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As our plane touches down in Sundsvall, Sweden, the horizon is all snow and ice. A small air traffic control tower sticks out above the white horizon.

But this airport actually has two air traffic control centers. The second one is just a short walk from the airport runway.

Inside a ground-floor, windowless room, there's a display that looks exactly like what you'd see out of an air traffic control tower. You can see the snowy runway, you can see the trees, you can even see a car pulling into the airport parking lot.

But instead of windows, these are actually screens. And the airport you're looking at isn't the one in Sundsvall. It's the one in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden — about 105 miles away.

Ornskoldsvik is the first airport in the world to land passenger planes remotely. This summer, an airport in Leesburg, Va., will become the first American airport to use the new technology.

Erik Backman runs the remote airplane landing center in the town of Sundsvall. He explains that the town of Ornskoldsvik has a tiny airport, and it's expensive to keep air traffic controllers there who spend hours with no planes to land.

So they decided to have one team in Sundsvall that could handle both cities.

"The day you have one air traffic controller who can control two airports, then you have some good benefits according to costs," Backman says.

A 'Paradigm Shift' For The Industry

In Ornskoldsvik, a set of cameras and microphones delivers a real-time image to Sundsvall. Of course, new technology is notoriously glitchy.

And a problem landing an airplane is far more consequential than a laptop freezing up.

Backman says when he saw the first mockup of this technology in 2004, he was dubious. The room had to be dark, the pictures were jumpy.

But a decade later, they've been landing planes remotely for months without any major problems.

Mikael Henriksson, the project manager, has been an air traffic controller for 40 years. He says in all his time looking out tower windows, there were only three big innovations: blinds to block out the sun, thicker glass to block out the noise, and bug zappers to get rid of the flies.

Now, he's had a chance to play with this new technology, and he can't believe it only arrived near the end of his career.

"For the air traffic controller, this is like airline pilots going from propeller to jet," Henriksson says. "It's a paradigm shift."

Many Uses, Including Potentially For The Military

Because once the windows are replaced with screens, you can overlay all kinds of information on the display: airplane numbers, runway incursion warnings. You can zoom in, or switch to an infrared view to see through thick fog or darkness.

And that might make this technology useful even for big, crowded airports.

Anders Carp is head of traffic management at Saab, the Swedish defense and security company that created this technology. He thinks there are worldwide — even military — applications.

Airports in dangerous places could have a camera house instead of a control tower, he says. The air traffic controllers could be a few — or a few thousand — miles away in a safe environment, because it doesn't matter whether the remote tower is across town or on the other side of the earth.

Back in the Sundsvall control center, a plane descends toward the Ornskoldsvik runway. We watch it move across the screen. The sound shifts in stereo as the plane rolls along.

The passengers — and even the pilot — have no idea whether they've been brought in for a landing from the tower they can see out their window, or from this hidden, remote center more than a 100 miles away.

aviation

sweden

In the U.S., I experienced my share of invisibility. And my minority women friends there tell me they've also experienced it.

For me, one example was at work. Some colleagues were putting together a project highlighting the accomplishments of a group. But I wasn't included in the presentation, despite belonging to that work group.

Then someone higher up — I'm not sure who — decided the project needed to show "diversity" in the workplace. And so, I was eventually asked to participate.

I was game, did my bit and even teased my colleagues about making me the "token minority." They responded with embarrassment and self-deprecating comments, and we merrily went back to working together.

Asia

On India's Trains, Seeking Safety In The Women's Compartment

I must add a line here in defense of all the people who wittingly or unwittingly made sure I wasn't invisible for most of my time in the U.S. I mostly felt supported and encouraged by numerous colleagues and friends. An experience of significant visibility, I'd say.

Still, it was hard not to notice the times where I was overlooked or my work underappreciated. And I'm not alone. This problem has been documented in studies, especially on African American women. Take this 2010 study for example, which shows how black women go "unnoticed" and "unheard."

Back here in India, I find myself aching for invisibility — not when hailing a cab though, like Kaling. That would be no good.

