CNC mills are usually the antithesis of portable. Sometimes they're as big as trucks. But ShopBot Tools, a North Carolina-based CNC Tool manufacturer, is trying to change that with the Handibot, a CNC Mill you can carry around.
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BEIJING (AP) ? A Chinese businessman behind the plan to build a waterway across Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal says his ambitions are well-researched and backed by an experienced team despite skepticism over whether the 40-year-old can deliver the $40 billion project.
Wang Jing, chairman and owner of Hong Kong-based HKND Group, told a news conference Tuesday in Beijing: "We don't want it to become an international joke, and we don't want it to turn into an example of Chinese investment failures."
HKDN won approval from Nicaragua to study, and possibly build and run a shipping channel across the central American country.
Wang says his consultants on the project have rich experience and include U.S.-based McKinsey & Co and China's biggest construction firm, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corp.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-businessman-assures-nicaragua-canal-success-085331031.html
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June 24, 2013 ? Researchers say they now know what allows some Western corn rootworms to survive crop rotation, a farming practice that once effectively managed the rootworm pests. The answer to the decades-long mystery of rotation-resistant rootworms lies -- in large part -- in the rootworm gut, the team reports.
The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Differences in the relative abundance of certain bacterial species in the rootworm gut help the adult rootworm beetles feed on soybean leaves and tolerate the plant's defenses a little better, the researchers report. This boost in digestive finesse allows rotation-resistant beetles to survive long enough to lay their eggs in soybean fields. Their larvae emerge the following spring and feast on the roots of newly planted corn.
"These insects, they have only one generation per year," said University of Illinois entomology department senior scientist Manfredo Seufferheld, who led the study. "And yet within a period of about 20 years in Illinois they became resistant to crop rotation. What allowed this insect to adapt so fast? These bacteria, perhaps."
Controlling rootworms is an expensive concern faced by all Midwest corn growers, said study co-author Joseph Spencer, an insect behaviorist at the Illinois Natural History Survey (part of the Prairie Research Institute at the U. of I.). Yield losses, the use of insecticides and corn hybrids engineered to express rootworm-killing toxins in their tissues cost U.S. growers at least $1 billion a year.
In a 2012 study, Seufferheld, Spencer and their colleagues reported that rotation-resistant rootworm beetles were better able than their nonresistant counterparts to tolerate the defensive chemicals produced in soybeans leaves. This allowed the beetles to feed more and survive longer on soybean plants. The researchers found that levels of key digestive enzymes differed significantly between the rotation-resistant and nonresistant rootworms, but differences in the expression of the genes encoding these enzymes did not fully explain the rotation-resistant beetles' advantage. Seufferheld and his colleagues thought that microbes in the rootworms' guts might be helping them better tolerate life in a soybean field.
To test this hypothesis, graduate student Chia-Ching Chu analyzed the population of microbes living in the guts of rootworm beetles collected from seven sites across the Midwest. Some of these sites (including Piper City, Ill.) are hot spots of rotation-resistance and others (in Nebraska and northwest Missouri, for example) lack evidence of rotation-resistant rootworms.
Chu found significant and consistent differences in the relative abundance of various types of bacteria in the guts of rotation-resistant and nonresistant rootworms (see graphic). These differences corresponded to differing activity levels of digestive enzymes in their guts and to their ability to tolerate soybean plant defenses.
The researchers found other parallels between the composition of gut microbes and the life history of the rootworms. The beetles' gut microbial structure corresponded to the insects' level of activity (rotation-resistant rootworms are usually more active), and also paralleled -- in a graduated fashion -- the plant diversity of the landscapes they inhabited. (Rotation-resistant rootworms are most abundant in regions where rotated corn and soybean fields are the dominant components of the agricultural landscape.)
To determine whether the microbes were in fact giving the rotation-resistant beetles an advantage, the researchers dosed the beetles with antibiotics. Low-level exposure to antibiotics had no effect on any of the beetles, but at higher doses the rotation-resistant beetles' survival time on soybean leaves fell to that of the nonresistant beetles. Antibiotics also lowered the activity of digestive enzymes in the rotation-resistant beetles' guts to that of their nonresistant counterparts.
The message of the research, Seufferheld said, is that the gut microbes are not just passive residents of the rootworm gut.
"They are very active players in the adaptation of the insect," he said. "The microbial community acts as a versatile multicellular organ."
"It's not just the rootworm that we have to worry about," Spencer said. "There's really this whole conspiracy between the rootworm and its co-conspirators in the gut that can respond fairly quickly, relatively speaking, to the assaults that they face."
The research team also included former postdoctoral researcher Jorge Zavala (now a professor at the University of Buenos Aires) and graduate student Matias Curzi.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/slJG9FABJYI/130624152603.htm
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June 25, 2013 ? Babies as young as two months know when they are about to be picked up and change their body posture in preparation, according to new research.
Professor Vasu Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth, has found most babies aged two to four months understand they are about to be picked up the moment their mothers come towards them with their arms outstretched and that they make their bodies go still and stiff in anticipation, making it easier to be picked up.
This is the first study to examine how babies adjust their posture in anticipation to offset the potentially destabilising effect of being picked up.
Professor Reddy said: "We didn't expect such clear results. From these findings we predict this awareness is likely to be found even earlier, possibly not long after birth.
"The results suggest we need to re-think the way we study infant development because infants seem to be able to understand other people's actions directed towards them earlier than previously thought. Experiments where infants are observers of others' actions may not give us a full picture of their anticipatory abilities."
The findings could also be used as an early indicator of some developmental problems, including autism. It was reported by researchers in 1943 that children with autism don't appear to make preparatory adjustments to being picked up.
The researchers, who included Dr Gabriela Markova of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, and Dr Sebastian Wallot of the University of Aarhus, did two studies, one on 18 babies aged three months, and a second on ten babies aged two to four months old.
In both, babies were placed on a pressure mat which measured their postural adjustments during three phases: As their mothers chatted with their babies; as the mothers opened their arms to pick them up; and as the babies were picked up.
The results revealed infants as young as two months made specific adjustments when their mother stretched her arms out to pick them up. These included extending and stiffening the legs which increases body rigidity and stability, and widening or raising their arms, which helps to create a space for the mother to hold the infant's chest.
Between two and three months of age the babies' gaze moved from mostly looking at their mother's face to often looking at her hands as she stretched her arms out towards them.
