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• November 29, 2011
• 0:00

  Ambient Displays and Game Design Patterns for Social Learning

   » ‎ CELSTEC Publications
  Title: Ambient Displays and Game Design Patterns for Social Learning
  
  Authors: Kelle, Sebastian; Börner, Dirk; Kalz, Marco; Specht, Marcus; Glahn, Christian
  

  read more

• September 14, 2011
• 6:14

  Intel and Google in Android deal

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Intel sets up a development partnership with Google to improve its mobile phone and tablet chips for the Android system.

• 5:48

  Demand at Target For Fashion Line Crashes Web Site

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  In an unusual fumble, Target was unprepared for shoppers’ hunger for the limited-edition Missoni for Target line.
  
  
• 5:44

  Op-Ed Contributor: Protect Our Right to Anonymity

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  A court case on surveillance technology threatens Americans’ expectation of anonymity in public places.
  
  

• 5:20

  American poverty levels hit record high

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  US poverty rate swells for third year to 15.1% with the number of poor in 2010 the largest on record

  A record 46 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010, pushing the US poverty rate to its highest level since 1993, according to a government report on Tuesday on the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

  Underscoring the economic challenges that face President Barack Obama and Congress, the US census Bureau said the poverty rate rose for a third consecutive year to hit 15.1% in 2010. The number in poverty was the largest since the government first began publishing estimates in 1959.

  The report surfaces at a time when the economic straits of ordinary Americans are at the forefront of the 2012 election campaign.

  Obama is suffering from low job approval ratings on the economy and evidence of rising poverty could give popular momentum to the $450 billion job-creation program he unveiled last week.

  The census data also could come into play in the deliberations of a bipartisan super committee in Congress, which has been charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years by 23 November.

  The United States has the highest poverty rate among developed countries, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

  The poverty line for an American family of four with two children is an income $22,113 a year.

  The data showed that children under 18 suffered the highest poverty rate, 22%, compared with adults and the elderly.

  In a sign of decline for middle-income Americans, the figures showed continued decline in the number of Americans with employer-provided health insurance, while the ranks of the uninsured hovered just below the 50 million mark.

  Underlying the census data was a rate of economic growth too meager to compensate for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs from 2009 to 2010, as the recession officially ended but the jobless rate shot up from 9.3% to 9.6%.

  "All of this deterioration in the labor market caused incomes to drop, poverty to rise and people to lose their health insurance," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute think tank. "One of the immediately obvious issues this brings up is that there is no relief in sight."

  The numbers would have been worse, analysts said, but for government assistance programs including extended unemployment compensation, stimulus spending and Obama's health reforms, which appeared to reduce the number of uninsured young adults.

  In Obama's hometown of Chicago, Salvation Army Major David Harvey knows well the effects of grinding poverty on the city's South Side, where he attended a food giveaway on Tuesday.

  "There are more families falling into poverty," he said. "That's multiplied on the South Side of Chicago where there are pockets with 20%, or more, unemployment."

  You've got people crying for jobs. They move out of state to get jobs because employers are leaving because of the tax increases here," Harvey said.

  The poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Hispanics but did not differ significantly for Asians. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 54% of the poor with whites at 9.9% and Asians at 12.1%.

  The South fared worst among US regions, recording the highest poverty rate, a significant drop in median income and the largest number of residents without health insurance.

  Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 22.7%, according to calculations by the census Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 6.6%.

  The administration was quick to seize on data showing a 2.1% drop in uninsured young adults, aged 18 to 24, as evidence that families were benefiting from an Obama healthcare reform that allows parents to extend their coverage to children as old as 25.

  The Affordable Care Act is the centerpiece of Obama's domestic policy agenda but has come under fierce attack from Republicans including presidential candidates who hope to challenge the president in the 2012 general election.

  "We expect even more will gain coverage in 2011 when the policy is fully phased in," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog posting.

  • United States
  • Poverty
  • Social exclusion

  
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 5:03

  Gadgetwise Blog: Macro Photography 101: Extreme Close-Ups

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Macro photographer Tony Sweet offers tips on extreme close-up picture taking.
  
  
• 3:40

  EBay Dispute With Craigslist Is Subject of U.S. Inquiry

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Craiglist, the online classified ad company, claims that eBay stole data to start a rival site.
  
  
• 3:25

  Bits Blog: At TechCrunch Conference, Talk of a Bubble

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  This year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco was rife with debate over whether the technology industry was experiencing Bubble 2.0.
  
  

• 1:23

  Revealed: secret government plans to win back women

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Exclusive: No 10 proposes debate on reduction of school holidays and child benefit overhaul, according to leak

  Downing Street is considering cutting the school summer holiday, overhauling child benefit and banning advertising to under-16s as part of a charm offensive aimed at winning back female voters, according to a leaked government memo.

  The document reveals a growing anxiety at the heart of government that the coalition is failing to deliver on its promise to be the "most family-friendly government ever" and a worry that its support among women is particularly low.

  The four-page document, marked "restricted – policy", was written by officials at No 10 and circulated to government departments in the past week. It includes proposals to put together a cross-government communications team to announce a series of elaborate policies designed to win women back.

  It cites an "urgent need to up our game on communications about what we're doing". It says: "We are clear that there are a range of policies we have pursued as a government which are seen as having hit women, or their interests, disproportionately." The document mentions public sector pay and pensions as an example, "particularly as contrasted with – mostly male – bankers, in the popular narrative".

  The proposals include moves to debate a reduction in the long summer holiday to help working families – "if we're feeling brave", it says. "This is tricky in the context of more school autonomy – but we could try some exhortation," it adds. Other measures raised include:

  • Frontloading child benefit to help parents struggling with childcare and lost earnings in their children's first years.

  • Working towards a "proper" ban on advertising to children.

  • Introducing personal budgets for maternity services to allow women to shop around for services.

  • Developing a strategy – "including possible cross-party work" – to ensure there are more female candidates for mayoral posts, elected police commissions and local enterprise partnerships.

  • Changing plans for the new universal credit to give it to women automatically, instead of allowing the applicant to nominate a household member.

  • Setting up a website to allow women to anonymously disclose and compare their salaries with others in their industry.

  • Criminalising forced marriage because the "signals sent out by opting not to criminalise is a bad one".

  • Holding a No 10 summit for women in business. "We haven't had one yet," it acknowledges.

  Labour claims the government's economic strategy has hit women hardest as they bear the brunt of the reforms to welfare and benefits, as well as job cuts in the public sector, and the coalition's ratings among women have plummeted.

  David Cameron has been accused of sexism on occasions, including when he told one female Labour MP to "calm down, dear". Last week's Commons debate on abortion stirred the issues once more. The document is understood to have been developed by the No 10 policy unit, headed by Steve Hilton, and is in marked contrast to the last leak from his office. That memo proposed abolishing maternity rights to help aid the economic recovery and startled ministers, who urgently sought to distance the government from it.

  Cameron's chief strategist, the former pollster Andrew Cooper, is also working on the issue and has spent the summer analysing the problem of women and the coalition. This week, Downing Street is to hold a meeting with officials from across government, including some from the office of the home secretary, Theresa May. No 10 refused to comment on the leaked document but a source stressed that the nature of the document was to raise ideas for discussion and that no decisions had been reached.

  The document says that women have reacted badly to "visible and prominent" issues, including tuition fees, abolition of child trust funds, changes to child tax credits, benefits and income support. The coalition's "women-friendly" policies on flexible working, parental leave, nursery places and health visitors have meanwhile failed to register, it notes. "There are also areas where we have made bold statements or promises but haven't delivered enough – including, for example, our overarching claim that we would be 'the most family-friendly government ever' [and] specific undertakings to increase the representation of women on boards," it says.

  The paper refers to suggestions that women have particular concerns about the future for their children and the next generations. "We need to change our messaging about deficit reduction," it concludes. "Talk less about sorting out a mess, and more about building a better economy for the future."

  Meetings have been held between female officials at the centre of government tasked with identifying the government's failure with women. The document says: "The group of Cabinet Office and No 10 women we assembled felt strongly that the general tone and messages of government communications, particularly around deficit reduction, were an issue – with women especially in the public sector feeling targeted.

  "And even a view that the government's choice of leaders on the economy gave the implication that 'now there's a real job to be done sorting out the mess, it can only be done by men'."

  Women's votes are increasingly seen as crucial for the next election. Polling by Ipsos Mori, commissioned and published by the Resolution Foundation, concludes that support for the coalition among female voters in the C2 socioeconomic group (mostly low-skilled workers) has fallen away. Over the course of this year, the Tory rating with C2 women is down by seven points, and the Lib Dems are down 14 points.

  ItThe polling also shows that the proportion of women aged 18-24 who support the Tories has declined from 30% at the general election to just 18% in 2011, and support for the Lib Dems among the same group has fallen from 34% to just 8%. Overall levels of approval for the coalition have fallen to 25% among women, 8% lower than for men. Just 13% of women feel the Tory party is the party closest to women; only 7% believe the Lib Dems are.

  Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and minister for equalities, said: "Women don't want more spin and communications professionals, they want fundamental changes to government policy. This panicked reaction shows that once again, the Tories are treating the women of this country as an afterthought."

  • Women in politics
  • Gender
  • Women
  • Schools
  • Liberal-Conservative coalition
  • Child benefit
  • Communities
  • Children

  Polly CurtisAllegra Stratton
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 1:23

  Phone hacking: 7/7 disaster victim's mother to sue NoW publisher

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  News emerged as fresh revelations placed the conduct of Murdoch's global media group News Corp under intense scrutiny

  The mother of a victim of the 2005 London terrorist attacks is suing Rupert Murdoch's media empire after she was told by police that her son's mobile phone is likely to have been targeted by a private investigator working for the News of the World.

  Sheila Henry filed a high court writ this week against the paper's owner, News Group Newspapers, alleging that journalists at the tabloid, which closed in July, hacked into a mobile belonging to Christian Small, 28, on the day he was killed by a bomb blast on the London Underground.

  Henry left messages on her son's phone on the day of the attacks, in which 52 people died. In common with many of the victims, Small was missing for some time after the initial bomb blasts, and his family were trying to discover where he was.

  The news emerged on the same day as fresh revelations in the phone-hacking affair that once again put the conduct of Murdoch's global media group News Corp under intense scrutiny.

  The company's UK subsidiary told the high court on Tuesday it had found "tens of thousands" of extra emails that could potentially shed light on the extent of phone hacking at the paper "which the current management were unaware of". They are understood to include correspondence between reporters and senior managers at the News of the World and the Sun.

  Mr Justice Vos, the judge overseeing the phone hacking cases, said : "There's some important material in what has already been disclosed. I took the step of looking at some of the material. There's some significant material. I'm sure there's lots more to come."

  The high court was also told Scotland Yard has handed a 68-page document to phone-hacking litigants who are pursuing civil cases. It lists the names of News of the World journalists who commissioned Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator the paper employed, to hack into mobile phones. The fact that the document runs to so many pages suggests Mulcaire acted on the orders of a number of News of the World reporters.

  Separately, James Murdoch, 38, son of Rupert and third most senior News Corp executive, was recalled to parliament for a second grilling by MPs over whether he was told three years ago that hacking extended beyond a single "rogue reporter" at the paper. Murdoch's denial was contradicted by the News of the World's last editor, Colin Myler, and former legal head Tom Crone, at the Commons culture, media and sport committee last week.

  Meanwhile, a group of News Corp shareholders in America who are suing the firm for corporate negligence widened their action against the company. The investors now allege that "illicit phone hacking and subsequent cover-ups at News of the World were part of a much broader, historic pattern of corruption". The action targets Rupert Murdoch, chief operating officer Chase Carey, and Carey's deputy, James Murdoch.

