K
    Kavitha Davidson

    Kavitha Davidson

    Contributor

  • NKorea Denies Sending Military Aid To Syria

    North Korea denies reports that it is aiding the Syrian government in its ongoing battle against opposition fighters. According to state-run news agency KCNA, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry dismissed the charge as a "false rumor," maintaining the country's apparent stance that the Syrian civil war should be solved peacefully. "This is nothing but part of the foolish plots of the hostile forces to tarnish the image of the peace-loving DPRK and cover up their criminal acts of blocking the peaceful settlement of the Syrian situation," the statement said.

  • LOOK: The Most Stunning Memorial Of A Terror Attack You Didn't Know Existed

    Hidden deep within the Sahara Desert lies a stunning site you probably didn't know existed -- until now. The memorial has resurfaced of late and can be viewed on Google Maps, which shows an aerial view of the site. On Sept. 19, 1989, the Paris-bound UTA flight exploded over Niger's Ténéré region in the Sahara, killing all 170 people on board.

  • Russia's Sending The Olympic Torch To Space

    In an unprecedented move, the Olympic torch will on Saturday be taken out into open space on a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts to mark Russia's hosting of the Games in February. The Soyuz-FG rocket and Soyuz-TMA capsule, emblazoned with the symbols of the Sochi Games and the Olympic rings, have already been installed on the lauch pad of Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

  • #InADrunkenStupor The Best Thing To Come Out Of Mayor's Crack Admission

    In one short statement, Toronto mayor Rob Ford managed to put forth the quote of the week and the Twitter hashtag of the day. After months of speculation about the existence of a video showing the mayor smoking crack cocaine, the Toronto mayor finally admitted to having used the drug on Tuesday.

  • WATCH: China Reveals Mysterious Fleet Of Nuclear Subs

    For the first time in more than 40 years, China has given the rest of the world a view of its mysterious fleet of nuclear submarines. Earlier in the week, various Chinese state media outlets ran an article touting the "exceptional" safety record of the subs, noting the "tremendous achievement" of developing such technology that many of the world's superpowers have long established. "We are China's first nuclear submarine force, and the 42 years since our establishment have witnessed our success in avoiding nuclear accidents," Rear Admiral Gao Feng, commander of one of the People's Liberation Army navy's submarine bases, announced to reporters.

  • LOOK: Did This Halloween Prank Go Too Far?

    A Norwegian supermarket chain was forced to issue an apology after an attempted Halloween prank apparently went too far. Discount store Europris announced it was removing its "Chop Shop" line of fake, severed limbs, which it packaged like butchered meat and stocked in freezer counters alongside real cuts of meat, complete with a nutrition label, the Telegraph reports. "What we have here is very extreme, especially as it is next to the children's fancy-dress costumes," said Kjellaug Tonheim Tonnesen of Barnevakten, a Norwegian non-profit that focuses on kids and the media.

  • 'Some Women Drivers Lack A Sense Of Direction' And Other Helpful Tips From The Beijing Police

    "Some women drivers lack a sense of direction, and while driving a car, they often hesitate and are indecisive about which road they should take," reads one of the suggestions, posted on the police department's official microblog late Tuesday. Women drivers, the posting continues, often discover that "when they're driving by themselves, they're not able to find the way to their destination, even if they've been there many times". "Women drivers, please change into flat shoes when you're driving," the posting warns.

  • Is 'Political Correctness' Making Female Circumcision Acceptable?

    A Londoner who suffered female genital mutilation has warned that political correctness is hampering the fight to stamp it out after asking people to sign a fake petition in its favour. Leyla Hussein, 32, said many were scared to speak out against FGM because they were worried about criticising another culture. Approaching shoppers with the petition supporting FGM, she told them she wanted to protect her  “culture, traditions and rights”.

  • Bahrain Has Ordered More Tear Gas Cans Than It Has People

    Human rights groups around the world are growing increasingly alarmed by what seems to be a push by the Bahraini government to stockpile massive volumes of tear gas. A document leaked by UK-based watchdog Bahrain Watch appears to be a public tender placed by the country's Ministry of the Interior on June 16 for more than 1.6 million shells containing the chemical. As Slate's Joshua Keating points out, that's more cans of tear gas than there are people in Bahrain, a country with an estimated population of 1.3 million and home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

  • WATCH: Dramatic Rescue Of Syrian Refugees In Mediterranean Sea

    Newly released footage shows the rescue of a group of Syrian refugees after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. The dramatic video was released on Wednesday by the Armed Forces of Malta and captures Maltese and Italian forces rescuing the stranded survivors. According to the AMF, the operation took place on October 11 about 60 nautical miles from Lampedusa, where hundreds of migrants drowned in a shipwreck mere weeks before.

