Knox appeal for sex-murder case

By M.K. Lim,

Knox, a 23-year-old from Seattle who was jailed for 26 years for the murder, gripped the edges of the sleeves of her blue cardigan and nodded while talking with her lawyers in the courtroom during the hearing.
"We feel as though we have a very good case," her step-father, Chris Mellas, told AFP ahead of the hearing.
"She's going to go home," said Mellas, who has been living in Perugia since September to help Knox prepare for her appeal.

Mellas said the wait for the appeal had been "difficult" for Knox, who was a student in the city at the time of the killing.

Wednesday's hearing lasted only a few minutes and the appeal court judge scheduled the next hearings for December 11, December 18 and January 15.

The result of the trial is expected some time next year.

"The conviction is wrong. We're starting again from scratch," Knox's lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, told reporters after the hearing.

Ghirga said the defence would focus on DNA evidence linking Knox to the crime scene that he said had been questioned by three scientific opinions.

The lawyer said Knox's mother and father would be at the hearing on December 11 and said he expected the trial to conclude in February or March.

Asked about her health, he said: "She looks terrible. She's very thin."

Knox was sentenced last year for killing Leeds University student Meredith Kercher in the cottage they shared in Perugia as part of what prosecutors described as a drug-fuelled sexual assault.

Prosecutors have said they will seek a longer sentence for Knox -- of up to 30 years in prison -- if the conviction is upheld by the court. Chronology: Main dates in Amanda Knox case

Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder, Raffaele Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years for the murder, is appealing at the same time.

Sollecito, wearing a red jacket and a cream-coloured polo neck jumper, flashed a smile at the cameras as he entered the courtroom for the hearing.

The appeal trial is being held for Sollecito and Knox jointly as the two were tried and sentenced together in 2009 and have both appealed.
An Ivorian man, Rudy Guede, who fled Perugia soon after the killing and was arrested in Germany, has also been jailed for the murder.
Kercher's father, Johan, meanwhile sent a letter to the mayor of Perugia through his lawyers to thank local authorities for setting up a scholarship in her name at the university where she was on an exchange programme.
"Meredith loved Perugia and had made a lot of friends there," Johan Kercher wrote, adding that the family was "moved" by the scholarship decision.
Kercher was found on November 2, 2007, half-naked in a pool of blood with stab wounds to the neck in her room in the cottage she shared with Knox.

Knox has repeatedly protested her innocence and her girl-next-door image has continued to attract large-scale media attention, particularly in the United States where many people are convinced of her innocence.

Earlier this month she was indicted on additional charges of slander for claiming that police beat her during questioning soon after the murder. She said then that she had been in the house at the time of the killing.
Knox faces a separate trial on the slander charges from May 17 next year.

She has spoken in detail of her imprisonment in a book of interviews released last month. She is quoted as saying that she longs to live a normal life and hopes to one day become a mother and start a writing career.
"I want to live... I'm thinking about when I will be out of here," Knox is quoted as saying in one of the interviews in her cell in Perugia.

"Living here is like being in limbo," she said.

The book says Knox has also been reading numerous classic works of world literature, including works by Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Kafka and Tolstoy.

The case is serving as the basis for a television film currently being shot in Italy called "The Amanda Knox Story," starring US actress Hayden Panettiere as Knox. It is expected to screen in the United States next year.

Virus Hoax on Facebook

By M.K. Lim,


There’s a new message spreading quickly on Facebook users’ walls, warning people about an application called “Christmas Tree.” The message is fake to our knowledge: No internet security firm has issued a threat warning about such an application.

The message comes in several different forms, claiming the Christmas Tree Facebook app will either crash your computer or steal your personal data.

A typical message looks like this: WARNING!!!!!!…..DONOT USE THE Christmas Tree application on Facebook.Please be advised it will crash your computer. Geek squad says it’s oneof the WORST trojan-viruses there is and it is spreading quickly. Re-post and let your friends know ( from a friend )


Besides the fact that Geek Squad, a company that does IT service and computer repairs, is not a reliable source for info on new malware, Sophos claims it’s not aware of any malicious Facebook app using the Christmas Tree name.

Of course, with the message spreading as quickly as it is, it wouldn’t surprise us if someone actually created a malicious app bearing that or a similar name. That’s the problem with fake warnings: They create confusion and after a while it gets hard to distinguish the fake threats from the real ones.

Please, don’t repost the Christmas Tree virus warning, or any similar threat unless you’re sure it comes from a credible source.

Potter's Owl Supplier Got Sued

London : The couple who supplied owls for a Harry Potter flick have landed in a legal trouble.
Veronica Mepham, 70, and husband Reinhard, 64, who run an animal sanctuary, have appeared in court on 36 cruelty charges.

     They are accused of causing unnecessary suffering to 18 animals including guinea pigs, a goat, a rabbit and a hen.

    They supplied a tawny owl called Cuddles for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
     The couple, who run Rescuers Wildlife Sanctuary in Benfleet, Essex, face 18 charges each, including failing to put sick animals down.

     The couple did not enter pleas. Southend magistrates heard that negotiations were taking place and the RSPCA was prepared to drop the case if the couple retired and re-homed the animals.

     "We love animals, we would never be cruel to them," the Daily Express quoted Mepham as saying.

