China Denies Plans to Build Military Base on Afghan-Tajik Border

But several Afghan officials have confirmed the plans, on the record.

China has formally denied reports that it is building a military base on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border for the Afghan armed forces. But Afghan security officials have confirmed the original report, and offered additional details of the secretive Chinese presence in the region.

In January, reports emerged that Beijing and Kabul had come to an agreement for China to build and supply a military base in Badakhshan, the remote panhandle of Afghanistan that borders China and Tajikistan.

But at a January 25 press briefing, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian denied those claims. “The so-called issue that China is building a military base in Afghanistan is groundless,” he said.

Of Course Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Fluent Mandarin

How’s your week going? Been pretty good? Feeling like you’re doing well at work and things are looking up?

Well, Mark Zuckerberg is back again to make you feel inadequate.

The Facebook CEO participated in a 30-minute question and answer session at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Wednesday, which he posted to his public page. He did the whole thing in Mandarin. He even cracked some jokes.

Evidently, Zuckerberg started studying Mandarin in 2010, saying it was his “personal challenge.”

The battle for Hong Kong’s future: there’s no going back

Regardless of what the end game is, Beijing cannot ignore the pro-democracy protests that have given the people of Hong Kong their voice. 

The fast moving events over the past week in Hong Kong have taken even the most astute political observers of the city by surprise.

The week started with class boycotts by hundreds of university students, followed by the unexpected launch of the long-awaited Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement.

For a week, the Hong Kong public was treated to street theatre and passionate speeches pushing for a seemingly impossible dream: Beijing’s blessing for universal suffrage that would give citizens of the autonomous region a fair chance to elect its chief executive, the head of the city’s government.

The SEC is investigating the Kushner family’s company over its use of a controversial visa program

• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating Kushner Companies for its use of a controversial visa program. 
• The company is owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. 
• This isn’t the first time Kushner Companies has come under scrutiny. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a probe into Kushner Companies, the New York real-estate firm owned by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The investigation reportedly focuses on the company’s use of the EB-5 visa program, which allows 10,000 immigrant visas each year in an effort to promote investment from foreign countries into less-developed regions or create jobs in the US.

Newly appointed ambassador to North Korea Dennis Rodman travels to Pyongyang despite travel ban as tensions speed up

Ban on US passport holders travelling to Pyongyang stops former basketball star from making sixth trip

Dennis Rodman, the American basketball star turned freelance diplomat , has urged Donald Trump to sign him up as a peace envoy to North Korea after his latest foray into Kim Jong-un’s hermit kingdom was scuppered by a travel ban preventing US citizens from visiting.

During an interview in Beijing, from where Rodman had hoped to fly to Pyongyang for his sixth trip there, the former NBA star said US officials had discouraged him from doing so amid continuing tensions between the countries. “Basically they said it’s not a good time right now,” he said.

Top-level Chinese envoy arrives in North Korea for the first time in years

BEIJING (AP) — China dispatched its highest-level envoy to North Korea in two years on Friday in a bid to improve chilly relations after President Donald Trump last week urged Beijing to pressure Pyongyang to cease its nuclear weapons program.

Song Tao will report on the outcomes of China’s ruling Communist Party congress held last month and visit counterparts in his role as President Xi Jinping’s special envoy, according to Chinese state media. China has given no other details about his itinerary or said whether he’ll meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

China is angry, but what can it do about North Korea?

Xi Jinping has few options to bring Kim Jong-un into line but he also has to contend with the unpredictable Donald Trump

On Friday afternoon, the eve of North Korea’s most powerful ever nuclear test, China’s football-loving president received a gift from the world’s greatest ever player.

“Good luck,” read the handwritten message from Pelé on a canary yellow Brazil jersey handed to Xi Jinping by his South American counterpart, Michel Temer.

Jared Kushner’s family is trying to raise $150 million from Chinese investors in exchange for US visas

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Organizers barred journalists on Sunday from a publicly advertised event in Shanghai to attract Chinese investment in a US real estate project linked to the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law in exchange for immigrant visas.

