Britain's First "Web-Rage" Attack

Reuters,

A British man convicted of what has been described as the country's first "web-rage" attack, was jailed for 2-1/2 years on Friday for assaulting a man he had exchanged insults with over the Internet.

Paul Gibbons, 47, from south London, admitted he had attacked John Jones in December 2005 after months of exchanging abuse with him via an Internet chatroom dedicated to discussing Islam.

The Old Bailey heard that Gibbons had "taken exception" to Jones, 43, after he had made the claim that Gibbons had been "interfering with children".

After several more verbal and written exchanges -- with Jones threatening to track him down and give him a severe beating -- Gibbons and a friend went to his victim's house in Essex, armed with a pickaxe and machete.

Jones himself was armed with a knife but Gibbons took it off him, held it to his throat and "scratched" him across the neck.

Gibbons, who the court heard had previous convictions for violence, admitted unlawful wounding on the first day of his trial last month.

Other charges of attempted murder and issuing online threats to kill four other chatroom users were not pursued but could be reactivated in future if he reoffends.

Media reports said it was the country's first case of "web-rage" and Judge Richard Hawkins described the circumstances as "unusual".

"This case highlights the dangers of Internet chat rooms, particularly with regards to giving personal details that will allow other users to discover home addresses," said Detective Sergeant Jean-Marc Bazzoni of Essex Police.

1st Legal Website for Free Movie Downloads

China.org

Chinese people can now watch movies online or download them legally from a website after the films have been screened in cinemas for two or three weeks. 　

The website quacor.com for downloading free copyrighted movies was launched in Beijing on Saturday. 　　
At the launch ceremony, the website received exclusive internet screening rights for two movies, Still Life and After This We Exile. 　

The site has already acquired thousands of movies' exclusive internet screening rights. 　　
Meanwhile, is there really such thing as a "free lunch"? How will the website survive with the high cost of acquiring screening rights? 　　

The website's publicist told the Stardaily that they will add advertisements to the movies and also on their website. He noted that the advertisements will only appear at the beginning or end of the movies.

More Journalists Against New Media Tasks

Vanity Fair,

Some would say that the Web has facilitated the job of the journalist. Others would say the tasks of online journalists are much more complex.

Journalists at the Wall Street Journal are of the latter opinion, rebelling against a management that they feel is demanding too much.

Those who consider the Web a boon to journalists are correct: it's easier to do research, it's easier to communicate, and it's easier to publish articles.

The problem is that those who consider it a burden are also correct: on top of the traditional everyday functions of journalists, they now must interact with readers, create podcasts and blogs and succumb to the pressures of a 24-hour news cycle.

A union of journalists at WSJ recently declared that its journalists would no longer be doing external or internal interviews pro bono.

The Journal's reporters regularly appear on CNBC, through an agreement that the cable news station has with the paper, but are not remunerated.

For their website, WSJ staffers also conduct webcast and podcast interviews free of charge, a task against which they are also revolting.

As most things in life, the real matter here is time and money. Why are staff journalists wasting time being interviewed on television and for the Internet for free when they should be out there digging into stories and interviewing people, the job for which they are paid?

The Journal's staff is not the first to feel the burnout from the effects new media is having on their profession.

The Washington Post encountered journalist discontent when it was revealed that many staffers writing blogs for the paper were not compensated for the extra time it took to write the blog, whereas other staffers who maintained blogs under their own names were.

Journalists at the Financial Times expressed their frustration at the new working schedule the Pearson paper imposed on them during its newsroom restructuring, requiring that journalists work at least three 7 a.m. shifts per month.

Staff at the Daily Telegraph are also in crisis mode as they make the transition to a state of the art multimedia newsroom that will involve a new media training program for all as well as Saturday and early morning shifts.

A "hollow-eyed" New York Times staffer is quoted in a Vanity Fair article by Michael Wolff complaining that the Internet has caused "everyone to do more and more for no more money."

Funny thing is, despite the additional workload that is obviously forced on journalists, every one of these papers is in the process of or has cut newsroom staff over the past year.

This may be the money-saving answer the paper's accountants are looking for, but it certainly does not bode well for journalists, be them those getting laid-off or those locked in the time-consuming yoke of new media news production.

Newspapers No Longer Mass Media in 10Yrs

Facing serious challenges from new competitors who are grabbing readers and advertising dollars, newspapers must find ways to reinvent themselves to survive

By Michael Hill, Bultimore Sun

The great department stores once stood in every city like eternal sentinels of American commerce.

In Baltimore, they anchored the corners of Howard and Lexington streets -- Stewart's, the Hecht Co., Hochschild-Kohn, Hutzler's.

And now they are gone.

Some wonder if the same fate awaits the American newspaper.

What was once unthinkable is now thought about as newspaper companies struggle with declining circulation and profits.

Few newspapers have disappeared, but the respected Knight Ridder chain is no more, a victim of pressure from shareholders as circulation and profit margins declined. The Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns The Sun, has put itself on the block for similar reasons.

No one knows exactly what will come out on the other end of this period of rapid adjustment. But if newspaper owners play their business cards right, most media experts think they will still have institutions that are both profitable and important, in print and online.

But there will certainly be serious challenges. Just as those department stores watched high-end boutiques take one type of customer and low-end discount stores another, newspapers are watching their readers -- and advertisers --- heading in all sorts of directions.

And, just like those old department stores, newspapers are accustomed to providing something for everyone -- not just the news and editorials and columnists, but also sports, stock listings, comics, the crossword, the entertainment reviews and listings, the bridge column, the weather report, obituaries.

Newspapers continue to do this as a matter of course. It is what they are expected to do, just as those department stores had clothes and furniture and toys and housewares and lingerie as well as restaurants and tea rooms.

That's because big-city newspapers have been considered a part of the essential fabric of American urban landscapes, like roads and buildings and schools and parks. They were an assumed ritual of daily life.

That is simply no longer the case.Managers of the Boston Globe, a regional icon in American journalism, recently announced that they expected their newspaper to lose money this year, because of plummeting circulation, classified and advertising revenues.

Media analysts blame that chilling news, in part, on the fact that Boston has more high-speed Internet connections than most cities in America. Editors in other cities see the Globe's problems as a shadow looming in their own futures.

Still, while all acknowledge that the ground is shifting, not all the news is doom and gloom. For now, most newspapers remain highly profitable enterprises.

"Whenever I address an industry group, I always start out by saying, 'You think you've got problems, how would you like to be Ford Motor Company?' " says Peter M. Zollman, a former journalist, now a newspaper industry consultant.

"Or NBC, which has to sit there and watch Tivo take away its entire business model?"

Indeed, newspapers aren't in that much trouble yet. It is the trend lines that many find alarming. The challenge they face at this point is to find ways to compete effectively in a marketplace where there is an array of new competitors offering cheap advertising and free news before revenues begin to plummet.

Newspapers that meet that challenge will survive. Some others will probably die. But that's nothing new in America.

An old story

Howard Weaver, the head of news for the McClatchy chain -- which bought Knight Ridder and then sold off about half of its papers -- notes that for most of the history of the United States, newspapers went in and out of business all the time. Major cities might have had a half-dozen papers. Baltimore had The American, The News, The Sun and The Evening Sun.

Weaver points out that newspapers have been hit hard before. It is no accident that their number peaked in the early part of the 20th century, before network radio went on the air. Television's zoom across the landscape after World War II continued the pattern of killing off scores of papers as they lost their monopoly as daily information providers.

Most of those cities that had many papers ended up with only one, maybe two. But those papers were financially strong. Little was required beyond turning on the printing presses to insure a steady profit.

This was the newspaper world of the past four decades, the one that those now in the business grew up in. There was plenty of money for expensive journalistic forays, if the owners were so inclined. Labor strife was common because, as in the other dominant U.S. industries of the day -- such as steel and autos -- there was plenty of money to fight over.