Pope says condoms sometimes permissible to stop AIDS

By K.M. LEW

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of AIDS, Pope Benedict says in a new book, in surprise comments that relax one of the Vatican's most controversial positions.

Pope Benedict XVI waves at the end of the Consistory ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican November 20, 2010.

     In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as "a first step towards moralisation", even though condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection".
     While some Roman Catholic leaders have spoken about the limited use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as the lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility in public.
     The Vatican newspaper unexpectedly published significant excerpts from the book on Saturday night, days before extracts were initially due to be made public. The book, called Light of the World, is to be published on Tuesday.
     Benedict made clear the comments were not intended to weaken the Church's fundamental opposition to artificial birth control, a source of grievance to many practising Catholics.

NO FORMAL STANCE

     The majority of Church leaders have been saying for decades that condoms are not even part of the solution to fighting AIDS, even though no formal position on this existed in a Vatican document.
The late cardinal John O'Connor of New York famously branded the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS as "The Big Lie".
     Last year, the pope caused an international uproar when he told journalists accompanying him to Africa that condoms should not be used because they could worsen the spread of AIDS.
The Vatican's opposition to artificial birth control has been highly contested, even by many Catholics, since it was formalised in the late Pope Paul's encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) in 1968.
     Benedict says that "the basic lines of Humanae Vitae are still correct", indicating that his comments about condoms are not intended to apply to birth control, only to AIDS prevention.
     He says that the "sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalisation of sexuality" where sexuality is no longer an expression of love "but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves".
     The 219-page book is made up of Benedict's responses to questions by German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald over a month of meetings at the papal summer residence.
     After the pope first mentions that the use of condoms could be justified in certain limited cases, such as by prostitutes, Seewald asks: "Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"
     The pope answers: "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

ABC PRINCIPLE

     In the section of the book on condoms and HIV/AIDS, the pope goes as far as mentioning the "ABC principle" (Abstinence-Be faithful-Condom) on preventing the spread of AIDS.
     While he says ABC was developed in "the secular realm", he uses the example himself to introduce his own comments on condoms being sometimes justified as a last resort.
     Strangely, in the English, French and German versions of the book, the pope uses the example of the possible justification when "a male prostitute" uses condoms. This would distinguish it from use as a means of birth control, which the church bans.
     But the Italian excerpts in the Vatican newspaper quote him as saying "una prostituta", meaning a female prostitute. It was not possible to clarify the discrepancy in the translations.
     Critics have said it took many years for the Church to realise that AIDS was not just a disease of the homosexual community and that many heterosexual women, particularly in Africa, were being killed.
     In other sections of the book, Benedict says the wartime Pope Pius XII, whom critics accuse of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, was "one of the great righteous men (who) saved more Jews than anyone else". Jews are bound to contest this.
     He also said scandals of sexual abuse of minors by priests were "an unprecedented shock", even though he had followed the issue for years, and says he can understand why people might quit the Church in protest.
     He indicates he would be ready to resign instead of reigning for life if he were "no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office", something no pope has done in 700 years.

The Future of Construction

By Y.C.LIM

Time lapse of Construction on Ark Hotel. Building 15 stories in 2 days.

A 15-story building built in two days, sound impossible? The Chinese Ark Hotel just proved that it is possible by erecting the entire building in 48 hours.

Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure, light weight, steel construction, passed level 9 earthquake resistance testing.

6x Less Material: even though the construction materials are much lighter(250kg/m2) than the traditional materials(over 1500kg/m2), the floors and walls are solid with surefootedness, airtight and sound-proofing.

5x Energy Efficient: 150mm thermal insulation for walls and roofs, triple glazed plastic windows, external solar shading, heat insulation, fresh air heat recovery, LED lighting, yearly HAVC A/C energy consumption equivalent to 7 liters oil.

20x Purification: after 3 levels of purification, the purification efficiency for fresh air reaches 95%-99.9%; air exchanged 1-2.5 times per hour, and indoor air is 20x cleaner than out door air.

1% Construction Waste: all components are factory made, construction waste, mainly package materials, result from on site set-up only and amount to 1% of the total weight of the building.

This can truly be called a sustainable building, as it comprises all the necessary environmental friendly elements, without compromising comfort and security. Topping off everything with a stunning erection time of only 2 days.

More information [link]

Who is the victim?

By M.K. Lim,

A young hairdresser in Kaluga, Central Russia, locked a robber who tried to steal her money in the basement of the beauty salon. After that, she has brutally raped her hostage for three days. A court in Kaluga has filed criminal charges against both of them, the Russian website Newsru.com reports.


The robber, who has not been named, burst into the salon armed with shotgun at about 17.00 on March 14. He demanded money. There were two hairdressers and one client in the salon at the time. One of hairdressers, who was studying judo and taekwondo, disabled the robber with a smashing body blow. Then she carried the unlucky robber to the basement and bound him with a hairdryer cord.

The hairdresser told her scared colleague and the client that she would call the police. But she did not. After work, instead of calling the police, she made her hostage undress. The perverted hairdresser forced the hostage to take several Viagra tablets. She chained the unfortunate robber with pink furry wristbands and painfully raped him for the next three days.  

After his release, the exhausted robber filed charges against the perverted woman. The frenulum of his penis was torn as a consequence of rape session.