The two-tower luxury apartment complex in New Jersey, One Journal Square, is being developed by KABR Group and the Kushner Companies, which until recently was headed by senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

China’s Premier on N. Korea: ‘No one wants to see chaos on his doorstep’

China’s second highest-ranking official used his once-yearly press conference to underline the importance of good relations with the US.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang discussed North Korea, the South China Sea and trade in a highly orchestrated and scripted ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Conflict on the Korean peninsula “would only bring harm to all parties involved,” Li said, ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s trip to the region which starts Wednesday.

“We hope that all parties can work together (to reduce tensions)” he added. “It’s just common sense that no one wants to see chaos on his doorstep.”

China is a key ally of North Korea, and has long called for more dialogue between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington. Last week, Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for North Korea to suspend its nuclear weapons program and warned that “the two sides are like two accelerating trains coming towards each other.”

China: Along the Tea Horse Road (PHOTOS)

In Yunnan province, visitors can still step back into the Ming dynasty.

On the dashboard of our van, a solar-powered Tibetan prayer wheel spins continuously as we make our way through the bumpy roads linking Lijiang, Dali and Tengchong.

We can’t stop watching this guy destroy a $1 million vase by Ai Weiwei

Maximo Caminero, a well-known painter based in Miami, is facing felony criminal mischief charges after deliberately dropping a vase painted by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei in a local museum on Sunday. Looking at the colorful object, Caminero said, he figured it was “a common clay pot like you would find at Home Depot.”

Underneath, however, it was a genuine ancient artifact from the Han dynasty—with an estimated value of $1 million (according to the responding police officer, that is).

Now, by way of some amateur footage, you too can experience the shock of standing in the Pérez Art Museum Miami when someone criticizes the gallery’s international focus by smashing a work of foreign provenance.

“It was a spontaneous protest,” Caminero told the Miami New Times. “I was at PAMM and saw Ai Weiwei’s photos behind the vases where he drops an ancient Chinese vase and breaks it. And I saw it as a provocation by Weiwei to join him in an act of performance protest.”

“I did it for all the local artists in Miami that have never been shown in museums here,” Caminero said of his attack on Ai’s According to What? installation—and some colleagues have happily praised him for it. “They have spent so many millions now on international artists. It’s the same political situation over and over again. I’ve been here for 30 years and it’s always the same.”

In comments to the BBC, Ai was clear on the difference between his acts of destruction and Caminero’s: “I never tried to destroy a museum piece—those vases belong to me. He can drop whatever he likes to drop, but not other people’s property.” I could almost swear I’ve heard that line of reasoning before?

Ai also laid claim the moral high ground of creative martyrdom: “I still don’t have a chance to show my work in China or Beijing. I never even think of going to a museum in Beijing to protest—if I [did], I would be punished.” Caminero will suffer his own unpleasant consequences, of course, but you can’t say he wasn’t warned not to touch.

Recycled steel bars form modular café interior by penda

in beijing, architecture and design studio penda has completed the interior of a local café using recycled steel bars to serve as modular dividers.

commissioned by property developers hongkun, the scheme introduces an area of greenery within the city’s heavily polluted atmosphere

intended to serve as a precedent that will encourage other chinese cities to implement similarly green proposals.

the primary design feature is the repetition of upcycled steel bars, painted black and constructed as a grid.

this modular system allows the café to be readily reconfigured.

the latticed structure allows a variety of different elements to be inserted, with plant boxes, books, and lights occupying the design.

many of the scheme’s wooden pots are filled with air purifying and easy-to-grow vegetation such as spider plants, sword fern and marble queen.

over time, the plantation will grow across the structural framework, covering the steel with a natural green blanket.

The Wall Street Journal suggests Snowden gave China an incredibly powerful cyberweapon

The Wall Street Journal thinks Edward Snowden may have provided China with a new, powerful cyberweapon.

China is known for its so-called Great Firewall, a nationwide system of web blocks and filters that the government uses to maintain strict online censorship in mainland China.

Now it reportedly has a complementary offensive tool — dubbed the Great Cannon — to go after sites it doesn’t like. And Snowden, the NSA-contractor-turned-whistleblower, may be to blame.

