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 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at Columbia University, Monday 24th Sep 2007
U.S. Sovereignty Threatened by U.N. Treaty, Critics Charge
The Real Spitzer Scandal
Purging the Neocons from the American Soul
Israel will pay the price for war in Iraq, former CIA official says
Global warming scientists fudge data - Has climate change data been fudged?
Army too stretched if Iraq buildup lasts - Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.
Bush's America - How "No American President can stand up to Israel."
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Tragedy of dead and survivors in Myanmar grows worseYANGON (Reuters) - Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis headed out of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta in search of food, water and medicine, but aid workers said on Sunday that thousands will die if emergency supplies don't get through soon. 
Tornadoes kill 21, injure hundreds in U.SATLANTA (Reuters) - Tornadoes killed at least 21 people and injured hundreds as they ripped through the central and southeastern United States over the weekend, destroying homes, overturning cars and downing trees and power lines. 
Obama campaign chief sees his man winning soonWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama's campaign chief predicted on Sunday his long battle against Hillary Clinton for the party's presidential nomination would soon be over, saying "we're coming to the end of the process." 
Hezbollah fighters pile pressure on Lebanon rivalsBEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah gunmen battled supporters of the government on Sunday on the fifth day of a campaign by the Iranian-backed group that has dealt a severe blow to Washington's allies in Lebanon. 
Sudan cuts ties with Chad after rebel attackKHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan cut diplomatic relations with Chad on Sunday after an attack on the capital Khartoum by Darfur rebels which it said was supported by Chadian President Idriss Deby. 
Serbia in coalition scramble after ambivalent voteBELGRADE (Reuters) - A coalition of pro-Western parties came first in Serbia's parliamentary election on Sunday but faced an immediate challenge from the nationalist runners-up who said they too could form a government. 
IB blames 'slack' BSF for infiltrationIntelligence Bureau has clearly mentioned in a report to the Centre that the infiltrators, suspected to belong to LeT, sought to exploit the complacency that has crept into BSF.
Kandahar comes back to haunt BJPThe Kandahar genie that L K Advani has unbottled refuses to go with Jaswant Singh, foreign minister in the then NDA regime, accusing the BJP veteran of amnesia.
Man United beat Wigan to take EPL titleManchester United retained the English Premier League title with 2-0 win at Wigan and ended the season on 87 points, two points clear of second-placed Chelsea.
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Serbia's pro-Western president declares victory in elections (AP) AP - Serbia's pro-Western president declared victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections — a stunning upset over ultranationalists who tried to exploit anger over Kosovo's independence. But his rivals vowed to fight on, and it was unclear if he could stave off their challenge.
Softer Speech Before a Tougher ParadePresident Dmitry Medvedev on Friday warned against disregard for international law and ""irresponsible ambitions"" that lead to conflicts, as he presided over the Victory Day parade, which showcased military hardware for the first time since the Soviet collapse.
Medvedev Gets Sexed Up on the InternetFirst, the Russian people - with a lot of help from Vladimir Putin - made him president. Now, someone seems to be trying to turn Dmitry Medvedev into a sex symbol.
Gazprom Tops China Mobile, GEGazprom overtook China Mobile and General Electric to become the world's third-largest company by market value after the presidential inauguration of its chairman, Dmitry Medvedev.
The Danger of IsolationismRussia has only two allies -- its army and navy."" This phrase, which was originally uttered 150 years ago by Tsar Alexander III, has become quite popular over the past several years to describe Moscow's shortage of allies.
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Noppadan: 'Not one square inch' to CambodiaThailand will not compromise with Cambodia in negotiations over land around Preah Vihear temple, which Phnom Penh wants to register as a Unesco World Heritage Site, Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said on Sunday.
Burma referendum 'nearly 100 pct' for militaryRangoon (dpa) - A "sham" referendum held this weekend despite the Burmese national tragedy wrought by Cyclone Nargis can expect an overwhelming "yes" vote for a new pro-military charter, according to initial counts seen by sources close to the ruling junta Sunday.
Democrat warns of political disaster(BangkokPost.com) - The Democrat party has warned that Thailand could be hit by a political cyclone, what he called "a political version of Cyclone Nargis" which caused devastation at a grand scale in Burma.
670 warned for violating mobile phone ban(BangkokPost.com) - The Metropolitan police have reported 670 cases of violation of a new ban on using mobile phones whilst on the roads which came into effect on May 8.
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Over 20 dead in Mo., Okla., Ga. after new round of stormsSearch crews combed debris-strewn fields for possible tornado victims Sunday as residents picked through the remains of homes demolished by storms that smashed through the Plains and South, killing at least 21 people in three states. At least 14 people died...