“That’s ridiculous. We had sex just a couple times. I brought him brand new jeans. I fed him every day and gave him one thousand rubles ($25) before his release,” the hairdresser said.

In response, she filed charges against the robber.

The robber admitted that the hairdresser really did feed him royally.   

“I actually don’t know what will happen to them. But it’s a pity that they could not meet in the cell. They would be a great couple,” one of the police officers said.  

Black Widow behind bars

By M.K. Lim,

Black Widow that resembles Valeria's personality

     A young Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping ten men.

     The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused ten local men after poisoning them with clonidine.

     Valeria, who has already been nicknamed the Black Widow for her love of spiders, would get acquainted with men and invite them to her place.

     She gave them drinks with clonidine, which almost immediately sent them to sleep for almost 24 hours.

     After that, she undressed her victims and raped them, tightening a rope on their male organs to keep them erect.

     Waking up in hospital with clonidine poisoning and penis trauma, all the victims could remember was a friendly brunette who gave them drinks.

     Finally, local police identified the offender and arrested her.

     At present, the police know about ten of Valeria’s victims, although one of them refused to file a complaint against her.

     “It was great,” the unnamed man said.

     “I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me.”

The Whistleblower

By Y. C. LIM

Julian Assange - the founder of Wikileaks - has remained shrouded in mystery since the launch of his site in 2006.
This fascinating expose reveals the man behind the leaks.
Assange spent the majority of his youth travelling from place to place, attending 37 different schools and being charged with numerous hacking offences.
While he continues to move, he does so to maintain his extensive network of Wikileaks contacts and to avoid the unwanted attention of governments.
Despite frequently hitting the front pages of newspapers around the world, Assange has somehow managed to retain a low profile.
This is now changing as he finally steps into the spotlight to defend Wikileaks and to address what he feels is a false perception the media is portraying of him. "The true nature of this world is being revealed. It's not being interpreted for you. There it is, face to face from the inside". Now, with Wikileaks, he is finally offering it to the world.

Obama admits losing sight of leadership role

By K.M. LEW

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama admitted in an interview aired on Friday that he focused on policies but failed to rally people behind those initiatives, leading to Republicans' big gains in congressional elections this week.
     "We were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn't just legislation," Obama said in an excerpt from a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010.

     Republicans describe their Tuesday midterm elections win, in which they took control of the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate, as a repudiation of the healthcare reform law and economic stimulus programs that dominated Obama's first two years in office.
     But the president told CBS he would seek to mend his ways in the run-up to his own re-election campaign in 2012.
     "It's a matter of persuading people, and giving them confidence, and bringing them together, and setting a tone and making an argument that people can understand," Obama said.
     "We haven't always been successful at that and I take personal responsibility for that. And it's something that I've got to examine carefully as I go forward."
     Obama said he didn't do a good enough job explaining the need for government spending on bank and auto bailouts and the economic stimulus package.
     "People looked at that and they said, "Boy, this feels as if there's a huge expansion of government," Obama said.
     "What I didn't effectively, I think, drive home, because we were in such a rush to get this stuff done, is that we were ... taking these steps not because of some theory that we wanted to expand government. It was because we had an emergency situation and we wanted to make sure the economy didn't go off a cliff."
Obama at a news conference on Wednesday said he had lost touch with voters who delivered a "shellacking" to him and his Democrats.

Engine problems hit second Qantas aircraft

By K.M. LEW

Engineers inspect the outermost port engine of a Qantas Boeing 747, flight QF6, at Singapore's Changi airport November 6, 2010. A Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft which left Singapore for Sydney on Friday evening has returned to the city-state, a Changi Airport official said on Friday.

SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Engine trouble forced a Qantas Airways Ltd jet to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Friday, less than 48 hours after another of the Australian carrier's aircraft had to land prematurely because its engine blew up.

     The Sydney-bound Boeing 747-400 aircraft, with 412 people on board, returned to the airport 20 minutes after takeoff due to "an issue with one of its engines," Qantas Airways Ltd said in a statement.

     That came a day after a Qantas Airbus A380 jet was forced to make an emergency landing after one of its four Rolls-Royce Plc engines appeared to break apart in flight, scattering debris over an Indonesian island.

     "Around 20 minutes into the flight we heard a loud bang," Ranjan Sivagnanasundaram, an Australian citizen in his early 50s who was on Friday's flight, told Reuters. "It was a very big shock to us, especially after what happened yesterday."

     The Boeing Co aircraft also had been equipped with Rolls-Royce engines.

Officials at British engine-maker Rolls-Royce did not return calls seeking comment.

     The earlier incident saw Qantas ground its fleet of six A380s pending safety checks that will take 24 to 48 hours and led other airlines to check their own A380s.

     "We believe this is probably, most likely, a material failure or some sort of design issue," Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney. "If we don't find any adverse findings in those checks, the aircraft will resume operations."

     Separately, a European Union air safety body confirmed it told airlines in August to make checks after finding "wear, beyond engine manual limits," on the type of Rolls-Royce engines fitted to the Qantas jet and some other A380s.

The incidents could provide Rolls' rivals General Electric Co and the Pratt & Whitney unit of United Technologies Corp with a chance to grab market share from the No. 2 engine-maker.

     "Things move slowly in the engine business, but there is no question that you have a series of events that really put Rolls-Royce's reputation at risk," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president at aviation consultancy Teal Group.

