SYDNEY — East coast Australia's water torture worsened Monday with the city of Rockhampton completely cut off by floodwaters two days before the swollen Fitzroy River was expected to reach its peak.
"The highway is cut at Rockhampton," Queensland state premier Anna Bligh said. "Rockhampton is now completely stranded — a town of 75,000 people — no airport, road or rail."
Mayor Rod Carter assured residents that the Defence Force had ferried in enough food, drinking water and medical supplies for an emergency that could carry into next week.
Col. Luke Foster, in charge of the airlift, said Hercules transport planes had brought in enough supplies before the last road link, the Bruce Highway, was severed.
"We'll continue to monitor the circumstances as they emerge and as they change," Foster said, promising that seven helicopters would be stationed in Rockhampton.
Queensland is reeling from the worst flooding in the state in 50 years, with 22 towns besieged by water and 200,000 people affected.
A man died when his car was swept off a causeway, the third death since Christmas put down to a flood crisis that extends over an area the size of France and Germany combined.
The rising waters knocked out Rockhampton's airport on Saturday and Carter said "we expect to have our airport closed for the best part of three weeks."
The Fitzroy River is projected to peak on Wednesday.
"Many Rockhampton residents will recall the devastating floods of 1991 and 1954," Bligh said. "These river peaks are at those historical levels and unfortunately it'll be a long time before this massive amount of water recedes."
She said 150 houses had been inundated and 1,000 more had water lapping up to their steps. If flood projections are correct, 400 houses could have water above their floorboards before the floodwaters sluice out into the Pacific Ocean.
Bligh has come under fire for flying to Sydney to spend New Year's Eve watching the firework display just hours after telling Queenslanders that the state she runs was facing one of the worst natural disasters in Australia's history.
Carter urged residents who worried their houses would flood to go to the evacuation centers or to move in with family or friends whose houses were on higher ground.
"If the police tap you on the shoulder and tell you you have to shift, that's a lawful direction," the mayor said. "We're doing that as compassionately as we can, but once that direction is given, there's no turning back _ you have to evacuate your home."
Bligh conceded that the ramifications of having an area the size of France and Germany under water would spread beyond Australia's borders.
"There's likely to be a significant long-term effect of that and not only nationally but internationally," she said.
Queensland coal fields produce half the world's supply of coal for making steel and three-quarters of them are stalled by the floods.
Macquarie Group, Australia's biggest investment bank, warned that the spot price for metallurgical coal would likely rise to $300 a ton from $246.
"There is a strong chance that 2011 could prove worse than 2008 when 7-8 million tons of metallurgical coal were lost due to flooding in Queensland," Macquarie said in a statement.
from http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Australian+city+floodwaters/4054153/story.html
Monday, January 3, 2011
User fury as iPhone alarms fail again
IN AN eerie, if far less serious, parallel to the Y2K millennium bug that set hearts racing a decade ago, iPhone users in Asia, parts of Europe, Australia and New Zealand overslept yesterday after their phone alarms malfunctioned on the first working day of 2011, despite Apple’s reassurances that built-in clocks would work as normal.
The online world was abuzz with irritated messages as people blogged, tweeted and posted Facebook messages about how they were two hours late for work or missed flights because of the third successive day of failure on the iPhone’s built-in alarm.
“I was a victim of the iPhone alarm glitch this morning. I have never gotten ready for work so fast in my life,” tweeted jkless. The problem also appeared to affect alarms on other Apple products such as the iPod and iTouch music player.
After the problem arose on New Year’s Day, Apple said the phones would function properly again on January 3rd, but many wished they had relied on the old-fashioned alarm clock instead. The problem did not affect recurring alarms.
There have been glitches like this before. The iPhone alarm system failed to recognise changes in daylight savings time in 2010, causing some users to sleep in an hour longer. And Apple had to deal with publicity problems in July when shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4, the most recent model, there were reports of bad phone reception.