The results reveal two important findings -- first, that from as early as two months babies make specific postural adjustments to make it easier to pick them up even before their mother touches them. And second, it appears that babies learn to increase the smoothness and coordination of their movements between two and four months, rather than develop new types of adjustment.
"In other words, they rapidly become more adept at making it easier for parents to pick them up," Professor Reddy said.
The mothers in the study were asked about their babies' physical responses before the tests and some reported their babies stiffened their legs or raised their arms in preparation for being picked up, but video footage watched frame by frame revealed physical adjustments happened to a greater degree and more subtly than mothers had noticed.
The researchers suggest more research now needs to be done to examine the extent to which infants discriminate between different kinds of actions directed at them, between familiar and unfamiliar actions, and how infant anticipation of these actions is influenced by the different maternal styles they each experience.
The research is published in the latest issue of the journal Plos One.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/0BD52rY3IaY/130625073554.htm
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs announces the debut of a new iPad on Jan. 27, 2010, in San Francisco. Photo by Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images
The man could not stand dirt. When he built his company?s first factory in Fremont, Calif., in 1984, he frequently got down on his hands and knees and looked for specks of dust on the floor as well as on all the equipment. For Steve Jobs, who was rolling out the Macintosh computer, these extreme measures were a necessity. ?If we didn?t have the discipline to keep that place spotless,? the Apple co-founder later recalled, ?then we weren?t going to have the discipline to keep all these machines running.? This perfectionist also hated typos. As Pam Kerwin, the marketing director at Pixar during Jobs? hiatus from Apple, told me, ?He would carefully go over every document a million times and would pick up on punctuation errors such as misplaced commas.? And if anything wasn?t just right, Jobs could throw a fit. He was a difficult and argumentative boss who had trouble relating to others. But Jobs could focus intensely on exactly what he wanted?which was to design ?insanely great products??and he doggedly pursued this obsession until the day died. Hard work and intelligence can take you only so far. To be super successful like Jobs, you also need that X-factor, that maniacal overdrive?which often comes from being a tad mad.
For decades, scholars have made the case that mental illness can be an asset for writers and artists. In her landmark work Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Johns Hopkins psychologist Kay Jamison documented the ?fine madness? that gripped dozens of prominent novelists, poets, painters, and composers. As Lord Byron wrote of his fellow bards, ?We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.? For the author of Don Juan, as for many of the other artsy types profiled by Jamison, the disease in question is manic depression (or bipolar disorder), but depression is also common. Sylvia Plath?s signature works?The Bell Jar and Daddy?hinge on her suicidal despair. But while most Americans now acknowledge that many famous writers were unbalanced, few realize that the movers and shakers who have built this country?CEOs like Steve Jobs?also struggled with psychiatric maladies. This misunderstanding motived me to write my latest book, America?s Obsessives. After discussing Jobs and other contemporary figures in the prologue, I cover seven icons, including Thomas Jefferson, marketing genius Henry J Heinz, librarian Melvil Dewey, aviator Charles Lindbergh, beauty tycoon Est?e Lauder, and baseball slugger Ted Williams. (Like Jobs, the Red Sox Hall of Famer was a neatness nut who used to quiz the clubhouse attendant about why he used Tide on the team?s laundry.) By picking trailblazers who toiled in different arenas?from business and politics to information technology and sports?I wanted to show how a touch of madness is perhaps the secret to rising to the top in just about any line of work.
These men and women of action did have occasional bouts with depression, but they primarily suffered (or benefited) from another form of mental illness: obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The key features of this superachiever?s disease include a love of order, lists, rules, schedules, details, and cleanliness; people with OCPD are addicted to work, and they are control freaks who must do everything ?their way.? OCPD is not to be confused with its cousin, obsessive-compulsive disorder. Those with OCD are paralyzed by thoughts that just won?t go away, while people with OCPD are inspired by them. Steve Jobs couldn?t stop designing products?when hospitalized in the ICU, he once ripped off his oxygen mask, insisting that his doctors improve its design on the double. Est?e Lauder couldn?t stop touching other women?s faces. Perfect strangers would do, including those she might bump into on an elevator or a street corner. Without her beauty biz as an alibi, she might have been arrested for assault with deadly lipstick or face powder. These dynamos are hard-pressed to carve out time for anything else but their compulsions. Spouses and children typically endure long stretches of neglect. In the early 1950s, with two boys at home (today both are billionaire philanthropists), Lauder was riding the rails all over the country half the year, hawking her wares.
Obsessives hate nothing so much as taking a break to relax or reflect, and they typically do so only when felled by illness. ?Home. Not well. Busy about house. Always plenty to do. Cannot well be idle and believe will rather wear out than rust out,? wrote the 35-year-old Henry Heinz in his diary in 1880, four years after starting his eponymous processed food company. Heinz?s compulsions included measuring everything in sight?he never left home without his steel tape measure, which he used on many an unsuspecting doorway?and keeping track of meaningless numbers. When traveling across the Atlantic on a steamer in 1886, he jotted down in his diary its precise dimensions as well as the number of passengers who rode in steerage class. But this love of pseudo-quantification would produce in the early 1890s one of the sturdiest slogans in American advertising history??57 Varieties.? At the time, his company actually produced more than 60 products, but this number fetishist felt that there was something magical about sevens. By his early 50s, Heinz had already driven himself close to a complete nervous collapse on numerous occasions, and he reluctantly passed the reins of the company to his heirs. For the last two decades of his life, his children insisted that the overbearing paterfamilias chill out in a German sanatorium every summer, either at Dr. Carl von Dapper?s outfit in Bad Kissingen or Dr. Franz Dengler?s in Baden-Baden.
Melvil Dewey, whose childhood fixation with the number 10 led him to devise the Dewey Decimal Classification system, also was forced into an early retirement by his feverish pace. Dewey published the first edition of his search engine?the Google of its day, which is still in use in libraries in nearly 150 countries?in 1876, when he was only 24. For the next quarter of a century, Dewey took on a series of demanding jobs, typically juggling two or three at a time, as a librarian, businessman, and editor. He became the head of the world?s first library school, at Columbia University in 1884. According to a running joke, Dewey had a habit of dictating notes to two stenographers at the same time. In the end, it was his sexual compulsions that did him in. He was a serial sexual harasser and in 1905 was ostracized from the American Library Association, the organization that he had helped found a generation earlier, when four prominent female members of the guild filed complaints against him.