  The case brought by Sheila Henry is the first to be launched by a 7/7 victim or a family member of a victim. The Metropolitan police have warned relatives of a handful of those killed that day that mobile numbers belonging to their deceased relatives were found in Mulcaire's notebooks. It is understood that Mulcaire made a note of Henry's own mobile as well as her son's. The apparent confirmation of the News of the World's willingness to target victims of a terrorist attack brought immediate condemnation.

  Labour MP Tom Watson, who has vigorously pursued the hacking allegations, said: "If this is accurate it shows that in the week we commemorated the victims of 9/11, the victims of our own terrorist attack have had their memories insulted in a callous and inhuman way."

  A spokeswoman for News International, News Group's parent company, said: "We take very seriously the matters raised in court this morning and we are committed to working with civil claimants to resolve their cases." Henry's claim will be one of half a dozen lead cases heard at trial early next year. If successful it will set a benchmark for the amount of compensation awarded to victims of hacking.

  They could include the parents of Milly Dowler, the schoolgirl who was murdered in 2002. The revelation in July that their daughter's phone had been targeted by Mulcaire led to the closure of the News of the World and the resignation of former NI chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

  The news comes as the lead investigator in Operation Motorman, a 2006 inquiry by the Information Commissioner's Office into the use of private investigators by newspapers, said that his team were told not to interview journalists involved.

  The investigator, a retired police inspector with 30 years experience, accused authorities of being too "frightened" to tackle journalists. "I feel the investigation should have been conducted a lot more vigorously, a lot more thoroughly and it may have revealed a lot more information," he said. "I was disappointed and somewhat disillusioned with the senior management because I felt as though they were burying their heads in the sand. It was like being on an ostrich farm," he told the Independent.

  • Phone hacking
  • News Corporation
  • Rupert Murdoch
  • National newspapers
  • Newspapers
  • Newspapers & magazines
  • 7 July London attacks
  • United States

  James RobinsonEd Pilkington
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 1:23

  Magistrates were told to send rioters to crown court, emails show

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Emails sent to justices' clerks after August riots raise questions about judicial independence and the use of blanket guidance

  Magistrates were urged to abandon sentencing guidelines when dealing with rioters last month because "nothing like this was envisaged", according to court documents released to the Guardian.

  The text of two controversial emails circulated to justices' clerks immediately after August's disturbances raises questions about judicial independence and the use of blanket guidance irrespective of individual cases. One human rights group described the emails as "disturbing".

  The messages appear to betray a sense of confusion – verging on chaos – behind the scenes as hundreds of suspects arrested for looting and violence were processed in late night emergency sittings.

  The documents, written by a senior justices' clerk in the London regional office of Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), were released by the Ministry of Justice following a freedom of information request from the Guardian.

  They were sent out on successive days at the end of the week in which rioting had started in Tottenham, north London, following a police shooting, before degenerating into widespread looting as it spread across the capital and other cities.

  The emails were sent to justices' clerks, who sit alongside magistrates providing guidance on the law and sentencing recommendations. The first, addressed "Dear all", began: "I should be grateful if you would ensure that the following advice is cascaded to every member of your legal team as soon as possible.

  "The sentencing guidelines cannot sensibly be used to determine the sentence in cases arising from the recent disturbances/looting. When the guidelines were written nothing like this was envisaged."

  Most of those arrested for looting had been charged with "commercial burglary", it noted. "The general advice from the higher judiciary is that we will not be criticised if we return these … If in doubt, commit to the crown court."

  Some of the words in the first email were missing. The second message read: "Apologies for the fact that the email … sent yesterday is confusing and frankly incoherent. The intention was that you should advise magistrates to commit to the crown court cases of commercial burglary, or handling … or violent disorder arising from the recent disturbances.

  "There is a general acceptance that what occurred earlier this week is not covered by the sentencing guidelines and it will be very much the exception that such cases are sentenced in the magistrates courts …Hopefully before too much longer we may get some guideline cases."

  Commenting on the emails, Sally Ireland, the director of policy at the civil liberties group Justice, said: "Justices' clerks can give directions to assistant justices' clerks under the Courts Act; however, the content of the email is disturbing. The application or disapplication of sentencing guidelines should be a matter decided on a case by case basis."

  She also questioned the term "higher judiciary", saying: "In what way did they give this general advice? The higher judiciary does not have a role in allocation/sentencing by magistrates, except in the case of appeals and guideline judgments."

  Paul Mendelle QC, a former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: "The idea that established Court of Appeal authorities can be set aside or ignored by the secret advice from an anonymous civil servant strikes me as undemocratic at best and unconstitutional at worst.

  "Blanket advice to magistrates to deal with all cases in one particular way – commit to crown court – regardless of the facts of the individual cases might be seen as an unlawful fetter on their discretion."

  At the time the emails triggered alarm on at least one bench, prompting questions about magistrates' independence.

  The week after the riots, Novello Noades, the chair of Camberwell Green magistrates court, in south London, claimed the court had been given a government "directive" that anyone involved in the rioting should be given a custodial sentence. She later retracted her statement and said she was mortified to have used the term "directive".

  It has been generally accepted in courts in the legal and judicial world that participation in violent riots and looting should be deemed an aggravating factor, leading to harsher sentences than for theft committed as shoplifting.

  John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates' Association, said: "Magistrates and legal advisers work as a team in court with the legal advisers having a role in law to advise the magistrates on all matters relating to the law and the magistrates making independent decisions based on any advice given ... this note refers to the issue of mode of trial decisions. Magistrates have to decide whether the maximum sentence of six months custody is sufficient for a single offence and if not then the matter is sent to the crown court.

  "It is not in any way outside guidelines as statute allows the judiciary to raise the seriousness of an individual offence after taking account of the harm caused, the culpability of the offender and any aggravating features such as an offence committed during grave disorder."

  Some sentences handed down immediately after the riots in August were criticised as being off the judicial scale. The former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald warned courts risked being swept up in a"collective loss of proportion". One person got six months for stealing £3.50 worth of water. Two youths were jailed for four years each for inciting riots on Facebook that never took place. Some sentences have since been overturned.

  Unusually, the Ministry of Justice provided an accompanying explanation with the emails, rebutting any suggestion that magistrates had been inappropriately influenced by government officials or that the independence of the judiciary had been compromised. "HMCTS is not involved in any guidance justices' clerks choose to give to magistrates, as this guidance is given whilst acting in a quasi-judicial capacity," it said.

  "It did not contain any direction by HMCTS or the Ministry of Justice on how anyone should be sentenced. Nor were there correspondence or conversations with the justices' clerks on any guidance prior to its issue."

  The statement continued: "We believe there is a strong public interest in ensuring there is confidence in the independence of the judiciary and we do not want this to be undermined by a perception the government has inappropriately issued any directions as to the types of sentences which should be handed down."

  According to the latest MoJ figures, Some 1,715 riot-related suspects have so far appeared before magistrates courts, two-thirds in London.

  • UK riots
  • Judiciary

  Owen Bowcott
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 1:20

  Iran to free US hikers jailed for spying

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were detained two years ago for walking across an unmarked border into Iran

  Iran has moved to reduce tensions with the international community by pledging to release two Americans held in the country and offering fresh nuclear talks ahead of President Ahmadinejad's visit to the United Nations in New York next week.

  The two Americans sentenced to eight years in jail for espionage and illegally crossing the border are to be released on bail of $500,000 (£316,000), their lawyer said on Tuesday.

  News of the deal came after Ahmadinejad revealed that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be allowed to return home in the next few days.

  In reaction to Iran's pledge, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said: "We are encouraged by what the Iranian government has said.

  "We obviously hope that we will see a positive outcome."

  The hikers' families said they were "overjoyed" the men may soon be released. They saidthey had no details but that the news was "a huge relief" and that they were looking forward to a reunion.

  The men, both now 29, were arrested by Iranian security officials in July 2009 along with a friend, Sarah Shourd, 33, after walking across an unmarked border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Shourd – who became engaged to Bauer while in jail – was released last September on health grounds and for the same bail sum.

  "The families of these two Americans and the Swiss embassy which hosts the US interests section in Tehran have been informed of this issue and Bauer and Fattal can leave Iran similar to Sarah Shourd," the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

  Iran's judiciary has a history of asking for large amounts of money as bail. For prisoners who leave Iran after securing the bail, it means buying freedom.

  Ahmadinejad appears to be crediting himself for their expected release ahead of his attendance at the UN general assembly meeting this month. The Washington Post quoted him as saying Bauer and Fattal had been granted a "unilateral pardon".

  "I am helping to arrange for their release in a couple of days so they will be able to return home," he said in an interview in Tehran. "This is of course going to be a unilateral humanitarian gesture."

  An Iranian court in August sentenced the two men each to three years for illegally entering Iran and a further five years for spying for the US. Their lawyer lodged an appeal against the sentences, and Amnesty International said the conviction made a "mockery of justice".

  The court's verdict was at odds with earlier comments made by Iranian foreign ministry officials who said before the trial that the pair would be freed. The contrast highlighted a growing rift between Iran's judiciary, which is close to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad's government.

  It is not clear why Iran has finally decided to grant them apparent clemency, but international pressure and Iran's isolation in the region may have been factors.

  A deal may have been struck for the lifting of a travel ban on Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran's atomic energy agency.

  The offer to release the Americans comes two days after Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran was ready to resume nuclear talks with the EU.

  The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said on Monday that he was "increasingly concerned" over Iran's nuclear activities, which the west worries might have military dimensions. Iran insists it wants nuclear energy for producing electricity.

  • Iran
  • Middle East
  • United States

  Saeed Kamali Dehghan
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• 1:19

  Militants attack government and Nato buildings in Kabul

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Explosions rock Afghan capital as militants strike at government buildings, US embassy and Nato military base

  A multipronged attack by Taliban militants held Kabul to siege on Tuesday and raised fresh doubts over the Afghan security forces' ability to take over security operations in the country.

  For more than six hours insurgents occupied the upper floors of an unfinished building in the Afghan capital, raining bullets and rockets towards their three main enemies in the 10-year war – the US embassy, Nato's HQ and the country's national directorate of security (NDS).

  The attack began at about 1.30pm local time when insurgents, believed to be disguised in burqas, reached Abdul Haq Square, killing at least one policeman at one of the "ring of steel" checkpoints and then entering the building. As rockets overshot the embassy, civilians rushed for cover in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood where several other embassies and foreign NGAs are housed. US embassy staff donned flak jackets and helmets and scrambled for their hardened safe rooms as US soldiers climbed on rooftops. Next door at the headquarters of the Nato-led International Assistance and Security Force (Isaf) a public address system announced "this is not a drill". Soldiers were put on lockdown after reports that their perimeter had been breached.

  Dozens of soldiers were ushered into bunkers and the dining hall, where they loaded their weapons and placed chairs against the doors to prevent any incursion. At the same time, militants at three other locations started their attacks. Two suicide bombers killed themselves in the west of the city, near the country's parliament, while a would-be suicide bomber near the airport was shot dead before he could detonate his bomb vest. Meanwhile, the insurgents in the 13-storey building were proving a resilient foe. The choice of location was no surprise – in a low-rise city, 13 floors is considered a skyscraper. This was why it was chosen, a Taliban spokesman announced as the attack continued.

  The spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the militants had come armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and 82mm shoulder-held rockets. "It's a very high building and with the targets we had we could easily attack from there – like Isaf HQ, like US embassy, like NDS office and other administrations."