“The Great Cannon is not simply an extension of the Great Firewall,” experts at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said, “but a distinct attack tool that hijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle.”

China can now reroute innocent traffic coming to Chinese websites and use it for a malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to overload the servers of another website. It may also be able to inject malicious code into target computers.

CitizensLabThis diagram shows how China’s “Great Cannon” works with its “Great Firewall” to hijack traffic and attack websites.

Citizen’s Lab notes that the only other “known instances of governments tampering with unencrypted internet traffic to control information or launch attacks” involve the use of a program called Quantum that was developed by the US’ National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Snowden revealed the existence of Quantum through slides given to American journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong after he arrived on May 20, 2013. The Journal is now wondering whether the former NSA contractor provided the source code to Beijing before flying to Moscow on June 23.

“Did Snowden give the Chinese the code for the Great Cannon?” the editorial asks. “He denies sharing anything with foreign governments. But then he’s an admitted liar, and we don’t know what the Chinese and Russian spy services have been able to copy from what he stole.”

REUTERS/Bobby YipA monitor at a shopping mall in Hong Kong in 2013 broadcasting news on the charges against Snowden.

The Journal’s evidence regarding Snowden and the Great Cannon is scant and circumstantial and is based mainly on suspicion of Snowden, the similarities between the Great Cannon and Quantum, and timing.

“A South China Morning Post report that the Great Cannon has been under development for about a year is suggestive,” The Journal asserts. “This means China’s hacking bureaucracy geared up to produce this new product soon after the Snowden leaks.”

In any case, China now has a powerful new cyberweapon to enforce its status as the world’s vastest internet censorship regime.

“The operational deployment of the Great Cannon represents a significant escalation in state-level information control: the normalization of widespread use of an attack tool to enforce censorship by weaponizing users,” CitizenLab notes.

Waldorf Astoria sale to Chinese on hold over security fears

The State Department said it is reviewing the sale of the hotel to Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group, and that it may stop leasing space for the U.S. ambassador to the UN or the General Assembly.

Anbang is reportedly linked to China’s Communist Party, which has overseen a massive effort to use cyberspying to steal U.S. trade and military secrets.

The sale of the Waldorf Astoria to a Chinese insurance giant is really bugging the State Department.

Grand plans by Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group “to restore the property to its historic grandeur” has some Washington diplomatic and security insiders wondering if the Chinese will be adding more than a view to kill for.

Officials said Monday they are reviewing the sale — and implied the glittering renovation scheme for the iconic Park Ave. hotel may mask a nefarious purpose: espionage.

“We are currently in the process of reviewing the details of the sale and the company’s long-term plans for the facility,” said Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

The State Department said it may end a 50-year practice of leasing a residence at the hotel for the U.S. ambassador to the UN.

Also at stake is the department’s rental of two floors of the Waldorf during the annual UN General Assembly.

The White House declined to say if President Obama will continue staying at the hotel’s presidential suite during trips to New York. Every commander-in-chief since Herbert Hoover has stayed there.

Cooper said security, along with cost, would determine if the State Department maintains its relationship with the hotel in the wake of the $1.95 billion sale, announced last week.

“The State Department takes seriously the security of its personnel, their work spaces and official residences,” Cooper said. “We are constantly evaluating our security protocols and standard operating procedures to ensure the safety and security of our information and personnel.”

Anbang, which bought the Waldorf from Hilton Worldwide, is reportedly linked to China’s Communist Party, which has overseen a massive effort to use cyberspying to steal U.S. trade and military secrets.

After all, the U.S. knows the game — we’ve done our own cloak-and-dagger work involving diplomatic representatives of allies and foes alike.

The National Security Agency’s eavesdropping efforts include bugging the Manhattan headquarters of the UN itself, according to documents provided to the German magazine Der Spiegel last year by ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The State Department regularly reminds U.S. diplomats who go to China that they are likely to face surveillance and tells American citizens who travel to China that someone might be listening in their hotel rooms.

“Hotel rooms (including meeting rooms), offices, cars, taxis, telephones, Internet usage and fax machines may be monitored onsite or remotely, and personal possessions in hotel rooms, including computers, may be searched without your consent or knowledge,” according to the department’s latest travel advice for China.