The aviator Charles Lindbergh also was an order aficionado whose oversized libido created a mess. This demanding dad saw his five children only a couple of months a year. He ruled over them and his wife, the best-selling author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, not with an iron fist but with ironclad lists. He kept track of each child?s infractions, which included such innocuous activities as gum-chewing. And he insisted that Anne track all her household expenditures, including every 15 cents spent for rubber bands, in copious account books. After Lindbergh turned 50, feeding his sex addiction became his full-time job; for the rest of his life, he was constantly flying around the world to visit his three German ?wives,? longtime mistresses with whom he fathered seven children, and to hook up with various other flings.
Remarkably, though these obsessive icons were all awash in neurotic tics, there has been no shortage of hagiographers who idealize their every move. Of Heinz?s penchant for collecting seemingly random numbers, one biographer has observed that he ?enthusiastically wrote down in his diary the statistics that one must know and record on such an occasion.? Another saw in Heinz?s factoid-finding a reason to compare him to ?a scientist such as Thomas Edison.? The author of the first biography of Dewey made the laughable claim that ?there was no psycho-neurosis in [him].? Even today, some still agree with what New York Gov. Al Smith said about Lindbergh soon after his legendary flight to Paris: ?He represents to us ? all that we wish?a young American at his best.? We Americans like our heroes and do not easily let them go. By pointing out the character flaws in our superachievers, I do not intend to diminish the greatness of their achievements. Instead I aim to show exactly how they managed to pull them off. And more often than not, it was with a touch of madness.
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Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
Share ] Contact: Liisa Hakola
liisa.hakola@vtt.fi
358-207-227-206
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a fast and affordable testing device for detecting the presence of toxic blue-green algae in water. There is currently no fast, affordable and user-friendly way for consumers to check water quality themselves.
The blue-green algae testing kit developed by VTT and the University of Helsinki is like a miniature laboratory. The device is the size of a thermometer, and it contains antibodies that react to any toxic bacteria found in a water sample. The test reveals in minutes whether the water sample contains toxic blue-green algae.
Thanks to the new testing device, consumers will soon be able to check themselves whether water is safe for swimming. At the moment, information on blue-green algal blooms in water is mostly based on visual inspections. However, visual inspections alone are not capable of determining whether an algal bloom is toxic. Until now, the toxicity of algae has generally had to be tested in a laboratory. For example, only approximately half of blue-green algal blooms in lakes are toxic and harmful to humans and animals. The new testing kit provides a fast and reliable means of determining whether a blue-green algal bloom is toxic.
Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, favour eutrophic and warm water. Cyanobacteria can be found in almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat - oceans, fresh water, damp soil, temporarily moistened rocks in deserts, and even Antarctic rocks. Every year, they form extensive blooms e.g. in the Baltic Sea and other waters. The prevalence of algae each summer depends on factors such as weather and water nutrient levels. The first blue-green algal blooms begin to form when the surface of sea water reaches 15 degrees.
The testing kit for detecting toxic blue-green algae is in the process of being commercialised. The kits could be on sale within 23 years.
###
For more information, contact:
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Liisa Hakola, Senior Scientist
Tel. +358 20 722 7206
liisa.hakola@vtt.fi
Further information on VTT:
Olli Ernvall
Senior Vice President, Communications
358 20 722 6747
olli.ernvall@vtt.fi
http://www.vtt.fi
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is a leading multitechnological applied research organization in Northern Europe. VTT creates new technology and science-based innovations in co-operation with domestic and foreign partners. VTT's turnover is EUR 290 million and its personnel totals 3,100.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 24-Jun-2013 Share ] Contact: Liisa Hakola
liisa.hakola@vtt.fi
358-207-227-206
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a fast and affordable testing device for detecting the presence of toxic blue-green algae in water. There is currently no fast, affordable and user-friendly way for consumers to check water quality themselves.
The blue-green algae testing kit developed by VTT and the University of Helsinki is like a miniature laboratory. The device is the size of a thermometer, and it contains antibodies that react to any toxic bacteria found in a water sample. The test reveals in minutes whether the water sample contains toxic blue-green algae.
Thanks to the new testing device, consumers will soon be able to check themselves whether water is safe for swimming. At the moment, information on blue-green algal blooms in water is mostly based on visual inspections. However, visual inspections alone are not capable of determining whether an algal bloom is toxic. Until now, the toxicity of algae has generally had to be tested in a laboratory. For example, only approximately half of blue-green algal blooms in lakes are toxic and harmful to humans and animals. The new testing kit provides a fast and reliable means of determining whether a blue-green algal bloom is toxic.
Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, favour eutrophic and warm water. Cyanobacteria can be found in almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat - oceans, fresh water, damp soil, temporarily moistened rocks in deserts, and even Antarctic rocks. Every year, they form extensive blooms e.g. in the Baltic Sea and other waters. The prevalence of algae each summer depends on factors such as weather and water nutrient levels. The first blue-green algal blooms begin to form when the surface of sea water reaches 15 degrees.
The testing kit for detecting toxic blue-green algae is in the process of being commercialised. The kits could be on sale within 23 years.
###
For more information, contact:
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Liisa Hakola, Senior Scientist
Tel. +358 20 722 7206
liisa.hakola@vtt.fi
Further information on VTT:
Olli Ernvall
Senior Vice President, Communications
358 20 722 6747
olli.ernvall@vtt.fi
http://www.vtt.fi
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is a leading multitechnological applied research organization in Northern Europe. VTT creates new technology and science-based innovations in co-operation with domestic and foreign partners. VTT's turnover is EUR 290 million and its personnel totals 3,100.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/vtrc-ntd062413.php
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June 25, 2013 ? Moderate-intensity exercise reduces fat stored around the heart, in the liver and in the abdomen of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus, even in the absence of any changes in diet, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin, a hormone that regulates the movement of sugar into the cells, or when the cells resist the effects of insulin. The disease can lead to a wide range of complications, including damage to the eyes and kidneys and hardening of the arteries.
Exercise is recommended for people with diabetes, but its effects on different fat deposits in the body are unclear, according to the study's senior author, Hildo J. Lamb, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
"Based on previous studies, we noticed that different fat deposits in the body show a differential response to dietary or medical intervention," he said. "Metabolic and other effects of exercise are hard to investigate, because usually an exercise program is accompanied by changes in lifestyle and diet."
