Wikipedia as a Printed Book

The English edition of Wikipedia Encyclopedia contains around 3 million articles as of now and if someone were to print the entire Wikipedia encyclopedia into a book, the size of that book would roughly be equivalent to 952 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.


This Wikipedia book has some 5,000 pages and it’s a compilation of 400+ featured articles all picked from Wikipedia. And, as you can easily make out from the photographs, the book is huge - it’s about 1ft 7in. high which is like placing 4 iPod Touch devices on top of each other.

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bab-ili: Ruins of Babylon - Iraq

Some 90 kilometres south of modern Bagdhad lies the ruins of ancient Babylon, the original name of which, "bab-ili", may be translated as "the Gate of the Gods". For the world at large, Babylon ranks as one of the most famous cities of antiquity, renowned alike for its refinement, beauty and magnificence. In classical times, the city walls of Babylon were spoken of with admiration and astonishment, while her "Hanging Gardens" were accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World.


As a center of culture and government, it flourished for about fifteen centuries, from the arrival of the Amorites ca. 1850 B.C. down to Alexander the Great, who died there in 322 B.C. One of the best known of the city's early rulers was the great law-giver, Hammurabi.

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Largest Statue: Great Sphinx of Giza - Egypt

A reclining lion with a human head that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile, near modern-day Cairo, is the largest monolith statue in the world. Standing 73.5 m (241 ft) long, 6 m (20 ft) wide, and 20 m (65 ft) high, the Great Sphinx of Giza is also the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians in the third millennium BCE. The Great Sphinx faces due east and houses a small temple between its paws.

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Kashmir belongs to Pakistan or India ?

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.

When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath.’


He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.’

The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, ‘What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.’

The Indian representative smiled and said, ‘And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.’

And they say Kashmir belongs to them………………………………………..

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Wind-It: Practical Form of Energy

Designers Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin and Raphael Menard were faced with the issue of how to make wind power a more practical form of energy.
The result was Wind-it, an electrical tower/wind turbine hybrid. What is great about the design is that the wind turbine fits within already existing electrical towers, essentially removing the debate about where best to locate wind turbines.







The design just won the Next Generation design competition for its advanced thinking yet great simplicity. The Wind-it seems like the best of both worlds!
Wind-it answers one of the greatest challenges to the development of wind power: where to site wind turbines. Choppin, Delon and Menard’s design uses existing infrastructure - the towers and pylons that dot the more than 157,000 miles of high voltage power lines in the U.S. - to locate their turbines, which can be stacked within already sited structures. Moreover, Wind-it solves the problem of linking energy generation and electricity transmission in the same way - by co-locating them.

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I Hate Love

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore.


Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.
I hate love”.

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40 FACTS ABOUT SLEEP YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW...

-The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.


- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

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Canadian Belly Dance Diva in a Swirl of Colors

She prefers to be known as just Belly Dance Diva. This belly dancer from Canada is trying to make the dance form popular in India, and says that Bollywood choreography makes her laugh


Belly Dance Diva, as she’d like to be called, says that it’s not uncommon for belly dancers to have a professional name and keep their real name private. “Most belly dancers in the world are not known by their real names. They all have a professional name. I’m known as the Belly Dance Diva and I like it. I want to keep my private and personal lives separate,” she says.
She was in Delhi recently, and was pretty gung-ho about being in India. Originally from Canada, she came to India about 10 months ago to learn yoga, and dreams of settling down here with her yoga instructor boyfriend, whom she met in Pune. How did she start dancing? “I’ve been dancing since the age of five. I tried all sorts of dances – hip-hop, salsa, jazz, even break dance – but I wanted to do more than just dance. I wanted to teach dancing to others. I actually started my career as a teacher and taught French for five years in a school in Canada. I find teaching a rewarding career. So when I started learning belly dance, I knew that it was the one kind of dance that I wanted people to learn,” she says.
She adds that in India, belly dance is seen more as a form of exercise rather than as a dance form. “Belly dance is new to India. People here see it as an exercise rather than a dance. But I think India is ready to learn it as a dance form as well,” she says. “I also feel that there are many misconceptions about belly dance, and maybe that’s why it hasn’t become that popular in India yet. It’s not a seductive dance form designed to catch a man’s eye. It is supposed to be an expression of your soul because it is a solo dance, not a group dance,” she says.
On the subject of belly dance in Bollywood, she says that it is often confused with cabaret. “I have shot for some Bollywood films and a few south Indian movies. In my next film, Cricket, I’ll be performing with Jackie Shroff. I got the offer because the movie needed a belly dancer. I would love to teach actresses and choreographers how to properly perform belly dance in their song sequences,” she says. She also says that she finds mainstream Bollywood dance sequences very “funny”. “I haven’t met too many Bollywood choreographers, but I think there’s a lot of freestyle dancing used in Bollywood song sequences. There’s so much time crunch that there is no time for rehearsals. I find Bollywood dance sequences very funny. I just find the movies very funny. The first time I watched a Bollywood dance sequence, it looked like a bunch of college kids who’d decided to make a joke of the movements!” she laughs.