Smartphones – The Xiaomi shock

China’s booming smartphone market has spawned a genuine innovator

“FROM the beginning, Xiaomi has considered the mobile phone to be a converged gadget of software, internet services and hardware, not just a simple device.” So declared Lei Jun, the charismatic founder of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone-maker with global aspirations, during a recent meeting at his firm’s headquarters in Beijing with Choi Yang-hee, South Korea’s telecoms minister.

Bland as Mr Lei’s comments may sound, the meeting revealed something important about Xiaomi. That a South Korean minister would deign to visit a Chinese tech firm which until recently was barely known outside its home country, let alone sit through such a lecture, is telling. Such has been the Korean hubris over the prowess of its chaebol—most notably Samsung, the world’s leading mobile-phone firm—that the scene would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. It shows how worried Samsung is of being upended by what another South Korean minister has called the “Xiaomi shock”.

To see what he means, consider what the firm has accomplished since its first phone was launched four years ago. Its worldwide sales were 61m handsets last year, a rise of 227% on the year earlier, making it the sixth-biggest mobile-phone firm in the world. In China, Xiaomi had leapt ahead of all its rivals, foreign and local, by the final quarter of last year, to become the top-selling brand of smartphones (see charts). This year Mr Lei wants to sell 100m units worldwide.

The company has already started a big push towards achieving this. Last year it began selling phones in a few South-East Asian markets, including Singapore. It also struck a deal with Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce firm, to sell handsets in that market. Earlier this month it unveiled plans to sell headphones and other accessories (though not yet phones) in America.

Conquering the world will be harder than dominating the home market. Google and its Android app store are unavailable in China, making it easier for Xiaomi’s flavour of the Android operating system, and its app store, to flourish there. Few consumers in other emerging markets are as plugged into e-commerce as the Chinese are. Entering such markets may require Xiaomi, which has thus far relied mostly on internet sales and word-of-mouth buzz, to make expensive investments in advertising and in bricks-and-mortar retailing.

Profitability is also a big concern. Xiaomi, still private, releases few details of its finances. But Mark Li of Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, suspects that its handsets do not make the sort of double-digit margins earned by Apple. Even the firm admits it has enjoyed higher margins from selling millions of fluffy promotional toys—in the form of a bunny called “Mitu”—than it has from handsets.

Another snag is its lack of intellectual property. Smartphone companies are highly litigious. Unlike its more experienced local rivals, Lenovo (which has bought Motorola’s smartphone division from Google) and Huawei, Xiaomi does not have a huge patent portfolio. Lin Bin, its president, says it has been filing thousands of patents in preparation for a legal onslaught: “This is something we expect to happen.” Indeed, an Indian court is investigating claims that Xiaomi has disobeyed its order to halt sales of some of its phones in the country, over a patent dispute.

Given these obstacles, why is Samsung still worried? One reason is that Xiaomi has positioned itself perfectly to be a disrupter of firms offering overpriced, over-elaborate devices. Its best handsets are not quite as good as Apple’s or Samsung’s best, but they are far better than those from other, cut-rate rivals—and they cost half what an unsubsidised new iPhone does.

Consider again the sweeping assertion made by Mr Lei to the Korean minister. From the start he has understood the awesome power of the connected mobile device. That has led to a business model that blends Apple’s walled garden, which encourages users to stay loyal to its “ecosystem” of apps, with Amazon’s use of the Kindle as a loss-leader to sell lucrative content, software and services. Xiaomi started off peddling handsets without profit, but it is creating a bunch of apps, “smart home” gadgetry, online video and peripheral devices to make a return on its investment.

The other reason incumbents should worry about Xiaomi is its financial firepower. Some 29 banks tripped over themselves to offer it a $1 billion loan in October. In December several respected venture capitalists including GIC, Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund, and DST of Russia, an early investor in Facebook, provided another $1.1 billion. Some reckon that this latest investment, which values it at $45 billion, makes the Chinese upstart the world’s most valuable startup. Xiaomi’s shock-and-awe campaign rolls on.

