India Says 'Well-Trained Terrorist' Attacked Israeli Diplomat

Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram says Monday evening's car blast was targeted at an Israeli diplomat's wife.

"It's quite clear that a very well-trained person has committed this attack," he said. "One has to proceed on the basis that it was a terrorist attack."

The attack was carried out in one of New Delhi's most secure districts -- only a few blocks from the residence of the prime minister himself.

"It appears that a motorcycle rider, a single person, came from behind and the person attached a device to the trunk's door of the Innova," he explained. "The explosion, according to the eyewitness...happened within seconds. And, we think it happened within about four to five seconds of the device being attached."

Incumbent Liberian President Leading in Early Returns

First results from Liberia's presidential election show incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf leading her 15 rivals.

Reporting results from just over 16 percent of more than 4,000 polling stations, Liberia's National Electoral Commission says President Sirleaf has more than 44 percent of the vote. Former justice minister Winston Tubman has more than 26 percent, while former rebel leader and current Senator Prince Johnson is running third with about 13 percent.

Vote counting is expected to continue through the weekend, and complete results may not be known for some time as the electoral commission has until October 26 to make a final count.  If none of the candidates wins an outright majority, there will be a run-off election between the top two finishers November 8.

This is Liberia's second post-civil war election but the first that has been run entirely by Liberians after the United Nations supervised the 2005 contest.  U.N. peacekeepers remain in place for this vote, but U.N. mission spokesperson Yasmina Bouziane says the election itself is up to Liberians to decide.

Video games 'can alter children's brains'

Children should "feel the grass under their feet" rather than play addictive computer games which can harm their mental development, a leading scientist has said.

Baroness Greenfield, the former director of the Royal Institution, said spending too much time staring at computer screens can cause physical changes in the brain that lead to attention and behaviour problems.

Technology that plays strongly on the senses – like video games – can literally "blow the mind" by temporarily or permanently deactivating certain nerve connections in the brain, the Baroness said.

She told the Daily Telegraph last night: "The human brain has evolved to adapt to the environment. It therefore follows that if the environment is changing, it will have an impact on your brain.

"If you play computer games to the exclusion of other things this will create a new environment that will have new effects ... every hour you spend in front of a screen is an hour not spent climbing a tree or giving someone a hug."

Giving a speech earlier yesterday about the addictiveness of screen technologies at the opening of a new £2.5 million science centre at the private Sherbourne Girls' school in Dorset, the Baroness urged pupils “to be outside, to climb trees and feel the grass under your feet and the sun on your face".

"Screen technologies cause high arousal, which in turn activates the brain system’s underlying addiction and reward, resulting in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity, the Baroness said.

Burmese President Visits India as Ties Between Neighbors Deepen

The Burmese president is in India for a bilateral visit aimed at deepening a relationship that has been growing steadily in recent years. New Delhi wants to nurture ties with its neighbor, whose new, nominally civilian leadership has made tentative moves toward political reforms.

Burmese President Thein Sein visited Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India before arriving in New Delhi to hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

It is the first visit by the head of Burma’s nominally civilian government, which took office in March this year. He is accompanied by several senior ministers.

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash says New Delhi is pleased that ties with Burma are gaining momentum. 

“Relationships are a process, it is a building process and I consciously did note that both in terms of content and substance and the sweep of the relationship, certainly it's an upwards trajectory, there is no doubt about that,” he said.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman says New Delhi will deepen ties with Burma in areas ranging from security, trade, energy, and infrastructure development, to education and agriculture. He called Burma an important partner in India’s quest for energy security. He says roads and a port being developed by India in the neighboring country will give remote northeastern Indian states easier access to port facilities and boost their economic development. The two countries also plan to increase bilateral trade from $1.2 billion at present to $3 billion by 2015.

An embedded home hugs its hillside

People have been transforming the rolling landscape of Ontario’s Grey County for more than 150 years. They have mined and logged it, cleared and farmed it, and, more recently, turned it into a much-frequented rural retreat from life in Toronto, dotted with weekend houses.

The architectural results are uneven. As anyone driving around the district can see, builders have occasionally just dropped city homes into the midst of the rural scenery. The more thoughtful designers, however, have engaged in dialogues with the place’s geology and cultural history, and developed solutions that fit, rather than fight (or ignore), the complex beauty of what’s there.

Toronto architect Ian MacDonald has tackled the more exacting task and carried it through to an interesting and expressive conclusion in his house known as Grey Highlands.

Designed as a second residence for a Toronto couple with five children, the 2,950-square-foot building stands on the site of a former farm laid out high up the sloping side of a valley. The visitor coming there drives up a steep dead-end road, then parks on a small pad just off the road.

Surveyed from the vantage point of the pad, the flat-roofed house lies low and broad below, partly embedded into the hillside. In plan, its two limbs describe an L shape. The larger wing contains the more public areas, while the other wing, enclosing the bedrooms, thrusts out toward the distant, opposite side of the valley. This out-bound visual pulse is sharply checked by an old barn that Mr. MacDonald preserved and renovated.