Taliban vow suicide and "insider" attacks in new spring offensive

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban in Afghanistan vowed on Saturday to start a new campaign of mass suicide attacks on foreign military bases and diplomatic areas, as well as damaging "insider attacks", as part of a new spring offensive this year.

The offensive was announced via emails from Taliban spokesmen. The Islamist group has made similar announcements in recent years, which have sometimes been followed by spikes in violence after Afghanistan's harsh winter months.

The announcement of more mass suicide and insider attacks will likely be greeted with concern by the NATO-led military coalition, which is in the final stages of a fight against the Taliban-led insurgency that began in late 2001.

However, there was no immediate reaction to the Taliban's statement from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

After announcing their spring offensive last year, the Taliban launched a large attack in Kabul involving suicide bombers and an 18-hour firefight targeting Western embassies, ISAF headquarters and the Afghan parliament.

The start of the traditional "fighting season" is particularly important this year, with ISAF increasing the rate at which it hands security responsibility to Afghan forces before the withdrawal of most foreign troops by the end of 2014.

The Taliban statement said this year's offensive, named after Khalid bin Waleed, one of the companions of the Islamic prophet Mohammad, will involve "special military tactics" similar to those carried out previously.

"Collective martyrdom operations on bases of foreign invaders, their diplomatic centers and military airbases will be even further structured while every possible tactic will be utilized in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors," the statement said.

Insider attacks, also known as "green on blue" attacks, involve Afghan police or soldiers turning their guns on their ISAF trainers and counterparts. They have grown considerably since last year and have strained relations between Kabul and foreign forces.

However, there is considerable debate over how many can be attributed to infiltration by insurgents and how many are by disgruntled members of the Afghan security forces.

Last August, then ISAF commander, U.S. General John Allen, said about a quarter of such attacks involved the Taliban.

The spring offensive was coordinated to begin on May 28 - or the 8th of the Islamic month of Thaur - to coincide with a national holiday to mark the overthrow of the Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah in 1992, the statement said.

(Reporting by Dylan Welch and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-vow-suicide-insider-attacks-spring-offensive-071938216.html

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Parliament's Penal Code Committee to summon ... - Minivan News

Parliament?s committee responsible for the new Penal Code has decided to summon Chair of Adhaalath Party Religious Council and a member of Maldives Fiqh Academy,?Sheikh Ilyas Hussein.

The committee decided to summon Ilyas on the grounds that he had made ??misleading?? comments suggesting that the purpose of the penal code was to ?destroy the religion of Islam?.

The decision was made during last Thursday?s meeting. During the meeting, Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Nazim Rashad proposed that the committee summon Ilyas to clarify doubts he may have regarding the Penal Code and to clarify how much the Penal Code incorporated the principles and penalties in Islam.

According to local media, on March 22, Sheikh Ilyas held a religious sermon dubbed ?Purpose of Islamic Shariah? at the Furuqan Mosque after Isha Prayers, and there he swore to God that the Penal Code was made to destroy the religion of Islam.

Speaking to Minivan News today, the Chair of Penal Code Committee MDP MP Ahmed Hamza said the committee had asked the parliament secretariat to send notice to Sheikh Ilyas to produce himself before the committee on Tuesday.

?He has told the public that there are some provisions in the Penal Code that are not in it,? Hamza said. ?We want to bring him in and have a chat and inform him about the provisions that are there in the Penal Code.?

Hamza said the Penal Code included provisions stating that theft and fornication were crimes.

?It also has a provision on flogging,? Hamza added.

Local media reported that during the sermon, Ilyas had declared that the Penal Code did not have penalties for fornication, theft, corruption, forgery or robbery, and if a person commits a crime while intoxicated, the person is not subject to punishment. He also claimed that according to the new penal code, it was not a crime for two people to have?consensual?sex.

Ilyas declared that the Penal Code was ?a trap made by the West? to erase Islam in the name of Muslims, and vowed that he was ready to argue the point even if all the country?s lawyers came out against him.