The crucial difference, Weaver says, between newspapers' previous battle and the current onslaught is that newspapers retained one important monopoly -- TV and radio could not do classified advertising.

Sure, automobiles and cereals and cosmetics and other major items could advertise on TV, but if you wanted to sell a car or a house or a wardrobe, you were not about to buy a 30-second spot on your local network affiliate.

Those pages and pages and pages filled with classified advertising provided newspapers with one of their main revenue streams. And it turned out to be something the Internet could do even better.

Consider that almost every one of those listings on eBay, almost every ad on Craigslist and almost every item offered for sale on similar sites all over the Web would have once been a classified ad in a newspaper, and you begin to get an idea of the impact.

"The Internet has made the world vastly different in many ways beyond classifieds," Weaver says. "Our role as the intermediary, the gatekeepers of information, has been eroded. But in terms of the revenue model, that's huge."

That is not to say that classified advertising has disappeared from newspapers. Zollman says it was a $17.2 billion business for newspapers in 2005, down from 2004, but up from 2002 and 2003. But it is way down from the $19 billion it brought in 2000, before the dot.com bubble burst.

There have been other factors in the financial problems of newspapers, but if the Internet could not do classifieds, it is likely pundits would be talking about some challenges facing newspapers, not a full-blown crisis.

Newspaper companies have responded by getting into the online classified business. Three major chains -- Tribune, McClatchy and Gannett -- own Careerbuilders, a major player in the online job search category.

But that raises another as-yet-unanswered question about the future: What business are those chains in? If it turns out that economics favor simply putting the classifieds on the Web without the expense of printing a newspaper, will they jettison the newspapers?

What happened to TV

In many ways, what is happening to newspapers is like the shifting ground that the television networks found themselves on 25 years ago.

The big three networks -- NBC, CBS, ABC -- had America hard-wired. If you wanted to get a message out to the country on TV, you had to go through them. The money rolled in. News divisions were a money-losing luxury to keep the regulators at bay.

Then two things happened. First, satellite communication made it easier for independent producers to bypass the networks and distribute syndicated shows to stations across the country. Oprah Winfrey became wealthy when hundreds of stations bought her show, creating a virtual Oprah network.

Then cable proliferated. There were plenty of ways to get a message out to much more specialized audiences. Which is not to say that the networks were unprofitable; they still had a huge number of eyeballs. But they had to adjust to new financial realities.

News divisions now have to make money. So documentaries don't do what Edward R. Murrow once did -- take on Joe McCarthy or reveal the plight of migrant workers; they tell the stories of salacious murders.

Newspapers lost a similar monopoly. Their distribution system -- delivery to front doors of houses every day -- was once the only way to reach the bulk of people in a city with an advertisement in print.

With the Internet, that is no longer the case. There are all sorts of ways now. There will be an adjustment.

"I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist," says Zollman, whose clients include the Tribune Co. "The newspaper business is changing radically, and journalism is changing pretty radically. But there will still be jobs for journalists. ...

"I think in five or 10 years, newspapers will still be printed, but they will no longer be a mass media; they will be a most effective targeted medium and they will be the largest of the targeted media."

That means newspapers will no longer be a universally accepted piece of the metropolitan landscape, but a product that has an appeal to a certain part of that area. That will be a significant part for sure, but still only a part.

The way to survive that shift, according to Zollman and others, is for newspapers not to make the same mistake another icon of American business did -- railroads, whose leaders thought they were in the railroad business, forgetting they were in the transportation business.

Widget lovers

So it is that journalistic enterprises are in the information business, not the newspaper business, something very hard to adjust to.

Weaver says that a business consultant once told him that there was a difference when he worked with newspaper people."When you talk to people who make widgets, those guys want to make a better widget, that's more efficient, that works better," Weaver says the consultant told him. "You guys in newspapers, you're in love with your widget."

And we do love all of that, the smell of the city room, waiting for the first edition to come off the press, going to the bar to talk about it," he says. "We are passionate about those vestiges, but that is not what really matters. What matters is the great story that was in that first edition."

And that is true no matter how that story is delivered, via the newspaper or the Web site or a download to a cellphone or a podcast. The challenge is finding the business model to support that.

Obviously the Web, where advertising revenues are growing, is crucial to that. Zollman says that the successful newspaper Web site "will have very deep local information and lots of contributions from readers, both from within the market and out of the market, people who have something valuable to contribute to the discourse.

"There will be lots of audio and video," he says. "It should not be the mirror image of the newspaper. Newspaper content is a tremendous starting place, but it is only a starting place."

Recognizing that the newspaper audience of the future will be a specialized one means giving up the department-store, something-for-everyone approach.

Zollman says he would keep the comics -- "You can't blow up your entire core audience" -- but, for instance, jettison stock tables as up-to-the-minute prices are available on the Web."

I don't understand why any newspaper in the country, except The Wall Street Journal, runs a single stock price," he says. "I believe at some point newspapers did belong in the business of being all things to all people, but they probably don't have that need any more."

The role of the modern newspaper in the United States has changed pretty substantially," Zollman says. "Some newspapers are successfully changing with it. Many more are struggling to figure out what that new role is."

Newspapers No Longer Mass Media in Ten Years

Facing serious challenges from new competitors who are grabbing readers and advertising dollars, newspapers must find ways to reinvent themselves to survive

By Michael Hill, Bultimore Sun


The great department stores once stood in every city like eternal sentinels of American commerce.

In Baltimore, they anchored the corners of Howard and Lexington streets -- Stewart's, the Hecht Co., Hochschild-Kohn, Hutzler's.

And now they are gone.

Some wonder if the same fate awaits the American newspaper.

What was once unthinkable is now thought about as newspaper companies struggle with declining circulation and profits.

Few newspapers have disappeared, but the respected Knight Ridder chain is no more, a victim of pressure from shareholders as circulation and profit margins declined. The Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns The Sun, has put itself on the block for similar reasons.

No one knows exactly what will come out on the other end of this period of rapid adjustment. But if newspaper owners play their business cards right, most media experts think they will still have institutions that are both profitable and important, in print and online.

But there will certainly be serious challenges. Just as those department stores watched high-end boutiques take one type of customer and low-end discount stores another, newspapers are watching their readers -- and advertisers --- heading in all sorts of directions.

And, just like those old department stores, newspapers are accustomed to providing something for everyone -- not just the news and editorials and columnists, but also sports, stock listings, comics, the crossword, the entertainment reviews and listings, the bridge column, the weather report, obituaries.

Newspapers continue to do this as a matter of course. It is what they are expected to do, just as those department stores had clothes and furniture and toys and housewares and lingerie as well as restaurants and tea rooms.

That's because big-city newspapers have been considered a part of the essential fabric of American urban landscapes, like roads and buildings and schools and parks. They were an assumed ritual of daily life.

That is simply no longer the case.Managers of the Boston Globe, a regional icon in American journalism, recently announced that they expected their newspaper to lose money this year, because of plummeting circulation, classified and advertising revenues.

Media analysts blame that chilling news, in part, on the fact that Boston has more high-speed Internet connections than most cities in America. Editors in other cities see the Globe's problems as a shadow looming in their own futures.

Still, while all acknowledge that the ground is shifting, not all the news is doom and gloom. For now, most newspapers remain highly profitable enterprises.

"Whenever I address an industry group, I always start out by saying, 'You think you've got problems, how would you like to be Ford Motor Company?' " says Peter M. Zollman, a former journalist, now a newspaper industry consultant.

"Or NBC, which has to sit there and watch Tivo take away its entire business model?"

Indeed, newspapers aren't in that much trouble yet. It is the trend lines that many find alarming. The challenge they face at this point is to find ways to compete effectively in a marketplace where there is an array of new competitors offering cheap advertising and free news before revenues begin to plummet.

Newspapers that meet that challenge will survive. Some others will probably die. But that's nothing new in America.

