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U.S. and Taliban announce formal Afghanistan peace talks
In a major breakthrough, the Taliban and the U.S. announced Tuesday that they will hold talks on finding a political solution to ending nearly 12 years of war in Afghanistan as the Islamic militant movement opened an office in Qatar.
American officials with the Obama administration said the office in the Qatari capital of Doha was the first step toward the ultimate U.S.-Afghan goal of a full Taliban renouncement of links with al-Qaida. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said U.S. representatives will begin formal meetings with the Taliban at the office in a few days. (MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images)
Give me weed instead of roses/give me whiskey ‘stead of wine”: How modern country music and marijuana made friends natpo.st/10u0VMl
What were they inking? An illustrated guide to tattoo trends across Canada
As one body artist described this new popularity and ubiquity of tattoos: “You might be the only one in the old folks’ home — when you get there — who doesn’t have one.” (Illustrations by Andrew Barr)
Well, this was pretty much inevitable …
Turns out a group of developers are working on an interactive sex game for the Oculus Rift VR headset.
By Matthew O’Mara
In a move that was pretty much inevitable, developers are working on a sex game for the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset.
Developers Wicked Paradise say that by using the virtual reality headset, players will be able to enter into the world of Wicked Paradise, which is being described as “the world’s first erotic virtual reality adventure game.”
Within the virtual reality world, players will have a chance to interact with characters that are designed to stimulate more than just their thumbs.
The developers of the game want players to think of the game asLeisure Suit Larry with you at the centre of attention.
Airborne laser uncovers ancient city hidden under dense Cambodian forest near Angkor Wat
Airborne laser technology has uncovered a network of roadways and canals, illustrating a bustling ancient city linking Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex.
The discovery was announced late Monday in a peer-reviewed paper released early by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The laser scanning revealed a previously undocumented formally planned urban landscape integrating the 1,200-year-old temples. The Angkor temple complex was constructed in the 12th century during the mighty Khmer empire.
“No one had ever mapped the city in any kind of detail before, and so it was a real revelation to see the city revealed in such clarity,” University of Sydney archaeologist Damian Evans, the study’s lead author, said by phone from Cambodia. “It’s really remarkable to see these traces of human activity still inscribed into the forest floor many, many centuries after the city ceased to function and was overgrown.” (Photo: Archaeology and Development Foundation - Phnom Kulen Program/Handout PNAS News)
Canada struggles to shed last vestige of the notorious litterbug: cigarette butts
Decades after the litterbug was otherwise beaten, Canadian cities are preparing for the end game: Cigarette butts.
The stubby end of a smoke has become Canada’s number one litter problem, with 416,955 picked up in the 2012 Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup alone.
“It’s still considered socially acceptable to throw butts down,” said Jill Dwyer, manager of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, run by the Vancouver Aquarium and the World Wildlife Federation, says cigarette butts are far and away the most common item the project has cleaned up from beaches every year for the past 20. “People think they’ll biodegrade.” (Photo: City of London)
Motorcycling fall — Moto2 rider Tony Elias from Spain crashes during the Motorcycling Grand Prix race at the Montmelo racetrack near Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, June 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Why Microsoft is losing the battle to become ‘input one’
By Daniel Kaszor
This is all a very long way of saying, Microsoft’s communications misstep may have cost it the very thing that it was aiming for most strongly this generation: not to transform the Xbox from a games machine into an all-in-one media box (the 360 already sort of is that), but for the Xbox to be the default singular thing that you use to interact with your television.
Your “One” first box. Basically, Microsoft not only wants you to use the Xbox One for all the stuff you can exclusively do on the Xbox, it wants to be your choice for all the stuff you can do on every box connected to your TV as well.
And with the boneheaded DRM move, Microsoft has knocked a very fundamental plank out from under the Xbox One. After E3, in many gamers minds, the Xbox is no longer the fundamental default box for games.
Boss Fight Books brings the video game nostalgia in paperback form
By Matthew O’Mara
Video game books are something of a double edged laser sword.
While gaming books are often fascinating to read and the history of the medium is often rich and colourful, video game literature is often dense in both size and complexity.
Gabe Durham, co-founder of Boss Fight Books, wants to change all that by creating his own series of books that feature in depth examinations of classic video game titles.
“I was reading a book on the history of Nintendo and it was fun, but it was covering so much history,” Mr. Durham said in an interview from Los Angeles.
“There were some parts I just wanted it to slow down and tell me more.”
Inspired by the 33⅓ series of books that tell the history of classic music albums — for example Radiohead’s Ok Computer – in splendid detail, with each tome designed to focus on specific themes and analysis.
The same will hold true for Boss Fight Books, Mr. Durham said.
“I got on Google and searched for thirty three and a third of video games and I fully expected there to be something because it just made so much sense,” Mr. Durham said.
Dog diving competition — White Swiss Shepherd dogs ‘Kenai’, left, and ‘Yasu’, right, jump into the water during the dog diving competition at the International pedigree dog and purebred cat exhibition in Erfurt, central Germany, Sunday, June 16, 2013. 4,000 dogs and 150 cats from 20 countries re shown at the exhibition. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
China builds world’s fastest supercomputer that can do 33,860 trillion calculations every second
China has built the world’s fastest supercomputer, almost twice as fast as the previous U.S. holder and underlining the country’s rise as a science and technology powerhouse.
The semiannual TOP500 official listing of the world’s fastest supercomputers released Monday says the Tianhe-2 developed by the National University of Defence Technology in central China’s Changsha city is capable of sustained computing of 33.86 petaflops per second. That’s the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second.
The Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way-2, knocks the U.S. Department of Energy’s Titan machine off the no. 1 spot. It achieved 17.59 petaflops per second. (Photo: Top500)
Apartment building washed away as torrential rains cause floods and landslides, killing at least 23 in India
Torrential rain and floods washed away buildings and roads, killing at least 23 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, officials said Monday.
More than a dozen people died in the state’s Rudraprayag district alone, while another 50 people were missing, said Amit Negi, an official in Uttarakhand.
A landslide triggered by the monsoon rains buried a bus, killing three people in Almora district. (Photo: AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/Getty Images)
Couple returns $23,000 wedding ring accidentally sold for just $10 at garage sale
A man who reduced his wife to tears by accidentally selling her $23,000 wedding ring for $10 at a garage sale said his faith in humanity had been restored after it was returned.
Racquel Cloutier was distraught after her husband, Eric, told her he had sold the wooden watch box in which she had hidden the ring before going to hospital to have their fifth child. “I immediately started crying,” said Mrs. Cloutier, 31, of Laguna Niguel, California. “I just wanted the ring to be in a safe place and out of reach from my two-year-old twins.” (Photo: Facebook)
Now that E3 has finally wrapped up, Post Arcade editor Matt Hartley and senior writer Chad Sapieha have put together a list of some of the games you’re going to want to keep an eye out for this year and into 2014.
Moody photo of a Spanish bullfighter Juan del Alamo making the ‘paseillo’ or ritual entrance to the arena before a bullfight at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid Sunday, June 16, 2013. Bullfighting is an ancient tradition in Spain and the season runs from March to October. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)