Ukrainian Brides May Solve China’s Gender Gap, Chinese Media Claims

The 33 million extra men pose serious social risks, but some just see a matchmaking bonanza.

Their economy is depressed but beautiful women are running rampant,” the state-run Beijing News reported Jan. 22 in a story suggesting that Ukrainian women could be the solution to China’s woman shortage.

The piece, illustrated with charts, bubbles, and cartoon illustrations of lonely Chinese men, was a breezy attempt to make light of China’s missing women and the severe gender imbalance caused by couples aborting female fetuses in favor of boys.

So widespread is the practice that it has badly skewed the country’s sex ratio: The global average is around 105 boys born for every 100 girls; but in China last year, just over 115 boys wereborn for every 100 girls.

The problem has been brewing since sonogram technology was introduced to China in the 1980s, allowing families to determine a baby’s gender during the first few months of pregnancy.

Combined with the country’s restrictive family planning policies — until recently, most urban families were only allowed a single child in order to curtail population growth — and a traditional preference for sons, the newfound ability to practice sex-selective abortion has resulted in one of the world’s highest gender imbalances.

The topic flared anew in the public mind after the National Bureau of Statistics announced the latest population figures on Jan. 20, noting that at the end of 2014 China had 700 million men and 667 women, a shortfall of more than 33 million women.

The bureau didn’t provide a breakdown, but previous research shows that most of China’s missing women are among those born since 1985.

To address the problem, China has resorted to propaganda campaigns extolling the virtues of daughters and offering cash incentives for couples that have them.

These measures have spurred more female births, but not enough — China’s gender imbalance is still “the most serious in the world, and has lasted for the longest time and affected the largest number of people,” China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) said in a Jan. 21 statement.

Rather than dwelling on the fact that sex-selective abortions continue despite a government ban,

Chinese media interpreted the sex ratio as a threat to men, not women.

Chinese media interpreted the sex ratio as a threat to men, not women. On Jan. 21, web giant Sina’s arm in Henan, China’s most populous province, wondered aloud on social media platform Weibo whether the news was “heart-stopping” and exhorted bachelors to “start making an effort!”

Meanwhile, a Beijing statistician sharing the latest figures to his Weibo account wrote, “Tomorrow I am going to get my son to hurry up and find a girlfriend at his elementary school.” The Beijing News even suggested that Ukrainian women could be a solution to China’s problem.

The story kicked off with a question: “Just how hard is it for a diaosi,” slang for young bachelors of modest means, “to find a wife?” After explaining the severe imbalance that the ratio represents, it added that Chinese brides are a popular “export” to many countries such as Japan, South Korea, and the United States, a trend it said had depleted China’s supply of eligible women still further. It offered a chart of the best destinations around the globe for Chinese men to find spouses.

Japan and South Korea were particularly promising, the paper said, claiming that 26 percent of South Korean women who took foreign spouses in 2012 chose Chinese men. The trend was bound to grow, the argument went, since popular Korean television actress Park Chae Rim married her Chinese actor beau, Gao Ziqi, in Sept. 2014.

Light-hearted joking filled the comments section, with most ignoring the underlying factors leading to bachelor over-supply. Some netizensviewed the gender imbalance as a boon for the gay community, others as a useful pressure valve for who weren’t interested in marriage anyway. There were, in other words, plenty of fish in the sea, at least outside of China.

Therese Hesketh, a professor of global health at the University College London, told Foreign Policy via email from eastern China’s Zhejiang province that many ordinary Chinese feel that “aborting a girl is simply a choice made by a couple — and they are entitled to this.”

Hesketh said that when she lectures in China, many audience members “seem to just accept selective abortions,” and she has students who admit they would abort female fetuses in favor of a boy. She added that many of students attribute this stance to parental pressure.

China is not alone in these cultural predilections. Indian social scientist Ravinder Kuar wrote in an August 2013 paper that “the common response” in both China and India “when the connection between sex selection and bride shortage is pointed out is that rather than allow daughters to be born, they would resort to importing brides.”

Kuar also wrote that bride shortages in China and India can lead to “kidnap marriages” that include “deception and enticement” and “luring women for marriage into high sex ratio areas.”