     GE is the world's largest maker of jet engines, Pratt comes in third.

AIRLINES INSPECT A380S

     The A380 engine failure on Thursday was the biggest incident to date for the world's largest passenger plane, which went into service in 2007.

     Rolls-Royce and Airbus parent EADS told operators of the Rolls-equipped A380 jets to have them inspected.

     The Engine Alliance, a joint venture between GE and Pratt that makes a rival engine for the A380 told users: "The EA is not recommending engine inspections as our design is unique ... and thus has no correlation with the RR engine."

     Singapore Airlines Ltd resumed flying its 11 A380s on Friday, lifting a grounding order imposed after the first incident.

     Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it had withdrawn an A380 from a Frankfurt-Johannesburg flight because it had not had enough time to check the engines before departure.

     Passengers who had been on the first flight said a second engine on the stricken Qantas aircraft had failed to shut down once the jet was on the tarmac, sparking fears it could ignite spilling fuel.

     Passengers said after landing they had been told of the dangers of using any electronic device as fire fighters sprayed the aircraft, which was leaking fuel from a hole in the wing.

     "Obviously in the back of your mind you are concerned about a very hot engine next to leaking fuel," passenger Christopher Lee said. "Obviously, you are in a state of anxiety."

     Qantas CEO Joyce said the second engine could have been harmed by the mishap to the first engine, which caused parts to fly off.

     Aviation experts said the first plane being able to land despite the engine mishap illustrated the safety of modern aircraft.

     "The fact that it survived the damage is a credit to the design. Twenty years ago that would probably have taken the aircraft out of the sky," said John Page, senior lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of New South Wales.

     Airbus sales chief John Leahy said he had not received complaints from airlines about the A380's safety.

    "We have to find out the reason for the engine failure," he told Reuters in Paris.

     Qantas said its engineers, along with those from Airbus and Rolls-Royce, were working to determine what went wrong.

     "Rolls-Royce have identified a number of potential areas," said Joyce. "This issue does not relate to maintenance."

     Rolls-Royce has maintained the engines since they were installed on the aircraft, he said. The company gets a goodly proportion of its revenues from such service contracts.

 

ROLLS SHARES SLIDE AGAIN

     European plane-maker Airbus and Rolls-Royce lost over $1.5 billion in combined market value on Thursday.

     EADS shares were flat on Friday, after Thursday's 4 percent fall, while Rolls-Royce shares fell a further 3.3 percent to 601 pence after a 5 percent slide the previous day. Boeing was up 0.7 percent at $71.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.

     Qantas shares ended down 1 percent at A$2.86 on Friday, underperforming the broader Australian market, which advanced 1.2 percent to a six-month high.

     Commonwealth Bank aviation analyst Matt Crowe said there was unlikely to be long-term damage to its reputation, as investors had tended to move on from previous safety incidents, which have never resulted in a fatal crash for Qantas.

Qantas plane makes emergency landing in S'pore after losing engine

By K.M. LEW

No reports of injuries or explosion, says airline spokesman

SINGAPORE: Qantas says one of its planes safely made an emergency landing Thursday in Singapore, after one of the aircraft's engines shut down while flying over Indonesia.

     A Qantas spokesman in Sydney, Australia, said the A380 aircraft experienced an engine issue soon after taking off from Singapore on a flight to Sydney.

     The plane had 433 passengers and 26 crew on board.

     Qantas spokeswoman Emma Kearns said one of four engines on the plane flying from Singapore to Sydney shut down.

     She added that the plane can safely fly on three engines, but the pilot landed the plane in Singapore to be safe.

     Kearns said there were no reports of injuries and the airline has not received any reports of an explosion on board.

Girl, 10, gives birth

By K.M. LEW

CADIZ (Spain): A 10-year-old girl has given birth in southern Spain, regional officials said Tuesday,the youngest woman known to have borne a child in the region of Andalusia , according to Qatar News Agency (QNA), citing the German Press Agency (DPA) report.

     The girl gave birth to a baby weighing 2.9kg at a hospital in Jerez de la Frontera a week ago.

     Mother and child, who were described as being in perfect health, were released from the hospital over the weekend, DPA reported.

     The Romanian girl became pregnant before coming to Spain, according to media reports.

     The baby's father is also believed to be a minor. Officials said they are investigating whether the girl's family is able to take care of her and the baby.

Live crab vending machine

By K.M. LEW

     This live hairy Shanghai crab vending machine keeps the crabs at 5° C, at which temperature the poor crustaceans go into hibernation. When you insert money (according to the value stated) it will dispense a crab accordingly.

     If it dispenses a dead crab, the machine's owner will give you three free live crabs by way of compensation. 

     A sign states that all the crabs in the machine are fresh: if the crab is dead-on-arrival, they promise to give you three free crabs.

     Converted into yen, the prices for the crabs range between 120 and 600 yen (depending on size). By cutting out the cost of store personnel, the seller can offer the crabs at 30% less than the usual price.

     The Chinese man who came up with the idea for the vending machine enthusiastically declares that he is ready to consider offers if there is demand for his product in Japan.

     The machine is also in Nanjing, and represents a major push in the always-complex business of live-crab vending.