  In response, Afghan police on the ground were firing haphazardly at the building but the muzzle flashes and rockets kept coming. At least 10 explosions could be heard across the city as the insurgents brought most of the city to a standstill. Nato helicopters were scrambled, firing on the building before they pulled away, replaced by Afghan ministry of interior helicopters which launched a brief assault on the building.

  The commander of the Afghan police's crisis response unit, Colonel Ghulam Daoud, said he directed police on the ground to stop firing at the building as his SAS-trained men moved in.

  "It's a very big building with lots of rooms," he said. "We are on the fourth floor. They are on the fifth and sixth floor." By nightfall one militant was still believed to be inside. At 9pm, Kabul police chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi said the attack was over and the militants were all dead but his men were checking the building for booby-traps.

  Despite the claim, almost two hours later gunfire and explosions could still be heard amid reports that two more insurgents remained in the building.

  Around the city, four police and two civilians lay dead, he added. A further 18 civilians were wounded. The US embassy later said four people in the embassy grounds were wounded. None of their injuries were life-threatening.

  The attack is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks in Kabul, including last month's storming of the British Council, and is likely to further undermine Afghans' belief that their security forces are unable to prevent – or even adequately combat – the insurgents.

  President Hamid Karzai praised the security forces and said their "timely reaction demonstrates their improved ability". He said the attacks were designed to affect the process of transition of security responsibilities to Afghans: "The attacks cannot stop the process [transition] from taking place and cannot affect, but rather embolden, our people's determination in taking the responsibility for their country's own affairs.

  Nato was equally bullish. "We are witnessing the Taliban trying to test transition but they can't stop it. Transition is on track and it will continue," said Nato's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

  • Afghanistan
  • Global terrorism
  • Nato
  • United States
  • US national security

  
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• 1:19

  Ed Miliband endures rough ride at TUC after criticism of pension strike action

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Labour leader urges talks to prevent confrontation while public sector unions gear up for a long-running battle

  Ed Miliband survived a smattering of boos and heckles as he told the TUC that Britain cannot afford a round of union strikes over public sector pensions, and admitted he was not going to restore all the coalition's spending cuts.

  Referring to the strikes in June, he said: "While negotiations were going on, I do believe it was a mistake for strikes to happen. I continue to believe that. But what we need now is meaningful negotiation to prevent further confrontation over the autumn."

  The speech was important to set the tone, as he seeks to seal a deal with unions affiliated to Labour over the next few days about the role of unions inside the party, including at party conference.

  Senior figures claim that after recent talks between union leaders, Miliband and Peter Hain, the shadow Welsh secretary, an agreement is possible.

  The proposals are due to be hammered out at a meeting of the Labour national executive committee next Wednesday.

  More public sector unions may ratchet up the pressure on government by announcing plans to hold ballots on strikes that will run from November, in what could be a running battle over pensions. "Without a shadow of a doubt, we are planning for it to be a long dispute," said Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite.

  Some are eyeing 29 November as a possible strike date – when the chancellor, George Osborne, delivers his autumn statement. But a line-up of leaders will take their turn at the podium on Wednesday to call on the TUC to give "full support" to industrial action against pension cuts, including "action planned for this autumn".

  After Miliband's speech, Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, the largest public sector union, said the largest single industrial ballot of modern times appeared inevitable, involving more than a million members.

  Miliband decided to risk serious barracking by telling the TUC he could not support the strikes, even though industrial action was sometimes a necessary last resort.

  He repeatedly urged them to make unions relevant by increasing their appeal and membership. He told them: "There are cuts that the Tories will impose that we will not be able to reverse when we return to government. And getting the deficit down means rooting out waste too. We all recognise that not every penny that the last government spent was spent wisely."

  But he insisted he was not delivering the unions a simple familiar Blairite "modernise or die" message. "I'm not just going to talk about how people need to change to suit our economy. I'm also going to talk about how we change our economy to suit the needs of people."

  He drew applause when he called for there to be more workers on company remuneration committees, a living wage for young people and condemned the closure of the train manufacturer Bombardier.

  But a question-and-answer session after his speech drew shouts of disagreement when he defended academy schools and after he praised the report into public sector pensions by Lord Hutton, the former Labour peer.

  To loud applause Janice Godrich, the president of the Public and Commercial Services Union, challenged him to "stand up on the side of hundreds and thousands of workers whose pensions are under attack".

  Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said she had been "proud" to join a strike in June by tens of thousands of teachers and civil servants, and told Miliband that the government was not prepared to negotiate a deal over its planned pension reforms.

  Miliband replied: "Of course the right to industrial action will be necessary, as a last resort.

  "But in truth, strikes are always the consequence of failure. Failure on all sides. Failure we cannot afford as a nation. Instead your real role is as partners in the new economy."

  Union leaders were split over the speech. Paul Kenny, of the GMB, said: "I have to give him credit for his courage in coming here and speaking frankly to us. What comes across is that he is not ashamed of the trade union links to the Labour party."

  On the eve of Miliband's first anniversary as Labour leader, a Populus poll for the Times found 63% of people said they couldn't imagine him as prime minister. Labour supporters were more evenly split between 49% who find it difficult to see him in Number 10, and 47% who believe he will become prime minister.

  • TUC
  • Trade unions
  • Ed Miliband
  • Unite
  • Pensions

  Patrick WintourHélène MulhollandDan Milmo
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• 0:28

  Intel's Genevieve Bell: She's really quite a gel

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  Naturally there was standing room only at the "round table"  - it was oblong - that Genevieve Bell had to endure, in the Famous Room 9. Bell lit off by saying can't we have more women to La Intella's PR. That is a sentiment with which I heartily concurred. And in fact continue to concur.

  You could call her Bell Labs, but I didn't dare, in case she strangled me by the throat until dead. She's been at Intel for 13 years  looks absolutely gorgeous, and applied her lipstick before all the men arrived. Sorry, wasn't allowed to take a photograph.
  
  Divining the Digital Future is the book what she has just written - an MIT book -  not Dragooning the Digital Future, and she has promised me a review copy - my email address is [email protected], Genevieve.
  
  Intel, sorry Bell Labs, has labs in India and China. She said that as you look across the emerging markets spectrums, they are very diverse. Now smaller power laptops have arrived. Countries that don't have a fantastic infrastructure like Africa are finding they're connecting to the net over mobile phones. Ten percent of people in Tanzania have mobile phones, but they are kind of shared connections.
  
  The iPad is a beautifully designed machine, she said, but it still needs a keyboard. The keyboard is still the best way to tell people things, to have your voice. It was first invented in 1865 and she seemed to think that I was around when it was invented.  Touch doesn't work for everything though, she thinks.  There is a challenge of scale. Voice is good if it's one to one. Voice works well if it's one person, one object.  "It turns out that one of the great things in relationships is who is in charge," particularly in relation to remote controls for television.
  
  We look a lot of looking after our gadgets. The next generation will be one where we don't do all the caretaking. They're all saying "feed me, feed me, feed me". When she looks at some of the next generation, she thinks they should be more nurturing of the people they own.
  
  It's about relationships. Some of the speculative works Bell Labs does is related to science fiction.
  
  Bell's Labs have been working on research protocols and methodologies where there's a combination of different approand where the design elements are going. Bell's Labs are looking at the megatrends. Science fiction prototyping means Intel takes science facts and turns them into science fiction. What?

  I liked the idea of my Crackberry nurturing me so at the end of the  session, I took it out of my pocket, pointed my finger at it and shouted "nurture me, nurture me". It just sort of laid there on the oblong table as if to reproach me.

  Bell said we should all go to a site called Rate my Network Diagram. Apparently loads of geeks go there. It does say something about the shape of things to come. She asked me if I was around in 1955. Regrettably I was. She asked me if we had panel beaters in the UK. I said we did. Frankly this was a great session, and we are tipping Ms Bell to be the first female CEO of the Intel Corporation.

  * PS - we bumped into Sean Maloney just outside Moscone West and we chatted for a few minutes. He is really quite a guy.

  

• 0:06

  Interim Libyan leader pleads for unity as tensions rise between factions

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Mustafa Abdul Jalil battles to quell row between Islamists and secularists amid fears internal split could derail rebuilding effort

  Libya's interim leader is facing a battle between conservative Islamic groups and secular figures as he struggles to unite multiple competing factions.

  Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), sought to quell anxiety over festering internal divisions in his first speech in Tripoli on Monday night.

  He told a crowd of about 10,000 people that sharia law should be the main source of legislation in Libya, but added: "We will not accept any extremist ideology We are a Muslim people, for a moderate Islam, and will stay on this road."

  Splits have emerged in the country's new leadership between Islamist conservatives and more secular figures, some of whom have long lived in exile or once had ties with Muammar Gaddafi's regime. There are concerns that rising tensions could derail rebuilding efforts after six months of civil war.

  "Abdul Jalil is trying to keep the peace, and it's a struggle between both sides, between the two powerful camps," an official close to the NTC told the Associated Press. "He's trying to maintain a balance between the two camps, and keep the international community happy. It's very difficult."

  Prominent Islamist figures include Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant organisation that long opposed Gaddafi. He is now the commander of the Tripoli military council, which has called for the resignation of Mahmoud Jibril, the US-educated acting prime minister.

  Regional differences have also come to the fore, with rivalry between Tripoli and Benghazi and complaints from cities such as Misrata that their sacrifice is not being fully acknowledged.

  In his speech, Jalil also emphasised that women had played an important part in the revolution and would continue to do so. "Women will be ambassadors," he said to cheers from women and girls in the crowd waving flags. "Women will be ministers." Many of the women were dressed in the red, black and green of the revolution.

  Senior European officials negotiating with the leadership in Tripoli say it is drawing up ambitious plans to turn the country into the "beacon" of the Arab and Islamic worlds, but faces a lengthy and dangerous bout of infighting between rival factions.

  Agostino Miozzo, an Italian doctor and veteran of humanitarian emergencies who is the EU's international crisis manager, emphasised that the leaders of the NTC were determined to resist international pressure and to decide the fate of their country themselves.

  "Tripoli seems to be moving fast towards normality, but they [the NTC] need time to fight the internal political struggle," Agostino said, after spending more than a week in Tripoli establishing contact with the new rulers. "We have no idea of the southern part of the country. That will be most problematic in the coming months. This part is totally out of control."

  European officials working on Libya and in regular touch with the new regime say they have been surprised by the resolve of the NTC to reject international pressure and to take its own decisions.

  The revolutionary leaders have compiled a "black book" of Gaddafi cronies, relatives and loyalists who can expect retribution for their roles under the dictatorship, but they are anxious to avoid the Iraq "de-Ba'athification" disaster. The vast majority of the Libyan army officer class, including those still fighting the NTC in places such as Sirte, should be incorporated into a post-Gaddafi military.

  Jalil has told Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, that "very few" army officers have been blacklisted. The NTC is using mobile phone messaging to urge bureaucrats in Tripoli to return to their desks.

  "They are requesting all staff professionals and all officials to the level of under-secretary of state to go back to work," said Miozzo.

  As well as ongoing challenges from Gaddafi loyalist forces in parts of the country, the new leadership is riven by friction between Islamists and secularists, and tribal and regional tensions.

  • Libya
  • Middle East
  • Africa
  • Muammar Gaddafi

  David SmithIan Traynor
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• 0:06

  Death and the salesmen: London hosts arms fair

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Forty-six countries arrive to show off latest weapons as Bahrain attends ExCel despite protesters' deaths

  Sharp-suited men and women from more than 1,000 weapons manufacturers are showing off their weapons in London's docklands this week. Their displays range from guns that can fire shells more than 30 miles within an accuracy, it is said, of three metres, to small, innocent-looking switches designed to make the life of a fighter easier and safer.