For the new study, Dr. Lamb and colleagues assessed the effects of exercise on organ-specific fat accumulation and cardiac function in type 2 diabetes patients, independent of any other lifestyle or dietary changes. The 12 patients, average age 46 years, underwent MRI examinations before and after six months of moderate-intensity exercise totaling between 3.5 and six hours per week and featuring two endurance and two resistance training sessions. The exercise cycle culminated with a 12-day trekking expedition.
MRI results showed that, although cardiac function was not affected, the exercise program led to a significant decrease in fat volume in the abdomen, liver and around the heart, all of which have been previously shown to be associated with increased cardiovascular risk.
"In the present study we observed that the second layer of fat around the heart, the peracardial fat, behaved similarly in response to exercise training as intra-abdominal, or visceral fat," Dr. Lamb said. "The fat content in the liver also decreased substantially after exercise."
Dr. Lamb noted that the exercise-induced fat reductions in the liver are of particular importance to people with type 2 diabetes, many of whom are overweight or obese.
"The liver plays a central role in regulating total body fat distribution," he said. "Therefore, reduction of liver fat content and visceral fat volume by physical exercise are very important to reverse the adverse effects of lipid accumulation elsewhere, such as the heart and arterial vessel wall."
The findings point to an important role for imaging in identifying appropriate treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes, which the World Health Organization projects to be the seventh leading cause of death worldwide by 2030.
"In the future, we hope to be able to use advanced imaging techniques to predict in individual patients which therapeutic strategy is most effective: diet, medication, exercise, surgery or certain combinations," Dr. Lamb said.
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BY:
On Tuesday, Dr. Michael Ciampi of Newton, Massachusetts appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the effects of Affordable Care Act on his practice. He notes many doctors have stopped accepting health insurance, and have adopted a ?pay as you go? method.
The Weekly Standard?s Tony Mecia recently wrote on this growing trend in the age of Obamacare:
There?s little doubt that the new health care law is causing concern among doctors. And the frustration runs deeper than just occasional anecdotes, such as the Orlando urologist who posted a flier on his door in late March that read: ?If you voted for Obama .??.??. seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years.? The doctor?s story was linked on the Drudge Report, he appeared on Fox News, and a Facebook page devoted to him has more than 3,000 fans.
While those stories are interesting, more troubling is a survey reported in March in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that 29 percent of the nearly 1,200 doctors interviewed said they would quit the profession or retire early if the health care reform bill passed. Add to that a reported shortage of doctors, retiring Baby Boomers, and 30 million new patients who formerly lacked insurance, and the result could be disastrous.
Source: http://freebeacon.com/obamacare-effect-doctors-switching-to-no-insurance-model/
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Andricia Hinckemann, Abel Jordaan, Emme-Lancia Faro and Phiwe Mathe at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa Photo by Sonia Small/Kaleidoscope Studios
BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa?Billyboy Ramahlele heard the riot before he saw it. It was a February evening in 1996, autumn in South Africa, when cooling breezes from the Cape of Good Hope push north and turn the hot days of the country?s agricultural heartland into sweet nights, when the city of Bloemfontein?s moonlit trees and cornfields rustle sultrily beneath a vast sky glittering with stars. The 32-year-old dormitory manager at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein was relaxing in front of a wildlife program on the TV with his door open.
Suddenly, he became aware of a new noise. Could it be the trees, rustling in a gust? No, it was heavier, more like trampling. Could it be his TV? He switched it off. The noise grew louder.
Ramahlele got up and poked his head out the door. There he saw the students of the dorm he managed, which housed about 100 black males, some of the first blacks to attend the historically white university since it had integrated four years earlier. And he immediately saw the source of the noise: His boys were stampeding out of the dorm entryway and running toward central campus. Some of them were singing militant songs from an earlier era, when blacks fought against apartheid rule, including one that went?Kill the Boer, a nickname for white Afrikaners. Many were holding sticks or cricket bats.
They said they wanted to confront the white boys on campus. The whites, they claimed, refused to treat them as they should be treated in South Africa?s new democracy, and they wanted to put an end to their insolence once and for all. More than one boy opened up his jacket to show Ramahlele a gun tucked inside.
Racing alongside the group, Ramahlele wasn?t truly worried until he rounded the corner and saw, under the starlight, a line of white boys at least as long as his line of black students, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. ?It looked like an army flank,? he remembered. The whites were also holding cricket bats, cocked on their shoulders like rifles. Unlike his students, they were eerily silent?until, all as one, they opened their mouths and began to sing. The song was Die Stem, the old apartheid-era national anthem.
Ramahlele?s heart sank. He felt as though he might cry. ?The history,? he explained, ?is if they?re singing that, somebody is going to die.?
I first set foot on the University of the Free State (UFS) campus in February of 2010 to study Afrikaans. On paper, the school was integrated: 70 percent of the student body was black. But 15 years after the end of apartheid?the infamous system of racial separation and black oppression that lasted from 1948 until the coming of democracy in 1994?it felt as though apartheid had never ended. The white and black students still seemed to operate in totally different worlds. There were classes in Afrikaans for the whites and classes in English for the blacks, and separate choirs and church services for both. I almost never saw a mixed-race group of students. And they didn?t live together?there were all-white dorms and all-black dorms.
UFS is in the heart of the Free State, the traditional center of Afrikaner power, settled in the mid-19th century by Dutch settlers who trekked inland in covered wagons from the Dutch East India Company?s colony at the Cape of Good Hope 600 miles southwest. They believed they had been sent to Africa by God to become a new people, the Afrikaners (?Africans? in Dutch), to tame the desert?like the Israelites in Canaan?and turn it into a garden. They plowed the region into a fertile grain belt, setting up a republic and naming a capital, pronounced ?BLOOM-fun-tayn,? meaning ?fountain of blossoms.? The city became a laboratory for the formation of Afrikaner identity. The Afrikaner National Party, the political party that designed apartheid, was established there in 1912. UFS, founded at the same time, was the first South African university to conduct classes in Afrikaans, the Dutch dialect the Afrikaners proudly formalized as part of their new Africa-based ethnicity.
I assumed that old-line attitudes demanding racial separation had never budged in this Afrikaner redoubt. But one day my Afrikaans teacher, Matilda, a warm, arty woman with flowing brown hair, told me there was a much more complicated and disturbing story behind the campus?s racial divide. ?Once, this place was the model of integration,? she lamented over coffee at the campus cafe. Leaning forward conspiratorially over her cup, she gave me a clue. ?Go to a dorm called Karee,? she said, ?and look at a set of photos hanging in the front hall. There, you?ll begin to understand what really happened.?