Opinion

For Indian Women, Teasing Is No Laughing Matter

But when I'm out and about in New Delhi, I wish I could go about my business unnoticed. That's because being visible comes with a certain risk of violence, especially in a city like New Delhi, often called the rape capital of India.

Public spaces here often have different rules for men and women. Men outnumber women, and there are liberties a man can take that women still can't.

For instance, a man can loiter. A woman can't — at least, not without drawing stares from men and assumptions about the woman's character being "loose." It's a guaranteed way to draw all the creeps in the vicinity.

Goats and Soda

India's New Comic Book Hero Fights Rape, Rides On The Back Of A Tiger

A man can go for a walk, anywhere and at any time of the day. A woman can't.

A man can walk out of the house wearing almost anything he wants. Indian men often wear shorts, lungis (wrap skirts for men), or or even no shirt at all. Nobody raises an eyebrow.

A woman doesn't have that freedom. Each time I step out of the house, I have to consider carefully what I'm wearing. Is it too tight? Is it too revealing? Is it going to draw lewd stares and comments from men? There are no specific rules, so to speak. But anything that's too revealing and modern — shorts, short skirts, tank tops — is bound to draw unwanted attention.

When I was younger, I didn't care. I wore what I wanted, despite the stares. Now, in my mid-30s, I no longer want my clothes to be a potential risk to my own safety, so I worry about my wardrobe.

An invisibility cloak would definitely come in handy here in New Dehli. I could wear it and go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And I could remove it when I needed to be visible, say, when hailing that cab.

But I recognize that invisibility isn't the answer. Only when more and more women step out into public spaces here can we hope to make spaces safer for Indian women. It will take time and maybe a few more generations. But, I think, it's the only way to go.

And actually, when you think about, the situation in New Delhi isn't that different from that in the U.S. Only by persisting in workplaces and public spaces, and making sure we are seen and heard, can we hope for a day when women of all colors feel more visible.

Going about one's life as though one's invisible, is definitely not the answer. Right Mindy?

mindy kaling

women's rights

minorities

India

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected any renegotiation of Greek debt after last week's election that brought an anti-austerity party into power in Athens.

Merkel said banks and creditors that extended Greece bailout loans to keep the government from defaulting on its sovereign debt have already must draw the line on already substantial concessions. But she did say in an interview with the German daily Berliner Morgenpost that she wanted Greece to stay in the eurozone.

"We — Germany and the other European partners — will now wait and see what concept the new Greek government comes to us with," she was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

However, Germany and the other EU partners had already forgiven billions of euros lent by private creditors, she said.

"I don't see a further debt haircut," Merkel said, according to The Associated Press.

The European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, known as the troika has agreed to a $270 billion bailout with the previous Greek government.

However, as the BBC reports, Greece's new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, "has refused to work with the troika to renegotiate the bailout terms and has already begun to roll back the austerity measures the creditors had demanded of the previous government."

Merkel's comments echoed those of Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who warned Greece on Friday that it would not back-down on repayment. "[We] are difficult to blackmail," he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Germany

Greece

China's education minister has told universities to stop using textbooks that promote Western values, reports NPR's Frank Langfitt from Shanghai, a move seen as part of a larger ideological crackdown.

At an educational forum, Yuan Guiren said universities should also forbid criticism of China's leaders and the country's political system, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Frank says the edict comes as the government disrupts virtual private networks, or VPNs, which help people access foreign websites that China's Internet cops have already blocked.

He says that earlier this week, an annual Human Rights Watch report criticized China for tightening already limited free speech in the media and on the Internet as well as for jailing rights activists, lawyers and critics.

Also, as the BBC reports, restrictions on academics appear to have tightened in recent months.

"In December, law professor Zhang Xuehong said he was sacked by the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai after refusing to apologise for writing articles criticising the government.

"His dismissal followed the expulsion of outspoken economist and free speech advocate Xia Yeliang from Peking University in October.

"Mr Xia was a signatory to a high-profile document calling for democratic reforms, Charter 08."

The news agency also noted that prominent Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who has urged Beijing to open a dialogue with the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province, was jailed for life on charges of separatism last year.

China

Censorship