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What divorce does to children...

It may be more socially acceptable and common, but divorce today has the same kind of devastating effect on a kid’s prospects in life as it did years ago. The National Child Development Study was carried out in the UK, and as a part of it researchers tracked around 17,000 people born during one week in 1958 – a time when divorce was subject to much greater social stigma. Their lives were then compared to people born in earlier and later years.
To their surprise, the researchers found that even with greater acceptance of divorce, the effect on kids’ lives remained the same, reports a newspaper. “It might be expected that as divorce has become more commonplace, its effects might have reduced. Yet a comparison with children born in 1970 shows that this is not the case,” the researchers write. They noted that kids from broken homes are still likely to lack qualifications and benefits and suffer from depression. “The estimates are surprisingly similar in magnitude and not significantly different from one another,” the NCDS team say.
Divorce, the report stated, still “has repercussions that reverberate through childhood and into adulthood.” It added, “Children from disrupted families tend to do less well in school and subsequent careers than their peers. They are also more likely to experience the break-up of their own partnerships.”
Mansi Pillai moved to another city after her divorce to avoid unpleasant situations with her former husband. “Divorce may be more acceptable now in that a divorcee is not looked at as an outcast or with a fair amount of suspicion, but the children suffer, mentally and psychologically.” She gives the example of her son who stays with her “but misses the father figure in his life. He goes into depression fairly often and throws tantrums which are very difficult to deal with. What’s worse, he becomes aggressive and violent at the drop of a hat. I’ll soon have to take him to a counsellor,” she says. Anita Samuel, wonders why her parents couldn’t make a go of their marriage. “I hate it when people ask me why my parents broke up. In fact, my attempts to explain things become pathetic and embarrassing. I miss that secure, warm ‘complete family’ feeling that I see in my friends’ homes and envy them for that.” Anita’s friend Sonal, wonders if that’s the reason she flits from one relationship to the other. Anita often confesses to her that this is because she feels her relationships are doomed because her parents’ marriage ended in a divorce.

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21 Rules of Life

1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

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2. Work at something you enjoy and that's worthy of your time and talent.

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3. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

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4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

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5. Be forgiving of yourself and others.

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6. Be generous.

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7. Have a grateful heart.

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8. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

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9. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary.

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10. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

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11. Commit yourself to constant improvement.

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12. Commit yourself to quality.

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13. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationship with people you love and respect.

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14. Be loyal.

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15. Be honest.

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16. Be a self-starter.

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17. Be decisive even it it means you'll sometimes be wrong.

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18. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.

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19. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.

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20. Take good care of those you love.

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21. Don't do anything that wouldn't make your Mom proud.

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Five Steps Towards Greater Self Confidence

We watch the star athlete calmly make the final shot, score the winning goal, or lead his team for a touchdown in the final minute of the game. We marvel at their talent and their determination, but what we value and admire most is the supreme confidence they display – they know they will succeed.

Confidence is an attribute that is alluring, attractive, valuable, desirable and contagious. Most everyone aspires to greater levels of it, even if they feel confident most of the time. It is a trait that will help us create greater results for ourselves and when leading others. Any trait with this much benefit is one worth developing. And yes, you can develop and strengthen your confidence.

Consider these five steps as the building blocks for greater confidence in any part of your life.

1. Remind yourself of past successes. Confidence builds on past success. Since you have had success before, you can (and will) have it again. We strengthen our confidence in any activity when we review or remind ourselves of past successes. If you are trying to build confidence in a new area, past success can still help us strengthen our confidence. For example, if you have had success in doing something new in the past, review those experiences when trying something else new – even if it is in an entirely different part of your life.

2. Read and listen to positive materials. Fill your mind with positive and affirming words, ideas and stories. Read things that enhances your skills or knowledge in the area in which you want to build your confidence. Read materials that are generally uplifting and affirming, and read biographies of successful people. You will find that many of them had troubles in life, came from tough situations and still succeeded. If you have ever thought, “Well, if they can do, I could too.” Then you realize that we can build our confidence by reading about others stories. Reading and listening to positive materials is about reinforcement, encouragement, and learning. All three of these components are needed for greater confidence.