An old story

Howard Weaver, the head of news for the McClatchy chain -- which bought Knight Ridder and then sold off about half of its papers -- notes that for most of the history of the United States, newspapers went in and out of business all the time. Major cities might have had a half-dozen papers. Baltimore had The American, The News, The Sun and The Evening Sun.

Weaver points out that newspapers have been hit hard before. It is no accident that their number peaked in the early part of the 20th century, before network radio went on the air. Television's zoom across the landscape after World War II continued the pattern of killing off scores of papers as they lost their monopoly as daily information providers.

Most of those cities that had many papers ended up with only one, maybe two. But those papers were financially strong. Little was required beyond turning on the printing presses to insure a steady profit.

This was the newspaper world of the past four decades, the one that those now in the business grew up in. There was plenty of money for expensive journalistic forays, if the owners were so inclined. Labor strife was common because, as in the other dominant U.S. industries of the day -- such as steel and autos -- there was plenty of money to fight over.

The crucial difference, Weaver says, between newspapers' previous battle and the current onslaught is that newspapers retained one important monopoly -- TV and radio could not do classified advertising.

Sure, automobiles and cereals and cosmetics and other major items could advertise on TV, but if you wanted to sell a car or a house or a wardrobe, you were not about to buy a 30-second spot on your local network affiliate.

Those pages and pages and pages filled with classified advertising provided newspapers with one of their main revenue streams. And it turned out to be something the Internet could do even better.

Consider that almost every one of those listings on eBay, almost every ad on Craigslist and almost every item offered for sale on similar sites all over the Web would have once been a classified ad in a newspaper, and you begin to get an idea of the impact.

"The Internet has made the world vastly different in many ways beyond classifieds," Weaver says. "Our role as the intermediary, the gatekeepers of information, has been eroded. But in terms of the revenue model, that's huge."

That is not to say that classified advertising has disappeared from newspapers. Zollman says it was a $17.2 billion business for newspapers in 2005, down from 2004, but up from 2002 and 2003. But it is way down from the $19 billion it brought in 2000, before the dot.com bubble burst.

There have been other factors in the financial problems of newspapers, but if the Internet could not do classifieds, it is likely pundits would be talking about some challenges facing newspapers, not a full-blown crisis.

Newspaper companies have responded by getting into the online classified business. Three major chains -- Tribune, McClatchy and Gannett -- own Careerbuilders, a major player in the online job search category.

But that raises another as-yet-unanswered question about the future: What business are those chains in? If it turns out that economics favor simply putting the classifieds on the Web without the expense of printing a newspaper, will they jettison the newspapers?

What happened to TV

In many ways, what is happening to newspapers is like the shifting ground that the television networks found themselves on 25 years ago.

The big three networks -- NBC, CBS, ABC -- had America hard-wired. If you wanted to get a message out to the country on TV, you had to go through them. The money rolled in. News divisions were a money-losing luxury to keep the regulators at bay.

Then two things happened. First, satellite communication made it easier for independent producers to bypass the networks and distribute syndicated shows to stations across the country. Oprah Winfrey became wealthy when hundreds of stations bought her show, creating a virtual Oprah network.

Then cable proliferated. There were plenty of ways to get a message out to much more specialized audiences. Which is not to say that the networks were unprofitable; they still had a huge number of eyeballs. But they had to adjust to new financial realities.

News divisions now have to make money. So documentaries don't do what Edward R. Murrow once did -- take on Joe McCarthy or reveal the plight of migrant workers; they tell the stories of salacious murders.

Newspapers lost a similar monopoly. Their distribution system -- delivery to front doors of houses every day -- was once the only way to reach the bulk of people in a city with an advertisement in print.

With the Internet, that is no longer the case. There are all sorts of ways now. There will be an adjustment.

"I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist," says Zollman, whose clients include the Tribune Co. "The newspaper business is changing radically, and journalism is changing pretty radically. But there will still be jobs for journalists. ...

"I think in five or 10 years, newspapers will still be printed, but they will no longer be a mass media; they will be a most effective targeted medium and they will be the largest of the targeted media."

That means newspapers will no longer be a universally accepted piece of the metropolitan landscape, but a product that has an appeal to a certain part of that area. That will be a significant part for sure, but still only a part.

The way to survive that shift, according to Zollman and others, is for newspapers not to make the same mistake another icon of American business did -- railroads, whose leaders thought they were in the railroad business, forgetting they were in the transportation business.

Widget lovers

So it is that journalistic enterprises are in the information business, not the newspaper business, something very hard to adjust to.

Weaver says that a business consultant once told him that there was a difference when he worked with newspaper people."When you talk to people who make widgets, those guys want to make a better widget, that's more efficient, that works better," Weaver says the consultant told him. "You guys in newspapers, you're in love with your widget."

And we do love all of that, the smell of the city room, waiting for the first edition to come off the press, going to the bar to talk about it," he says. "We are passionate about those vestiges, but that is not what really matters. What matters is the great story that was in that first edition."

And that is true no matter how that story is delivered, via the newspaper or the Web site or a download to a cellphone or a podcast. The challenge is finding the business model to support that.

Obviously the Web, where advertising revenues are growing, is crucial to that. Zollman says that the successful newspaper Web site "will have very deep local information and lots of contributions from readers, both from within the market and out of the market, people who have something valuable to contribute to the discourse.

"There will be lots of audio and video," he says. "It should not be the mirror image of the newspaper. Newspaper content is a tremendous starting place, but it is only a starting place."

Recognizing that the newspaper audience of the future will be a specialized one means giving up the department-store, something-for-everyone approach.

Zollman says he would keep the comics -- "You can't blow up your entire core audience" -- but, for instance, jettison stock tables as up-to-the-minute prices are available on the Web."

I don't understand why any newspaper in the country, except The Wall Street Journal, runs a single stock price," he says. "I believe at some point newspapers did belong in the business of being all things to all people, but they probably don't have that need any more."

The role of the modern newspaper in the United States has changed pretty substantially," Zollman says. "Some newspapers are successfully changing with it. Many more are struggling to figure out what that new role is."

Physics Promises Wireless Power

Jonathan Fildes, BBC

The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today's electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past.

US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players without wires.

The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.

Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it will work.

"There are so many autonomous devices such as cell phones and laptops that have emerged in the last few years," said Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the researchers behind the work.

"We started thinking, 'it would be really convenient if you didn't have to recharge these things'.
"And because we're physicists we asked, 'what kind of physical phenomenon can we use to do this wireless energy transfer?'."

How wireless energy could work

The answer the team came up with was "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.

"When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly," Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website.

Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example.

"When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate," he said.

Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team's system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays.

Typically, systems that use electromagnetic radiation, such as radio antennas, are not suitable for the efficient transfer of energy because they scatter energy in all directions, wasting large amounts of it into free space.

To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances".

When energy is applied to these objects it remains bound to them, rather than escaping to space. "Tails" of energy, which can be many metres long, flicker over the surface.

"If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic.

Hence, a simple copper antenna designed to have long-lived resonance could transfer energy to a laptop with its own antenna resonating at the same frequency. The computer would be truly wireless.

Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed.
The systems that the team have described would be able to transfer energy over three to five metres.

"This would work in a room let's say but you could adapt it to work in a factory," he said.
"You could also scale it down to the microscopic or nanoscopic world."

Old technology

The team from MIT is not the first group to suggest wireless energy transfer.

Nineteenth-century physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla experimented with long-range wireless energy transfer, but his most ambitious attempt - the 29m high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower, in New York - failed when he ran out of money.

Others have worked on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer such as lasers.
However, these require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.

A UK company called Splashpower has also designed wireless recharging pads onto which gadget lovers can directly place their phones and MP3 players to recharge them.

The pads use electromagnetic induction to charge devices, the same process used to charge electric toothbrushes.

One of the co-founders of Splashpower, James Hay, said the MIT work was "clearly at an early stage" but "interesting for the future".

"Consumers desire a simple universal solution that frees them from the hassles of plug-in chargers and adaptors," he said.

