that could endure for decades.
United States President George Bush suffered a major defeat on his plan to overhaul US immigration laws on Thursday when the Senate refused to close debate and advance the legislation. The Bill would have given a path to US citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
A United States court on Monday ruled against a man seeking $54-million from the Korean immigrant owners of a dry cleaners who, he said, lost his pants despite a promise of "satisfaction guaranteed". Roy Pearson alleged that Custom Cleaners lost his trousers and misled him with a sign promising satisfaction.
The World Bank on Monday unanimously approved Robert Zoellick as its president after a controversial two-year term by Paul Wolfowitz, who agreed to resign over a promotion scandal involving his companion. Zoellick, former United States deputy secretary of state and trade representative, was the only nominee for the job.
A senator is proposing a modest step to improve the efficiency of food aid donations from the United States, but the plan falls short of the Bush administration’s vision for reform. The US would spend -million over four years on pilot projects to vet aid donations that use crops purchased in developing countries.
Sudan and seven other sub-Saharan African countries are among the 10 nations in the world most vulnerable to violent internal conflict and deteriorating conditions, according to a private survey. In the third annual ”failed state” index, Sudan was judged most at risk of failure.
From the steamy to the bizarre and the downright embarrassing, the marathon grind of the 2008 White House campaign is rich with missteps, mirth and melodies. When a racy brunette in a steamy video declares a crush on Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, it’s clear that the hoopla surrounding this election is like nothing that came before.
They range from surgeons and scholars to illiterate refugees from some of the world’s worst hellholes — a dizzyingly varied stream of African immigrants to the United States. More than one million strong and growing, they are enlivening American cities and altering how the nation confronts its racial identity.
A convicted double murderer in Texas is holding a joke contest on the internet so he can use the winning entry as his last words when he is sentenced to die by lethal injection on June 26. Convicted of murdering two neighbours in 1991, Patrick Knight has spent the past 16 years on death row in Texas.
Everyone looks forward to summertime — but computers hate it. That’s because along with summertime comes a computer’s worst enemy: heat. Too much heat can cause hard drives to fail prematurely and entire systems to become slower and less stable.
Libya, citing cost and liability concerns, has informed the United States of plans to back out of a contract to destroy its mustard gas stocks as promised under a landmark 2003 agreement, United States officials said. The State Department played down the development and insisted Tripoli remains committed to getting rid of its chemical weapons agents.
A White House-backed Bill to revamp United States immigration laws stalled in the US Senate on Thursday, handing President George Bush a major legislative setback. The sharply divided Senate refused to limit debate on the fragile compromise hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House.
Former White House aide Lewis ”Scooter” Libby was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison for perjury and obstruction in a case which also put a glaring spotlight on the flawed United States case for waging war against Iraq. Libby, formerly one of the most trusted aides to US Vice-President Dick Cheney, was convicted in March for lying to federal investigators.
United States Democratic Representative William Jefferson, accused of hiding 000 of intended bribes in his freezer, was charged on Monday with soliciting bribes and paying off a Nigerian official. Jefferson (63) a member of Congress since 199, faces a maximum of 235 years in prison if convicted.