3. See your future success. Olympic athletes, corporate executives, and successful people in all sorts of endeavors visualize future success. Confidence will grow when we see ourselves succeeding. Think about it, if you know you will succeed, your confidence will soar, right? Visualizing future success does that very thing for us. Our minds cannot tell the difference between something real and something vividly imagined. So vividly visualize your success. What will it look like, smell like, and taste like to have succeeded? Who will be with you, what will you be hearing and where will you be? How will you be feeling at that moment? Putting this much detail into your vivid picture improves the likelihood of success, and supports greater confidence!

4. Reframe failure. Thomas Edison spent a long time trying to create an incandescent light bulb – to create light from electricity. He is attributed with saying, “I have not failed, I have discovered twelve hundred materials that don’t work.” 1,200! Perhaps you feel you can reframe your failures as learning experiences – as a chance to find out what doesn’t work. But would you be able to do so 1,200 times? Know that failures will occur - and your confidence won’t be as shaken when they come. Use the failures as an opportunity to learn. Realize that every failure puts you that much closer to success. When we reframe our failure as a learning experience we reduce our fear and increase our confidence.

5. Take confident action. You wanted confidence to help you try and succeed in new ways, right? So get out there and get at it! You have to put your confidence to the test. You have to practice. And, while you are taking action, make it confident action! Remember that if you act confident, you will be more confident. Review the other steps you have been taking to build your confidence. If you are driving towards your new action step, remind yourself of past successes, again. Visualize the successful outcome, again. Build your confidence at every step of the way, but remember it all must lead to action.

These steps are a regimen for strengthening and building your confidence in any life situation. Use these steps and I am confident, you will be more confident

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Nariman Point 6th in World!

Slips Two Spots While Worli Is Ranked 10th; Hong Kong On Top

Mumbai: The city emerged as the sixth most expensive office location in the world, according to Office Space Across the World 2009, a report by global property consultants Cushman & Wakefield.
Nariman Point, the commercial business district (CBD) of India’s financial capital, however, slipped two positions from last year’s fourth rank, moving towards more cost effective rentals. It has given way to Moscow (fourth) and Dubai (fifth) on the list.
The study compares office occupancy costs in 202 key locations across 57 countries around the world. Significantly, London lost its status
as the world’s most expensive office location for the first time in nine years as rental values corrected by 23% in West End.
Honk Kong emerged as the most expensive office location in the world while Worli in Mumbai and CBD in New Delhi occupied the 10th and 12th positions, respectively.
The ranking is compiled from the location with the most expensive occupancy cost in each country monitored. Rents, which form the largest part of occupancy costs, are calculated on a net internal basis.
“With the slowdown in the global economy, many corporates eased or postponed their expansion plans in Mumbai, resulting in subdued demand for office space. As a result, Mumbai witnessed an overall vacancy of about 12% in 2008, which is significantly higher than the previous 4-5% vacancy recorded in 2007,’’ said the report.
Vacancy in this CBD inched closer to 5% in 2008 as compared to 1%-2% in 2007 on account of restrained demand and low renewals of expired lease agreements by corporates, leading to a drop in rental values at Nariman Point by 9%.

Worli witnessed a correction of approximately 13% in rental values in 2008 over the previous year. In 2007, Worli grew by 33% over 2006-07 largely due to limited supply.
The location, which was
fast emerging as a hub for industries such as banking and finance, IT/ITeS and media, among others, saw a drop in activities owing to the global slowdown and a general consensus that it had reach very high price points. “Worli recorded vacancy of approximately 7% in 2008 as against 2% recorded in 2007, it said.
In the global ranking, although rents in Hong Kong fell 4% in 2008, the much larger 23% fall in London’s West End pushed occupancy costs down further to US$ 183 per sq ft per annum. According to the report, the cost of space in Tokyo now stands at US $ 190 per sq ft per annum, a fall of 19% in 2008.

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Obama pitching a broad economic case to nation

WASHINGTON – Barreling ahead on a mammoth agenda, Barack Obama is ready to offer a detailed sketch of the first year of his presidency, casting the nation's bleeding economy as a tangle of tough, neglected problems.

In a prime-time speech from the House of Representatives, Obama will make his case Tuesday that much more has to be done to turn around the economy — a message he knows he must explain.

Already, the nation is nearly dizzy keeping up with what's emerged from Washington during Obama's first weeks as president, from a staggering $787 billion stimulus plan to a revamped bailout for the financial sector to a rescue plan for struggling homeowners.

