Group items tagged

News that Germany and France have, with a mini-bound, escaped recession must be the most ominous development of the week.

For those within this system, Germany had been an extremely comfortable place until the downturn. But the apparent failure of its export-driven social model changed all that. As a result, Germans had begun to campaign for a responsive political system.

In all sorts of ways,  Germans had begun to realise that the economy - and thence German society - had reached the end of the post-war path. The worry is that today’s GDP figures will drive them back to the old, familiar way of thinking.

CHINESE hackers have attacked the Melbourne International Film Festival website in an intensifying campaign against the screening of a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

The hackers replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans

"It is obviously a concerted campaign to get us because we've refused to comply with the Chinese Government's demands."

Twitter taken down to silence one man New York August 9, 2009 CYBER attacks on Twitter and other popular web services last week disrupted the lives of millions of internet users, but the real target was one man: a 34-year-old economics professor from the republic of Georgia.

The attacks were ''the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don't like one of the newscasters'', said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at internet security company F-Secure.

The hackers used a botnet, a network of thousands of infected personal computers, to direct massive amounts of junk traffic to Cyxymu's pages on Twitter, LiveJournal, YouTube and Facebook in an attempt to disable them.The millions that were affected were, in a sense, simply bystanders, experiencing shrapnel from an internet blitzkrieg that took aim at one person and knocked out an entire community.

Fairfax, News to charge for online Tom Hyland August 9, 2009 THE loyalty of readers accustomed to getting their news online free is about to be tested, as Australia's largest newspaper groups prepare to charge for access to their websites.Fairfax Media is considering two levels of access, one free and the other incurring a charge, as newspapers move to protect declining revenues.Last week, News Limited chief executive Rupert Murdoch announced that sites featuring the news content of his stable of papers would no longer be free.The plan to erect pay-walls around their online sites comes as newspaper companies confront a decline in the advertising revenue that has financed print production.

Monetisation will have to happen, because without monetisation of the online sites that the newspaper industries have operated very successfully, we can't afford to keep the big newsroom staffs we have,'' he said.Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.

The move is a risk for both publishers, which are gambling on readers being prepared to pay for news they have been receiving free - and will remain free on sources such as the ABC.While newspaper websites carry advertising, they do not finance the news content, most of which comes from the papers

Over the past six weeks at Disney World, a 21-year-old monorail driver, a 47-year-old actor portraying pirate Capt. Jack Sparrow's henchman "Mack," and a 30-year-old stuntman practicing for the Indiana Jones' Epic Stunt Spectacular died in on-the-job accidents.

community's grief is apparent on their Facebook pages. "We lost another one of our own at Disney. Too many, too young. Just wish it made some sense,"

"Mark lived for that magic. That's when Mark was most Mark," Babel says. "One's person's life can touch, in Mark's case, millions of guests. And he would make a special connection with each and every one of those kids that he came into contact with. He was amazing. The shining example of someone like Mark is inspiring, and so I kind of take extra care to make the magic in honor of Mark."

Australia is disturbed by China's detention of an Australian executive; China is angry that Australia allowed a Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer, to visit.

Australia sells huge amounts of natural resources to China and, despite hitches in the relationship, signed a new gas deal this week with PetroChina.

"China has significant interests in Australia. China's interests in Australia go to its long-term needs for its resource security," Mr Rudd said.

A TRIP to India next week to promote Melbourne as a safe city has turned into a monumental challenge for John Brumby after another racist attack that has attracted fresh headlines and anti-Australian fury across India.

Two Indian men and another two of Indian origin say they were racially taunted and told to ''go back to your country'' before being kicked and punched by attackers who were part of a large birthday celebration at Legends Entertainment Centre. The Indian Government increased pressure on Australia last night over the ''recurring attacks'' on its citizens. It called on authorities to ''take all necessary steps towards the safety and security of Indians''. Indian consular officials in Melbourne were also ordered to investigate.

One of the victims, Sukhdip Singh, 26, had been in Australia just one month. A relative said he had suffered head and facial injuries and wanted to return to India immediately. His uncle, Mukhtiar Singh, 45, also a victim, said Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's recent assurance to India's Foreign Minister that Australia was safe for Indian students rang hollow. ''I used to say the same thing … now I would say Melbourne is worse than a Third-World country, violence-wise,'' Mr Singh told The Age. Recalling Saturday's incident, he said his nephew was taunted with verbal abuse and racial slurs in the bar before they were later set upon in the car park by about 20 people. ''I have lived here for 22 years,'' Mr Singh said. ''I've got my own business here, my own house, my kids have grown up here. Why should I go back? We all come from somewhere.''

It is not the first time the Egyptian security service claimed to have rounded up a cell of jihadist European students.

After just over a week of questioning, they were deported. There was no evidence. Back in Europe authorities saw no reason to hold the students.

the Egyptian security service often keeps surveillance on specific foreign students at the request of European secret services.

Muslims in Malaysia have been prohibited from going to a Black Eyed Peas concert that is sponsored by Guinness.

Last week, 32-year-old fashion model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno became the first woman to be publicly canned for drinking alcohol in a hotel lounge in 2008

"Muslims cannot attend. Non-Muslims can go and have fun

The Shanghai government, along with neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces

standardise signs and eliminate notoriously bad, and sometimes amusing, English translations.

A malfunctioning online translation tool may have helped a restaurant named "Translate server error"

David Bradbury, a renowned filmmaker and activist, claims the haze that engulfed some of the country's biggest cities in the past week contains radioactive grains - or tailings - carried on gale force winds from a mine in the South Australian desert.

"In a big dust storm, the dust is not going to come from one isolated site, it is going to be mixed in with dust from a [wide] area and diluted considerably,"