"Wireless power technology has the potential to deliver on all of these needs."
However, Mr Hay said that transferring the power was only part of the solution.

"There are a number of other aspects that need to be addressed to ensure efficient conversion of power to a form useful to input to devices."

Professor Soljacic will present the work at the American Institute of Physics Industrial Physics Forum in San Francisco on 14 November.

The work was done in collaboration with his colleagues Aristeidis Karalis and John Joannopoulos.

HOW WIRELESS POWER COULD WORK

1] Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2] Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4MHz, emitting electromagnetic waves
3] 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m [16.4ft]
4] Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4MHz. Energy used to re-charge device
5] Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4MHz

Blocking Cheap Drugs for Developing World

US and EU have broken Doha pledges, says Oxfam
Stop Aids claims 75 per cent of HIV patients not treated

by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian

Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines, a report says today.

Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse.

The charity accuses the US, which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the EU of standing by and doing nothing.

Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs but the US is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants.

"Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha declaration," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. "The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work and that hasn't happened. In fact, we've actually gone backwards. Many people are dying or suffering needlessly."

The Indian generics firms make most of the cheap drug cocktails that are now being rolled out to people with HIV in Africa and are keeping more than a million people alive. They brought the price of a basic three-drug cocktail down from $10,000 (£5,250) a year to less than $150 (£79). But new Aids drugs will soon be needed because the virus will become resistant to the basic ones now in use - as has happened in the EU and the US.

Those newer Aids drugs, together with drugs for cancer and diabetes, are under patent. The Oxfam report points out that 4 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2005 and cancer and diabetes are expanding faster in developing countries than in the richer world.

The report says that, since the signing of the Doha declaration on November 14 2001, "rich countries have failed to honour their promises. Their record ranges from apathy and inaction to dogged determination to undermine the declaration's spirit and intent. The US, at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, is uniqely guilty of seeking ever higher levels of intellectual property protection in developing countries."

The US has pursued its own free trade agreements with developing countries, tying them into much tighter observance of patent rights than anticipated at Doha. "The USA has also pressured countries for greater patent protection through threats of trade sanctions," the report says.

The drugs firms are also fighting to have patents observed. Pfizer is challenging the Philippines government in a bid to extend its monopoly on Norvasc, a drug pressure drug. Novartis is engaged in litigation in India to enforce a patent for Glivec, a cancer drug, which could save many lives if it were available at generic prices.

The Stop Aids campaign, a coalition of 90 NGOs of which Oxfam is a member, is calling for the government to champion the issue at the G8 summit next year. Three-quarters of HIV drugs are still under monopoly and unaffordable in poor countries, it said. More than 75% of those who need HIV treatment urgently are still not getting it. Only 8% of children with HIV are on drugs, which cost four times more than those for adults.

"Sadly, promising words have not translated into life-saving treatments and five years is too long to wait when the stakes are so high," said Steve Cockburn, campaign coordinator.
Case study

Premavati, a 60-year-old widow living in Delhi who is suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, has spent around $900 (£470) on medicines. "My husband died two years ago," says Premavati. "We have absolutely no savings. Of my two sons one is a casual labourer, the other has no job. My daughter is 30, has two children and is also a widow."

She is one of 1.42 billion people in India who cannot afford the drugs they need to save their lives. Their country is the leading producer of inexpensive generic drugs but about 67% of the output is exported, and it is under pressure to stop copying new patented drugs.

The future looks bleak for Premavati. "How will I raise the money for my treatment?" she says, "Already, I've spent what we had. If nobody helps I will just go back to my daughter and will have to die without medicines."

'Compassionate Slavery' Market for Africa

Notice: This is a an imaginary incident. You can call it 'Reflection of Truth'!


A WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" was announced at the Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa.

World Trade Organization representative, Hanniford Schmidt said it's for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright.

Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome.

The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to [re]-privatize humans themselves.

"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt said.

He added that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.

The audience included Prof. Charles Soludo [Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria], Dr. Laurie Ann Agama [Director for African Affairs at the Office of the US Trade Representative], and other notables.

Agama prefaced her remarks by thanking Scmidt for his macroscopic perspective, saying that the USTR view adds details to the WTO's general approach.

Nigerian Central Bank Governor Soludo also acknowledged the WTO proposal, though he did not seem to appreciate it as much as did Agama.

A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said.

"Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the> worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits out the door. Get sick, get fired.

If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now."

To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said.

[http://www.policynetwork.net/main/article.php?article_id=505]

One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory.

There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal. During his talk, Schmidt outlined the three phases of Africa's 500- year history of free trade with the West: slavery, colonialism, and post-colonial markets. Each time, he noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead.

"So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business--GOOD for people."

The panel on which Schmidt spoke was entitled "Trade in Africa: Enhancing Relationships to Improve Net Worth." Some of the other panels in the conference were entitled "Re-Branding Africa" and "Growing Africa's Appetite."

Throughout the comments by Schmidt and his three co-panelists, which lasted 75 minutes, Schmidt's stewardee, Thomas Bongani-Nkemdilim, remained standing at respectful attention off to the side.

"This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything--even people."

Abstract Aesthetic to War-Damaged Urban Fabric

Lebanese painter's new work draws inspiration from summer conflict and its aftermath
Zeina Nasr, The Daily Star, lb

It's a trying life for the Lebanese visual artist. Of course, artists everywhere have never had an easy time of it. Whether they forage for funding, endeavor to exhibit or struggle to find inspiration, their profession is simultaneously one of deeply private creation and necessarily public promotion.

The Lebanese art scene is no exception, though the small scale of the local market as well as its uncompetitive spirit may spare artists a life of commercial coups and calculations.

But there is the problem of culture. Who is truly interested in Lebanese contemporary art? Can a community of visual artists survive without the presence of serious art collectors? And how may a collective understanding of contemporary art develop without the presence of institutions to memorialize such work?

Despite an impoverished cultural climate - not to mention debilitating war and postwar economies - Raouf Rifai has done well. He has exhibited his paintings in France, Japan, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Bangladesh and the United States. He has steadily shown his work in numerous Lebanese galleries since 1973. His paintings sell at robust prices and please the obligingly critical eye.

"The artist visibly follows a process of formal simplification and qualification that leads him to create compositions that are, without a doubt, a most compelling mix of figuration and abstraction tending toward the definition of a new visual language," says the exhibition announcement for Rifai's current show at the French Cultural Center, on view until December 22.

Such long-winded praise elevates Rifai's colorful compositions to groundbreaking innovations of the medium itself. Although his work does indeed mix figuration and abstraction, there is little in the mid-sized canvases, layered as they are in dense blocks of acrylic color, to indicate that Rifai has developed a new visual language.

Complementary color pairs characterize most of the paintings currently on show: bright orange and electric blue, olive green and brick red, mustard yellow and magenta. Accenting tones of white, black, gray and beige serve to detail and outline each block of color.

Instead of using brush strokes, Rifai drips and rolls his paint, layering saturated surfaces with grids of wavering lines. What emerges is a visual language between print patterns, abstract landscapes and primitive figuration - neither entirely developed nor notably individualized.

If anything, Rifai's work most calls to mind myriad swatches of stylish furniture fabric. His paintings are striking in their color but merely decorative in their even geometries. And if they are paintings most suited to compliment swanky interiors, Rifai is qualified to produce such work, given his position as a professor of interior design at the Lebanese University.

Also an urbanist and a staunch environmentalist, Rifai considers his current exhibition to be an expression of spatial vision. Having previously produced paintings in a more primitive style - depicting stick figures amongst trees in cluttered, childish interiors - Rifai's move to formal abstraction was propelled to completion by this past summer's war.

"I was affected by pollution - the pollution of the environment and of the city," says Rifai.
Inspired by the urban destruction of Beirut's southern suburbs and the villages of South Lebanon, Rifai wanted to depict the unexpected beauty of such a deconstructed urban landscape.