I went. Karee?named for a drought-resistant tree found in the South African desert?had been built in 1978, as apartheid rule was consolidating and Afrikaans-language universities were expanding. The photos my teacher had mentioned were class photographs. The first dozen or so showed only white boys arranged on the dorm stoop, mugging for the camera. Then, in 1992, a few blacks appeared. There was one looking proud in a mauve suit, and another in a yellow shirt, his hip popped out in a jaunty contrapposto, his lips stretched wide in an enigmatic smile. 1993, 1994, 1995: Every year there were more black students, intermingled with the whites.
And then, in 1997, one year after the riot Billyboy Ramahlele witnessed, something new appeared in the photo: two flags from the age of white supremacy in South Africa?one from the old Afrikaner republic and one from the apartheid state that followed it. They were jarring to see, held high by two white boys in the last row right over the head of a black boy in a wide-brimmed hat. Over the following years, the flags remained, but the black students in the photos disappeared. By 1999, the class photo was all white again, and it stayed that way until 2008, the last year for which there was a picture.
Those images became a consuming mystery for me. UFS hadn?t remained segregated after apartheid?s end?it had integrated and then resegregated later. I wanted to know why the white students raised those ancient flags, and why the black students had left Karee. I uncovered a tale of mutual exhilaration at racial integration giving way to suspicion, anger and even physical violence. It seemed to hold powerful implications well beyond South Africa, about the very nature of social change itself. In our post?civil rights struggle era, we tend to assume progress toward less prejudice and more social tolerance is inevitable?the only variable is speed.
But in Bloemfontein, social progress surged forward. Then it turned back.
Karee is one of about 20 dorms at UFS that house a few hundred students each. The large brick buildings are situated around the edges of the stately, tree-lined campus, like guardians of tradition, which is what they once were. They had legacy admission. If your mother or father had been in a certain dorm, you?d be in that one, too. In one dorm, freshmen wore striped coats. In another, everybody but the seniors walked in through the back door.
In the early 1990s, South Africa?s universities, all public institutions, were required to integrate as part of the country?s transition to multiracial democracy. Then-UFS President Francois Retief, who was tasked with incorporating black students into an all-white campus, worried about the dorms, he explained in the drawing room of his house in an old-age village on the edge of Bloemfontein. Retief seriously considered housing blacks separately from the whites. ?Our dorms were historically more like your fraternities,? he said. ?They had a lot of in-house culture. We called them?die huise [the houses] and their culture was?die tradisies?[the traditions].?
These traditions were arbitrary, but they distinguished one dorm from another and fostered a sense of group pride and belonging. Retief feared that his white students might be reluctant to let blacks partake in their long-standing dorm culture. In 1990, he polled the student body to ask their views. To his great surprise, 86 percent welcomed the idea of housing the new black students in the white dorms. So, starting in 1992, he did just that. And it was a ?roaring success,? he recounted. The first black students ?fit in exactly!?
Lebohang Mathibela was the boy in the mauve suit in the 1992 class photo on the wall in Karee and one of the first eight black students to live in a UFS dorm. Integration ?was beautiful,? he raved when we met at the main campus caf?. Dressed in a cheerful red T-shirt, Mathibela, now 42, hardly looked older than the 21-year-old in the photo, with cheeks as round as a cherub?s and a pealing laugh. Mathibela has had an accomplished career as a linguist, speaking all 11 official South African languages.
UFS wasn?t a natural choice for a black boy from Johannesburg, his hometown. There were two kinds of historically white colleges in South Africa: those that taught in English and those that taught in Afrikaans. (There were also historically black colleges, but they have generally been of lower academic quality.) The English universities cultivated a liberal, multicultural, anti-apartheid identity; they started admitting black students in the 1980s, when it was still technically illegal to do so. The Afrikaans colleges were reputed to be everything the ?English? ones weren?t: conservative, mono-cultural, isolationist. UFS was the most daunting because it was marooned in the grain belt. For most aspirational black college applicants in the 1990s, venturing to UFS would be like choosing Mordor to study.
But UFS was also known for nurturing Afrikaans as a poetic language. That?s what drew Mathibela. In elementary school, he had developed a deep affection for Afrikaans, which was a mandatory school subject under apartheid. It was a mystery to his friends and relatives. ?I decided to come to UFS because of my love of Afrikaans,? he said. ?My mom was so angry. She said to me, ?Other children are going to Wits [the University of the Witwatersrand],? ? Johannesburg?s premier English university. ?She says to me, ?You are not my son anymore!? ?
After he was placed into Karee, he proceeded to fall in love with UFS?s dorm culture. His favorite ritual was freshman initiation. He laughed as he described it to me, because he recognized that it seemed an unlikely memory to cherish. ?We queued blindfolded and half-naked,? he recounted. Seniors painted the freshmen?s bodies in red and yellow stripes to resemble the dorm mascot, a bee. Then they made each initiate drink tomato juice from a toilet bowl. ?It looked like vomit! It was horrible! Guys were really getting sick!? Finally, the freshmen were led to a ?huge drum filled with water, cow dung and grass.? A senior shouted at them to?dyk?dive! ?Then you get out. You?re dripping, smelling like cow dung.?
After the cow-dung dip, the black and white freshmen were instructed to go back to their rooms, shower, change into a jacket and tie, and head to the dorm courtyard, where smiling seniors were waiting to hand them a plate of barbecued meat and a beer. ?You are a member now,? they informed Mathibela. ?Color doesn?t count.?
?I felt proud,? he remembered.
Like Mathibela, most of the first black students to brave UFS were gung-ho about the dorm culture. UFS had been closed to them, and it was thrilling to be let in and to belong. Another former black student who lived in a mostly white dorm in the early 1990s told me he felt like he was ?ascending.?
Their enthusiasm made the white students feel as if they had something worth sharing, bolstering their sense of pride. Mathibela recalls that a white student named Coenraad Jonker pulled him aside. ?Where did you learn to speak such beautiful Afrikaans?? he marveled. ?You are definitely going to make it here.? White students even bent some of the dorm rules to make it easier on the black students.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Funeral services for actor James Gandolfini will be Thursday at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.
An HBO spokeswoman speaking on behalf of the family says the funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m.