It didn’t seem to hurt sales – Apple sold more than 14 million iPhones in the year to the end of September, and the phone is now the world’s No 2 smartphone brand behind global leader Nokia.
Of course, the alarm glitch may prompt some malingerers to try to extend the Christmas break.
ChrisWBates tweeted: “Wonder how many people are going to use ‘my iPhone alarm didn’t go off’ as an excuse to not go in tomorrow after new year’s break.” And as another online wag commented: “Haven’t you all heard of an alarm clock?”
from http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0104/1224286701596.html
The online world was abuzz with irritated messages as people blogged, tweeted and posted Facebook messages about how they were two hours late for work or missed flights because of the third successive day of failure on the iPhone’s built-in alarm.
“I was a victim of the iPhone alarm glitch this morning. I have never gotten ready for work so fast in my life,” tweeted jkless. The problem also appeared to affect alarms on other Apple products such as the iPod and iTouch music player.
After the problem arose on New Year’s Day, Apple said the phones would function properly again on January 3rd, but many wished they had relied on the old-fashioned alarm clock instead. The problem did not affect recurring alarms.
There have been glitches like this before. The iPhone alarm system failed to recognise changes in daylight savings time in 2010, causing some users to sleep in an hour longer. And Apple had to deal with publicity problems in July when shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4, the most recent model, there were reports of bad phone reception.
It didn’t seem to hurt sales – Apple sold more than 14 million iPhones in the year to the end of September, and the phone is now the world’s No 2 smartphone brand behind global leader Nokia.
Of course, the alarm glitch may prompt some malingerers to try to extend the Christmas break.
ChrisWBates tweeted: “Wonder how many people are going to use ‘my iPhone alarm didn’t go off’ as an excuse to not go in tomorrow after new year’s break.” And as another online wag commented: “Haven’t you all heard of an alarm clock?”
from http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0104/1224286701596.html
Monday, December 27, 2010
Russia finds Khodorkovsky guilty in second trial
MOSCOW - A Moscow court on Monday found tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty in his second fraud trial, provoking condemnation from the West over a case seen as an indicator of Russia's political future.
Khodorkovsky and co-accused Platon Lebedev were convicted of embezzlement and money laundering, said judge Viktor Danilkin, dashing the hopes of Russian liberals that the trial would show a new approach from Russian courts.
The United States led some stinging Western reaction, with the White House saying it was "deeply concerned" about the "selective application of justice". Germany called it a step backward for Russia.
The pair were charged with embezzling 218 million tonnes of oil from Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil giant between 1998 and 2003 and laundering 487 billion rubles (16 billion dollars) and 7.5 billion dollars received from the oil.
"This is an unjust verdict by a court that is not free," Khodorkovsky's lead lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant told journalists. "It is shameful for the country. We will appeal the verdict." Amid chaotic scenes, only a handful of reporters were allowed into the courtroom for the verdict and judge Danilkin then requested even those journalists to leave as the rest of the verdict was read out.
"The court has established that M. Khodorkovsky and P. Lebedev committed embezzlement acting in collusion with a group of people and using their professional positions," said Danilkin in the judgement. Both reacted impassively to the judgement in the glass-fronted defendants' cage in the packed courtroom, Khodorkovsky leafing through papers and looking into the air while Lebedev appeared to be reading a book.
Hundreds of supporters gathered outside the court shouted "Russia without Putin" and "Down with the police state". An AFP correspondent saw police arrest 20 people. The court adjourned Monday evening until 0700 GMT Tuesday and it was not clear when the final sentence would be delivered.
Once the country's richest man and now its most prominent prisoner, Khodorkovsky, 47, is already serving an eight-year sentence for fraud on charges that his supporters insist were trumped up by the authorities. But with his release scheduled for 2011, Khodorkovsky was put on trial last year on charges of money laundering and embezzlement that could see the head of the now-defunct Yukos oil giant stay in jail until 2017.