  • Nobel Winner Escaped Nazis As A Young Boy

    Martin Karplus, one of three scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday, escaped the Nazis and the Holocaust aged just eight-years-old, according to his autobiography. Karplus was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1930 and narrowly escaped Austria when Germany took control of the country in 1938, he wrote in a lengthy article in the Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure in 2006. Karplus described how attitudes towards him and his family changed even before the Nazi takeover of Austria, and how two boys he and his brother had considered their best friends began bullying them.

  • Japanese Man Busted For Arranging Elderly Sexcapades

    Police in Japan have arrested a 70-year-old man over claims he arranged sexual encounters among senior citizens through newspaper adverts soliciting "tea-drinking companions", police and press reports said Tuesday. Kiyohide Kuroda had allegedly been posting classified ads in a Tokyo newspaper for around a decade before he was taken into custody last week. Press reports said Kuroda had helped arrange sex among about 1,000 men and 350 women, mostly in their mid sixties, earning some 30 million yen ($310,000) as commission in breach of Japanese prostitution laws.

  • French Tourist Mutilated, Burned Alive By Madagascar Mob

    A mild mannered father-of-one screamed ‘I am innocent!’ seconds before being burnt alive by a rampaging mob on an idyllic holiday beach, it emerged today. The last words of Frenchman Sebastien Judalet, 38, were recorded by a vigilante ‘court’ in the most popular tourist resort of Madagascar last Friday. Judalet, a Paris postman with an 11 year old daughter, was caught by a crowd of some 300 people along with Roberto Gianfala, a Franco-Italian hotel worker in his 50s.

  • LOOK: Brilliant Photos Show The Real North Korea

    The Hermit Kingdom is notoriously closed-off to foreigners, keeping its secrets under tight control of the totalitarian state. It is these instances that offer a glimpse into the real North Korea, beyond the carefully crafted image put forth by the regime of Kim Jong Un.

  • LOOK: Your Computer Helps Fund Child Soldiers In Congo

    You see, diamonds aren't the only minerals at the heart of violent conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. In the October issue of National Geographic, reporter Jeffrey Gettleman and photographer Marcus Bleasdale journey to Congo, where the mines yield bountiful treasure, from gold to cobalt to copper.

  • Yemeni Forces Storm Al Qaeda HQ

    At least 10 people including three soldiers were killed in an offensive to retake headquarters seized by Al-Qaeda-linked militants in southeast Yemen, medical and military sources said Thursday. "We received this morning the bodies of 10 people" killed in the attack on the HQ, a medical source at Ibn Sina public hospital in Mukalla told AFP. A military official confirmed that at least three of the soldiers taken hostage by the militants were among the 10 dead.

  • £1 Million Home Trashed After 600 Show Up To Facebook Party

    This is the scene outside a £1 million north London home when police were called to disperse hundreds of revellers who had turned up to a party advertised on Facebook. Catherine Seale, who was enjoying a holiday in the south of France with husband Adam, was horrified to get a call from a friend informing her 600 partygoers were destroying her home, damaging a skylight and covering the sitting room in vomit. The skylight was damaged when somebody fell on it, Mrs Seale, 54, said.

  • Our Favorite Reads Of The Week

    The Unquenchable Fire The Economist Al-Qaeda has staged a comeback -- that's the assertion made by The Economist, highlighted by this week's three-day siege of a Kenyan mall. "While attacks on the far enemy are important both as a deterrent and as a source of jihadist inspiration, they are not al-Qaeda’s main purpose," The Economist writes. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

  • London Prison To Open Restaurant Run By Inmates

    It is the third training restaurant run by The Clink Charity — the other two being in HMP High Down in Surrey and The Clink Cymru at HMP Cardiff. As well as the restaurant, the building on Brixton Hill will also house rooms for business meetings and working lunches. Chris Moore, chief executive of The Clink Charity, said Brixton is “the perfect site”.

  • Japan's High Suicide Rate Due To Bad Weather: Study

    The study, which chimes with commonly held beliefs about mood and weather, was an attempt to find reasons behind some of the deaths that make up Japan's relatively high suicide rate. A team led by Hiroshi Kadotani of Shiga University of Medical Science reviewed 971 instances where someone had taken their own life, or attempted to do so, between 2002 and 2006 in Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Osaka, Japan's main commercial hubs. "We observed an increased proportion of railway suicide attempts after several days without sunlight," the study's abstract said.