"This is how my work has developed - more toward abstraction and urban space, and because of the war, I began to see how destruction can inspire. I wanted to paint all of this urban confusion," he explains.

As to his choice of acrylic paint, Rifai says: "I like to work quickly, impulsively. My work is emotional painting, and oil takes too long to dry. It makes me lose the feeling. So I work with acrylic to make it look like oil paint."

Perhaps he works too quickly. Rifai's paintings are immediately appealing, like attractive hothouse flowers. But they lack the unsettling detail and raw emotion of more substantially "felt" compositions.

In an art scene where a grounding history and an active community have yet to evolve, the question remains: Who is truly interested in Lebanese contemporary art?

If Rifai paints by himself and essentially for himself, it is understandable that his paintings may lack conceptual substance. Perhaps he is inspired by the work of some distant masters, as in the colors of painter Mark Rothko and the lines of architect Zaha Hadid, but for whom does he paint?

With which local artists does he exchange ideas? What works does he set his own against?
Although it may be said that a genius creates beauty under any circumstances, cultural value can only be attributed to work that is validated by a favorable context. Genius or not, art is nothing but private expression until it is recognized and fit into a community of artistic endeavor.

Rifai's previous work is more firmly anchored in what may be called a Mediterranean tradition. His childish drawings are charming, each one portraying some aspect of a sunny childhood spent amidst the happy disarray of an old-time Lebanon.

It may be said that his current work is more "mature." But according to what standards? Does a move from simple figuration to simple abstraction immediately indicate artistic maturity? And why has Rifai made this move?

As there is no cultural context through which Rifai's move to decorative abstraction may be understood, his paintings remain the results of private whim.

It is not so much that Rifai's colorful urban landscapes are uninteresting, but rather, that they are culturally powerless.

Looking for Similarities Among Religions

By Faiz Khan, Daily Star

The West and the Muslim world are multi-faceted, multi-cultural, and multi-religious realms despite the narrow way they are often viewed and defined.

There are millions of Muslims in the West, and there are millions of individuals of other faiths in the "Muslim world."

There are underlying relationships between these supposed separate worlds that exist in the basic foundations of their cultures; the continual resurgence of religiosity is at the heart of both of our cultures and has been throughout history.

The goal of religiosity is piety, and a temporal consequence of piety is the insistent turning of the individual and collectivity toward those values and ethics that are universally cherished by all human beings.

Given this relationship between piety and time-honored ethics and values, anyone of goodwill, Western or not, should feel encouraged by that facet of Islamic doctrine that supports the cultivation of piety through religious practice, which elicits from its practitioner an inter-human ethic also shared by the Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Parsi and Buddhist traditions.

Therefore, similarities between cultures can be found in the religious and theocentric realm. Even seemingly clashing cultures can find common ground here. American heritage has a strong theocentric basis.

I recall, as a schoolchild, reciting daily "one nation, under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," as taught by the American Pledge of Allegiance. This idea is precisely Koranic.

Moreover, the sense that executive, legislative and judiciary institutions must be parochially neutral while at the same time acknowledging divinity and cultivating piety and sanctity, no matter what the outward form (be it Christian or Buddhist or Islamic, or something else), is in keeping with the operational understanding of governance as derived from Koranic principles.

These principles were elaborated on and lived by the prophet Mohammad and his apostles.
Though similarities can be drawn, the East has kept theocentric principals closer to the surface of its cultures, while the West supports a more secular culture.

There is very little the "Muslim world" needs to learn ideologically from the modern West. The making of ideologically sound governance and society lies in the application of Islamic law, or sharia, defined by the Koran and embracing pluralism.

Whether this element of the sharia is fostered and supported by the domestic or transnational geopolitical powerbrokers is an entirely different issue.

Western-based secular humanism, which views public expressions of faith or mention of God as a malignant imposition of religion, is repugnant to the Islamic paradigm. Regardless, Muslims in the West are still expected to abide by the mores and legal precedents of where they live.

Taking an extreme example, if, through due process, it is decided that religion or mention of God is purely private matter, the Muslim, by the ethic dictated by sharia, needs to comply or find somewhere else to live.

In the Muslim world, like in the rest of the developing world, the West has imposed corporate client regimes through the use of covert or overt war. The ensuing harmful sociopolitical and economic consequences have caused many segments of the population to feel deeply violated.

When these Muslim populations express themselves against very real injustices, they do so in the phraseology of a sharia ethic that promises them their rights to life, liberty, property, security and fair distribution of wealth and opportunity.

The sharia has its basis in religion; hence, religious revivalism is analogous to Americans demanding their "constitutional rights" in the face of sociopolitical and financial victimization. Various reactionary movements have their basis in this dynamic.

Religion, when practiced authentically, by definition builds bridges among its practitioners, no matter what the brand of their respective religions. The Koran explicitly addresses this phenomenon in many instances.

One of the most dangerously flawed theses is that there is something within authentic religion that is central in causing conflict along religiously parochial lines.

However, religious, racial, ethnic or any other form of bigotry is by definition a psychological perversion. Although religion, race and ethnicity are semantically linked to their respective bigotries in an existential manner, they are not causative.

A pious Jew, Christian or Muslim will behave in the same manner when it comes to inter-personal ethics. The modalities of worship may differ, but the treatment by a pious Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Parsi or Buddhist toward their fellow man will be the same.

All humans, be they theocentric or theophobic, desire to spend their time on this earth with their rights secured, free to enjoy their pursuits within a peaceful and ordered society.

This is the common bridge between believers and non-believers.

There is an underlying commonality that exists in the humanity of peoples, their cultures and religion. A massive public campaign must be waged which supports tearing down the barriers between our "two worlds."

It's time that we stop looking for differences and start paying attention to the similarities.


Faiz Khan, a medical doctor, is a writer and lecturer on Islam. He is also a co-founder of MUJCA-NET, the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth.

U.N. Peacekeepers at Record High

UPI

U.N. officials say peacekeeping forces at the end of October reached nearly 81,000 military and police and 15,000 civilians, the highest number ever.

The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations said Friday they were deployed in 18 missions around the world and required a budget that could reach US $7 billion.

"The unprecedented growth represents a growing confidence in U.N. peacekeeping as a means to help build stability after conflict," said Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno.

"These new demands have also brought unprecedented challenges to the United Nations, including in the areas of personnel, resources, management, logistical support, quality assurance, professionalism and oversight, as well as the challenge of maintaining the political engagement of (U.N.) member states," Guehenno said.

The previous peak in 58 years of U.N. peacekeeping operations was in July 1993, when 78,444 troops were deployed, almost one-third of them in the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The current surge began in October 2003, with the deployment of major operations to Burundi, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sudan and expansion of the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Over the past three months, the newly established U.N. Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste and the increased deployment in the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon contributed to the record-breaking number of uniformed personnel in the field.

Peacekeeping is paid for by all Member States according to an agreed upon formula which they established.

The current top 10 financial contributors are: the United States at 27 per cent, Japan paying 19 per cent, Germany contributing 9 per cent, Britain giving 7 per cent, France 7 per cent, Italy 5 per cent, Canada and Spain at 3 percent each and China and the Netherlands each paying 2 per cent

Our 'Africa' Lenses

From the West, Big Labels but Little Context


By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Washington Post


Growing up in Nsukka, a small university town in eastern Nigeria, I often had malaria.

It was so commonplace that when you went to the medical center, a nurse would say, "Malaria has come again, hasn't it?"

Because I know how easily treatable malaria is, I was surprised to learn that thousands of people die from it each year.

People like the relatives of David Banda, Madonna's adopted son from Malawi.

But of course most American media do not say "Malawi"; they just say "Africa." I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain.

I reject this facile compression of a varied continent into a monolithic country, but I have also come to accept that African nations do have much in common with one another. Most have a history of European colonization. Most also have a failure of leadership, a long line of presidents and prime ministers and heads of state all intent on the plunder of the state.