For more information, visit: http://www.hjjdzx.com/ 

Mail Bombs exploded in Athens

By M.K Lim

Investigators surveying explosion area .

ATHENS - A bomb exploded at the Swiss embassy in Athens Tuesday and suspicious packages were detonated by police outside Parliament, the Bulgarian embassy and a courier company, officials said.

     No injuries or damage were reported from Tuesday’s four small explosions. Police say they suspect that far-left domestic groups are responsible for the wave of attacks that began Monday when four mail bombs failed to reach their targets — French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the embassies of Mexico, the Netherlands and Belgium.

     The bombs were found Monday after one exploded at a delivery service in central Athens, lightly wounding a worker at the delivery company.

     Authorities have said the bombs were not particularly powerful, and no link was made with the recently discovered Yemen-based mail bomb plot.

     Two Greek men were arrested on suspicion of plotting the attacks when they were spotted close to the scene of one of Monday’s bombings. Police said they were carrying handguns and bullets in waist pouches, and one wore body armor, a wig and a baseball cap.

     One of the two was wanted in connection with an investigation into a radical anarchist group known as Sect of Revolutionaries.

     Though a student uprising succeeded in ending military rule in 1974, it also left a legacy of activism and simmering tensions between Greece’s security establishment and a phalanx of deeply entrenched leftist groups that often protest against globalization and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

     The groups have now evolved into various mainly youth factions that claim to fight trends ranging from globalization to police surveillance cameras. Their impact is usually limited to graffiti and late-night firebomb attacks on targets such as stores and cash machines.

China starts counting its wary population

By K.M. LEW

BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a once-in-a-decade census on Monday in an exercise that will form a basis for policy-making in the world's most populous country, but is likely to face resistance from residents wary of government officials.

     Six million census-takers will fan out across the country from the booming cities on the eastern coast to the remote mountains of restive Tibet as they try to visit some 400 million households over a 10-day period.

     "The census is the basis for making policies on education, medical care, employment and social warfare and aid," Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in an editorial. "This is the biggest social mobilisation of peaceful times."

     The exercise will cost about 700 million yuan ($104.9 million), with 90 percent of respondents being asked 18 questions, including details about eduction and ethnic groups. The results will be released next April.

     For the first time, China is counting people based on where they actually live, rather than where they are registered under the household registration, or 'hukou', system.

     The results will help measure the degree of China's urbanisation, as well as previously uncounted children born in defiance of the one-child policy, and will outline a country undergoing a massive population shift.

     It will show that almost half the country's 1.3 billion people now live in cities, though many lack a city 'hukou', meaning they are not formally registered there and do not enjoy all the social security benefits of urban dwellers.

     Over the next 20 years another 400 million rural residents are expected to move to the cities, according to state media, adding to the estimated 200 million migrant workers who already work in cafes, factories and on building sites in urban areas.

     That is fuelling a building boom, especially in inland cities where growth has lagged that of the coast, and should help boost economic growth, as better educated and wealthier urbanites earn more and in turn spend more than their rural cousins.

     "For the majority of these migrant workers, they will not go back to the villages. They will remain, live and work, in the cities," said Wang Jing, a professor at Capital University of Economics and Business' School of Labour Economics.

     The census will also outline how fast the country is ageing. The government expects an average of 8 million to turn 60 each year by around 2015, 3.2 million more than the average in 2006-2010.

RESISTANCE

     The population dependency ratio, the proportion of those too young or old to work, is seen rising for the first time after falling for over 40 years, while the ratio of those aged 15-59 is predicted to peak and then slowly start to fall.

     This would leave China's younger generation supporting a much larger ageing population. Demographers worry China will probably become the first country in the world to age before it gets rich.

     Census takers are unlikely to have an easy time in a country nervous of government officials and a large floating population of migrant workers who keep irregular hours and may live in temporary accommodation.

Green banners encouraging people to participate festoon Beijing, in a departure from the usual red public propaganda banners, and text messages have been sent out asking people to "cooperate in accordance with the law".

     The government has tried to reassure its people that the information will be confidential, but suspicion abounds.

     "What you are looking for is all written in the household registration book, so go ahead to check that -- there's no need to do a census at all," wrote one user on the Chinese property website www.anjia.com.

     "Who dares tell the truth to a government which lacks public credibility and has a bad reputation?" the person added.

     China's last census in 2000 showed the population at 1.295 billion. It placed 64 percent, or about 800 million people, as still in the countryside, even though migrant workers had been flooding to cities and coastal factories for a decade at least.

Indonesia volcano erupts again, tsunami deaths hit 430

By K.M. LEW

 Mount Merapi volcano spews smoke as seen from Deles village in Klaten, near the ancient city of Yogyakarta, November 1, 2010. (REUTERS/Dwi Oblo)

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano erupted on Monday for the third time in a week, driving the number of refugees to almost 70,000, as the death toll from a tsunami thousands of kilometres to the west rose to 431, officials said.
     The fresh eruption forced a thick ash cloud around 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) into the air above Merapi, which sits on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city in Central Java, and caused panicked residents to flee villages on the slopes of the mountain for safety shelters.
     The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said that 38 people have been killed and 69,533 evacuated since Merapi began erupting last week, while Indonesia's vulcanology agency warned that flights around Yogyakarta may be disrupted.
     Scientists are also monitoring increased activity at two other volcanoes, Mount Anak Krakatau in the Sunda strait and Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra, an official from the vulcanology agency said.
     Merapi's third eruption comes as Indonesian disaster officials are struggling to deliver aid to the remote Mentawai islands in Sumatra province, where a 7.5 magnitude quake triggered a tsunami last week.
     The tsunami killed 431 people and another 88 are still missing, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.