  Lethal objects were laid out in glass cases, polished and shining under the lights of the ExCel Centre as though they were delicate ornaments, never to be soiled by blood let alone kill anyone. The 46 countries advertising their wares alongside the US giants Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics included Israel, which had a big stand this year.

  It advertised an anti-tank weapon described as good for "wall-breaching" but also "highly accurate" and therefore involving "low collateral damage". Tucked in behind the Israeli pavilion were the Russians, with the latest Kalashnikov assault rifle. The AK104 is several models up from, and much more expensive than, the ubiquitous AK47, the favoured weapon of insurgents and guerrillas around the world.

  Pakistan advertised an "arms for peace" exhibition in Karachi next year and showed "gold-plated" submachine guns – "for collectors", inquirers were told.

  Yet, making the point that life in Pakistan is less than safe at the moment, an enterprising salesman was offering "fashion body armour": leather jackets and waistcoats with reinforced linings.

  Some small exhibitors were there to help save lives. Weatherhaven was launching an "expanding container capability" or "hospitals in a box": units that fit inside a Chinook to deal with medical emergencies. The Medical Warehouse produces bespoke emergency medical bags and pouches. And it is clear that supplying clean water for troops is a fast-developing growth industry. A German company is supplying British and US troops in Afghanistan with bottled water purified by a small filter system, a less burdensome, and much cheaper, alternative to bringing bottled water by convoy hundreds of miles across the desert.

  But Defence and Security Equipment International, as the two-yearly fair is called, is dominated by companies designing weapons that can defeat an enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible while protecting its own troops. They included MBDA, makers of the Brimstone "precision" missile and Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missile, dropped by RAF Tornados throughout the Libyan conflict. Executives on the company stand said they were not allowed to say how many had landed on Libyan targets, but it is likely that more than 100 were dropped, at a cost yet to be revealed. According to some reports, some Nato countries nearly ran out of bombs.

  Liam Fox, the defence secretary, praised the role of UK arms firms in Libya. In a speech promoting the cause of weapons exports, he said: "For too long, export potential has been ignored when initiating projects for the UK's own use. That needs to change … Defence and security exports play a key role in promoting our foreign policy objectives: building relationships and trust, sharing information and spreading values."

  Stung perhaps by criticism, not least by MPs of all parties, that Britain has sold arms to countries with poor human rights records that have used them against their own citizens, Fox said: "Margin, profit, market share – these are not dirty words. But the language of multinational business can sometimes appear values-free."

  He went on: "Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are mandatory considerations for all export licence applications, which we consider on a case-by-case basis."

  In April, MPs accused ministers of misjudging the risk that British arms exports would be used for repression. The government had approved licences to sell equipment – from small arms to armoured personnel carriers – to states such as Bahrain, which was invited to the fair despite its security forces having killed unarmed protesters during recent demonstrations.

  Fox noted that Britain was the second largest exporter of arms-related equipment. But his speech contained a stick as well as a carrot: "Industry does not need handouts – nor will it get them." The government would be a "tougher, more intelligent customer" in future, he said.

  • Arms trade
  • Weapons technology
  • London
  • Pakistan
  • Bahrain
  • Military
  • Liam Fox
  • Libya
  • Middle East
  • Africa

  Richard Norton-Taylor
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• 0:05

  Turkey's PM rallies Arab world in Cairo with call for UN to recognise Palestine

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Analysts believe Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Egypt visit is designed to strengthen Turkey's influence in the region and isolate Israel

  Turkey's prime minister has called for the Palestinian flag to finally be raised at the United Nations, insisting that international recognition of the state was now an obligation, not an option.

  Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a much-anticipated speech to the Arab League in Cairo to rally opposition to Israel, and promised that Turkey would stand in solidarity with those struggling for political change in the Arab world.

  "Freedom and democracy and human rights must be a united slogan for the future of our people," Erdogan told an audience of Arab foreign ministers and millions more watching on television across the region. "The legitimate demands of the people cannot be repressed with force and in blood."

  The 57-year-old was speaking at the start of a four-day tour of revolutionary north Africa, which analysts believe is designed to strengthen Turkey's influence within the Middle East and isolate their one-time ally Israel. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who is also in Egypt, has announced that he will be pressing ahead with Palestine's bid for full recognition from the UN security council, despite the fact that it will almost certainly be met by a US veto. The EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said that the bloc has yet to reach a common position on the question of Palestinian statehood.

  Erdogan is currently embroiled in a diplomatic crisis with Israel over the latter's refusal to apologise for the killing of Turkish activists by Israeli soldiers on a Gaza-bound ship last year. In his address he accused the state of acting like a spoiled child and building a blockade around its own people, adding: "Israel will break away from solitude only when it acts as a reasonable, responsible, serious and normal state."

  He added: "We must work hand in hand with our Palestinian brothers. The Palestinian cause is the cause of human dignity. It's time to raise the Palestinian flag at the United Nations. Let's raise the Palestinian flag and let that flag be the symbol of peace and justice in the Middle East." The 33-minute speech was interrupted several times by bursts of applause from the assembled Arab dignitaries.

  With the fight for democracy continuing to rumble through the Arab world and steadfast allies seemingly melting away, Israel appears to be facing an altered reality in the Middle East – where it could once count both the Egyptian and Turkish governments as close friends. Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor refused to comment on Erdogan's address, or on earlier claims made by Erdogan that Israel's assault on the Mavi Marmara vessel constituted "grounds for war".

  Erdogan's visit to Egypt has been a media circus, with thousands greeting the Turkish leader on his arrival at Cairo airport on Monday night. With his strong rhetoric on Turkish-Arab unity, high-profile satellite TV chatshow appearances and photogenic walkabouts in the capital – including an impromptu and warm meeting with street protesters campaigning for regime change in Syria and Yemen – Erdogan did little to hide his intention of positioning Turkey into a leadership role at the heart of the Arab spring.

  "He's a media star, and he's making the Arab leaders look bad by going to their own home and criticising them," said Sultan Al Qassemi, an analyst of Arab affairs. "It feels a tad opportunist – particularly as it's only Israel's refusal to apologise [over the Gaza boat deaths] that has given him the space to do this – but he has the credibility because he's done so well in his own country, and he can talk from a position of strength. The question remains, will he prove to be a shining star, or just a comet that will crash and burn?"

  Egyptians are looking to Turkey for political support and economic aid as the country begins to rebuild following the toppling of former president Hosni Mubarak in February. Erdogan arrived in the country accompanied by an army of 200 Turkish businessmen, and has announced plans to increase investment and establish a formal strategic co-operation council between the two nations. With Egypt's military junta on the back foot over recent pro-change protests and the breaching of the Israeli embassy during a protest in Cairo last week, this trip has come at a particularly sensitive time.

  "Right now every country is trying to advance its own agenda in Egypt," said Al Qassemi. "Turkey can't match the billions of dollars being ploughed in by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but it can use cheap media events like this to raise Turkey's profile. The Egyptian military won't necessarily appreciate all this, but Turkey is an important ally and so they're letting him get away with it."

  Erdogan also opted to make a direct intervention into some of the key internal debates currently raging over Egypt's long-term future – particularly the question of whether a forthcoming new constitution, which will be drawn up after parliamentary elections in November, should enshrine a secular or Islamic state.

  "Do not be wary of secularism. I hope there will be a secular state in Egypt," Erdogan told private television channel Dream on Monday. With its combination of a secular constitution, Islamic political leadership, a strong military and relative economic prosperity, Turkey is often cited as a possible model for post-Mubarak Egypt, although the Turkish prime minister was careful not to overstate his country's role in Egyptian affairs.

  Erdogan also avoided making any direct criticism of Turkey's southern neighbour Syria, where a popular uprising has been brutally repressed, leaving more than 2,500 dead.

  • Turkey
  • Recep Tayyip Erdogan
  • Palestinian territories
  • Israel
  • Egypt
  • Arab and Middle East unrest
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • Africa

  Jack Shenker
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• 0:05

  Bishop of Derry calls for end to celibacy in Catholic church

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Father Edward Daly, famous for protecting the wounded during Bloody Sunday, says Vatican must ease shortage of priests

  On Bloody Sunday in 1972 Father Edward Daly faced down the Parachute Regiment responsible for shooting dead 13 unarmed Derry civilians, waving just a white handkerchief as he protected the wounded from the army's bullets in the Bogside. Now 39 years later the retired Bishop of Derry is confronting an even more powerful force than the Paras: the Vatican.

  Dr Daly, who was the Bishop of Derry for 20 years during the Troubles, has become the first senior Irish Catholic cleric to call for an end to celibacy in the church. His intervention in the debate over whether priests should be allowed to marry is highly significant because he is still one of the most respected figures in the Irish Catholic church at a time when faith in the institution has been shattered by the paedophile scandals involving clergy.

  Challenging centuries of Catholic theocracy, Daly has said that allowing the clergy to marry would solve some of the church's problems.

  The number of Catholic priests in Ireland is in sharp decline as older clergy die and very few young men take up a celibate life. In some parishes the church has transferred priests from Poland and the developing world to fill the gap.

  "There will always be a place in the church for a celibate priesthood, but there should also be a place for a married priesthood in the church," Daly writes in his new book A Troubled See, Memoirs of a Derry Bishop, which will be launched at Magee College in the city on Wednesday.

  "I think priests should have the freedom to marry if they wish. It may create a whole new set of problems but I think it's something that should be considered," he says.

  "I'm worried about the decreasing number of priests and the number of older priests. I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed and addressed urgently."

  While Daly accepts he might be out of step with current Vatican thinking he points out that he is "not engaged in a popularity contest".

  He says that during his time as a bishop he found it "heartbreaking" that so many priests or prospective priests were forced to resign or were unable to get ordained because of the celibacy issue.

  Many young men who once considered joining the priesthood turned away because of the rule, the 74-year-old cleric argues.

  Daly became a recognised figure around the world in 1972 when he was seen waving a bloodied white handkerchief in front of British paratroopers in Derry during Bloody Sunday.

  The sight of the priest during the army massacre in the city became one of the most iconic images of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

  Daly was also a fierce critic of the IRA's armed campaign and a strong supporter of the peace process kickstarted by the likes of his friend and confidant, the Nobel peace prize winner John Hume. In the book the former bishop praises Hume who he says is "one of my great heroes".

  He had first-hand experience of the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 and took part in the civil rights demonstrations in the city prior to the Troubles erupting. Daly also played a part in the campaign to free the Birmingham Six. His tenure as Bishop in Derry spanned the years 1974 to 1993 and included some of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.

  He accepts that admission of married men to the priesthood could well create new problems and issues for the church.

  "However, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, major decisions must be made," he adds.

  In his book he also denounces the paedophile priests whose crimes and the cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy has dramatically reduced the church's respect and influence in Ireland. He is "heartbroken and appalled" that fellow clergymen were engaged in "such horrible criminal acts against the most vulnerable".

  Catholic priests have been unable to marry since the Gregorian reforms in the 11th century made celibacy compulsory. Historians have contended that the move was partly for spiritual reasons, but was mainly to ensure estates held by clerics would pass back to the church upon their deaths rather than to offspring.

  However, in recent years Pope Benedict XVI has made allowances for married Anglican ministers to transfer to the Catholic church after a number made the move in protest at controversial Anglican issues including the ordination of women priests, and acceptance of ministers in same-sex relationships.

  The County Fermanagh-born cleric now works as a chaplain in Derry's Foyle hospice.

  Vatican's view

  Bishop Daly's proposal will meet with dogged silence in the Vatican, but widespread understanding in the Roman Catholic church.