The 51-year-old star of "The Sopranos" died Wednesday in Rome. Family spokesman Michael Kobold says Gandolfini died of a heart attack.
The Italian news agency ANSA reports Gandolfini's body departed Rome for the United States on Sunday. Kobold earlier told reporters the "provisional plan" was to repatriate Gandolfini's body Monday.
The actor had been headed to Sicily to appear at the Taormina Film Festival, which paid tribute to him Saturday.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/funeral-plans-set-actor-james-gandolfini-233347225.html
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4 hours ago
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images file
Actress Kelly Rutherford celebrates Michael Kalish's Belle Epoque Sculpture in New York City in 2012.
?Gossip Girl? star Kelly Rutherford, who earned $468,000 a month while working on the CW show, has filed for bankruptcy after spending $1.66 million on her custody battle with her ex-husband, according to documents obtained Monday by NBC News.
The 44-year-old year actress and mother of two filed Chapter 7 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in California on May 20 declaring to be over $2 million debt -- and with a current monthly income of $1,279.33.
Rutherford divorced Daniel Giersch in 2010. In August, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that Rutherford?s daughter and son must live with their father in France after his visa was revoked. Rutherford and Giersch are supposed to split their time with the children equally, even though they live in different countries. They are 6 and 4 years old now.
"I do think the kids are at risk because I was the primary, and now I'm the visitor," Rutherford said in an emotional interview on TODAY last year. "What I was in court trying to get to the bottom of is that he could disappear tomorrow and I don't know where to look."
Rutherford has been traveling to France regularly to see her children and Skypes with them daily.
According to the bankruptcy petition, Rutherford has $23,937 in assets -- $11,487 in her checking account, $5,000 in furniture, $5,000 in clothes, and $1,500 in jewelry. The documents also show Rutherford owes over $350,000 in last year?s federal and New York state income taxes and over $300,000 to friends and family for personal loans.
She also owes American Express $25,000 and Citibank nearly $36,000.
?Gossip Girl? wrapped last year. Rutherford also starred on ?Melrose Place? in the ?90s.
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By Yara Bayoumy
DOHA (Reuters) - Syrian rebels need to wrest back control of territory held by Islamist militants whose involvement in the conflict gives Bashar al-Assad a pretext for more violence, French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday.
Radical Islamist groups such as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have joined in fighting against the Syrian president's forces in the conflict which has killed more than 90,000 people and displaced millions.
"The opposition needs to win back control of these areas ... ????????they have fallen into the hands of extremists," Hollande told a news conference in the Qatari capital Doha.
"If it seems that extremist groups are present and tomorrow they could be the beneficiaries of a chaotic situation, it will be Bashar al-Assad who will seize on this pretext to continue the massacre."
The French president was in Doha for a meeting of 11 Western and Arab countries, known as the "Friends of Syria", over the two-year-old Syrian conflict.
The countries agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to the rebels, channeled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council, a move that Washington and its European allies hope will prevent weapons falling into the hands of Islamist radicals.
Hollande said the countries still needed to work out how to supply arms to the Syrian opposition and that deliveries were conditional on the rebels organizing politically and militarily.
"We cannot imagine delivering weapons to groups which could use them to the detriment of interests of a democratic Syria or eventually against us," he said.
The aim, he said, was to assert military pressure on Assad, because doing nothing would benefit "Assad on the one hand and the most radical elements on the other ... We refuse that."
He also called on Iran's new President Hassan Rohani to use his influence to help the Syrian situation.
"Elections have taken place in Iran, (there is) a new president. It's up to him to show he can maybe be useful, that he can also exert pressure on Bashar al-Assad to find a solution."
The United Nations said on Sunday it had so far raised 33 percent of the $5 billion of humanitarian aid it was seeking to help the Syrian people.
"The United Nations is trying its best to help the Syrian refugees to help the Syrian refugees but a political solution is the way out of this crisis," Panos Mounties, regional coordinator of the U.N. refugee agency, said after a meeting with the Arab League in Cairo.
(Additional reporting by Aymin Samier in Cairo; Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Robin Pomeroy)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/france-says-syrian-rebels-wrest-areas-radicals-144603165.html
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By Ali Hashisho
SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese soldiers stormed a complex holding gunmen loyal to a radical Islamist cleric in the city of Sidon on Monday and arrested dozens of his supporters, security sources said, in a second day of clashes fuelled by neighboring Syria's civil war.
The fighting is the deadliest outbreak in Lebanon since Syria's two-year conflict began. The army said 12 soldiers were killed in the southern Mediterranean port city, while security sources gave a higher army toll of 18 dead and 128 wounded.
A medic told Reuters that 22 bodies had been pulled from the mosque complex but he expected the final death count to be higher. He said 94 wounded had been treated by the Red Cross.
The violence has strained fragile sectarian relations across Lebanon and residents fear that Syria-related clashes could drag their country back into civil war. Lebanon is still struggling to heal the wounds of 15 years of war between 1975 and 1990.
Fighting spread to a second city on Monday, with Sunni fighters in the northern city of Tripoli opening fire on the military and blocking roads with cement blocks and burning tires. By nightfall, clashes there had injured two soldiers and three gunmen.
Hardline Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir, who has accused the army of backing the interests of the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, was still at large after the battle in Sidon.
The army is trying to kill or capture him, accusing him of killing soldiers "in cold blood" on Sunday.
Security forces were taking over houses around the mosque as they tried to control the area in Sidon. Clouds of smoke rose from the mosque and Assir's office across the road was completely destroyed. At least four tanks and several army vehicles at the scene had been torched.
Sniper fire continued to hit nearby streets, so it was unclear how many buildings Assir's gunmen still controlled.
Sidon had been on edge since violence erupted last week between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim fighters, at odds over the Syrian conflict which pits mainly Sunni rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, who is a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
Tensions had been rising since the Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah sent fighters into Syria to help Assad's forces recapture a strategic town.
The army said clashes broke out on Sunday after security forces detained one of Assir's followers. His supporters retaliated by opening fire on an army checkpoint.
Army commanders pledged to crush Assir's forces.
"We affirm to all Lebanese that the army is determined to eradicate strife, and will not halt its military operations until security is completely restored to the city," the army said in a statement on Monday.
At least 62 Assir supporters were arrested as soldiers combed the area they had seized, a security source said. One of the men captured had disguised himself in niqab, the head-to-foot cloak worn by religious Muslim women.