For its part, the Chinese government is still campaigning against sex selective abortions. Following the release of the latest statistics, the NHFPC revealed details of its latest initiative to curb sex-selective abortion: harsher penalties for agencies and individuals who send blood samples from expectant mothers abroad for testing to determine the gender of the woman’s fetus.

Clinics and hospitals in China can perform sonograms on expectant mothers, but are barred from revealing the gender of the baby, a restriction that has given rise to black market sonogram testing (including providers who perform the exam in the back seat of a woman’s car).

Chinese agencies that offer to come to a woman’s home will draw blood, pack it in dry ice, then mail or carry the sample across the border to Hong Kong or elsewhere for testing at hospitals.

The commission has promised severe punishments for anyone caught in the act. But that hardly seems like enough to solve the underlying problem, any more than Ukrainian brides.

The Mysteries and Tragedy of Russia’s Bottomless Karst Lake (PHOTOS)

The water is serene but deathly cold – and danger lurks beneath its surface. Yet, in the aquatic depths the promise of discovering hidden underwater caves and relics of our past awaits. Here, beauty and allure belie risks – but risks that some are prepared to take.

“A sapphire in a ring of green trees.” That’s how this stunning lake has been described. Even on overcast days, the water has a deep, crystal blue color like the gemstone to which it has been compared.

But there is much more than splendor to this lake. Beneath its smooth surface lie mysteries as yet unsolved. And some of these are secrets that the lake will not easily give up; at least, not if the recent tragic death of one diving explorer and the hospitalization of another are read as telltale signs.

9 Magical Zen Gardens

Zen garden is an interesting and deeply spiritual aspect of Japanese gardening traditions. The typical Zen garden consists of an enclosed and shallow sand box of sorts which features predominantly sand or gravel with rocks of various shapes and sizes.

The rocks and sand (or gravel) are the chief elements of the garden, which generally creates the scene of islands in the sea. The sand or gravel in a Zen garden represents the sea or ocean and is used instead of water. It will be carefully raked by tending monks to create the impression of waves on the surface of a body of water.

The rocks themselves represent islands or rock formations jutting out from the water. The overall goal is to create a small-scale recreation of an aerial or cliff-top view of an intricate coastal scene. One of the primary differences between a Zen garden and most other varieties is the lack of living elements. Although grass may sometimes be included, no other plant or flower species will be found in a classic Zen garden.

This can be both unusual and exotically appealing to people with no past experience with the history and meaning of a Zen garden.

The world’s most extraordinary hotels in pictures

Mihir Garh, Rajasthan 
“The fort sits in splendid isolation amid the Thar Desert near Jodhpur. It looks like an enormous sandcastle, a mirage, and is not just a unique place to stay; it’s a shrine to the artistic and architectural traditions of Rajasthan in general and Jodhpur in particular.”

Planet Baobab, Botswana
“Botswana’s Makgadigadi Pan comprises the world’s largest network of salt pans – a thirsty, mirage-inducing landscape of flat, shimmering expanses under hard blue skies. Halfway along the sole tarred road through this arid moonscape, a statue of an anteater towers at the dusty verge. It is a surreal sight, and an appropriate signpost for the distinctive Planet Baobab.”

Prendiparte B&B, Bologna, Italy
“A medieval high-rise turned romantic hideaway, the Torre Prendiparte is unlike anywhere else you’ll ever stay. The living area is on the first two floors and comprises a snug, classically-furnished living room, mezzanine bedroom, and kitchen. Above this is the former jail where you can still see graffiti left by prisoners on the 2m-thick walls.”

Qasr al Sarab, UAE
“Rising from the shifting sands, Qasr Al Sarab appears like a mirage on the edge of the vast Empty Quarter desert. Outside high crenellated walls echo fortresses of old. Inside rooms continue the dream of Arabian Nights with sumptuous fabrics, carved Islamic designs, woven rugs, wooden doors and metalwork lanterns.”

Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge, Tasmania, Australia
“A stay at Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge plunges you into the heart of Tasmania’s wilderness, with luxury that feels as organic as your surrounds. The cabins are nestled privately in the bushland, with wallabies bounding past the windows and wombats shuffling amid the trees.”