Source: http://minivannews.com/society/parliaments-penal-code-committee-to-summon-sheikh-ilyas-for-misleading-public-57037

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WikiLeaks suspect won't be SF Pride parade marshal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Racing to stanch a flow of criticism, the president of San Francisco's annual gay pride celebration said Friday that the U.S. Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. secrets to the WikiLeaks website will not be an honorary grand marshal after all.

SF Pride Board President Lisa Williams said in a statement that an employee of the organization had prematurely notified imprisoned intelligence specialist Bradley Manning this week that he had been selected for the distinction, which recognizes about a dozen celebrities, politicians and community organizations each year for their contributions to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

"That was an error, and that person has been disciplined. He does not now, nor did he at that time, speak for SF Pride," Williams said.

A committee of former San Francisco Pride grand marshals did select the 25-year-old Manning, who is openly gay, for the honor, but the Pride Board decided his nomination would be a mistake, Williams said.

Manning's lawyers have argued that his experience as a soldier before the repeal of the U.S. military's ban on gay service played an important role in his decision to pass hundreds of thousands of sensitive items to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

"In point of fact, less than 15 people actually cast votes for Bradley Manning," Williams said. "However, as an organization with a responsibility to serve the broader community, SF Pride repudiates this vote."

While the event's grand marshals are typically celebrated as they wave from convertibles during a downtown San Francisco parade, naming Manning as one was destined to be a symbolic gesture. He is in custody at a military prison in Kansas while he awaits court-martial and would have been unable to attend the June 30 parade.

Earlier Friday, Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 leaked the classified information about the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers, had agreed to participate in the San Francisco parade on Manning's behalf, said Rainey Reitman, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network who had cheered the short-lived recognition.

"I and many other LGBT Manning supporters are deeply disappointed by this sudden change in position on the part of the committee," Reitman said. "Bradley is a gay American hero who sacrificed a great deal so we could learn the truth about our government, and he was fairly elected to serve as grand marshal in the parade."

Contingents of Manning supporters have marched in past pride parades, and will do so again this year in San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego and other cities, she said.

But other gay rights activists were less enthusiastic about celebrating Manning, arguing that he should not be honored either as an individual or as a representative of the gay rights movement.

"Manning's blatant disregard for the safety of our service members and the security of our nation should not be praised," said Stephen Peters, president of American Military Partners Association. The group, which advocates for same-sex military families, had called on the Pride Committee to rescind the invitation.

"No community of such a strong and resilient people should be represented by the treacherous acts that define Bradley Manning," Peters said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wikileaks-suspect-wont-sf-pride-parade-marshal-025956668.html

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Itihasa made itihasya...: Thoughts on education and learning...

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Reimagining education, learning and society...some ramblings

Schools, learning, teaching, universal access, textbooks and more ...Matters educational are tenuously holding centre stage in contemporary India where otherwise facetious debates on corruption, gender violence, caste and communal fracases, economic stimulus and likes, form the cynosure of public attention,?? determined and defined mostly by hyperventilating TV news anchors and some by scholars and experts? in ed and op ed pages of leading dailies. But in their discourses, issues connected to education emerge often in terms of numbers: poor enrollment, high drop out rates or when lamenting the qualitative aspects; poor infrastructure, pitiable computing, reading and writing abilities, ( resulting mostly from) woeful teaching standards.

However such concerns appear very normalizing wherein other knowledge paradigms and possibilities of learning and teaching is barely taken cognizance of. So even when the tardy enforcement of RTE, viewed to be a progressive legislation to universalize education in India,? is seen with dismay by many, it is largely done so, perhaps unconsciously, as failure to enforce and 'democratize' a standardized vision of learning which also embeds certain dominantly accepted epistemes and knowledge systems.