The commissioner of Lebanon's military court, Judge Sakr Sakr, said that Assir had been summoned "to be put on trial, along with 123 of his followers, including his brother and Fadil Shaker," a prominent Lebanese singer who abandoned his career to join Assir's ultraconservative group.
"SAVE YOUR PEOPLE"
"Come and save your people who are being massacred," said an appeal on Assir's Twitter account on Monday.
The bespectacled sheikh with a long grey beard was little known before the Syria conflict but quickly rose to fame for his protests and marches in support of the rebels and Islamist groups in Syria.
Media took note when he made a brief visit to the besieged Syrian border town of Qusair, where Hezbollah led Assad's forces to victory this month.
The cleric and his followers have grown increasingly hostile in their condemnations of Hezbollah and its Shi'ite supporters, and skirmishes in Sidon were becoming more common.
Assir, who accuses the army of giving cover to Hezbollah gunmen, called in a YouTube video for people across the country to join him and "honorable" soldiers to defect. He was pictured carrying a gun, in a black military-style vest.
A statement by the military command on Sunday said the latest violence "has gone beyond all expectations. The army was attacked in cold blood in an attempt to light the fuse in Sidon, just as was done in 1975", it said.
Assir has a small group of staunch supporters, believed to number in the hundreds. Many other Lebanese Sunnis see him as a militant and trouble maker.
Lebanon's Grand Mufti Mohammad Rashid Qabbani condemned the fighting, saying that there was never a justified reason to attack the armed forces.
However, local media reported that some hardline Sunni mosques in Tripoli as well as the capital Beirut called for jihad, or holy war, in support of Assir. Jihadi feeds on Twitter were full of calls for Sunnis to fight in support of him.
(Additional reporting by Issam Abdallah in Sidon, Erika Solomon and Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Writing by Erika Solomon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lebanese-army-storms-islamist-mosque-syria-crisis-spreads-154137481.html
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed a hotel in a remote part of northern Pakistan on Sunday and killed nine foreign tourists and a Pakistani guide near the foot of one of the world's tallest mountains, police and security officials said.
Five Ukrainians, three Chinese, a Russian and their guide were killed in the attack in a remote resort area near the base camp for the 8,125-metre snow-covered Nanga Parbat peak, a popular destination for adventurous trekkers, officials said.
"Unknown people entered a hotel where foreign tourists were staying last night and opened fire," Ali Sher, a senior police officer in Gilgit-Baltistan province, told Reuters.
Sher had earlier said 10 foreign tourists were killed, but officials revised the tally as fresh reports arrived from the area.
A Pakistani militant group known as Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack.
"These foreigners are our enemies and we proudly claim responsibility for killing them and will continue such attacks in the future as well," Jundullah spokesman Ahmed Marwat told Reuters by telephone.
The same group has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on members of Pakistan's Shi'ite Muslim minority, known as Shias, in northern Pakistan, including an ambush in February 2012 when gunmen shot 18 bus passengers by the roadside.
The gunmen fled after the attack on the hotel, which took place at about 1 a.m. on Sunday, Sher said.
A senior government official said a large number of security personnel had been sent to the area.
"Since the area is very remote with no roads or transport, the bodies will have to be retrieved by helicopter," the official said.
Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Kashmir, had been considered one of the more secure areas of Pakistan, but has witnessed a spate of attacks by militants targeting members of Pakistan's Shi'ite minority in recent years.
It was the first time foreign tourists had been attacked in the province, which is famous for its natural beauty.
Pakistan receives few foreign tourists, but a trickle of visitors is tempted by the spectacular mountain scenery in its northern areas, where the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya mountain ranges converge.
(Reporting By Jibran Ahmad; Writing by Matthew Green; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gunmen-kill-10-foreign-tourists-northern-pakistan-police-041053224.html
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Not particularly glamorous, but essential to some. Alongside our first hands on with the new Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini at the Premiere 2013 event in London, the range of official cases was also on display. Like the Galaxy S4, the Mini has plenty of choice in color and style, and even has its own version of the 'S View' flip case. Click on past the break for a few more snaps.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/WvqzhR2fazg/story01.htm
By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has filed espionage charges against Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who admitted revealing secret surveillance programs to media outlets, according to a court document made public on Friday.
The charges are the government's first step in what could be a long legal battle to return Snowden from Hong Kong, where he is believed to be in hiding, and try him in a U.S. court. A Hong Kong newspaper said he was under police protection, but the territory's authorities declined to comment.
Snowden was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, said the criminal complaint, which was dated June 14.
The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of fines and up to 10 years in prison.
A single page of the complaint was unsealed on Friday. An accompanying affidavit remained under seal.
Two U.S. sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was preparing to seek Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, which is part of China but has wide-ranging autonomy, including an independent judiciary.
The Washington Post, which first reported the criminal complaint earlier on Friday, said the United States had asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.
Hong Kong's Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted police sources as saying that anti-terrorism officers had contacted Snowden, arranged a safe house for him and provided protection. However, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said Snowden was not in police protection but was in a "safe place" in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang declined to comment other than to say Hong Kong would deal with the case in accordance with the law.
Snowden earlier this month admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, creating a public uproar. Supporters say he is a whistleblower, while critics call him a criminal and perhaps even a traitor.
He disclosed documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts to the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.
On Saturday, Hong Kong's SCMP said Snowden had divulged information to the newspaper showing how computers in Hong Kong and China had been targeted.
The SCMP said documents and statements by Snowden show the NSA program had hacked major Chinese telecoms companies to access text messages, attacked China's top Tsinghua University, and hacked the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which has an extensive fiber optic submarine network.
The criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located.
That judicial district has seen a number of high-profile prosecutions, including the spy case against former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui. Both were convicted.
'ACTIVE EXTRADITION RELATIONSHIP'
Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.
President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.
U.S. federal prosecutors, by filing a criminal complaint, lay claim to a legal basis to make an extradition request of the authorities in Hong Kong, the Post reported. The prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment and can then take steps to secure Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong for a criminal trial in the United States, the newspaper reported.
The United States and Hong Kong have "excellent cooperation" and as a result of agreements, "there is an active extradition relationship between Hong Kong and the United States," a U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters.
Since the United States and Hong Kong signed an extradition treaty in 1998, scores of Americans have been sent back home to face trial. However, the process can take years, lawyers say.