Free Spirit Spheres, British Columbia, Canada
“Suspended in the trees on sturdy guide ropes, Vancouver Island’s Free Spirit Spheres look like giant eyeballs peering deep into the British Columbia woodlands. Step inside and the handmade orbs – accessed via spiral rope staircases or slender steel bridges – are lined like comfy boat cabins with built-in beds and cabinets.”

Taskonak Hotel, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey
“Göreme has dozens of beautiful cave-hotels but Taşkonak manages to dish up the cave-suites and stupendous views Cappadocia is famous for without breaking your budget.”

Thonga Beach Lodge, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa
“One of few such lodges within the extraordinary 328,000 hectare iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a Unesco world heritage site.”

Saugerties Lighthouse, New York state, USA
“Saugerties Lighthouse is a historic 1869 landmark that makes a wonderful base for exploring the scenic Hudson valley. It is 100 miles north of New York City, and the red brick building has played a pivotal role in safely guiding steamboats, barges and other vessels safely along the Hudson river over the years. More recently (in the mid 1990s), the lighthouse was transformed into a two-room B&B, providing safe haven of a different sort.”

The Gibbon Experience Treehouse, Bokeo Reserve, Laos
“The tree houses erected by conservation group Animo are a thing of architectural wonder, straddling the giant trunks of strangler fig trees. But more extraordinary still is that to reach these vertiginous eyries you’ll have to trek through the fecund realm of the tiger, then catch a series of exhilarating zip lines strung across the forest canopy, before flying into your night’s accommodation.”

Amazing color pictures from 1960s Budapest

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National Geographic Photo Contest

 

 

 

 

100 years old pictures in colours before World War I

Türkei, Bursa, Ladengeschaeft einer Confiserie, Auguste Leon, 1. Juni 1913

Vietnam. Tonkin, Leon Busy, 1914

Indien, Statue des Heiligen Stiers, Stephane Passet, 29. Januar 1914

Österreich, Wien, Judengasse, Fotograf unbekannt, 23. April 1913

Mongolei, nahe Ulaanbaatar Urga, Stéphane Passet, 23. Juli 1913

Irland, Galway, Marguerite Mespoulet, 26. Mai 1913

Indien, Uttar Pradesh, Agra. Mausoleum Taj Mahal von Shah Jahan für Mumtaz Mahal, Stéphane Passet, 19.-21. Januar 1914

Indien, Amritsar. Marmorne Strasse zum Goldenden Tempel, neben den rituellen Reinigungsbecken, dem Darbar Sahib und dem Hari Mandir, Stéphane Passet, 15. Januar 1914

China, nach Kalgan. Nomadenlager, drei Männer und ein Junge vor einer Jurte, Stéphane Passet, 18.-21. Juli 1912

Water pipe smoking. Samarkand

Mongolei, Ulaanbaatar. Der Finanzminister des unabhängigen Staats Mongolei auf dem Marktplatz, Stéphane Passet, 22. Juli 1913

Major Lazer & DJ Snake – Lean On (feat. MØ)

Listen To A Rare 1965 Recording Of Stanley Kubrick’s Most Profound Interview

When physicist and renowned author Jeremy Bernstein (born December 31, 1929) penned a terrific piece on 37-year-old burgeoning director Stanley Kubrick for The New Yorker, the story gained so much attention that Bernstein was commissioned to write an even more elaborate profile of the legendary filmmaker. Normally Kubrick would have flat-out refused, however, he agreed due to the fact that he shared a common passion with Bernstein — chess. When Bernstein travelled to Oxford, England for the conversation on November 27, 1965 it was also captured on tape. The interview remains to this day one of the most profound conversations with Kubrick ever recorded, and you can listen to it in full below.

Helios – Hope Valley Hill (Arms and Sleepers Remix)

Keith Kenniff – Helios

Mac DeMarco // “Brother” (OFFICIAL SINGLE)

 

Alan Watts: Sense of Nonsense

November 27, 1965: A Rare Recording of Stanley Kubrick’s Most Revealing Interview

“People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction.”