The verdict was watched as a possible indicator of Russia's future direction under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, amid speculation that Putin is planning a return to the Kremlin in 2012 polls. Liberals had hoped an acquittal would send a signal to the West that Russia was serious about reform and demonstrate the independence of its judiciary.
"The judge would have had to have been a hero to have given an acquittal verdict," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia's best known rights defenders, told the Interfax news agency.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, travelling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said the US was "troubled by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends."
The "apparent selective application of the law to these individuals undermines Russia's reputation as a country committed to deepening the rule of law," he added.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that "the way the trial has been conducted is extremely dubious and a step backward on the road toward a modernisation of the country."
In a more subdued reaction, Britain said it would stress to Russia that the law should be applied in a "non-discriminatory and proportional way". European Parliament head Jerzy Buzek said Khodorkovsky's case "has become an emblematic symbol of the systemic problems of the rule of law, legal nihilism and human rights in today's Russia."
Amnesty International called on the Moscow courts to overturn the conviction "on the grounds that his trial was unfair and appeared politically motivated."
Moscow's Khamovnichesky court had postponed the verdict from its original date of December 15, without explaining why.
The next day Putin compared Khodorkovsky to US fraudster Bernard Madoff, jailed for 150 years, and observed that a "thief must be in prison". The pursuit of Khodorkovsky has been the most controversial legal action of the post-Soviet era in Russia.
Like many other billionaires, Khodorkovsky made his fortune in controversial loans-for-shares privatisation in the 1990s but his supporters say he turned Yukos into Russia's most transparent company.
from http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20101228-255149.html
Khodorkovsky and co-accused Platon Lebedev were convicted of embezzlement and money laundering, said judge Viktor Danilkin, dashing the hopes of Russian liberals that the trial would show a new approach from Russian courts.
The United States led some stinging Western reaction, with the White House saying it was "deeply concerned" about the "selective application of justice". Germany called it a step backward for Russia.
The pair were charged with embezzling 218 million tonnes of oil from Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil giant between 1998 and 2003 and laundering 487 billion rubles (16 billion dollars) and 7.5 billion dollars received from the oil.
"This is an unjust verdict by a court that is not free," Khodorkovsky's lead lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant told journalists. "It is shameful for the country. We will appeal the verdict." Amid chaotic scenes, only a handful of reporters were allowed into the courtroom for the verdict and judge Danilkin then requested even those journalists to leave as the rest of the verdict was read out.
"The court has established that M. Khodorkovsky and P. Lebedev committed embezzlement acting in collusion with a group of people and using their professional positions," said Danilkin in the judgement. Both reacted impassively to the judgement in the glass-fronted defendants' cage in the packed courtroom, Khodorkovsky leafing through papers and looking into the air while Lebedev appeared to be reading a book.
Hundreds of supporters gathered outside the court shouted "Russia without Putin" and "Down with the police state". An AFP correspondent saw police arrest 20 people. The court adjourned Monday evening until 0700 GMT Tuesday and it was not clear when the final sentence would be delivered.
Once the country's richest man and now its most prominent prisoner, Khodorkovsky, 47, is already serving an eight-year sentence for fraud on charges that his supporters insist were trumped up by the authorities. But with his release scheduled for 2011, Khodorkovsky was put on trial last year on charges of money laundering and embezzlement that could see the head of the now-defunct Yukos oil giant stay in jail until 2017.
The verdict was watched as a possible indicator of Russia's future direction under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, amid speculation that Putin is planning a return to the Kremlin in 2012 polls. Liberals had hoped an acquittal would send a signal to the West that Russia was serious about reform and demonstrate the independence of its judiciary.
"The judge would have had to have been a hero to have given an acquittal verdict," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia's best known rights defenders, told the Interfax news agency.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, travelling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said the US was "troubled by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends."
The "apparent selective application of the law to these individuals undermines Russia's reputation as a country committed to deepening the rule of law," he added.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that "the way the trial has been conducted is extremely dubious and a step backward on the road toward a modernisation of the country."