Under Hong Kong's extradition process, a request would first go to Hong Kong's chief executive. A magistrate would issue a formal warrant for Snowden's arrest if the chief executive agrees the case should proceed.
Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the first charge of theft against Snowden might find an equivalent charge in Hong Kong, needed to allow extradition proceedings to move forward, but the unauthorized communication and willful communication charges may be sticking points that lead to litigation and dispute in the courts.
What ever the Hong Kong courts decide could be vetoed by the territory's leader or Beijing on foreign affairs or defense grounds.
An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland's government would grant asylum.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.
(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in HONG KONG; Editing by Warren Strobel, Peter Cooney and Neil Fullick)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-files-espionage-charges-against-snowden-over-leaks-015108216.html
REUTERS/Pascal Lauener Tim Berners-Lee, director of World Wide Web Foundation, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 25, 2013. 
The inventor of the World Wide Web said the internet is facing a ?major? threat from ?people who want to control it on the sly? through ?worrying laws? such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants.
?If you can control [the internet], if you can start tweaking what people say, or intercepting communications, it's very, very powerful...it's the sort of power that if you give it to a corrupt government, you give them the ability to stay in power forever.?
Sir Tim was speaking as it emerged that the US government has been collecting huge amounts of personal information from Google, Facebook, Apple and other internet companies.
There have also been reports that British spies have been gathering intelligence from the internet giants "through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency"
?Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society,? Sir Tim said. ?I call on all web users to demand better legal protection and due process safeguards for the privacy of their online communications, including their right to be informed when someone requests or stores their data.
?Over the last two decades, the web has become an integral part of our lives. A trace of our use of it can reveal very intimate personal things. A store of this information about each person is a huge liability: Whom would you trust to decide when to access it, or even to keep it secure??
Sir Tim added that a ?wake up call? had been delivered when former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak cut off communications services during the uprising that ousted him.
?A lot of people thought the internet was like the air, it just flows. [After this] people asked, 'who could turn off my internet'??
Sir Tim said "companies and governments in different places all over the world trying to take control of the internet in different ways" is a much bigger threat to its development than fears over any one company having an online monopoly.
"If you remember [web browser] Netscape, people thought, oh the web is great but here's a completely controlling web company, what are we going to do? Then one morning they weren't worried about Netscape any more, it was Microsoft. Then suddenly, wait a moment the browser wasn't the issue, it was the search engine. Then, it's wait a moment, it's the social network.
"If you look at it broadly, yes a monopoly slows innovation, reduces competition. That's why it's important this is an open platform. But monopolies come and go all the time."
Sir Tim called for governments to protect the neutrality and independence of the web and compared its democratic importance to the freedom of the press.
He said "organisations that keep the internet running" should be "connected to government but at arms length. That's really important and as years have gone by that's got more and more important. Once you have an open internet, with an open world wide web on top of it, I'm very optimistic".
Sir Tim was speaking in Monte Carlo at the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year competition. He likened the determination he needed when developing the web to the single mindedness exhibited by successful entrepreneurs.
?With the web, it was a paradigm shift. It's a well used phrased but it means that afterwards the world is so different, there weren't the words in the old word to describe the new world. People didn't understand clicks and links and web pages ? we didn't have words.
?You just need to stick with it and work with a few people with in a twinkle in their eye because they get it. Some people will respond with excitement ? not everybody, maybe three in three hundred will get it. The web took off because a few people around the world had the twinkle in their eye and said they could understand what it would be like if all the information in the world was [online].?
He added that while about "25pc of the world" now uses the web, "a massive gap" remains. "There are number of languages where there isn't a lot of stuff on the web, and a lot of culture that isn't represented. A lot of countries haven't got the backbone for a good internet-based democracy.
"The change for the world will be massive when we go from only 20pc of the world having it to 80pc of the world. It is going to be a wonderful explosion in culture and participation and I hope that people of different cultures use it to understand each other as a result."
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/berners-lee-forces-are-trying-to-take-control-of-the-internet-2013-6
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Gabriel Weinberg is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, a search engine that does not track users' history and information. Photo by Sean Simmers/the Washington Post/Getty Images
Revelations about governments' online snooping have been good news for Gabriel Weinberg, founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo?a search engine that doesn't track its users. He has degrees in physics and in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wendy M. Grossman: What made you set up DuckDuckGo?
Gabriel Weinberg: I started it a little over five years ago, just intending to build a better search engine. My initial focus was to reduce spam and prevent irrelevant sites from coming up in links, and also to make better instant answers. A lot of times you want stuff from Wikipedia, so that was the first place I tried to give you an answer from. After I launched, I started getting questions about search privacy. When I investigated, I decided I didn't want to store data.
WG: Why didn't you want to track your users?
GW: Google has been pretty transparent about handing over data to law enforcement, to their credit. I thought that would be inevitable if we store data. Also, it's just kind of creepy for the search engine to know so much about you. You have your most personal relationship on the Internet with the search engine?medical queries, where you're going, all tied back to one person. That's the case even more now; infrastructure in tracking people online has exploded in the last five years.
WG: Internet companies make money by selling user data to advertisers. How do you make a profit if you don't collect data?
GW: It's a myth that Google needs to track users to make money on Web search. The vast majority?99 percent?of the money in Web search is based on keyword matching. If you type in "car," you get a car ad. We make money the same way.
WG: Who uses your search engine?
GW: Different people prefer different experiences and user interfaces. Google is trying to appeal to the average user?we are trying to carve out a niche for the serious person who knows what they're doing and wants their privacy protected and a great result. We have servers around the world, and we can see how much traffic is coming in from which areas, so we know our users are about 50 percent United States, 50 percent international. We also do surveys, which show that about half our users come in after reading about us in the press. It varies what the story was about?privacy, instant answers, or just, "Check this out, it's cool." The rest find out about us through word of mouth.
WG: Are you still improving the search engine?
GW: We are focusing more on instant answers. When you do a search, the answer often exists on a particular site. The big ones are obvious: Movies are IMDB, for restaurants you might want Yelp. But when you get into more obscure queries, you really don't know what that site is. It's our job to figure that out and give you an answer quickly. That requires two things: classification and plug-ins to give you the data in the right format. We are recruiting open source developers to make those plug-ins.
WG: Have the revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring program affected your traffic?
GW: We were close to 2 million queries a day before the NSA story broke. Since then, traffic has passed 3 million. We've broken records.
This article originally appeared in New Scientist.
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