KATHMANDU: You can’t have an office in the backseat of a Maruti. Not a comfortable one in any case and The Lincoln Lawyer says that all you need to be a courtroom coyote is a large car, a cell phone and lowlifes to defend. Taken from the brilliant Michaeal Connelly’s book, the film confuses you in a delightful way until it sorts you out. Here you have the eponymous lawyer defending a fresh faced child who says, “I want to be tried” and so begins a thriller that takes you from the dredges of Los Angeles into prison cells and courtrooms and allows you to meet motorcycle ...
Published On: 2011-06-03

KATHMANDU: Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the badminton hall on the top floor of the Bull’s Club in Nakkhu turns into a big top as a dozen teenagers learning different tricks in the lengths of white silk cloth, hoop and trapeze suspended from the ceiling. Eager and enthusiastic, these teenagers are busy trying to better their circus skills with dreams of becoming professional circus artistes. But things weren’t always rosy for them. There was a time when even the word circus was a nightmare for them. Most of these teenagers were rescued from different circuses around India b...
Published On: 2011-06-03

BERLIN: The death toll in Europe from the outbreak of a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria rose to at least 19 Friday when an 80-year-old woman succumbed to the infection in Germany, authorities said. The woman died in a hospital in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the state health office in Rostock reported. All but one of the deaths from enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) poisoning, which broke out last month, have been in Germany but infections have been reported in 11 other countries. Regional German health authorities have reported more than 2,000 cases of people fa...
Published On: 2011-06-03

BEIJING: The Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of launching a global "Internet war" to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China. The accusations Friday by Chinese military academy scholars, and their urging of tougher policing of the Internet, followed allegations this week that computer hackers in China had compromised the personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including government officials, military personnel and political activists. Google traced t...
Published On: 2011-06-03

SINGAPORE: Apple's iPad and other tablet computers are replacing traditional note pads in some Asian schools and making the lives of thousands of students a whole lot easier. Soon pupils could be reading on their tablets about a quaint old communication device called "paper", especially in Asia's advanced economies where many schools are racing towards a paperless classroom. The slim glass slabs slip easily into a bag and can store thousands of textbooks, making a fat school bag full of heavy books, pens and notepads a thing of the past. "I like the iPad because it is portabl...
Published On: 2011-06-03

WASHINGTON: Hackers have claimed to have compromised more than one million passwords, email addresses and other information from SonyPictures.com in the latest cyberattack on the Japanese electronics giant. The claim was made by a group of hackers calling themselves "Lulz Security," who published a number of files online containing lists of thousands of stolen email addresses and passwords. "We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1,000,000 users' personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-i...
Published On: 2011-06-03

NEW DELHI: South Asian art scaled a new high in the European auction market with a 14th century Nepali painting, ‘Vasudhara Mandala’ selling for £825,250 at Sotheby’s in London — a world record for a work of its class, a statement by Sotheby’s said on June 2. The painting, by Jasaraja Jirila, went under the hammer on June 1. It was from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection of Islamic and Indian art — a repository of Indian and Islamic art collected by Welch, an American scholar and Harvard teacher. Vasudhara Mandala was painted by Jasaraja Jirila in 1365...
Published On: 2011-06-02

KATHMANDU: Keeping the roots of rock genre in mind, Prism band is going to rock Bhumi at Lazimpat with the classic beats of rock and roll. “We are going to play the tunes from 1960s, 1970s and 1980s,”shared Pemba Lepcha of the band. Besides Lepcha, the band comprises of Dev Rana, Subarna Limbu and Dipak Thapa. And these musicians will be on the stage of the second leg of the Golden Moments Tribute to Rock to be held on June 2. It is also the second time the band is performing in the festival that pays tribute to classic rock. “We are also going to do a bit of heavy rock and...
Published On: 2011-06-02

KATHMANDU: In the 1940s Lady Eve Balfour wrote a book called The Living Soil which promoted organic farming, two years before which Jerome Rodale was the pioneer in the US in this method of farming. Both were a direct result of unhealthy food provided by the post-industrial revolution haste to get good looking but unhealthy fruits and vegetables to department stores and markets, and into households. In our very own Nepal, Samir Newa is a relentless Crusader for Nepalis both locals and visitors to eat healthy. His Bu Keba restaurant is a showcase of what he does. For example, his Chicken Momos...
Published On: 2011-06-02

HAVANA: Raul Castro is in a jovial mood on the eve of his 80th birthday, joking that he's in better shape than many 60-year-olds. The Cuban president bantered with reporters at the Havana airport as he saw off Brazil's ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Castro noted that he joins the ranks of octogenarians Friday and asked, "How do I look?" He quipped: "How many old men of 60 are there who aren't in my shape?"...
Published On: 2011-06-02