Issues I have with studies and reports like ASER and PROBE and the alarming inferences that many draw is the fact that learning and literacy are seen as a very formal attribute. One certainly cannot but concede that literacy is what makes abstraction possible and enhance the quality of perception, observation and is transformative. No one can really find fault with a processes that seeks to activate the abstraction capabilities, and scholars such as David Olson, Jack Goody and Walter Ong have argued? that it is literacy that sharpens if not shapes culture as well as cognition, and which separates 'primitive' from 'civilized' societies and that 'mastery of a written language affects not only the content of thought but also the process of thinking - how we classify, reason, remember.' (references here)? But as Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole contend the impact of literacy is complex and localized and cannot be described in terms of 'generalized changes in cognitive abilities'.??In this even Paulo Freire, the icon for critical schooling and political empowerment of the oppressed masses who envisaged a 'praxological' 'dialogic' form of pedagogy attempting to 'liberate' one from 'magical' consciousness to critical ability, stressed the act of reading and the importance of writing. However orality does continue in Freire's thought even when he privileges writing, reading as facilitating abstraction, in his emphasis of dialogue.? (reference here)? Dialogue is basically oral and in Freire's stress on reflexivity and praxis, he seeks to develop a sort of interior dialogue which links theory and action to social reality. When Freire suggests reading of the word has to be preceded by reading of the world, such an understanding is derived orally, '...even the spoken word flows from the reading of the world.' But since Freire's approach is democratic and egalitarian transformation through conscenciatization his goal, he adds that, '...we can say that reading the word is not just preceded by reading of the world but by certain form of writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious practical work. For me this dynamic movement is central to the literacy process.' (reference here)
Consequently some argue that Freire and his followers failed to realize that literacy itself is often a colonizing process that reinforces a modern form of individualism. (reference here)? Further let us consider the study of Thomas Farrell who had asserted that many Black students-particularly those from inner-city? backgrounds- in the US have been socialized? in the purely oral cognitive patterns of Black English, which is essentially a spoken rather than written language. Consequently he observed that they lack control of the full? panoply of conjugations and coordinating and subordinating syntax that distinguish standard written English which form a necessary matrix? for abstract and analytic thought. Donald Lazere a scholar of literacy and media who tried using literature that black students could relate to like autobiography of Malcolm X or James Baldwin's 'Notes of a Native Son' in his advanced literature classes expecting that working-class Black students might better be able to relate to the subject matter was thwarted by their difficulties with the syntactic and intellectual complexities. In this these students leaned on readers (guides) in? handling new vocabulary and allusions and clearing exams. Further another scholar Lisa Delpit, also concludes from her experience teaching? Black inner-city children that? they dislike the current neglect of standard form and mechanics and want instruction in the? formal skills they need to progress in schooling. (Reference here)? In India many Dalits too maintain a similar position who want to be 'equal participant' and seek 'empowerment' because the past for them means nothing - no worthwhile skills other than menial and extremely derogatory work and therefore memory of past is one of exploitation and oppression. In the present, a normative education (despite all the warts and problems) is certainly more liberating.? But needless to say such formal schooling does entrap us into normative and regulative socio-politico regime which far from being liberating becomes another oppressive institution of modernity.

Therefore does it mean modes of cognition, perception and learning which are tied more to the concrete, specific and tangible have outlived their utility and relevance? I also ask this - Did not orality also nurture superior craft skills which more than the literate sections of the populace sustained us for thousands of years - fed us, clothed us and helped us survive wars, epidemics and hunger? help us make beautiful monuments, art and also brought about understanding of human body, physical world and more?

Schools as operationalized in certain formal space and time, even when enabled by a sensitivity to evolve a curriculum which is cognizant of the childs' social and cultural experience, resulting in a child centred, socially and culturally appropriate pedagogy and an inter-disciplinary and integrated curriculum, has its inherent limitations. These are particularly exacerbated in our age and time of super specialization and performance - where formal exhibition of knowledge in the abstract thru tests and examination - has become sine qua non to prove one's accomplishment and one's employment worth.