Mentally disabled man missing in San FranciscoPolice and family are searching for a 50-year-old mentally disabled man who has been missing since Thursday, when he disappeared during a visit to San Francisco with his group home, his brother said today. Bobby Joe Lamascus was last seen at around 1:30 p.m....
Police: Santa Cruz bicycle protest ride turns hostileAuthorities say a protest by Santa Cruz cyclists turned hostile after a rider collided with a motorist during a ride to remind drivers to share the road. Santa Cruz police Lt. Rick Martinez said about 100 bicyclists swarmed the streets near the city's...
Boat carrying Myanmar aid sinks; toll climbs beyond 28,000Myanmar's monumental task of feeding and sheltering 1.5 million cyclone survivors suffered yet another blow Sunday when a boat laden with relief supplies _ one of the first international shipments _ sank on its way to the disaster zone. The death toll jumped...
Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gearFour-dollar-a-gallon gas is good for business _ if you run a bike shop. Commuters around the country are dusting off their old two-wheelers _ or buying new ones _ to cope with rising fuel prices, bicycle dealers say. "Everyone that comes in the shop is...
SD scientists say bacteria could be a red tide killerScientists believe they've found a red tide killer. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego has discovered that RCA bacteria _ a natural marine microbe _ can attack and kill the single-cell plankton that produce red tide algae. The blooms often...
Brentwood the poster child for housing bustRoger Abraham stands in his driveway, one hand holding the newspaper, the other sweeping across the homes on Brentwood's Solitude Street. "This one," he points, "this one, this one." All empty. This farming community on the eastern edge of the Bay Area...
Ohio, Florida hold keys to election victoryThe long fixation on race, gender, age and class in the Democratic primaries will soon spread to the general election as the Democratic nominee seeks the keys to the Republican kingdom: Ohio and Florida. Both states were hotly contested battlegrounds in 2000...
S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000Kelly Medora, a petite preschool teacher who weighed about 118 pounds, went out with a friend in North Beach one Saturday night in 2005 for some fun. Instead, San Francisco police officer Christopher Damonte, who weighed about 250 pounds, arrested her for...
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Obama catches Clinton in race for superdelegatesSen. Barack Obama has tied Sen. Hillary Clinton in the race for superdelegates, according to CNN's latest count. Obama today picked up the backing of California superdelegate Crystal Strait of the Young Democrats of America. The Democrats next face off Tuesday in West Virginia, where Clinton leads in polls. 
Bush: Jenna's wedding was 'spectacular'President Bush today called the wedding of his daughter Jenna to Henry Hager on Saturday evening "spectacular," saying the couple exchanged vows just as the sun set at his Texas ranch. 
Red Cross relief boat sinks in MyanmarA Red Cross boat delivering supplies to help 1,000 victims of last weekend's cyclone sank today when it hit debris in the Irrawaddy Delta region, as the U.S. prepared to deliver relief supplies to Myanmar. 
U.S. official: Too early to expect Sadr City truceA U.S. military official said Sunday it was "premature" to conclude there will be a truce between the Iraqi government and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's movement, despite word from both sides that a cease-fire agreement was reached. 
Toll climbs as storms sweep several statesResidents in three Midwestern states spent Mother's Day sifting through the wreckage of their homes, trying to recover from powerful storms that killed at least 22 people. 
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Calm in Beirut, but violence rages in TripoliLEBANON's political and military leaders struggled to pull the country back from a deepening civil conflict yesterday with a measure of calm returning to Beirut after four days of fighting but the streets of Tripoli erupting in violence.
US lawyer barred for Guantanamo biasWASHINGTON: A military judge has disqualified the Pentagon's top legal adviser in the Office of Military Commissions from participating in the prosecution of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay because he exerted improper influence over a team of prosecutors and may have compromised the case's fairness.
Doubts emerge over scope of Sadr City truceRESIDENTS in Baghdad's Sadr City said there were no reports of fighting yesterday after Shiite political factions reached an agreement to end seven weeks of clashes that have killed hundreds of people in the slum.
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Over 20 dead in Mo., Okla., Ga. after new round of stormsSENECA, Mo. (AP) -- Search crews combed debris-strewn fields for possible tornado victims Sunday as residents picked through the remains of homes demolished by storms that smashed through the Plains and South, killing at least 21 people in three states....
Lebanese violence spreads to mountains outside capitalBEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanon hung between fears of all-out war and hopes of political compromise Sunday as government supporters and opponents battled with rockets and machine guns in the mountains overlooking the capital....