  The view from the top is clear. Last year, when the scandal over clerical sex abuse was at its height, the archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, suggested part of the problem might be priestly celibacy. His comment was all the more interesting, coming as it did from a conservative theologian andformer star pupil of Pope Benedict. But in case anyone thought his musings had Vatican backing, the pope went out of his way a few days later to praise celibacy as an "expression of the gift of oneself to God and others". Three months later, he reinforced his defence of the status quo, describing celibacy as a "great sign of faith".

  The debate over whether to admit married men to the priesthood, however, is one not even the pope can stifle. Two developments have refocused attention on the issue in the last couple of years – and one is partly attributable to Benedict himself. The first is the continuing sex abuse scandal, which on Tuesday acquired new life when the US-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests asked the international criminal court to investigate the Vatican for crimes against humanity. The first senior figure to argue the case for a link between an unmarried priesthood and sex abuse was the bishop of Hamburg, Hans-Jochen Jaschke, who in March 2010 told a newspaper interviewer a "celibate lifestyle can attract people who have an abnormal sexuality".

  The other development has been the welcoming into the Catholic church of traditionalist Anglicans, unable to reconcile their faith with the ordination of women or the consecration of openly gay bishops. Their incorporation has been made easier since October 2009 when Benedict issued a controversial ordinance allowing them to retain much of their identity, liturgy and pastoral arrangements.

  The reordination into the Catholic church of married Anglican priests has pointed up the fact that priestly celibacy is not a doctrine, but a discipline. In 1970, the decline in priesthood vocations persuaded nine leading theologians to sign a memorandum declaring that the Catholic leadership "quite simply has a responsibility to take up certain modifications" to the celibacy rule. Extracts from the document were reprinted in January. Not least because one of the signatories was the then Joseph Ratzinger, now pope Benedict.

  • Northern Ireland
  • Ireland
  • Catholicism
  • Religion
  • Christianity
  • Europe

  Henry McDonald
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• 0:05

  Gay rights: a world of inequality

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Gay people still live in fear in many countries around the world – prejudice, torture and execution are common. Can two new legal and diplomatic campaigns change attitudes?

  Last Thursday, three men were hanged in Iran for the crime of lavat, sexual intercourse between two men. The case is considered extreme even by Iranian standards, because while the death penalty is in place for homosexuality, it is usually enforced only when there is a charge of assault or rape alongside it; the accusations in these three cases were of consensual sex.

  In Uganda, politicians have been seeking since 2009 to institute a strikingly nasty piece of legislation: the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" (being homosexual more than once) and, in a totalitarian touch, penalties for teachers, doctors and even parents who suspected that someone in their care was gay but didn't report them. In Belize, there is a law on the statute books that criminalises homosexuality; a gay rights group in the country, Unibam, has brought a motion challenging the law, and had this reply from the minister of works, Anthony "Boots" Martinez: "My position is that God never placed anything on me for me to look at a man and jump on a man. I'll be clear on it … How would you decriminalise that, I am sorry, but that is law. Not only is the law made by man, that is a law made from the Bible. Why you think God made a man and a woman, man has what woman wants, and woman has what man wants, it's as simple as that. I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that law."

  For lesbian and gay people who live in one of the 82 countries where homosexuality is criminalised, the world is not getting better: it is getting significantly, demonstrably worse. The irony – it's actually not an irony, it's a source of great shame, but it is also an unhappy coincidence – is that 40 of these countries are members of the Commonwealth, and this is a British export. Homosexuality was criminalised here in the 1880s, and was therefore part of our legislative package in the age of empire. By the time it was decriminalised in England and Wales in the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 (Scotland followed in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982), we no longer had any control over Commonwealth jurisdictions. The repeal came after a report by Lord Wolfenden in 1957; if its findings had only been enacted more swiftly, today unnumbered people across the Commonwealth – at an estimate, more than a million – would be living entirely different lives. Jonathan Cooper, CEO of the Human Dignity Trust, says: "The human misery that criminalisation causes can never be overestimated. The impact on lesbian and gay people growing up, you cannot overestimate what it does to people living under those laws, even if they're not being prosecuted. Just the fact that the rest of society is denied to them, they have no access to it."

  That's the bad news. Incredibly, for a story like this, there is also good news. Apart from specific campaigning bodies such as Stonewall and more general human rights agencies such as Amnesty, there is a new crop of organisations trying to tackle this in a different way. This isn't another story about new media taking on old battles, though an awe-inspiring Facebook campaign, We Are Everywhere, has gained ground since the hangings last week. But two groups in particular are taking the old-fashioned routes of top-level pressure and the rule of law. Kaleidoscope is described by its director, Lance Price, thus: "First, we're being driven by the experience of the people in the countries we're talking about. If you look at any country in the world where there has been progress, it started with a small group of people who had the courage to stand up. It's their struggle, these are their countries. Second, the people involved have been active in politics at a very high level [Price is a former adviser to Tony Blair], or active in the civil service at a very high level. I'm not bragging. But we're working all the time on behalf of people who struggle to have a voice, and we can bring them to the attention of powerful people who do make decisions, in their own countries and here."

  It's not lobbying, exactly; it's not diplomacy, but it is characterised by "quiet conversations with people who can make a difference. We're going to have to engage with people, quietly, rather than shouting at them."

  The other group, the Human Dignity Trust, is not a campaigning organisation either. It is not there to raise awareness and is not even there to put pressure on governments. It is setting out to change the law, in the Commonwealth and beyond, on the basis that it is a breach of international human rights to criminalise someone's sexual identity.

  With a few exceptions – Saudi Arabia being one – all the countries that criminalise homosexuality are signed up to either the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or they are bound by test case rulings in their respective courts. "This is a matter of law," Cooper says. "Once you're not following the law, you're undermining the rule of law." This is reflected in the list of the trust's patrons – the former attorney general of India; the former secretary general of the Commonwealth; Lord Woolf, former lord chief justice of England and Wales; and a former judge at the Intra-American court of human rights. "They are not pursuing this as part of a lesbian and gay agenda. It's an international rights law agenda," says Cooper.

  The story of the trust is this: when Uganda's homophobic upsurge began two years ago, Tim Otty, a QC with a "strong sense of fairness" (according to his entry in Chambers UK), was asked by the Commonwealth Association to give his advice on the law, and found it, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be in breach of their human rights treaty obligations. Cooper, also a barrister and a friend of Otty, explains how the situation evolved: "Tim is pretty establishment – he's at Blackstone chambers, he's not somebody you would associate with lesbian and gay issues. Unlike me, because I've been around these issues for 20, 30 years; I've done transgender cases, I've done sexuality in the armed forces cases, I've done loads of this type of stuff. So I was not at all surprised when, as we found out in our research, 80-plus jurisdictions continue to criminalise homosexuality around the world. That's almost half the countries in the world." He was amazed that countries still criminalised in flagrant violation of international human rights law, even having signed the treaty.

  The test case for European law was Jeff Dudgeon v the United Kingdom in 1981, when the activist brought a case against the British government for the fact that criminalisation was still in force in Northern Ireland. "In a way that was the revolution," says Cooper. "Human rights now protected the lesbian and gay identity. But the Brits didn't over-defend Dudgeon." If you are looking for excessive defence, that happened in the Repulic of Ireland in the late-80s. "They threw everything at this case, to say: you are not going to change our law, human rights law cannot change Ireland's Christian-based law. The Strasbourg court said: 'Actually, we can.'" After one more case, in Cyprus, this became a settled matter for the Council of Europe. Then, following a case brought by Nicholas Toonan in Australia in 1991, the same decision was reached by the UN. "By the mid-90s, it had been settled: international human rights law doesn't protect lesbian and gay rights; it protects identity. And as a consequence of protecting identity it protects you as a gay man or a lesbian woman from having your identity criminalised. That's how it works," Cooper explains.

  So all the trust has to do now is change the world, through test case litigation. It does so by finding an individual who is mounting a challenge against, say, the government of Belize, and then, to put it a layman's way, piling in. "I email our legal panel, asking: anyone have any experience of litigating in Belize? Someone comes back and says yeah, we'll represent you in this legal challenge. They bring in as their counsel Lord Goldsmith, and the former attorney general of Belize, Godfrey Smith. We turn up as the international community, with a legitimate interest in the outcome of this case, but we do change the nature of the struggle because we have approached it on the basis that it's a major legal challenge. That is our intention." They're not going to know what's hit them, I observe. "You almost feel sorry for the judge!" Cooper replies, delighted.

  Naturally, an appeal will be mounted, whoever loses, and the case will then go to a higher court. "What that means is that when we turn up in the difficult places of Africa and Asia, it's watertight. You can imagine them saying: 'Well, that's South Africa, that's the US supreme court' and trying to distinguish them. But it would be very difficult to distinguish two privy council decisions, one from the South Pacific, one from the Caribbean. If you are that independent judge in Kenya, faced with those authorities, how do you say: 'We're going to retain criminalisation'? You can't."

  Price is quite cautious about the work he's taken on: he thinks the process will be slow, and its impact subtle. "If we can just begin to level the playing field a bit so that the other side is put, that will be progress. Because, at the moment, those who want to preach hate have pretty well got a free run."

  Cooper, also measured but with the fire of optimism in his eyes, thinks they could have all the decisions they need in five years. "We will have to pay for cases in jurisdictions; I don't see why local lawyers should do it pro bono. We will fundraise, and there is something rather charming that you can say to somebody: 'If you give us £50,000, I can more or less guarantee that you will have decriminalised homosexuality in Tonga.' And actually, you know, that's great."

  • Gay rights
  • Equality
  • Human rights

  Zoe Williams
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

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  An article in another newspaper (which you won’t have read of course, because you are loyal i readers) made a passing reference to my possibly being more on the defensive in this spot than my illustrious predecessor Mr Kelner.

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  Each morning over their coffee some of the most powerful people in the world turn to the financial pages of their newspapers to check on the health of their investments by looking at how the Dow Jones and the FTSE 100 are performing. But there is another graph, also updated every day that is far more significant for charting the long-term wellbeing of all of humankind.

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  Christina Patterson: Isn't it time politicians came clean about drugs?

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  Sometimes, it would be interesting to know what went on in a politician's head. It would be interesting to know, for example, how the Chancellor of the Exchequer felt on Monday, when he was making announcements about banking reform, and other people were making announcements about his relationship with a woman who called herself "Mistress Pain". It would be interesting to know what he thought when he heard Mistress Pain, whose real name is Nathalie Rowe, say in an interview on Australian television that he was "very intrigued" by her work as a dominatrix, and that their relationship was "more than friendship".

  
  
  
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  Hamish McRae: So complicated, even the taxman can't cope

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  The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has achieved almost totemic status in matters fiscal in Britain. When people refer to it they usually preface it with the word "authoritative" or "independent".

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  The shimmering bulk of the Westfield Stratford City shopping mall rises amid skeletons of the post-Thatcher slump, though these are by now an endangered species in the wake of east London's Olympic urban renewal. In the Eighties it was Michael Heseltine who presided over the regeneration of London's industrial landscape; this time, it is tycoon Frank Lowy, the chairman of the Westfield Group.

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  In the end, it came down to a pick-up truck, a laptop and a small satellite dish powered by a car cigarette lighter. And a great degree of bravery: with this, Sky News foreign correspondent Alex Crawford and her crew provided riveting coverage of the rebel advance into Tripoli, scooping their rivals in the background.

• 0:00

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• September 13, 2011
• 23:52

  Bits Blog: Game That Critiques Apple Vanishes From App Store

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  A game that critiques the socioeconomic cost of the smartphone industry was available in Apple's App Store for a few short hours, its developers said.
  
  
• 23:26

  Google Lets Wi-Fi Owners Opt Out of Registry

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• 22:41

  Bits Blog: Google Introduces Long-Awaited Flight Search

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• 22:23

  Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate faces appeals for clemency in two highly charged death row cases
  
  • Amanda Marcotte: Rick Perry executes justice, Texas-style

  Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.

  Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.

  On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.

  How Perry reacts to the demands for commutation and clemency in these two highly controversial cases will give an indication of how he proposes to deal with the death penalty issue, which has welled up in the presidential race for the first time. Perry, as governor of Texas, has presided over more executions than any other US official in modern times.

  Perry was questioned about his enthusiasm for the death penalty at a televised Republican debate last week. When the TV moderator put it to him that his state had executed 234 prisoners since he became governor in 2000, the Republican studio audience cheered.

  Perry said he had never lost any sleep worrying that some of those individuals might have been innocent. "I've never struggled with that at all," he said.

  When asked how he felt about the audience applauding so many deaths, he replied: "I think Americans understand justice."

  Lawyers for both Buck and Woods are engaged in frenzied last-minute lobbying to Perry and to the courts to try to put off the executions. If their efforts fail, Woods's execution on Tuesday night will be followed by Buck's on Wednesday night.

  Responsibility for the execution going ahead, despite the controversy over the racially-tinged testimony, is now falling squarely on the shoulders of Perry. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has cleared away one of the last impediments to the ultimate penalty going ahead by refusing to recommend that Buck should be granted clemency.

  That leaves Perry, who has power to issue a 30-day reprieve but who has very rarely done so.

  Buck, 48, shot and killed Debra Gardner, his former girlfriend, and a friend of hers, Kenneth Butler, in a drunken explosion of jealousy in July 1995. His guilt is not in dispute, but the testimony presented to the jury at his sentencing is.

  At the hearing, a psychologist, Dr Walter Quijano, was called by the defence and testified that he did not believe Buck would be a future danger as the murders had been a one-off crime of passion. But under cross-examination, the prosecution pressed him about Buck's ethnicity as an African-American.

  "You have determined that the … race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons. Is that correct?" the prosecution asked.

  "Yes," replied Quijano.

  The prosecution later exhorted the jury to make their decision on the basis of Quijano's testimony. The jury found that Buck did pose a future danger of violence, and put him on death row.

  In 2000, the then attorney general in Texas, John Cornyn, admitted that the racial testimony of Quijano had wrongfully been allowed to prejudice sentencing in seven separate cases. Six of those cases were reheard as a result, but, in a legal oversight, Buck's never was.

  Buck's lawyer, Katherine Black, is petitioning Perry to commute his execution to allow resentencing. "This case violates the US constitution and undermines our moral values. A person has a right to be sentenced based not on the colour of their skin," the petition reads.

  Further pressure has been brought to bear on Perry by a senior Texas lawyer who acted as prosecutor in Buck's original trial. Linda Geffin has written to Perry calling on him to delay the execution. "It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system," she wrote.

  Steven Woods, 31, who will die barring a last-minute stay of execution, was one of two men accused of murdering Ronald Whitehead and Bethena Brosz in a drugs turf war in May 2001.

  Woods was brought to trial in August the following year. The prosecution alleged that he had planned and carried out the shootings, and he was convicted and sentenced to death.

  Three months later, his alleged accomplice, Marcus Rhodes, who had cut a deal with prosecutors, was given a life sentence, despite having confessed that he had personally carried out the shootings. Rhodes was given life imprisonment, while Woods remained on death row.

  Amnesty International has issued an urgent action alert, accusing Texas of treating Woods unfairly in a case "where one defendant receives a death sentence and another who pled guilty to personally shooting the two victims receives a life sentence".

  Mary O'Grady, a specialist in death row based in Austin, said that under the so-called "law of parties" in Texas, death penalties can be inflicted even on those who did not pull the trigger. Being present at a murder, knowing that an accomplice intended to kill, is sufficient.

  "A lot of people with no blood on their own hands get executed in Texas," O'Grady said.

  The prospects of Perry granting clemency for Woods are not great. The governor has only once in 11 years shown clemency to a death row inmate unless forced to do so by the courts.

  "When it comes to death row, Perry is completely unfeeling and unemotional," said Ray Hill, who runs the Execution Watch website and radio show in Texas.

  "It never strikes him that he should value the lives of those who are accused, even wrongfully."

  Next week two further executions are scheduled, of Cleve Foster on Tuesday and Lawrence Brewer on Wednesday.

  • Texas
  • Rick Perry
  • United States
  • US elections 2012
  • Race issues
  • Republican presidential nomination 2012
  • Human rights

  Ed Pilkington
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 22:16

  Bits Blog: Founder of Delicious Weighs In on Version 3.0

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Joshua Schachter, the original founder of Delicious, said he was pleasantly surprised to hear that the founders of YouTube planned to revamp the service that he first created in 2003.
  
  

• 21:40

  Intel rejigs its Atom road map, tablet wise

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  Yeah, Stephen Smith, the man who first showed me the Itanium so many years ago, is now the VP of netbook and tablet development at Intel.
  
  He is talking about 22 nanometre process with tri-gate transistor technology, and that, he claims, is a breakthrough.
  
  Intel is co-optimising silicon technology and design and the foundry model doesn’t work in that sphere.  Energy efficiency, he said is driving the market and Moore’s Law still matters.
  
  Moore’s Law, he said, matters more than ever. It gives Intel a big advantage. Intel is changing its product design style to meet the demands of the market.  Silicon is now about tight integration.
  
  The 22 nanometre process means that Intel can target the tablet and smartphone market.  The tri-gate tech will give 50 percent power reduction. There can be four cores at 22 nanometre for the same die size as two cores at 45 nanometres.
  
  Intel will work on producing 14 nanometre processors – the two varieties for 22 nanometre will be called the P1270 for the CPU and P1272 for SoC. At 14 nanometres, the version will be the P1272 for CPU and P1273 for the system on a chip version, said Smith.
  
  Intel wants to be the leader in low power processors. Intel has decided that it will change its design point to be, for Haswell, 20 watts for notebooks and less than a watt for its system on a chip designs. Haswell at 22 nanometres will include Ivy Bridge targeted at Xeon and Core products. The low power verson includes Saitwell at 32 nanometres and Silvermont at 22 nanometres and Airmont at 14 nanometres. Silvermont comes in 2013 and Airmont in 2014.
  
  Ivy Bridge is on target for later this year, and as we reported the other day, will appear in Ultrabooks next year. Intel will halve Moore’s Law by introducing new nodes in three years. In the olden days, it would be 18 months or two years.  
  
  Intel has shifted its development structure so it will have the best of both worlds. It has slammed together the development teams and will integrate more and more. It wants to have fine grained power management available in the mainstream, said Smith.
  
  It has a reference design for tablets and is a proxy for an eventual OEM system and it will give advice to original development manufacturers, too. Software is important and the reference designs will be made available using the Medfield tablet reference design.
  
  Intel showed off a working Medfield tablet using 22 nanometre technology and running Android Honeycomb. Intel is working on optomising the tablet for power and performance and the software is currently an Alpha version.
  
  

  

• 21:31

  Microsoft shows off next Windows

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Microsoft takes the wraps off Windows 8, the next generation of its operating system, which is due to be released next year.

• 20:48

  Media Decoder Blog: Mashable Expanding Its Coverage

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  The technology and social media Web site said it would add sections on entertainment and news, and named a new editor to oversee the coverage.
  
  
• 20:42

  YouTube Founders Aim to Revamp Delicious

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  For their next big thing, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley are betting on a social site that Yahoo nearly abandoned.
  
  

• 20:07

  Diocesan CMH (Healing) Conference, Malmesbury

   » ‎ Latest News
  This year’s Diocesan Church’s Ministry of Healing (CMH) conference takes place on Saturday 15 October 2011 at Malmesbury Abbey where Bishop Lee will be leading on “The Church - God’s Instrument of Healing”. The day is open to everyone with a heart for the Church’s Ministry of Healing. To book your place, contact Julia Chard [...]

• 19:32

  DealBook: H.P. Extends Autonomy Offer

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Shareholders of the Autonomy Corporation, who have been slow to get behind Hewlett-Packard's $11.7 billion deal, will now have until Oct. 3 to accept the offer.
  
  

• 19:14

  Intel, Google team up in Unholy Alliance

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  No single device sits at the centre, Paul Otellini said here in San Francisco today. The user is the sweet spot he said. He left the sweetest spot until his last paragraph and said that Google and Intel - the combination of not evil and atheism would cooperate more closely on phones, tablets and stuff.
  
  The device is important, said Otellini, but not that important. The IT industry has unleashed creativity and made us all more productive. The growth of the cloud has meant more engaging experiences on any device. Social notworking means storage is more important than it ever was. The “data centre spend” will be over $450 billion this year.
  
  The transistor continues to be important than ever before. The explosion of devices means that in the next five years there will be gazillions of transistors needed. Moore’s Law still lives, said Otellini. Moore’s Law is not a scientific principle, claimed Otellini. Moore’s Law will never end and Intel engineers will always find a way to keep on, we guess transistoring. “The world needs Moore’s Law”. Intel is well into developing 14 nano process. Over 14 million developers have worked on the X86 cake with six million applications, forget the App Store, he impled.
  
  Computing has become more diversified, he said.  Computing must be engaging, consistent and secure. We live and love in a visual world and we expect our devices to engage with us as fast as we think, he thought. Thinner and lighter is good, said Otellini, kind of chatting about the Ultrabook. The Ultrabook is Intel’s vision, it’s kind of like a kingfisher and it will be “affordable”.
  
  There will be more and more Ultrabooks and Ivy Bridge will ship next year with lots of engagements. Haswell is a 2013 microprocessor with a 30 percent reduction in stand by power. Otellini said Haswell has a systtem level power management frameworks and will have “uncompromised performance” and the battery will last all day. Honest.
  
  Microsoft and Intel still love each other. Microsoft and Intel are still pushing the limits.Honest. That's why Intel and Google are now the closest of partners.
  
  

  

• 19:11

  Supreme Court to Rule on GPS Surveillance, Addressing ‘Big Brother’ Claims

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a case about GPS surveillance that had some judges alluding to Orwell’s “1984.”
  
  

• 19:04

  Samsung and Apple fight in France

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Samsung has filed a patent complaint against Apple in France, claiming the company has infringed three of its patents.
• 19:02

  Facebook update targets Google+

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Facebook updates its Friend Lists system, in what is likely to be seen as a reaction to the Circles feature on Google+.

• 16:41

  (Media) Autumn start for mission shaped ministry courses in UK and Canada

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  Ten mission shaped ministry courses are set to get underway in locations across England, Scotland and Canada this autumn.

• 15:55

  Growing Church: Journey to Jesus

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  Highlights of Stephen Lindridge's seminar at 'Growing Church: Journey to Jesus' on the Isle of Man.

• 15:52

  Gemeinde2.0

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  Graham Cray's presentation to the 2011 Gemeinde2.0 conference in Germany.

• 15:50

  Libya embraces “moderate Islam” under NTC

   » ‎ Interfaith

  The National Transitional Council (NTC) has promised that Libya will become a democratic Islamic state where extremism will not be tolerated.

  Speaking to a crowd of around 10,000 people in Tripoli, the head of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jaili, also promised that women will be able to play a part in politics, under the new regime.

  It was Mr Jalil’s first official speech since the NTC took over leadership of the newly-named Libyan Republic, and followed news that Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saadi Gaddafi, has crossed the border into Niger.

  The location of Colonel Gadafi himself is still not known.

  The NTC was established in Benghazi, the second-largest city in Libya, after Colonel Gadafi met peaceful pro-democracy protests with military force in February, using thousands of sub-Saharan African mercenaries, ground attack jet fighters and helicopter gunships against the protestors.