Indeed the point is our sense of shock, despair and lament at such poor 'showing', would perhaps not be so profound if it were that these school drop outs could still sustain themselves in work that ensures good living wages facilitating a life of dignity and self respect. The issue many perhaps worry about here is the fact that India does not have a well equipped labour force to work either in factories or in cubicles. In such a scheme of things, where manufacturing (mass produced in conveyor belt form) and services ( particularly IT enabled) which is predicted to contribute the most to GDP, and a high GDP and growth rate would then give us something to brag about, is being jeopardized.

In dealing with this anxiety and satisfying globally benchmarked and defined norms of literacy, education and learning, variables like pedagogy, teacher training, textbooks etc are reframed to make it relevant to the most deprived children and consciously tailored to seek their empowerment. But yet even accounting for few who do and will benefit from these well meaning interventions derived from critical theories of Habermas and Friere, it will in the end precisely do that i.e. enhance only a few.

Nevertheless let us look it matters this way...what if we have a an economy where agriculture and crafts can continue to provide for one's existence (beyond hand to mouth as it were) something which can be more environmentally sustainable, less competitive and ensures that we do not as a society sink to ribald consumerism?

An example will perhaps help to make my point with greater clarity. I know this carpenter whose services we have been availing for more than 10 years. He is a carpenter par excellence but (and I use but with a slant) a school drop out. The way he determines the quality of wood, is able to cut the wood with finesse, shape it into beautiful chairs, tables and cots is seen to be believed. It is evident that his craft displays an acute understanding of mathematical and geometric proportions, weight, mass along with a deep sense of aesthetics. Now his whole skill can be abstracted and presented in terms of non-figurative and theoretical? knowledge through formulas, axioms, theorems, hypothesis etc to students in classrooms. And if my carpenter friend was to be seated in the same classroom it is possible that he is at a complete loss (the key word is possible here...) but we cannot blame him (and the teacher as well or for that matter the curriculum) if he is at pains to understand the concept and even flunks all evaluative processes. On the other hand one may also claim that given the contextual and embedded learning in operation here, my carpenter can make the leap to abstract thinking and grasping. But my contention here is the tenuous nature of such abstraction .


One's credentials as someone who is learned need not be limited by abstracted abilities and skills exhibited through formalized learning spaces (schools/colleges) and its normative practices.? What is more important in my view is their politicization and equipping them with citizenship attributes. A Frierian vision of politicization and empowerment is not precluded because of? poor articulation in writing and deficient reading skills. In other words citizenship and criticality does not and need not hinge on formal literacy abilities. What if my carpenter friend also showed perceptible political consciousness, recognizing aspects of his work as being so fundamental to the material culture we have, takes pride in it but seeks adequate compensation that affords him a better quality of life? What if he says,' No! I dont have any regrets in being a carpenter and I wont insist that my children need the kind of education that will ensure them 'better' jobs as long as this job or any other which they are comfortable doing, emerges from skills and competencies they have proclivities for, arising organically from their socialization and exposure which 'formal schooling' enhances and nurtures it, rather than trying to impose something new on them. It should ensure a life of dignity and decency. Their work should not confine them to living in hovels with poor sanitation, power and deny them some creature comforts. (beyond mobile phones and TV!!!) So if carpentry, farming, garage work, masonary, etc, professions more fundamental to our existence than that of a IT code jockey, bank manager and even a doctor or an engineer, and can ensure us good quality of life, in what ways are we less important or our work less dignified or are we of any inferior intelligence?'

Of course, truth be told my carpenter nurses a deep sense of inferiority and neither does he exhibit such critical and politically edifying thoughts. He certainly does not want his sons (and even daughters thankfully) to have anything to do with carpentry and dreams of his kids becoming good techies and engineers working in false roofed, glass fronted A/C buildings.? But in my view my carpenter is a victim of double whammy - stigmatized as failure by education and lacking political and citizenship consciousness. This despite the brilliance he brings forth to his work which adds so much value to so many people. Tragic indeed. But if we lived in a world where one's intelligence, survival did not depend on such economic externalities and warped by skewed social values, would my carpenter be facing this crisis? This is precisely what Gandhi feared and sought a more organic and integrated school model not divorced from work as he argued in his Nai Talim. This dovetailed well into the non-industrial and non-urban vision he had for India based on his visceral understanding of modernity and its pathologies engendered by commerce, consumption and competition.