And so I was wearing my "African" lenses as I watched Madonna on television, cautiously, earnestly explaining the media circus around her adoption. I did not think it my place to wonder what her motivation for adoption was.

I did cringe, however, when she said that her greatest disappointment was that the media frenzy would discourage people who wanted to do the same thing that she had done: adopt an African child. She wanted people to go to Africa and see what she had seen; she wanted them, too, to adopt.

Later, watching David Banda's biological father speak about being grateful that she would give David a "better life," I could not help but look away. The power differential was so stark, so heartbreakingly sad; there was something about it that made Africa seem terribly dispensable.
Madonna will give David a better life, at least a materially better life: better food, housing, books.

Whether this will make him a happier and normatively better human being is open to debate. What really matters is not Madonna's motivation or her supposed flouting of Malawian adoption laws (as though non-celebrities would not also hasten adoption processes if they could).

Rather, it is the underlying notion that she has helped Africa by adopting David Banda, that one helps Africa by adopting Africa's children.

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.

If I were not African, I would, after watching the coverage, think of Africa as a place of magnificent wild animals in which black Africans exist as tour guides, or as a place of desperately poor people who kill or are killed by one another for little or no reason.

I once watched CNN's Anderson Cooper, who is undoubtedly well-meaning, interview a Belgian (who, we were told, was a "Congo expert") about the conflict in that country, while Congolese people stood in the background and watched.

Surely there was a Congolese who was qualified to speak about Congo. Surely there are Congolese who are working just as hard as the foreigners and who don't fit into the category of either killer or killed. Surely the future for Africa should be one in which Africans are in a position to raise their own children.

Which brings me back to Madonna. I applauded her funding of orphanages in Malawi. I wish, however, that instead of asking television viewers to go to Africa and adopt, she had asked them to send a check to malaria-eradication organizations.

I wish she had added, after one of those thoughtfully dramatic pauses, that Africa cannot depend on aid alone, that aid is like salted peanuts: The more failed leaders got, the more they wanted.

I wish she had said that she was setting up an organization to use donations as micro-credit and that this organization, by the way, would be run by locals rather than expatriate staff members who would raise rents out of the reach of the people they were supposed to be helping.

I wish she had pointed out, with suitable celebrity-style rage, that Western countries need to stop appeasing and propping up hopeless African leaders, that Western banks must stop enabling and accepting stolen money from these leaders, that Western donors who insist on the free movement of capital across borders must also insist on the free movement of labor.

I wish she had then shown, with graphs on the screen, how these things affect the father and relatives of David Banda.

Of course this isn't really about Madonna. It is about a formula that well-meaning people have adopted in looking at Africa, a surface-only, let's-ignore-the-real-reasons template that African experiences have all been forced to fit in order to be authentically "African."

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond.

I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

I wonder whether I would know that Africa has class divisions, that wealthy Africans who have not stolen from their countries actually exist.

I wonder whether I would know that corrupt African countries are also full of fiercely honest people and that violent conflicts are about resource control in an environment of (sometimes artificial) scarcity.

Watching David Banda's father, I imagined a British David visiting him in 2021 and I wondered what they would talk about.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novelist, is the author of "Half of a Yellow Sun."

Lack of Clean Water, a Huge Global Problem

Chantelle Benjamin, Business Day

Despite increased wealth worldwide, more than 1-billion of the world’s poor do not have access to safe water and 2,6-billion do not have adequate sanitation, says the United Nations (UN) Development Programme report.

The report, which will be released worldwide tomorrow, looks at the importance of increasing access to water for citizens and whether that has positive spinoffs to countries’ economic growth.

It looks at 175 UN member countries, including the Palestinian territories. The report says 2,6-billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation.

The report highlights the correlation between productivity and access to water, saying this affected most of the world’s malnourished people, who are small farmers, labourers and herders.

Releasing the UN 2006 Human Development Report, Kevin Watkin said safe water and sanitation were fundamental to human development.

“When people are deprived of these, they face diminished opportunities to realise their potential as human beings.” He said it was hoped that the extensive report would galvanise leaders to address “what amounts to a humanitarian emergency”.

The report contains this year’s human development index, a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and living standards for countries, which is taken seriously by governments.

Saudi Arabia was rated 120 out of 177 countries, behind the Seychelles, Libya and Mauritius, but ahead of other sub-Saharan countries.

The top six countries were Norway, Iceland, Australia, Luxembourg, Canada and Sweden. The last three countries were Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Niger.

Get Rid of Explosives After War

By Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters

A global treaty obliging warring parties to remove unexploded munitions which kill and maim long after fighting ends came into force, amid moves to start negotiations to curb use of cluster bombs.

The "explosive remnants of war" pact, clinched three years ago, has been ratified by more than the 20 states needed to become legally binding.

It requires the cleaning up of deadly debris such as unexploded shells, grenades, cluster submunitions, mortars and rockets which lie in wait after the end of hostilities.

"This is the first international agreement to require the parties to an armed conflict to clear all unexploded munitions that threaten civilians, peacekeepers and humanitarian workers once the fighting is over," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.

"Its entry into force, finally, is a milestone," Philip Spoerri, ICRC's director of international law, told Reuters.

The humanitarian agency -- hoping to minimise death, injury and suffering from Asia to Africa -- was behind the initiative to address unexploded ordnance in 2000.

Under the pact, warring parties must mark contaminated areas after a conflict ends and warn civilians of the risks until the ordnance has been cleared.

"It creates an obligation to clean up the mess on the battlefield even if a party doesn't control the territory anymore," Mark Hiznay, of the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

El Salvador and Liberia, which have emerged from conflicts, are among 26 states to have ratified the treaty so far. U.S. President George W. Bush has sent it to the Senate.

It is a protocol to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its entry into force comes midway in a two-week review conference where momentum is building to address the issue of deadly cluster bombs, aid agencies say.

Cluster bombs are air- or ground-launched canisters holding up to 650 submunitions, which often fail to explode on impact. Designed for use against infantry and tanks, they sink into the ground or lie on the surface and become virtual landmines.

Israel's use of cluster bombs in its month-long war against Islamist Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon has brought a sense of urgency to halting their firing against military targets located in heavily populated areas, aid agencies say.

More than 20 people have been killed by cluster bomblets since the Aug. 14 ceasefire in Lebanon, where experts estimate that an unusually high 40 percent failed to explode on impact.

"A new treaty is needed urgently to prohibit cluster munitions, weapons that have caused documented and unacceptable harm for over 40 years. The devastation in Lebanon is just the latest example," Angelo Simonazzi, director-general of the Brussels-based Handicap International, said in a statement.

The ICRC has called for a ban on the use of cluster bombs in populated areas, where it says they cause "severe and disproportionate impact" on civilians, a call echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Nearly 20 states at the Geneva meeting back an attempt by Sweden to seek the launch of negotiations on some form of treaty, according to the ICRC's Spoerri.

Your Mobile Should Be Free!

Reuters,

Web search leader Google Inc.'s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sees a future where mobile phones are free to consumers who accept watching targeted forms of advertising.

As mobile phones become more like handheld computers and consumers spend as much as eight to 10 hours a day talking, texting and using the Web on these devices, advertising becomes a viable form of subsidy.

"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.

He was interviewed following a speech on the theme of business innovation organized by Italian student groups and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Schmidt also said his company was working on how to allow users to maintain basic control of their personal data.

Currently, Google stores consumer data on hundreds of thousands of its own computers in order to provide additional services to individual users. The company is looking to allow consumers to export their Web search history or e-mail archives and move them to other sites, if they so choose.

"We are working to ensure that as long as it is yours, we want to give you the equivalent of number portability," Schmidt said at another conference earlier this week. Portability is a government-mandated program that allows consumers to retain their mobile phone numbers when they switch carriers.