Public File Sharing

By M.K Lim,

The man behind the project, Adam Bartholl

NEW YORK : Across New York City, a new kind of network is going up. You may see it. USB connections jutting out of walls at locations around the city.

     You can plug into, anybody can, and leave whatever they want and download what they want. The man behind the project, Aram Bartholl, describes the project he calls "Dead Drops".

     "An anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space.

     Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data."

     The allure is unmistakable. Admit, if you saw one of these, wouldn't you want to plug in? As Gizmodo puts it: "I mean, if I saw a USB stick stick out of a random wall, I'd be dying to know what's in there.

     I'd have to plug in. It'd also be interesting to see what people would anonymously share on the public drive, well, until some jackass decides to upload a virus to screw up everybody's computer."

     Bartholl has installed five USB drives in New York, and has plans for other cities, and to encourage others to take up the project in their town.
 

USB Port on the wall

     Here's a more sophisticated version of a similar idea. Cellular networks are centrally administered, enabling service providers and their governments to conduct system-wide monitoring and censorship of mobile communication. 

     This paper presents HUMANETS, a fully decentralized, smartphone-to-smartphone (and hence human-to-human) message passing scheme that permits unmonitored message communication even when all cellular traffic is inspected.

     HUMANET message routing protocols exploit human mobility patterns to significantly increase communication efficiency while limiting the exposure of messages to mobile service providers. 

     Initial results from trace-driven simulation show that 85% of messages reach their intended destinations while using orders of magnitude less network capacity than naïve epidemic flooding techniques.

Death toll in Indonesian tsunami, volcano tops 340

By K.M. LEW

MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia (AP) - The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano rose to more than 300 Wednesday as more victims of Indonesia's double disasters were found and an official said a warning system installed after a deadly ocean wave in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance.

Hundreds were still missing after Monday's tsunami struck the remote Mentawi islands off western Sumatra, where officials were only beginning to chart the scope of the devastation. At least 311 people died as the huge wave, triggered by an undersea earthquake, washed away wooden and bamboo homes, displacing more than 20,000 people.

About 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east in central Java, the Mount Merapi volcano was mostly quiet but still a threat after Tuesday's eruption that sent searing ash clouds into the air, killing at least 30 people and injuring 17. Among the dead was a revered elder who had refused to leave his ceremonial post as caretaker of the mountain's spirits.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rushed home from a state visit to Vietnam to deal with the catastrophes, which struck within 24 hours along different points of the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a series of fault lines prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.

The first cargo plane loaded with tents, medicine, food and clothes landed Wednesday in the tsunami-hit area, said disaster official Ade Edward.

Huge swaths of land were underwater and homes were torn apart by the 10-foot (3-meter) wave that hit Pagai Utara island in the Indian Ocean south of Sumatra. One house lay tilted, resting on the edge of its red roof, with tires and slabs of concrete piled up on the surrounding sand.

Hundreds of homes were washed away in about 20 villages, displacing more than 20,000 people, Edward said. Many were seeking shelter in makeshift emergency camps or with family and friends.

Vice President Boediono toured devastated villages on Pagai Utara and met with survivors and local officials, his office said. At one point, he paused solemnly in front of several corpses in body bags.

The charity SurfAid International is getting "grim news" from village contacts, said Andrew Judge, head of the group founded by surfers who have been helping deliver aid. He said he is hearing of "more death, large numbers of deaths in some villages." With the arrival of help, Edward said officials "finally ... have a chance now to look for more than 400 still missing."

Officials prepared for the worst, sending hundreds of body bags, said Mujiharto, head of the Health Ministry's crisis center. The islands lie close to the epicenter of the 7.7-magnitude quake that struck late Monday beneath the ocean floor. The fault line on Sumatra island's coast is the same one that caused the 2004 quake and tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean.

After that monster wave, many countries set up early warning systems in their waters hoping to give people time to flee to higher ground before a tsunami - which can travel hundreds of miles (kilometers) - crashed ashore.

Indonesia's version, completed in 2008 with German aid, has since fallen into such disrepair that it effectively stopped working about a month ago, according to the head of the Meteorology and Geophysic Agency.

The system, which uses buoys to electronically detect sudden changes in water level, worked when it was completed, but by 2009 routine tests of it were showing problems, said the agency chief, who uses the single name Fauzi. By last month, he said, the entire system was broken because of inexperienced operators.

"We do not have the expertise to monitor the buoys to function as intended," he said. As a result, he said, not a single siren sounded after Monday's quake. It was unclear if any sirens could have made a difference, since the islands worst affected were so close to the epicenter that the tsunami would have reached them within minutes.

The group that set up the system, the Germany-Indonesia agency Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS), could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but the questions Fauzi raised highlighted the difficulty for a poor country such as Indonesia in disaster prevention and response.

On the ash-covered slopes of Mount Merapi, authorities continued a search for more victims. Dr. Teguh Dwi Santosa, who works at a local hospital, said the death toll had climbed to 30.

