By Chris Crum
It was recently discovered that search engine/news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk had been blocked by Times Online, a publication from News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. This has been viewed as a possible beginning to what News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been talking about for quite some time - blocking search engines and aggregators from using its content (and using apparently includes linking).
Do you think linking is a right? Share your view.
Read more »January 13, 2010 - Poorest country in the western hemisphere is ill equipped to deal with natural disasters.
The earthquake that has hit Haiti, raising fears that thousands have been killed, is the latest in a long line of natural disasters to befall a country ill equipped to deal with such events.
Hurricanes and flooding are perennial concerns for the poorest country in the western hemisphere, which has time and again been dependent on foreign aid in emergencies.
In 1963 hurricane Flora, the sixth deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, devastated the island. The US weather bureau estimated the death toll at 5,000 and the cost of damage to property and crops at between $125m and $180m.
Read more »January 13, 2010 - A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died.
Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.
A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. Many people have spent the night outside amid fears of more aftershocks.
Describing the earthquake as a "catastrophe", Haiti's envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions.
A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.
Read more »January 12, 2010 - Togo's shaken footballers prepare to go home after machine-gun ambush. Team withdraw from Africa Cup of Nations, but organisers insist that the tournament will still go ahead.
Togo's traumatised footballers have pulled out of the Africa Cup of Nations after the death toll from a machine-gun ambush on their team bus rose to three.
But organisers in Angola dismissed calls for the tournament to be abandoned because of security concerns and said the opening ceremony and first match would go ahead tomorrow as planned.
Read more »Do you remember the story of this Italian scientist who predicted the L'Aquila earthquake weeks before it actualluy occured (in April 2009). He was muzzled by the authorities which considered that his prediction had no scientific foundation.
Read more »
January 12, 2010 - A remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle killed an Iranian physics professor outside his home in northern Tehran on Tuesday, state media reported, blaming the United States and Israel for the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. One state broadcaster, IRIB, quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that “in the initial investigation, signs of the triangle of wickedness by the Zionist regime, America and their hired agents are visible in the terrorist act” against the scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi.
There was some dispute about his field of scientific specialization.
Read more »February 5, 2010 On 5 February 1997, dozens of people were killed or injured in Gulja in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) when security forces opened fire on ethnic Uighur protesters.
That day, Uighur residentsof Gulja began a peaceful demonstration. They were protesting against the closure of independent religious schools, the banning of “meshreps” (a traditional form of social gathering), the closure of a local Uighur football league and high rates of unemployment among Uighurs.
Security forces carried out house-to-house searches detaining suspected protesters and supporters. Many of those detained were reportedly tortured, some to death.
Read more »February 2, 2010 - Police violence and illegal evictions near Papua New Guinean gold mine must be investigated
The government of Papua New Guinea must investigate the conduct of police who burnt down homes and threatened people with guns while illegally evicting them from land next to one of the biggest gold mines in the country, Amnesty International said today.
With a million Haitians homeless and disease spreading, the earthquake-shattered island is threatened by other natural forces.
Aid agencies are warning of an imminent health crisis in Haiti, as the onset of the rainy season brings fears of outbreaks of waterborne diseases in Port-au-Prince's squalid refugee camps.
Read more »
Diamonds and Human Rights by Rona E. Peligal
Browsing for diamond jewelry off Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, you can't tell by looking where the diamonds in the store windows come from. But experts can. And those same experts have affirmed that diamonds from the Marange fields of eastern Zimbabwe are mined under highly abusive conditions - the latest "blood diamonds" of the twenty-first century.
To its credit, the Israeli government has tried to put pressure on Zimbabwe to improve these conditions. In the coming year, as chair of the global group that monitors the diamond industry, Israel will have the opportunity to do even more.
Read more »
