Word: humanize
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Star Trek fans know it as the Prime Directive: that there should be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations. (Given the frequency with which captains Kirk, Picard, et. al., violate it, however, the Prime Directive seems more like a Prime Suggestion.) Since human beings have yet to explore very far beyond Earth, pondering an interplanetary noninterference policy of our own may seem a little premature - at least until we've mastered warp drives and phasers...
...some form - the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which governs the legal framework for activities in space. Best known for banning governments from putting nuclear weapons into orbit, the treaty also requires space-faring nations to avoid "harmful contamination" of other worlds while exploring the solar system. Human beings have yet to set foot on other planets, so the risk today comes from bacteria that can hitch a ride on unmanned spacecraft like NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, which arrived on the red planet's surface last May. (See pictures of the Mars Rover's five years in space...
...terrorism to rural development to its troubled relationships with its neighbors, almost every challenge that India faces is played out in some way along the border. But instead of resolving them, it only throws them into relief. "Fencing can't stop anything," says Adilur Khan, head of a Bangladeshi human-rights group called Odhikar. "It's kind of building the Berlin Wall again...
...their soil to commit acts of violence in India." (Fencing on the Pakistan border has already made that area easier to patrol, the BSF says.) Mutual suspicion inhibits the one antiterrorism strategy that could make a real difference: cooperation between India and Bangladesh against their common threat. Intelligence and human-rights experts in Bangladesh and India say the two countries have not made any serious efforts to share intelligence. That's unlikely to change as long as insurgent groups from India's northeast find sanctuary in Bangladesh (a ULFA commander, Anup Chetia, has been in Bangladesh since completing a prison...
...ground, the prospects for cooperation are even worse. "Bangladesh is definitely a sanctuary for extremist groups," says a Bangladeshi human-rights researcher who has worked on the border. But the curfews, surveillance and other techniques of "border domination," as the BSF calls it, have had the effect of increasing sympathy among the border population for terrorists. The researcher adds: "India has alienated a large section of people who think that India is our enemy." The Bangladesh human-rights group Odhikar estimates that 62 Bangladeshis were killed by Indian border guards in 2008 - about one every six days. "Bangladesh and India...