Serbia's pro-Western president declares victory in electionsBELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- Serbia's pro-Western president declared victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections - a stunning upset over ultranationalists who tried to exploit anger over Kosovo's independence. But his rivals vowed to fight on, and it was unclear if he could stave off their challenge....
BBC Upset That Fans Are Knitting Dr. Who CharactersWhile many people are familiar with copyright issues concerning things like music, movies and software online, there's another community that also has been quite active: the knitting community. For a few years now there's been an ongoing battle between hobbyist knitters who have uploaded patterns that others feel are infringing on their copyrights. Now it appears that issue is touching on the tech/sci-fi community as well. Boing Boing points us to the news that a fan of the famed BBC show Dr. Who had created some knitting patterns of his own that would enable anyone to knit various characters from the show. This isn't a case where he was uploading someone else's patterns -- but he had created his own. The BBC, however, flipped out and told him to remove all such knitting patterns as they infringed on the BBC's copyrights and trademarks. This seems like yet another case of overly aggressive enforcement of intellectual property rights because someone can, not because it's a good idea. It's nearly impossible to see how a fan getting people to knit versions of Dr. Who characters somehow diminishes the rights of the BBC. All it's doing is enabling fans (who are also into knitting) to express their fandom. If anything, the BBC should be encouraging this kind of fan support, rather than trying to stifle it and shut it down. It's stunning that after all these years, people still don't realize that helping fans express their feelings towards something is a good thing, rather than infringement. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story  
Blogging vs. Journalism Question A Key Point In Compelling The Troll Tracker To TestifyWhile it looks like the attempt to get Rick Frenkel, better known as the "Patent Troll Tracker" into court on a separate patent-related dispute has gone nowhere, there's an interesting side dispute as part of this that touches on the age-old debate concerning the border of blogging and journalism. Frenkel told the court that since the Troll Tracker blog was a side project, not an effort of Cisco, and since he was, effectively, a journalist in writing it, he could not be compelled to testify since it "would result in a serious detriment to Frenkel's future ability to gather and disseminate news." However, Frenkel's nemesis, patent attorney Ray Niro responded by scoffing at these claims, and ticking off the reasons why Frenkel should not be considered a journalist. Unfortunately, in doing so, Niro displays a rather profound ignorance concerning what it means to be a journalist (one would hope that his work with patent hoarders is not so sloppy). In the link above, Joe Mullin does a good job picking apart Niro's points, but let's take a closer look. First, Niro says Frenkel is not a journalist because he's unqualified: "Frenkel has no degree in journalism; no professional training as a reporter; and has never been employed as a reporter or journalist." If that's a requirement to be a journalist these days, then an awful lot of folks doing serious journalism work wouldn't be considered journalists either. There are no professional requirements to be a journalist. Second, Niro claims that Frenkel wasn't very nice in his posts, highlighting the Troll Tracker's rather amusing "haiku" contests, that tended to make fun of patent hoarders and (sometimes) Niro. Of course, there's nothing in engaging with your readers with amusing haiku contests that makes you any less of a journalist. Third, Niro says that since Cisco was Frenkel's employer, he's clearly not a journalist but something of a corporate mouthpiece. Of course, there's little evidence to suggest that Frenkel was doing anything on behalf of Cisco, but more importantly, (as Mullin points out) biased reporting doesn't disqualify you from being a journalist. If it did, how many "journalists" would still be around? And fourth, Niro claims that Frenkel was guilty of various journalistic ethics violations, such as writing anonymously (someone better alert the Economist) and not revealing his sources (always knew that Woodward and Bernstein weren't real journalists). The simple fact is that you don't need a degree or a certificate to be a journalist these days. You just need to report the news -- and no one can deny that Frenkel did that. In fact, he was much more of a journalist than many "official" journalists these days in that he reported on news that wasn't getting covered anywhere else and did some pretty hefty investigative work on some to try to work out the details behind some of the patent hoarding company shell games. In fact, since he took down his site, the type of news he reported has been sadly missing from the discussions on patent law and patent reform. On that note, it's probably also worth pointing out that Frenkel said in his own filing on the case that he's planning to return to blogging at some point in the future. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story  