George Orwell on how to make the perfect cup of tea

Excerpt from Orwell’s fantastic 1946 essay outlining his 11 “golden” rules of tea /

Harald Grosskopf’s 1979 Masterpiece “Synthesist” Is 7 Minutes Of Pure Amazingness

Yesterday TEEN DAZE released a new mixtape which you can stream and download by visiting ThePlayground.co.uk.  The 8-track collection provides a perfect ambient backdrop for pretty much any situation, but the crown jewel of the mixtape is unquestionably Harald Grosskopf’s brilliant track “Synthesist”.

Shanghai Tower (650 meters)

Raskalov and Russian photographer Vadim Mahora broke into and climbed the Gensler-designed Shanghai Tower, soon to be China’s tallest and the world’s second tallest skyscraper at 632 meters (2,074 feet) high. Although the tower will eventually boast the world’s fastest elevators (reaching 40mph), the pair had to climb the 120 flights of stairs by foot (taking them about two hours); they then spent another 18 hours sleeping and waiting for the weather to clear. The staggering resulting images show not just the dizzying heights, but also fantastic views of the adjacent Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center (together, the trio of buildings that are re-defining the Shanghai skyline).

Adam Magyar – Stainless, 42 Street (excerpt)

High speed video recording in NYC at Grand Central station.

Tolkien & Sendak On The Psychology Of Fantasy & The Powerful Effect Of Fairy Tales On The Adult Mind

In March 1939, renowned fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien penned an essay enitled “On Fairy-Stories” which explores the nature of fantasy and the cultural role of fairy tales. His argument is the same — that there is no such thing as “writing for children.” Tolkien writes: “A ‘fairy-story’ is one which touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic — but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician. There is one proviso : if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.”

Tolkien adds: “Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else … may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.” You can read more excerpts from Tolkien’s essay by visiting BrainPickings.org.

The Aqualibrium Garden – The Future of Food

The Aqualibrium Garden – The Future of Food by “Aqualibrium”

The fish in the self-cleaning aquarium in the bottom chamber of the Aqualibrium Garden provide the nutrients that feed the plants in the self-watering grow space in the upper chamber. This cycle… like nature herself… is automatic, providing the potential to grow an abundance of fresh vegetables, herbs and flowering plants all year.

The Real Walter White (VIDEO)

When AMC’s Breaking Bad premiered in 2008, one of Alabama’s most successful meth cooks was already knee deep in building a massive meth empire. His name? Walter White. In this documentary, Walter tells us the secret behind his product, how he stacked up thousands of dollars per day, and why his partner is now serving two life sentences.

A new industry born from the disaster — LED indoor farm

A new industry born from the disaster — LED indoor farm

Awesome pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope

 

 

 

 

Great Gardens: “Prospect Cottage” by Howard Sooley – NOWNESS

http://vimeo.com/103807651

Great Gardens: “Prospect Cottage” by Howard Sooley – NOWNESS

Speeding Around The World in Under 5 minutes Time Lapse

17 Countries. 343 Days. 6237 Photographs. One incredible journey.

GoPro: Wild Downhill Ride with Claudio Caluori

Claudio Calouri and Will Longden takes us on a wild run through the UCI Downhill Course at Leogang in Austria.

World’s smallest cat – Big Cats

森の木琴

TOUCHWOOD SH-08C http://answer.nttdocomo.co.jp/touchwood/

“TRUMP ANTHEM” — A Bad Lip Reading of Donald Trump

Snow falls in the Sahara desert

The town of Ain Sefra, on the edge of the Sahara desert, was hit by icy weather last week – and even snow.

Snowfall is very rare in the Sahara, despite the fact that it can be cold at night – because there’s rarely enough water around for any kind of precipitation.

Unbelievable Unlikely Animal Friendships Compilation 2017

Winds on this mountain in the US will make it feel like -67C

Temperatures on a mountain peak in the US state of New Hampshire could fall so low you risk getting frostbite in just a couple of minutes.

Micro Wind Turbine

Oxmo Puccino – 365 Jours

The Future Of Transportation

The World in 2050