This undertaking is both a recognition of users' right to control their personal information, an effort to head off regulatory action and a response to an increasing trend on the Internet toward openness rather than exclusivity, he said.

"Data should never be held hostage. We might as well get ahead of it before a law gets passed forcing us to do that."

Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced, he said.

The Google executive said his own company had no plans to directly give away phones itself, nor is he aware of any effort by partners such as phone makers Nokia or Motorola or mobile operators like Vodafone to make such a radical move, he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted.

The company, which will derive virtually all of its expected US$10 billion in revenue this year from selling text ads to computer users who use Google to search the Web, has said previously it expected mobile phone advertising to match computer-based ad revenue over time.

Future of TV is Personal

Nokia commissioned report from the London School of Economics gives valuable insights into the impact of mobility on television.

The report, titled 'This Box Was Made For Walking', examines the future impact of mobile TV on the broadcasting and advertising industries.

The report predicts that the introduction and adoption of mobile TV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with big implications for users, content providers and advertisers.

Users will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them, and even create and upload their own television content, while content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user.

According to the report, the current trend of user generated content, as seen by the phenomenal growth of YouTube, will be a key feature of mobile TV.

As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to create video content, new broadcast platforms will emerge to distribute this content to other mobile users.

The United States television channel, Current TV, is a good indicator of the future with 30 per cent of its programming consisting of user-generated content.

Dr Orgad examined the impact of mobile TV on the advertising industry and predicts new opportunities for the industry as it is able to better target and interact with key audiences.

On mobile TV, advertisers will be able to pinpoint their messages to users according to very specific levels not possible with traditional TV and at success rates higher than those of the Internet.

The report also reveals that advertisers are currently experimenting with five and seven second-long ad spots to be better suited to the 'snacking culture' of mobile TV viewing.

The report predicts that mobile TV programming will be a combination of original content from broadcast television and new content made specifically for mobile.

It is expected that the most popular genres and programmes on mobile TV will be news, entertainment (soaps, reality shows, comedy, animation), sport, music and children's programmes.

Moreover, the content will be tailored with the mobile viewer in mind:

• Much shorter and more concise news bulletins
• User interactivity in the plots of reality TV shows and game shows
• Growing importance of user-generated content
• New distribution formats: in China, for instance, the movie Kung Fu Hustle was made into ten segments for mobile TV
• New TV content
  

The mobile TV viewing experience is also likely to see new programme formats emerging.
These include:

Talking heads and close ups - due to the small screen size, broadcasters will need to focus on talking heads, where viewers will be able to watch close-ups and see the details, rather than capturing a wide screen.

'Snackable content' - mobile TV content will need to be suitable for 'snacking'.

Mobisodes - mobisodes are fragmented and small made-for-mobile episodes that cater to bite-sized portions of content on the go.

Visual spectacle - programmes will need to emphasise visual spectacle over conventional narrative and be image-orientated.

Local content - content should be relevant for the here-and-now of viewers. New prime times
Broadcasters are likely to see a new midday prime time with mobile TV according to the report.

This is backed up by consumer trials of mobile TV in Europe which revealed heavy usage of mobile TV during the day as well as during the more traditional early morning and late evening prime times.

Leave Christmas Alone, Say Muslims

By Jonathan Petre, Telegraph

Muslim leaders joined their Christian counterparts yesterday to launch a powerful attack on politicians and town halls that play down Christmas.

They warned that attempts to remove religion from the festival were fuelling Right-wing extremism.A number of town halls have tried to excise references to Christianity from Christmas, in one case by renaming their municipal celebrations "Winterval".

They have often justified their actions by saying Britain is now a multi-faith society and they are anxious to avoid offending minority groups.

But the Muslim leaders said they honoured Christmas and that local authorities were playing into the hands of extremists who were able to blame Muslim communities for undermining Britain's Christian culture.

The unprecedented broadside was delivered by the Christian Muslim Forum, which was launched this year by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, with the support of Tony Blair.The forum's reaction reflects growing anger among Christians and other faiths about the efforts of secularists to push religion to the margins of public life.

In 1998 Birmingham renamed its celebrations "Winterval", and in 2001 Luton described its Christmas lights as "luminos", taken from Harry Potter.

Last week, the Church of England criticised Royal Mail for issuing Christmas stamps with no Christian theme.

The forum, which draws half its membership from senior members of the Muslim community, said in a statement that "as Muslims and Christians together" it was "wholeheartedly committed" to the religious recognition of Christian festivals.

"Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus and we wish this significant part of the Christian heritage of this country to remain an acknowledged part of national life.

"The desire to secularise religious festivals is offensive to both of our communities."

The statement, signed by the forum's chairman, the Bishop of Bolton, the Rt Rev David Gillett, and its vice-chairman, Dr Ataullah Siddiqui, urged society to promote religious freedom.

"Those who use the fact of religious pluralism as an excuse to de-Christianise British society unthinkingly become recruiting agents for the extreme Right. They provoke antagonism towards Muslims and others by foisting on them an anti-Christian agenda they do not hold."

Bishop Gillett said in a separate article that it was strange that so many public bodies were nervous or dismissive about Christmas when 72 per cent of Britons described themselves as Christian in the 2001 Census.

Any repetition by councils to rename Christmas so as not to offend other faith communities will "backfire badly" on the Muslim community, he said. "Sadly it is they who get the blame — and for something they are not saying."

Radio for Peacebuilding, Africa Awards Winners

The Radio for Peacebuilding, Africa team selected the winners for the RFPA Awards 2006.

A large number of individual radio broadcasters and radio stations participated in three categories; Talkshow, Drama and Youth Radio.

Programmes worked on reducing tension in different communities, promoting shared interests, breaking down stereotypes, and providing positive role models.

The quality of the programmes varied. In the Youth Radio section two programmes shared the first prize. But, in the Talk-show category the judges awarded two runner-up prizes only.

The winners are:

Talkshow

First Prize [800 Euros]

- Inyanduruko [The roots of evil] produced and broadcast by Radio Isanganiro, Burundi.

Second Prizes [300 Euros]

- Africa Have Your Say, produced by BBC World Service, African Productions, United Kingdom.
- Our Peace, produced and broadcast by Miraya [Mirror] FM, Sudan.

Drama

First Prize [800 Euros]:

- Slayed Dog, produced and broadcast by BBC World Service, African Productions, United Kingdom.

Second Prizes [300 Euros]

- Domestic Violence, produced and broadcast by Radio Sem Fronteiras, Mozambique.
- Gande Mbatsav vo [Beyond Witches and Wizards] produced and broadcast by Radio Benue, Nigeria.
- Libération des prisonniers politiques, produced by Studio Ijambo and broadcast by Radio Isanganiro, Burundi.

Youth Radio

First Prize [800 Euros]

- La communauté lutte contre le phénomène des enfants dits sorciers, produced by Sisi Watoto Project, Centre Lokole and broadcast by Radio Maendeleo, Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Ursom ala el ard makaanak [Draw your place on Earth] produced by The Darfur Lifeline Project and broadcast by BBC World Service Trust, Sudan.

Second Prizes [300 Euros]

- Agateka K’abana [Children’s rights] produced by Studio Ijambo and broadcast by Radio Isanganiro, Burundi.
- Paroles d’enfants: mésaventures de mineurs au-delà des frontières produced by L’Agence La Cible and broadcast by Radio Gerddes, Benin.

Congratulations to All the Winners!

Sign on Letter for Press Freedom

The New York City Independent Media Center (NYC IMC) urges all US IMCs and US-based media organizations to joinus in signing this letter calling for freelance and community journalists to be given the same backing and protection given to those journalists employed by large corporations.

Click to Sign the Letter Now

Letter for Press Freedom

The Honorable Antonio O. Garza, Jr.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Department of State
United States of America

Via Facsimile: 011.5255.52 07 0091


Dear Ambassador Garza,


The organizations listed below formally protest the killing of independent journalist Bradley Roland Will in Oaxaca, Mexico on October 27th 2006 and request that the Government of the United States of America use all appropriate means to insure that his death isinvestigated and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

All American citizens must be protected by the full power of our government wherever they travel in the world. This is especially thecase when that citizen is a journalist attempting to report the truth ina dangerous situation. When the members of the press are subjected to physical attack, it is our values of freedom and of democracy whichsuffer.