  Agostino Miozzo, the EU’s international crisis manager, told the Guardian that the leaders of the NTC are determined to decide Libya’s fate themselves, and will not be pressured by International communities into holding early elections.

  The NTC’s first priority is to stabilise the country by securing its borders, and there are some locations where it still faces opposition from Gaddafi loyalist forces.

  However, optimism is high that Libya will have a brighter future under its new leadership.

• 15:41

  TSMC joins in on cutting-edge lithography development

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has announced that it will be joining an industrial consortium to develop cutting edge lithography processes.

  TSMC will be joining in a party known as the EIDEC which will see the firm rubbing shoulders and having nibbles on sticks  with 11 Japanese semiconductor firms funding the group, as well as Samsung and Intel.

  Other than indigestion, the consortium will be looking at the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography which is seen as the semi industry's best way for boldly pushing Moore's Law into the future.

  The move means that TSMC will now be part of a move to help bring the technology into general production by the end of 2015, says CENS.

  So, as well as giving TSMC the change to cosy up with Japanese integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) the semi producer will be able to stay abreast of its rival Chipzilla in development of the technology and might even sample from its drinks cabinet.

  TSMC is currently using double patterning immersion lithography in its 28 nanometre and 40nm chip production, but hopes to keep up with Intel which is looking at the EUV method.

  Intel is planning on beginning its own pilot production of the new EUV lithography in 2013, so TSMC will want to make sure it keeps up with developments.

  TSMC has reportedly already installed EUV systems purchased from ASML, which it will use to develop the lithography method at its FAB 12 facility in the aim of becoming the first to foundry to provide the chip technology.

  The news comes as TSMC recently hinted that it could beat Intel to its much vaunted 3D transistor technology, with an expectation of commercial production by the end of the year.

  

• 15:40

  Chinese activists seized in human rights crackdown accuse authorities of torture

   » ‎ The Guardian World News

  Revelations of abuse trigger concerns over plans to allow police to hold suspects for up to six months without informing families

  Activists and lawyers detained in China's human rights crackdown this year suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and multiple interrogations and were forced to make videotaped "confessions", according to accounts obtained by the Guardian.

  Details have leaked slowly because detainees were ordered not to discuss their experiences with journalists, members of NGOs or diplomats, and many are fearful because of threats to their families.

  The accounts have increased concerns among human rights groups about plans to authorise police to hold suspects in secret locations for up to six months without informing their families. Critics say the changes to residential surveillance laws, which would apply in state security, terrorism and major corruption cases, would legitimise forced disappearances.

  Scores of people were seized in the clampdown. While some were held only briefly, and several activists and dissidents were formally detained or sent to re-education through labour, others were held for weeks or months at unknown locations in breach of the current law, say experts.

  Most signed guarantees they would not write political material online or speak to foreigners. "People are genuinely scared and that's why they are not talking," said Wang Songlian of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network. "I think all of the people who disappeared for a period of time have experienced some form of torture or mistreatment.

  "Even when the [rights] community was being targeted before, people were always quite defiant. This time it is like a bag with a hole punctured: the air has gone out of it."

  Relatives have also been silent. But a handful of those held have now disclosed details and the Guardian has spoken to sources with knowledge of others' lengthy detentions. Friends say many of those detained lost significant amounts of weight and show clear signs of trauma, including disturbed sleep and memory loss. Many were hooded before they were driven away and several were badly beaten in the first day or two. In most cases they were watched around the clock by two officers at a time and deprived of sleep.

  CHRD, which spoke to the Guangzhou-based rights lawyer Tang Jingling when he was released after more than five months of residential surveillance, said he was questioned non-stop for more than a week by three teams of interrogators, without sleep or rest. He was allowed to sleep for short periods after suffering from trembling, numbness in his hands and chest pains. Another lawyer, Liu Shihui, said on Twitter that he was interrogated for five days without sleep, until he collapsed.

  Detainees were also forced to sit in stress positions for hours at a time. Although it is common practice in Chinese prisons to make people sit still for long periods, it was much more intensely enforced with these prisoners, so even slumping or closing their eyes could prompt a rebuke or threat.

  Some were handcuffed for long periods. In other cases, air conditioning was run at full blast until rooms were unbearably cold; one of those thought to have been involved, the lawyer Tang Jitian, has since been diagnosed with tuberculosis, say friends. They are particularly concerned because he has shunned contact with them.

  CHRD said another lawyer, Jin Guanghong, was held for days in a psychiatric institution where he was beaten, tied to a bed, given injections of unknown substances and forced to take medicine. He could not recall the full details.

  Many found the psychological pressure hardest. They were not allowed to speak or read except in interrogations and guards were permitted to talk to them only when giving orders.

  "I tried very hard to adjust my mind from going crazy. There were seven to eight times that I almost broke down. Well, no windows is just a minor problem," wrote Shanghai lawyer Li Tiantian in a tweet after her release from three months of detention.

  In an article last week, the artist Ai Weiwei, the best known of the detainees, wrote of solitary confinement: "You truly believe they can do anything to you ... You become like mad."

  In some cases, officers threatened detainees with the example of Gao Zhisheng,- a lawyer who has been missing for more than two and a half years and who gave a graphic account of torture when he resurfaced briefly last year. Detainees also told friends of "brainwashing" as officers lambasted them repeatedly for incorrect attitudes and disloyalty to China.

  The crackdown appeared to be prompted by anonymous online calls for an Arab-inspired "jasmine revolution", posted on an overseas website. But while most detainees were quizzed about the appeal, several saw it as the trigger rather than the cause of the crackdown.

  They were repeatedly interrogated about precise details of contact with other rights activists, trips abroad and meetings with foreigners. Other questions appeared designed to break them down, they felt – for example, asking Li Tiantian about her sex life.

  Detainees were also ordered to write and read aloud confessions. Some suspect the resulting videos could be used in future trials, helping to intimidate them into compliance, while others saw it as a way to humiliate activists and sow distrust among them.

  "I realise that I face some danger from revealing the truth," Liu Shihui wrote in a tweet.

  In a blog post – since deleted – Li Tiantian wrote: "I'll bet that there will be others in the future who, like me, will become increasingly mute, and I now know why many online friends from before have vanished from the internet."

  Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said the disappearances, and proposed changes to the residential surveillance laws, meant "secret detentions would become the norm for handling dissidents, rights activists and critics. They also tell us that such detentions will be unchallengeable, greatly increase the likelihood of torture and ill-treatment and will be used for political motives far beyond legitimate concerns about national security but rather to protect the party".

  The ministry of public security and police in Beijing, where many were seized, did not respond to queries. Nor did the ministry of justice comment on the implications for amending the law.

  • China
  • Human rights

  Tania Branigan
  guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 15:33

  Ferroelectric chips could extend Moore's Law

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  A team of researchers believe they might have found a way to produce ultra-low power chips using ferroelectric materials, helping to get a leg up over a Moore’s Law barrier.

  The researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have been adding up the numbers and dividing by their shoe size to work out how to reduce the minimum voltage needed to store charge in a capacitor.  This would mean reducing the overall power and heat generation of current electronics.

  And it is heat which is one of the main stumbling blocks to the move to smaller and smaller processes. 

  Common sense says that it is  difficult to move past the around a seven nanometre process for chip production with the conventional electronics.  This has lead to a variety of exotic technologies being researched, such as spintronics and quantum computing.

  But it appears that the Berkeley boffins have a way of fine tuning more conventional transistor systems.

  This is down to the use of ferroelectric materials which can improve the efficiency of transistors.  Ferroelectric materials exhibit some unusual and beneficial qualities and can hold both positive and negative electrical charges.  

  It is even possible to hold an electrical charge even when a voltage is not applied to it, while its electric polarisation can be reversed when an external field is applied.

  The team were able to demonstrate for the first time that a capacitor made using ferroelectric materials combined with a dialectric insulator, the charge accumulated for a voltage can be amplified.  This is known as negative capacitance, and the team reckon it is a “viable strategy to overcome the power draw of today's transistors”.

  The method involved the use of the ferroelectric material lead irconate titanate (PZT ) and the dialectric strontium titanate (STO), stacked together.  A voltage is then applied to the PZT-STO structure and a layer of STO on its own, comparing the amount of charge stored in both.  With the ferroelectric material there was a “two-fold voltage enhancement” for the same voltage, which they believe could go even higher.

  While it is currently necessary to have at least one volt to operate a transistor, what the researchers at Berkely have essentially done is reduce the amount of voltage that is needed to generate a larger charge from a smaller voltage. 

  This means less heat dissipation, and therefore allows more transistors to fit onto a chip.   While a bottle neck has been reached since 2005, with a plateau in Moore’s Law as the researchers say, this could allow for even greater advances in clockspeeds once again.

  Unfortunately the effect that the team found works at a higher temperature than would be found without slowly roasting you laptop, working at around 200 degrees Celsius.  Usually 85 degrees Celsius is the limit for modern processors.  The researchers are looking at room temperature negative capacitance now though.

  Also the ferromagnetic materials used are not likely to be commonplace or cheap, so the technology may still be someway from being commercially viable.

  

• 15:25

  Love on the go? There's an app for that

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Smartphone apps designed to make dating easier

• 15:17

  Intel to make appearance in Samsung tab

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  Rumours are circling like overweight vultures that Intel chips will be making an appearance under the bonnet of a new range of Samsung tablets.

  The mutterings suggest that Intel will finally be making its move into the tablet market with a Windows 8 based device to be showcased at both the Microsoft BUILD conference and Intel Developer Forum.  The chief mutterer is HotHardware.

  Most think it is about time Intel began to make a splash in tablets.  Despite opinion being mixed over the ability to usurp the traditional PC or laptop, by non Apple fans at least, Intel is undoubtedly running the risk of being left behind in a changing market.

  It has been putting its faith into the development of the Ultrabook, and these will too be showcased at both conferences.  But while the Ultrabook sounds like the a tablet beater by offering the best of both worlds, there have been significant problems with keeping the cost of components down.

  As mentioned in a story by TechEye’s editor, this means both a difficulty in attracting a public swayed by the relatively low price of say an iPad, compounded with the possibility of low margins despite heading north of $1,000. This seems to have put off some vendors, who have adjusted their orders accordingly.

  With this background, any moves that Intel makes into the tablet market becomes important.  It is the bell to start ARM wrestling for control of the of the chip design following Microsoft decision to use both in versions of its tablets.

  It is thought that it will be either Intel’s Cedar Trail or Medfield that will be found in the Samsung tablet.  But while it will be interesting to see Intel’s foray into tablets compared to ARM’s own designs, it will be sometime before any prototypes from Samsung hit the market, with Windows 8 not expected to hit the shelves before late 2012.

  TechEye spoke to iSuppli analyst Francis Sidaco who believes that it is good that Intel is seeing its chips used in products developed by a big player in the tablet market such as Samsung.

  He said that there are two types of tablet, evolving.  There is the media tablet such as the iPad with a mobile operating system, and the PC tablet. It will be interesting to see if the Intel device is firmly in the media tablet area.  This will epend on what version of Windows 8 we see at IDF, Sidaco  said.

  “If it is a media tablet then it shows that the Atom is able to reach power levels necessary in the tablet space. Overall for Intel it is good news, working with a new device manufacturer that is connected with mobile products, and not Dell or others," he added.

  Samsung is an OEM which has focused on mobile, and therefore it is a big win for Intel. Intel still has a long road ahead if it is going to muscle in on the tablet market.  Sicado told us that there are many challenges awaiting.

  Sidaco said that Windows 8 gives  Intel the best opportunity as it is designed to work with the x86 structure.  The challenge is that none of the other operating systems have been constructed that way.