At certain levels such a perspective may appear elitist and Brahmanical. I have already dwelled on this aspect here and would not repeat myself.



II

As a teachers I think we need to understand the larger context elucidated above and work towards using pedagogies that can still overcome these structural constraints. Now this is not easy and I dont think I myself succeeded in much measure in this direction. I was teaching in a school catering to middle classes and had to do the needful to put them on an aspirational path. Also the training programmes offered by these schools with its obsession on performance never helped me to understand issues in the manner I'm increasingly begin to look at. As teachers we were given to, rather than subject to accountability and therefore lots of training on appropriate teaching methods, child centred teaching, multiple intelligences and blah blah we were inflicted upon.? Regarding these I recently came across this blog? by Subir Shukla. As Subir says over the last two decades, there has been an explosion of 'pedagogies'...(and government, NGOs etc) have all come up with what they consider 'sure fire' methods of teaching...(to make) classroom processes...interesting, 'joyful' activities will be conducted, teaching learning material and 'learning ladders' will be used, and so on.

What Subir says next is more significant, 'At the heart of it all though, is the basic tenet that if the teacher really cares for his children, he will find a way. All these pedagogies begin to have meaning only if the teacher is interested in children and finds delight in helping them learn. Now most of our training programmes, materials and pedagogical models might claim to be make teaching more effective, but they don't necessarily generate that emotional commitment to children and their learning that is a prerequisite to successful classroom processes.'?








Modernity as we have it then predicates on such an education system and institutionalized nature of work. To conclude

?

Source: http://www.historyandpedagogy.org/2013/04/thoughts-on-education-and-learning.html

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Breakthroughs Martin Sheen on Customer Service | Breakthroughs ...

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The retail industry is more competitive than ever. There are more ways to shop from store to store through websites and more ways to make a purchase. The challenge businesses face in this growing market for goods is separating themselves from their competitors. Breakthroughs Martin Sheen is looking at how customer service can be an important strategy to building a brand.

Regardless of the type of merchandise a business sells or the size of the company, there will be customer issues. Defective products, lost orders or slow deliveries can all crop up over time, and they usually do. No company is immune to errors, and how they are handled can mean a lot both to the customer and the company.

Martin Sheen PBS has found that while the most desirable result is an uneventful sale, it does not always happen. Companies that see customer problems as an opportunity are separating themselves from their competitors largely through word-of-mouth.

By resolving customer service issues promptly and satisfactorily for the customer, businesses can actually help grow their brand. Deep down, most customers prefer an uneventful purchase but they know that accidents and mistakes happen. The true test is how those issues are resolved.

Businesses that create a positive experience through good customer service that corrects problems can often create more goodwill than the uneventful purchase. Often customers who have issues that are resolved quickly and satisfactorily will share their experiences with friends through social media and other means. This creates a confidence in a brand that if things go wrong, they will be corrected.

Breakthroughs with Martin Sheen is looking at many of these new customer service strategies through the TV program on public television and the website at www.breakthroughsptv.com. These new reports will be airing in 2013 along with other stories that are important to the business community.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://breakthroughspbstv.org/2013/04/breakthroughs-martin-sheen-on-customer-service/

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Toll in Bangladesh building collapse climbs to 290

A Bangladeshi rescuer looks out from a hole cut in the concrete as he looks for survivors at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi rescuer looks out from a hole cut in the concrete as he looks for survivors at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

A Bangladeshi woman survivor is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

In this image taken from AP video, garment worker Mohammad Altab moans to rescuers for help while trapped between concrete slabs and next to two corpses in a garment factory that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Deep cracks visible in the walls of the Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working. (AP Photo/AP video)

In this image taken from AP video, garment worker Mohammad Altab moans to rescuers for help while trapped between concrete slabs and next to two corpses in a garment factory that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Deep cracks visible in the walls of the Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working. (AP Photo/AP video)

Bangladeshi people gather as rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? Crews bored deeper Friday into the wreckage of a garment-factory building that collapsed two days earlier, hoping for miracle rescues that would prevent the death toll from rising much higher, as angry relatives of the missing clashed with police.