These are values to which the governments of Mexico and the U.S. both ascribe. Legal reaction to this murder must be swift and direct.

Bradley Roland Will was a legitimate journalist whose work was cablecaston Public Access television stations throughout the United States, as well as in Central and South America, and was distributed online.

Hoodlums and political operatives who wish to operate under cover of darkness often feel safe in silencing independent reporters through actsof violence and intimidation. Violence against reporters on the edge is harbinger to destruction of press freedom in the middle.

Our government and mainstream press should feel the same outrage over this killing as over the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

If anything, reporters who give of their own resources and work under such dangerous circumstances are even more deserving of our respect and protection because of the great personal sacrifice they endure in the quest for the information we need to exist as a free people.

The undersigned implore the United States government to:

1. Give full governmental protection throughout the world, in wordand deed, to community-based journalists from the United States.


2. Ask the Mexican Government to make a formal, federal inquiry intothe killing of journalist Bradley Roland Will in Oaxaca on October 27, 2006.

3. Ask that the Mexican Government bring his killer(s) to justice.

4. Ask that the Mexican Government state clearly that it will not tolerate the targeting of journalists covering conflicts, no matter whattheir affiliations or nationalities.

If the tragic killing of Bradley Roland Will results in thestrengthening of protections for independent journalists, then his deathwill not have been in vain.

More importantly, we will have stoodtogether as a nation against an attack on our free press and the manyfreedoms which are built upon it.

Please keep us informed of your actions in this matter. Thank you foryour time and consideration.


Sincerely,


Anthony Riddle Executive Director, Alliance for Community Media. Washington, DC.
Robert McChesney President, Free Press. Northampton, MA.
Prometheus Radio Project. Philadelphia, PA.
New York City Independent Media Center. New York, NY.
Guerrilla News Network. New York, NY.
Center for International Media Action. New York, NY.
Michael Eisenmenger Manhattan Neighborhood Network. New York.
Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Los Angeles, CA.

'Enemies of the Internet' Named !

BBC

A list of 13 "enemies of the internet" has been released by human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The 13 blacklisted countries are

Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, & Vietnam

For the first time, Egypt has been added to the list while Nepal, Libya and the Maldives have all been removed.

The list consists of countries that RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the internet.

The civil liberties pressure group has organised a 24-hour protest, inviting web users to vote for the worst offending countries.

Visitors to the RSF website are also invited to leave a voice message for Yahoo's co-founder Jerry Yang, expressing their views on the firm's involvement in China.

RSF has been outspoken in its condemnation of Yahoo. The search engine has been criticised along with other companies for helping the Chinese authorities block access to some online material.

Improvements

The blacklist is published annually but it is the first time RSF has organised an online protest to accompany the list.

"We wanted to mobilise net users so that when we lobby certain countries we can say that the concerns are not just ours but those of thousands of internet users around the world," said a spokesman for RSF.

Many of those on the internet blacklist are countries that are regularly criticised by human rights groups, such as China and Burma.

Egypt is a new entrant and has been shortlisted for its attitude to bloggers rather than specific web censorship, said RSF.

"Three bloggers have been arrested and detained this year for speaking out in favour of democratic reform. This is an appeal to the Egyptian government to change its position," said the RSF spokesman.

"The fact that this year we have removed three countries from the list is encouraging. It shows that the situation can change for the better," he added.

On a visit to Libya, Reporters Without Borders found that the Libyan internet was no longer censored although it still considers President Maummar Gaddafi to be a "predator of press freedom".

Will Europe Capture the Moral High Ground?

By El Hassan bin Talal

As I write this piece in the formerly divided city of Berlin, I can only feel hope that walls built between populations must inevitably fall to the communal needs of peoples with an equal right to justice and security.

Last week, I began my trip to a so recently divided Europe with a visit to Copenhagen, where I was delighted to declare my full support for the Nordic Council's coexistence agenda. Whether European or Asian, we all have a strong vested interest in the success of any initiative that recognizes the importance of dialogue.

Coexistence of civilizations is an international project that grew out of Denmark's recent cartoon controversy. In response to the crisis, the country's leading economic and political newsletter, Monday Morning, devised the initiative to mobilize regional and global media to promote understanding, debate and engagement.

I was honored to take the baton as patron of an expedition of understanding launched by the initiative and to be the first outsider to address a plenary session of the regional Nordic Council (Danish Parliament, Copenhagen, November 1, 2006). Prime ministers, ministers and politicians from all Nordic countries agreed almost unanimously to promote multicultural development through the coexistence project.

It is perhaps timely to remember the notion of coexistence was formed in the dangerously divided era of the Cold War. It marked the start of a process of rapprochement in fractured Europe. Similarly, the Nordic coExistence initiative aims to reach past mere coexistence toward true partnership - of people, of ideas and of governments.

Many in Europe agree with my urgent belief that the time has come to re-assess the responsibilities of a fast-paced, globalized world. The various crises facing our peoples should serve to remind governments and policy-makers alike that rights emanate from and affect not only the European and American contexts, but the entire family of cultures that comprise our human civilisation. Crucially, our quest for coexistence must look beyond technological, market-driven imperatives to achieve a lasting reconciliation of cultures and peoples.

At a news conference at the Danish Parliament, I stressed the role of the Nordic countries as catalysts for world peace. I believe that the history of Nordic and Baltic cooperation can act as a model for peaceful interaction in our region and that Nordic politicians and civil society can continue to provide vital moral support for peace in the Middle East.

The Nordic governments have recognized that globalization presents us with a clash of opportunities and challenges. To deal properly with the implications of growing interdependence, we must invest to reconcile diverse cultural and religious values, political ideas and economic regimes.

The Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy and the Barcelona Process for Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue outlined three inter-connected categories of human relations: security, economy and culture. We must integrate these into a coherent strategy in which culture is not merely an afterthought.

For Europe, migration is an inevitable aspect of economic globalization, bringing the issues faced by far off populations to the heart of European societies. Ethnic and religious groups are no longer confined to one region as traditional margins shift and groups disintegrate and reintegrate at escalating rates. We have all seen how conflicts arising from repression can spread swiftly from their epicenter.

At the first Middle East North Africa summit in Casablanca in 1994, delegates called for the EU to invest $35 billion in 24 countries over 10 years, to build an infrastructure to encourage a "will to stay." Providing opportunities at home remains the only way to avoid the problems caused by mass migration. Sadly, the European response at the time was "first come, first served."

It is ironic that the same sum was allocated in one day for Homeland Security in the US following the September 11, 2001, attacks. But supporting a siege mentality in the US or in Europe does nothing to alleviate the chronic problems caused by the inequities of globalization.

The Nordic coexistence initiative reminds us that the dominance of military response in international relations must be addressed. In the Gulf area alone, there have been no fewer than 22 active border disputes since 1900, all dealt with by military means. The recent war in Lebanon provides yet another example of militarism called into play as a first-resort tactic.

The politics of military supremacy has fueled massive military spending, augmenting national debts in my region and diverting funds that could have been used to narrow the gap between inclusion and exclusion. It is a telling irony that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the group empowered to uphold peace around the world, together account for some 90 percent of the world's arms trade.

The Nordic coexistence initiative marks a positive step in bringing cultural comprehension into the globalization process, both at home and abroad. Managing cultural complexities through a framework for dialogue must become the norm in inter-state and inter-regional relations.

Participation rather than exclusion must underpin security and freedom, while freedom of expression must come with a responsibility to protect the livelihoods and beliefs of all.

Prince el Hassan bin Talal of Jordan received Tuesday the Berlin Peace Clock Award by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.