  “One of the other main challenges is that the processing power is certainly there for Intel but the battery budget is a lot less tolerant.”

  Coming from the PC market will be a struggle but Intel will get there, it just depends how fast, he said. Whether Intel can fall back on the Ultrabook market Sicado was less optimistic.

  Isuppli believe that it will be around 2015 to 2016 when the Ultrabook will really blur the lines between the PC and media tablet. Until then the majority of shipments are going to be the likes of the  iPad, Galaxy, he said.

   Chipzilla will need to accelerate its development. Until that happens, the ultrabook will some impact on purchase decisions but not a tremendous amount, Sidaco  added.

  

• 14:53

  (Media) Fresh Expressions growing ecumenically and internationally

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  Fresh Expressions, which was initiated by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Methodist Council in the wake of the Mission-shaped Church report, is gaining increasing recognition both at home and abroad.

• 14:52

  (Media) Bishop Cray, mission & networks

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  Bishop Graham Cray today reminds the Church of England of its historic calling to proclaim the Christian faith "afresh" in each generation and to establish fresh communities of faith in ways which are culturally appropriate for today.

• 14:51

  (Media) Start of mission shaped ministry courses in Bradford, Leeds and Skipton

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  The highly successful Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course, which helps Christians to help reach those not involved in traditional churches, is to take place in Bradford, Leeds and Skipton from January 2010.

• 14:51

  (Media) Start of mission shaped ministry course in Walthamstow

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  The highly successful Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course, which helps Christians to help reach those not involved in traditional churches, is to take place in Walthamstow from January 2010.

• 14:50

  (Media) Start of mission shaped ministry course in Shrewsbury

   » ‎ Fresh Expressions RSS feed

  The highly successful Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course, which helps Christians to reach those not involved in traditional churches, is to be take place in Shrewsbury from January 2010.

• 14:14

  1m euros to fund Windows clone

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  A free, open-source Windows "clone" ReactOS that has been in development for over a decade has caught the eye of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
• 14:03

  VIDEO: Lie detector uses heat cameras

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  British scientists have developed a new lie detection test using heat cameras and computer software which records the flow of blood around the eyes.

• 14:00

  Building Better Business Blogs (7/7): Are You In With The In-Crowd?

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Welcome to our newest series, Building Better Business Blogs, here we aim to give small businesses tips on how to build effective corporate blogs that lead to greater customer engagement and sales. Here is the final post in a series of seven questions to ask yourself before you press “post”.

  How easy are you making it for your customers to spread the word about your company/product/service/brand?

  Many companies make sure they “cover the waterfront” so-to-speak with their social media efforts, friending customers in Facebook and Tweeting to them on Twitter, but at the heart of things most of your customers and users don’t really want to be your friend. What they want is for you to deliver good product that will make their lives easier or more fun or more interesting, and if you do that, they will gladly use their social networks to spread the word about you. Is your blog making it easy for them to do that? You should definitely have a “block” that lets users share your posts via the various social networks, but sharing can go even further than that. To help users truly spread the word, you must think about ways that you can also remove the obstacles to sharing.

  

  Artist Nina Paley shares her work for fun and profit.

  Artist and filmmaker Nina Paley has done this is in a very novel way, she blogs about her work for her community of fans and releases all her work via free distribution networks that make her audience her distributors. While other entrepreneurs might be thinking about ways to prevent their ideas from being copied and shared on sites around the world, Nina is cooking up ever more ways to make it easier for her fans to copy, remix, translate, and redistribute her work….and she’s never been more successful. Her animated feature Sita Sings The Blues has screened at film festivals, movie theaters, and laptop screens around the world and won accolades from numerous festivals and critics (Ebert gave her top marks and an award!). She puts herself on the same side as her audience and her appreciative fans (and often even other fellow artists) have given her thousand of dollars, sent subtitles for her films (in over 25 languages), and flocked to her online store to buy DVDs, CDs, and merchandise related to her many projects. All this because she creates great work and encourages — in fact, she makes it as non-restrictive as possible — for them to share it.

  So, what are you doing for your ideas to spread further? What tools are you putting in your customers hands and what roadblocks are you moving out of their way?

  Happy Blogging!

  Thanks so much for reading the series over the past few weeks. I exuberantly welcome feedback! - Camille

  Related articles

  • Building Better Business Blogs (1/7): What Is It? (zemanta.com)
  • Build Your Best Business Blog (2/7): Are You On Topic? (zemanta.com)
  • Building Better Business Blogs (3/7): Are These Comments On? (zemanta.com)
  • Building Better Business Blogs (4/7): Click, Click, Who’s There? (zemanta.com)
  • Building Better Business Blogs (5/7): To Be Continued?? (zemanta.com)
  • Building Better Business Blogs (6/7): Thank You, Come Again. Please ? (zemanta.com)

  
  
  

• 12:26

  Ofcom acts on broadband contracts

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Contracts which automatically sign users up for long-term broadband deals are to be banned by regulator Ofcom.
• 12:25

  Blagging firms 'get away with it'

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Blagging of personal data goes far beyond the media but debt collectors and other firms are getting away with it, warns the information commissioner.

• 12:13

  Riot police escort sole Anonymous protestor while gays strike

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  I was proceeding in a westerly direction when I noticed that a vast array of riot police were policing an alleged Anyonymous member past the BART. It wasn’t a joke, here’s the evidence. How much must it be costing the tax payers here?
  
  
  
  
  And then I turned the corner to discover that there’s another long queer strike going on.
  
  
  
  

  

• 11:40

  Hunt: Google and co must take on pirate sites

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  The government wants Google to make pirate sites harder to find
• 11:37

  Legal action on college book plan

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Groups representing authors have issued a lawsuit against five US universities which plan to open digital libraries of books scanned by Google.
• 11:21

  Could a robot be conscious?

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  If a robot behaves just like one of us in all respects is it conscious?

• 10:42

  Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A;: Running Old Software on New Systems

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  How to determine if older 32-bit applications will run on Microsoft's 64-bit Windows 7.
  
  

• 10:19

  Skynet seeks idle computer power

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Idle home computers are being sought to help analyse mountains of astronomical data set to be produced by new telescopes.

• 9:47

  HTC wants to buy an operating system

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  Phone maker HTC wants to buy its own operating system, according to Chinese reports.

  Cher Wang, who is the outfit's chairwoman said the company is considering buying an operating system, but is in no rush.

  Hacks have been asking her if HTC is interested in buying HPs WebOS which appears to be on the market. There is also Meego which Intel and Nokia have lost interest in.

  HTC is currently having to pay a small fortune to Microsoft for its use of Android so it might be wanting to break out of that contract,

  Wang said that she has certainly given the idea of buying an operating system some thought, but will not do it on impulse.

  Chatting to the Economic Observer of China Wang said HTC's advantages lie in its distinctiveness, which means it can make unique products on different operating systems.

  She said it was possible to use any OS it wanted and HTC could still make things different from our rivals on the second or third layer of a platform.

  So far that means that HTC has only had to understand an OS, but it does not mean that it had to produce one.

  Wang added that she was not too concerned about Google's purchace of Motorola Mobility because it would free up a few patents for the rest of Android users. 

  
• 9:45

  Fusion Garage slashes the cost of its coming tablet

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  It seems that tablet makers have finally realised that they can't compete with Apple by offering a similar keyboardless netbook for the same price.

  Fusion Garage has slashed the price of its Grid10 tablet, after pushing back the delivery date.

  The Grid 10 was originally to cost $499 in the US and be ready to ship by the end of this week. However according to PC Pro, CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan has decided to delay the launch until 24 October. This will allow the outfit to release the tablet at a much more competitive $299.
  We assume that means that it will be coming out with cheaper components.

  In Blighty that means that the 16GB Wi-Fi only version will cost £259 (inc VAT), while the 3G edition will be priced at £359.

  Apparently what has caused Fusion Garage to change its mind was seeing how HP's TouchPad sold out after a massive discount.

  Rathakrishnan said that there has been really no innovation since Apple released its iPad and everything has been a carbon copy of the Apple devices.

  He said that if you are trying to copy and you're a poor carbon copy, you're not going to succeed. That and the fact that prices of tablets has been far too high.

  The way the tablet market is at the moment it is like going to China and buying a fake Louis Vuitton bag, at the same price as the real Louis Vuitton bags, he said.

  We have been saying this for ages and have not been surprised that Android Tablets had not taken off as much as the hardware makers claimed they would. £259 seems to us to be about right.

  
• 9:43

  Intel exec says Air France Brazil crash a total accident

   » ‎ Tech Eye - Latest technology headlines

  A continuing class action case by the relatives of people who died when an Airbus plane crashed on its way to Brazil in June 2009 will, no doubt, be relieved to know that it had nothing to do with the Intel Corporation.
  
  An Airbus 330-200 left from Paris and crashed not very very far away from Brazil, leaving 238 people dead.  A class action was filed on behalf of the dead people by their living relatives. They have claimed there was negligence by Intel, Motorola, Airbus, Thales and others, as we have reported.
  
  A case was started against Intel and other defendants last year, but a judge ruled that none of the defendants had a claim to answer. That decision has been appealed.
  
  Yet nn Intel executive told 150 or more journalists in San Francisco that he was glad the pilots had been vindicated. And the techology. He said that the crash probably happened because the plane flew into a thundercloud – a thundercloud that could not have predicted.
  
  He said that in situations like this, the sensors normally fitted to planes failed. It is a very technical case and the case continues.

  

• 8:56

  VIDEO: IFA 2011: The future of 2D cameras

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Richard Taylor looks through the viewfinder at the latest imaging technology on offer at IFA 2011.

• 6:20

  Microsoft Tries to Woo Mobile Developers With Windows 8

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Microsoft is hoping that efforts to make its new operating system more friendly for developers will work to its advantage.
  
  
• 5:50

  Michael Arrington and AOL Part Company

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  AOL and Michael Arrington, the TechCrunch blogger, have parted over journalistic conflict of interest claims over CrunchFund, his venture capital company.
  
  

• 3:45

  'Wi-fi refugees' shelter in West Virginia mountains

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  The wi-fi 'casualties' sheltering in West Virginia

• 1:01

  Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A;: Pulling Photos Off an iPod

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  How to get photos off an iPod Touch and onto your computer when all you use the Touch for is music.
  
  
• September 12, 2011
• 20:17

  California Votes to Give Amazon a Sales-Tax Reprieve

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  California lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a compromise bill giving Amazon.com a one-year reprieve from having to collect a sales tax from its customers in the state.
  
  
• 19:24

  Rich Tax Breaks Bolster Video Game Makers

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  A collection of tax deductions, write-offs and credits makes video game development one of the most highly subsidized businesses in the United States, a tax professor says.
  
  

• 18:03

  Disappearing tycoon blames Google

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Transport tycoon Sir Brian Souter has accused Google of making him vanish by hiding his website in searches.

• 16:51

  Media Decoder Blog: Longtime Holdout Bob Seger Succumbs to iTunes

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  The Springsteen of the Midwest will release two live albums, leaving only a few acts still resisting digital music sales.
  
  
• 16:51

  New York Fashion Week: On Tumblr, a Community for Style - NY Fashion Week

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Tumblr has become an important image-driven platform to fashion photographers, brands and bloggers, who have made it an integral part of their online lives.
  
  
• 16:34

  Link by Link: On Wikipedia, 9/11 Dissent Is Kept on the Fringe

   » ‎ NYT > Technology
  Wikipedia, created in the year the Sept. 11 attacks took place, was profoundly shaped by those events.
  
  

• 16:26

  Cars and cursors go smart at IBM

   » ‎ BBC News - Technology
  Students on IBM's summer internship show off their projects