Although Obama is too new in office to be delivering a State of the Union address, his speech will have all the same trappings. It comes two days before he delivers a budget blueprint to Congress. Unlike that detail-driven document, his address will be broad, spelling out what he wants and how he will do it.

The economy, in its worst tailspin in decades, will dominate. Obama will touch on foreign policy, but that will largely be left for other upcoming speeches. This will not be a rollout of one policy initiative after another.

Obama will make clear that the trillion-dollar-plus deficit is one he "inherited." In other words, he wants to remind people that President George W. Bush and the previous Congress left him a big hole, forcing him to pursue the costly stimulus package.

On Congress' turf, the president will spell out how he thinks all the economic pieces are entwined.

So he will push for movement on ensuring health coverage for all Americans. He will seek to expand educational opportunities, and diversify the country's energy sources, and contain sacred entitlements like Social Security, and halve the soaring budget deficit in four years.

Gunning for so much at once is complicated, both in terms of the issues themselves and the politics. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod acknowledged Monday there is a risk in taking on too much.

"I think the bigger concern," he said, "is to not be aggressive at a time when a tepid approach could really consign us to a long-term economic catastrophe. We believe the times demand vigor and aggressive action, and so we're having to do a lot of things at once."

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Obama's speech amounts to a coming-out party.

"You never know what a salesman's going to sell you until he shows up at your door," Issa said of his expectations. "If he gives us a narrow set of priorities that can be executed, and they don't just involve more spending, then I think it will be refreshing. If he gives us a long laundry list, which most presidents do, then although it will set the agenda ... it won't be as meaningful."

In many ways, though, Obama will be speaking directly to the American people. Daily followers of Obama's rhetoric are not likely to be surprised by Obama's words, some of which will be repeats. He is trying to reach millions of people who don't get to hear him every day.

So Obama will say that the crises facing the nation are so large they can only be solved in bipartisan ways. He will be blunt about the country's woes but try to balance that talk with optimism. He will talk about his travels as president so he can focus on the stories of communities outside Washington.

The president is also likely to put the often jargon-filled world of economic life in plainer terms.

He did so Monday in saying that the yearly deficit — the difference between the government collects and what it spends — is not some abstract accounting problem. It requires paying interest on debt. Obama said that interest cost $250 billion in 2008 alone, more than three times what was spent on education.

There is sure to be ceremony as Obama arrives in the well of the House. His speech is tentatively at 45 minutes, accounting for applause time.

Yet it comes during a daily drumbeat of depressing economic news. Investors haven't warmed to the Obama administration's steps so far.

On Monday, Wall Street took another pounding, with the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling to its lowest close since 1997.

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Clinton in China pushes environment, finance

BEIJING – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chinese officials agreed Saturday to focus their governments' efforts on stabilizing the battered global economy and combating climate change, putting aside long-standing concerns about human rights.

After a morning of talks during her inaugural visit to China as America's top diplomat, Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said a regular U.S.-China dialogue on economic issues would be expanded to include troubling security issues.

"It is essential that the United States and China have a positive, cooperative relationship," Clinton told reporters at a joint news conference with Yang. She said that they also agreed on the need to develop clean energy technology that would use renewable sources and safely store the dirty emissions from burning coal.

With the export-heavy Chinese economy reeling from the U.S. downturn, Clinton sought to reassure China that its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury notes and other government debt would remain a good investment.

"I appreciate greatly the Chinese government's continuing confidence in United States treasuries. I think this is well-grounded confidence," she said. "We have every reason to believe that the United States and China will recover, and together we will help lead the world recovery."

Yang said China wants its foreign exchange reserves — the world's largest at $1.95 trillion — invested safely, with good value and liquidity. He said future decisions on using them would be based on those principles, but added that China wanted to continue work with the U.S.

"I want to emphasize here that the facts speak louder than words. The fact is that China and the United States have conducted good cooperation, and we are ready to continue to talk with the U.S. side," Yang said.

Beijing is the last, and some analysts say, the most important stop on Clinton's weeklong visit to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China. She was to meet China's president and premier as well as tour a geothermal power plant before leaving Sunday.

Along with cooperating on the financial crisis and climate change, the United States wants China to step up efforts to address threats like Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs and tenuous security situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In addition, Clinton said the U.S. would like to see China play a positive role in Myanmar and Sudan, two countries which receive large Chinese investments but whose governments are at odds with Washington.

The emphasis on the global economy, climate change and security highlight the growing importance of U.S.-China relations, which have often soured over disagreements on human rights.