The eruption sent thousands streaming into makeshift emergency shelters, although the ash did not disrupt flights over Indonesia. About 36,000 people have been evacuated, according to the Indonesian Red Cross. Some defied authorities and returned home to check on crops and possessions left behind. More than 11,000 people live on Merapi's fertile slopes.

Tuesday's blast eased pressure that had been building behind a lava dome on the crater. Experts warned that the dome could still collapse, causing an avalanche of the blistering gas and debris trapped beneath it.

"It's a little calmer today," said Surono, the chief of Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation. "But a lot of energy is pent up back there. There's no telling what's next."

The volcano, whose name means "Fire Mountain," has erupted many times in the last 200 years. In 1994, 60 people were killed, while in 1930 more than a dozen villages were incinerated, leaving up to 1,300 dead.

Among the dead from Tuesday's eruption was an 83-year-old man named Maridjan, who was entrusted by a late king from the nearby city of Yogyakarta to watch over the mountain's unpredictable spirits. He had refused to leave his house high on its slopes.

The discovery Wednesday of his ash-covered body, reportedly found in a position of Islamic prayer, kneeling face-down on the floor, rattled residents who for years joined his ceremonies to appease the rumbling giant by throwing rice, clothes and chickens into the crater. Many Indonesians paid tribute to Maridjan on Facebook and Twitter.

"I'm more afraid than ever," said Prapto Wiyono, a 60-year-old farmer from the mountain village of Pangukrejo. "Who's going to tell us what's going on with Merapi?"

Air Guitar Competition 2010

By M.K. Lim

     The Grand Final witnessed snapping strings and fainting groupies as the contestants, one fierier than the other, fought for the ultimate command of the air.

      Last year's World Champion Sylvain “Gunther Love” Quimene (FR) gave once again a stunning performance and took the highest crown back to France.

      His fellow countrywoman Soraya “Eva Gina Runner” Garlenq scored second with her sparkling and tight one-minute show.

     The third place was taken over by retiring Canadian champion Cole “Johnny Utah” Manson.

Air Guitar World Championship Final 2010 results, all the participants!

1. Sylvain “Günther Love” Quimene (FR) 33,9 2. Soraya “Eva Gina Runner” Garlenq (FR) 33,4 3. Cole “Johnny Utah” Manson (CA) 33,1 4. Corentin “AirGus” Fermont (BE) 32,6 5. Chuah “L-Bird” Eng Beng (MY) 32,5 6. Aapo “Little Angus” Rautio (FI) 32,4 6. Kevin “Narvalwaker” Leloux (BE) 32,4 8. Cameron “Tommy Thundah” Bunney (AU) 32,3 9. Toshihiko “SUNANEY” Sunabe (JP) 32,1 10. Peter “Pete Peacemaker” Kuriscák (SK) 31,4 11. Matt "Romeo DanceCheetah" Cornelison (US) 16,0 12. Christian  ”Heart Buckboard” Sweep (DE) 15,8 13. Kirill “Your Daddy” Blumenkrantz (RU) 15,7 13. Karla "Gotika" Mendoza (MX) 15,7 15. Thom "W!ld Th!ng 37" Wilding (UK) 15,5 16. Bedrich"Mr Babinoska" Levi (CZ) 15,4 17. Dirk "Swiss Dirty Airy" Lüdi (CH) 15,2 17. Eero "Oulun oma poika" Ojala (FI) 15,2 19. Rezo  "Baron horse-stealer" Gamrekelidze (UA) 15,1 20. Soren "Big G" Stenbjerg Gregersen (DK) 15,0 21. Deku "Deku Chan" Chan (IE) 14,9 22. Alan "Xirtam" Foster (BR) 14,8 23. Alexander "Devilseducer" Gott (RU) 14,6

     As the Air Guitar tradition has it, after the winner was chosen, all the contestants took the stage once more and encouraged the whole world to play Air Guitar to Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" while the fireworks lighted the sky to celebrate the 15th anniversary.

     The night's host, Air Guitar Guru Dan ”Björn Türoque” enchanted the Oulu Marketplace with his charisma and tuned the festival audience into an airy frequency.

     The chilly Final night gathered a massive audience of approximately 7000-8000 people.

     It was a success as one of the interviwers in our blog was the representative of Malaysia and he won the fifth place.

     Good job and congratulations to Albert Chuah.

Facebook for sale

By M.K. Lim

     There’s a new stocking stuffer for the social gamer on your holiday shopping list: Facebook Credits.

     Already available at Target stores, the social networking site is set to offer the credits which can be used for in-game purchases in games like FarmVille at Walmart and Best Buy too.

     Walmart will offer $5, $10 and $25 versions of the gift cards, while Best Buy will sell them in denominations of $10, $25 and $50.

     A Facebook spokespersonsaid, “As we approach the holiday gift-giving season, we’re happy to expand the availability of Facebook Credits gift cards to Walmart and Best Buy.

     More than 200 games and applications accept Facebook Credits, giving people a fun, convenient and secure way to buy premium items, and making Credits gift cards a unique gift for the holidays.” Cards are also already available at certain retailers in Asia and Australia.

     The soon to be ubiquitous nature of Facebook Credits gift cards speaks to the momentum behind the rapidly growing social games and virtual goods business, which is expected to grow to $6 billion by 2013.