Some of those trapped under fallen concrete in the Rana Plaza building were still alive, rescue workers said, but they were so badly hurt and weakened that they will need to be extricated within a few hours if they are to survive.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said the death toll at the Rana Plaza building had reached 290, and that 2,200 people have been rescued. The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed Wednesday.

Hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble, spent a third day working amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers' relatives gathered outside the building, which housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

Police cordoned off the building site, pushing back thousands of bystanders and relatives, after rescue workers said the crowds were hampering their work.

Clashes erupted between relatives of those still trapped and police officers, who used batons to disperse the mobs. Police said 50 people were injured in the clashes.

"We want to go inside the building and find our people now. They will die if we don't find them soon," said Shahinur Rahman, whose mother is missing.

An army rescue worker, Maj. Abdul Latis, said he found one survivor still trapped under concrete slabs, surrounded by several bodies. At another place in the building, four survivors were found pinned under the debris, a fire official said.

The rescue workers said they were proceeding very cautiously inside the crumbling building, using their hands, hammers and shovels, to avoid more injuries to trapped survivors and avoid further collapses.

Police say cracks in the building had led them to order an evacuation of the building the day before it fell, but the factories ignored the order.

A military official, Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, told reporters that search and rescue operations would continue until at least Saturday.

"We know a human being can survive for up to 72 hours in this situation. So our efforts will continue non-stop," he said.

Some people have been pulled out of the wreckage alive, though severely weakened, more than a day after the collapse.

Forty people had been trapped on the fourth floor of the building until rescuers reached them Thursday evening. Twelve were soon freed, and crews worked to get the others out safely, said Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations. Crowds at the scene burst into applause as survivors were brought out.

The odor of decaying bodies at the site of the collapse, in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, is a constant reminder that many garment workers were not so lucky.

Thousands of workers from the hundreds of garment factories across the Savar industrial zone and other nearby industrial areas have taken to the streets to protest the collapse and poor safety standards.

Local news reports said protesters had smashed dozens of vehicles at one strike Friday. Most of the other protests were largely peaceful.

The disaster is the worst ever for Bangladesh's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve the country's worker-safety standards.

Instead, very little has changed in Bangladesh, where wages, among the lowest in the world, have made it a magnet for numerous global brands.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-26-AS-Bangladesh-Building-Collapse/id-996fb287a6c24e4bb40e01d2df57ec44

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EVE Online dev reveals Oculus Rift-based space dogfighting 'experience' (update: video!)

It's not clear if Icelandic game studio CCP is extending its crazy MMO, EVE Online, into the world of virtual reality, but the company is working on some form of EVE-based VR application using the Oculus Rift. CCP teased the concept during the keynote event at its Fanfest event this afternoon, showing off what looked like a modern Wing Commander-style space shooter set in the world of EVE (similar to the first-person shooter extension on PlayStation 3, Dust 514), built using the Unity game engine. EVE fansite The Mittani notes from a hands-on demonstration at Fanfest that the game is currently 3v3 dogfighting employing the VR headset and an unnamed "console-style game controller." Sadly, it sounds like the project is little more than an internal curiosity at this point, but color us unsurprised if this pops up in a more polished form down the line. We'll add a video of CCP's presentation to this post as soon as it goes live -- we were marveled by the gorgeous visuals and gameplay promise of a space shooter which employs VR.

Several games are currently in development for the Oculus Rift, and Valve's Team Fortress 2 already supports the device. However, the headset that's currently available is a development kit, and not meant as representative of the final retail product.

Update: We've added the video from Fanfest below the break!

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software

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