But ahead of the talks, Clinton signaled that China's poor human rights record, while still of deep concern to the United States, would not be at the top of her agenda.

She noted that both sides already knew the other's positions on the matter and said that human rights concerns "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises."

Her comments drew immediate fire from rights groups who said they sent the wrong message, undermined efforts to promote basic freedoms in China and squandered Washington's leverage with Beijing.

Asked to respond to the criticism, Clinton said "the promotion of human rights is an essential aspect of our global foreign policy," noting in particular the issues of Tibet, religious freedom and freedom of expression.

"Human rights are part of our comprehensive agenda," she said.

But she added that the work of civic groups and private advocates that she has highlighted is "at least as important in building respect for and making progress on human rights" as government-to-government contact.

Yang appeared pleased by Clinton's reply, saying China was happy to engage on human rights with the United States but only "on the basis of equality and noninterference in each other's internal affairs."

Authorities in Beijing are facing a difficult year on the rights front as they try to muffle dissent ahead of politically sensitive anniversaries: 20 years since the crushing of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement and 50 since the failed Tibetan uprising that forced the Dalai Lama to flee into exile.

Beijing has already tightened security in Tibetan areas across western China, which erupted in anti-Chinese government protests last March.

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Newest US troops in dangerous region near Kabul

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Close to 3,000 American soldiers who recently arrived in Afghanistan to secure two violent provinces near Kabul have begun operations in the field and already are seeing combat, the unit's spokesman said Monday.
The new troops are the first wave of an expected surge of reinforcements this year. The process began to take shape under President George Bush but has been given impetus by President Barack Obama's call for an increased focus on Afghanistan.
U.S. commanders have been contemplating sending up to 30,000 more soldiers to bolster the 33,000 already here, but the new administration is expected to initially approve only a portion of that amount. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday the president would decide soon.
The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces.
Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterhozer, the brigade spokesman, said.
Several roadside bombs also have exploded next to the unit's MRAPs — mine-resistance patrol vehicles — but caused no casualties, he said.
"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Ostehozer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."
Commanders are in the planning stages of larger scale operations expected to be launched in the coming weeks.
Militant activity has spiked in Logar and Wardak over the last year as the resurgent Taliban has spread north toward Kabul from its traditional southern power base. Residents say insurgents roam wide swaths of Wardak, a mountainous province whose capital is about 35 miles from Kabul.
The region has been covered in snow recently, but Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade, said last week that he expects contact with insurgents to increase soon.
"The weather has made it so the enemy activity is somewhat decreased right now, and I expect it to increase in the next two to three months," Haight said at a news conference.
Haight said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war."
Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"
Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.
Logar Gov. Atiqullah Ludin said at a news conference alongside Haight that U.S. troops will need to improve both security and the economic situation.
"There is a gap between the people and the government," Ludin said. "Assistance in Logar is very weak, and the life of the common man has not improved."
Ludin also urged that U.S. forces be careful and not act on bad intelligence to launch night raids on Afghans who turn out to be innocent.
It is a common complaint from Afghan leaders. President Hamid Karzai has long pleaded with U.S. forces not to kill innocent Afghans during military operations and says he hopes to see night raids curtailed.
Pointing to the value of such operations, the U.S. military said Monday that a raid in northwest Badghis province killed a feared militant leader named Ghulam Dastagir and eight other fighters.
Other raids, though, have killed innocent Afghans who were only defending their village against a nighttime incursion by forces they didn't know, officials say.
"We need to step back and look at those carefully, because the danger they carry is exponential," Ludin said.
Haight cautioned last week that civilian casualties could increase with the presence of his 2,700 soldiers.
"We understand the probability of increased civilian casualties is there because of increased U.S. forces," said the colonel, who has also commanded Special Operations task forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Our plan is to do no operations without ANA (Afghan army) and ANP (Afghan police), to help us be more precise."
The U.S. military and Afghan Defense Ministry announced last week that Afghan officers and soldiers would take on a greater role in military operations, including in specialized night raids, with the aim of decreasing civilian deaths.
The presence of U.S. troops in Wardak and Logar is the first time such a large contingent of American power has been so close to Kabul, fueling concerns that militants could be massing for a push at the capital. Haight dismissed those fears.
"Our provinces butt up against the southern boundary of Kabul and therefore there is the perception that Kabul could be surrounded," Haight said. "But the enemy cannot threaten Kabul. He's not big enough, he's not strong enough, he doesn't have the technology. He can conduct attacks but he can't completely disrupt the governance in Kabul."

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