China Shows Again That Stronger IP Protection Comes After There's Content To Protect, Not BeforeCopyright and patent law is supposed to act as incentives for the creation of new content or inventions. Yet, as we've pointed out recently, there's little economic evidence that it does so. Instead, the evidence suggests that stronger intellectual property laws seem to come after the fact. In other words, when there is little IP protection, there is often quite a bit of creation and invention -- and then those that did that creation and invention decide that they want to protect it retrospectively. That's not the purpose of IP law, but it's what seems to happen. And, look no further than China to see it happening again. China, of course, is notorious as a haven for intellectual property infringement, which (not surprisingly) has resulted in business model innovation. However, now that China is hosting the Olympics, it's suddenly worried about making sure the video of the games will not be copied in an unauthorized manner (found via Against Monopoly). Note the obvious irony. You can walk around malls in parts of China and buy any kind of unauthorized software, music and movies for next to nothing... but when it comes to China's own content, suddenly copyright is a big deal. And, of course, it wasn't copyright that acted as the incentive for China to host and show the Olympics -- but now the country is using it to protect the content. Copyright is being used for protectionism, not as an incentive. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story  
Skype Concedes In GPL DisputeTom wrote about the Skype/GPL case yesterday, and it's worth noting (as many in the comments did) that partway through the hearing, Skype gave in and agreed to drop the appeal and abide by the lower court ruling. That's a good thing. However, from the comments on Tom's post, it appears that many seemed to have misunderstood what he wrote, believing he was (a) supporting Skype or (b) disparaging GPL. It appears to be neither. He pretty clearly states that it's a "desperation" play by Skype, and so it's not at all surprising that Skype gave in after the court indicated that Skype's arguments were not convincing. Tom also does not appear to be disparaging the GPL -- he notes how it helped encourage much more openness in software development. His actual point, which got less attention, was whether the power of the GPL specifically is waning as other licenses gain prominence -- and, specifically, whether it would be so horrible if the GPL somehow went away. He's not suggesting that's a likely or ideal scenario -- just questioning what would happen. And, the point he makes is that while the GPL paved a very important path, we're seeing other options now appearing, and that's a good thing for open source. Developers now have a much bigger choice among licenses they can choose to adopt, and that competition can lead to interesting innovations. It's not an anti-GPL post -- but recognition that the hopes and dreams of open source software development are no longer tied to the success or failure of the GPL. And that's a good thing for both the GPL and open source. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story  
If Copyright Is About Incentive, Should It Allow Total Control Over The Work?William Patry points us to an interesting draft of an article by Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh (of University of Chicago Law School) for the Harvard Law Review concerning how the courts rarely take into account the real purpose of copyrights in deciding what copyrights allow people to do. The basic premise is that copyright is designed solely to be an incentive to get people to create new works -- and, as such, some of the powers that the courts and Congress have added to copyright seem to go well beyond that core purpose. Specifically, Balganesh suggests that copyright shouldn't prevent others from using the content in ways that the original author never foresaw, as those uses clearly should not have influenced the original incentive to create, since they were never even thought about. While Patry gives some compelling reasons why Balganesh's current argument is a bit flawed, it does bring up a variety of interesting and important questions concerning what copyright really should be doing. Most specifically, this argument is going to become more and more important as content creation increasingly moves away from a "broadcast" model to a many-to-many "communications" model. In such a world, things like fair use, derivative works and whether someone should "own" all downstream uses become much more important: None of copyright's current doctrinal devices enable courts to circumscribe a creator's entitlement by reference to the incentive structure that the institution is premised on. As a direct consequence, creators (and their assignees) are often thought to be 'rightfully entitled' to any revenue stream associated with their creation, whether or not it owes its existence solely to the creator and regardless of it having been developed well after the creation of the work.... Individuals will (and can) not factor the unforeseeable consequences of their actions into their ex ante reasons for acting. Consequently, limiting copyright's grant of exclusivity to uses of the creative work that were foreseeable to a creator at the time of creation is likely to better align creators' creative decision-making with their incentives. In other words, just because your work is used in part by another to create something new and different, it often doesn't make sense to give the original creator control over that work -- especially if it has nothing to do with the original incentive to create. Somehow, I'd imagine that JK Rowling would disagree. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story  
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Japan's money supply up 1.9% in April+(Kyodo) _ (EDS: LEAD STORY TO FOLLOW) The key gauge of Japan's money supply in April rose 1.9 percent from a year earlier, the Bank of Japan said Monday. The average daily balance of
Japanese editorial excerpts+(Kyodo) _ Selected editorial excerpts from the Japanese press: PERMANENT LAW NEEDED TO SEND SDF OVERSEAS (The Daily Yomiuri as translated from the Yomiuri Shimbun) Progress on...
11 dead in Haiti ferry capsizingAn overloaded ferry capsized off the coast of southern Haiti, killing at least 11 people, U.N. and Haitian authorities said Sunday. U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman David Wimhurst...
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