     Gift cards help make that currency available to everyone not just those with credit cards or PayPal accounts and we imagine we’ll continue seeing them hit the “impulse purchase” section of many a chain store.

The Truth About War on Iraq

By Y.C. Lim

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army.

Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period.

For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has defended the unauthorised release of 400,000 classified US military documents on the war in Iraq, saying they revealed the "truth" about the conflict.

The mass of documents from 2004 to 2009 offer a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

Julian Assange -
Founder of WikiLeaks.org

"This disclosure is about the truth," Assange told a news conference in London Saturday after the whistleblowing website published the logs on the Internet.

"The attack on the truth by war begins long before war starts, and continues long after a war ends," he said, adding that WikiLeaks hoped "to correct some of that attack on the truth".

He claimed the documents revealed around 15,000 more civilian deaths than were previously known about.

The heavily redacted logs appear to show that the US military turned a blind eye to evidence of torture and abuse of Iraqis by the Iraqi authorities.

Assange said the documents showed the war had been "a bloodbath on every corner". Profile of the WikiLeaks founder

Washington and London warned that releasing the documents could endanger the lives of coalition troops and Iraqi civilians, although the rights ministry in Baghdad said the logs "did not contain any surprises".

In an announcement which could further concern the United States, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said the website would soon release a further 15,000 secret files on the war in Afghanistan which had been held back for line-by-line reviewing and redacting.

WikiLeaks enraged Washington by releasing 92,000 documents on the Afghan war in July, and drew criticism from rights groups who said the inclusion of Afghan informants' names put lives at risk. Facts about WikiLeaks

The files published Friday contain graphic accounts of torture, civilian killings and Iran's hand in the Iraq war, documenting years of bloodshed and suffering following the 2003 US-led invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein.

In one document, US military personnel describe abuse by Iraqis at a Baghdad facility that was holding 95 detainees in a single room.

It says "many of them bear marks of abuse to include cigarette burns, bruising consistent with beatings and open sores... according to one of the detainees questioned on site, 12 detainees have died of disease in recent weeks."

Other reports describe Iraqis beating prisoners and women being killed at US military checkpoints.

WikiLeaks made the files available several weeks ago to selected newspapers and television channels, including Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian.

British newspaper The Guardian said the leaks showed "US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished."

It said "US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities."

The Iraqi government has said that as many as 85,694 Iraqi civilians and members of the security forces perished in the conflict between January 2004 and October 2008.

US officials have frequently dismissed the Iraqi numbers as too high.

The Guardian said WikiLeaks is thought to have obtained the material from the "same dissident US army intelligence analyst" who is suspected of leaking the material on Afghanistan. WikiLeaks has not revealed its source.

US soldier Bradley Manning, 22, is in US custody facing charges he gave WikiLeaks classified video showing a July 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several people.

He is also suspected of possible involvement in the leak of classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

On Iran's role in the Iraq conflict, the latest files show Tehran waging a shadow war with US troops in Iraq and Tehran allegedly using militias to kill and kidnap US soldiers.

The documents describe Iran arming and training Iraqi hit squads to carry out attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi government officials, with the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps suspected of playing a crucial role, The New York Times and The Guardian reported.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers told the London news conference that some of the deaths documented in the reports could have involved British forces and could now be the subject of legal action in British courts.

"Some of these deaths will be in circumstances where the UK have a very clear legal responsibility," he said.

The US-based Human Rights Watch called for Iraq to probe mistreatment by its own forces, and said the United States should investigate if it committed wrongdoing by transferring prisoners to Iraqi hands.

A Pentagon spokesman said the documents were "essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story."

Britain's Ministry of Defence also condemned the unauthorised release, saying it made the job of British and allied troops "more difficult and more dangerous".

Indonesian tsunami kills 108

By K.M. LEW

JAKARTA: At least 108 people have died and more than 500 people are missing on a group of Indonesian islands hit by a tsunami, according to local officials. And the country’s most active volcano Mount Merapi has erupted three times and continued to do so Tuesday night.
      "Our latest data from the crisis centre showed that 108 people have been killed and 502 are still missing," Hendri Dori Satoko, an MP from the Mentawai islands, told MetroTV.
      Most buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga were destroyed, said Hardimansyah, an official with the regional branch of the Department of Fisheries.
      Hardimansyah, who has only one name, said 80 percent of the houses in the area were damaged and food supplies were low.

     A tourist boat carrying between eight and 10 Australians has been out of radio contact since the quake, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.

     Elsewhere in the archipelago, a three-month-old baby has died - the first reported fatality from three eruptions by Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano. At least 30 people are reported injured.

     "We heard three explosions around 06:00 pm (1100GMT) spewing volcanic material as high as 1.5 kilometres and sending heat clouds down the slopes," government volcanologist Surono told the AFP news agency.

     The eruption is bigger than the 2006 eruption, which killed two people, he said.
      The authorities put an area of 10 kilometres around the crater of on red alert Monday, ordering 19,000 people to flee. But 15,000 of them ignored the order or returned during Tuesday to work and tend cattle.
      Merapi’s deadliest eruption occurred in 1930 when more than 1,300 people were killed. Heat clouds from another eruption in 1994 killed more than 60 people.