In a more subdued reaction, Britain said it would stress to Russia that the law should be applied in a "non-discriminatory and proportional way". European Parliament head Jerzy Buzek said Khodorkovsky's case "has become an emblematic symbol of the systemic problems of the rule of law, legal nihilism and human rights in today's Russia."
Amnesty International called on the Moscow courts to overturn the conviction "on the grounds that his trial was unfair and appeared politically motivated."
Moscow's Khamovnichesky court had postponed the verdict from its original date of December 15, without explaining why.
The next day Putin compared Khodorkovsky to US fraudster Bernard Madoff, jailed for 150 years, and observed that a "thief must be in prison". The pursuit of Khodorkovsky has been the most controversial legal action of the post-Soviet era in Russia.
Like many other billionaires, Khodorkovsky made his fortune in controversial loans-for-shares privatisation in the 1990s but his supporters say he turned Yukos into Russia's most transparent company.
from http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20101228-255149.html
What Facebook Can Give Back To The Web
In Time’s Person of the Year 2010 article on Mark Zuckerberg, one fact shouts out to me above all others: 1 in 4 Web pages in the United States is now viewed behind the walls of Facebook.
I enjoy Facebook and would be happy spending a quarter of my Web life there, if I could leave Facebook for the other 75%. But even if I log out completely, most of the Web’s most popular sites are tied to Facebook, through Share or Like or Connect buttons. Facebook is not just another Web site: it is a service that “Facebookizes” every Web site it touches, making me bring all of my friends with me, like luggage. It’s disconcerting being on a Web site that I’m used to browsing anonymously, and seeing my friends’ faces there. And so I have a holiday wish: Facebook, let me dance if I want to, let me leave my friends behind.
For the last twenty years, we’ve enjoyed One Web that is united through the common policy of letting us be whoever we want to be, wherever we go. One Web allows us at times to be cooler than we are in real life, aspirational, anonymous, and/or fanatical about a particular subject. And that is why the Web is wonderful.
Over the last five years, Facebook added a new hat to the One Web haberdashery, by giving us the ability to be a person who is a friend online with the people we have known in real life (as well as people we’ve never met). In 2010 Facebook added Instant Personalization, with the explicit goal of letting us be our Facebook selves everywhere. But in so doing, we have lost the On/Off button: I love being my Facebook self some places, but how do I turn it off on-the-fly?
This presents an opportunity for Facebook to give back to the Web: please let us take off our Facebook hats whenever we want by replacing the Connect button with an On/Off button that lets us see clearly whether we are being Facebookized on any given page of the Web.
One Web is as old as the Web itself: The 1993 New Yorker joke was that on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog. But now you can’t go anywhere without people knowing your pedigree, where you went to obedience school, and the status of your latest puppy love.
What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, I don’t know how you roll… but I personally spend a lot of my time on the Internet doing things that I’m not ashamed of in principle, but don’t want broadcast to my mom, former schoolmates, and coworkers. Mostly I’d just bore them to tears because almost nobody I know gives a rat’s ass about my obsessive love of Logan Couture of the San Jose Sharks, Showtime TV shows like LOOK, or photos of panda babies. But also… I admit that I waste a lot of time on the Web when I “should” be doing other things. If you put together all the time I’ve spent just looking up song lyrics, watching videos of kittens, and studying cupcake recipes—all perfectly innocent and life-affirming activities, I might add—some small-minded people might think badly of me.
So imagine that every time you looked at any Web page, Facebook could tell all your friends what you were looking at in real time. Would you be OK with that? From a technical point of view, Facebook could do it right now. They have the data from a large percentage of the top websites; they just aren’t exposing it yet. When we talk about the benefits of anonymity, for the average person it amounts to their boss not knowing how much time they’re spending on fantasy football or shoe shopping at work. (Vibram Five Fingers for the win!)
In Facebook’s march to a billion users by 2012, Facebook seems to be everywhere we Web users want to be. Someday soon more than half our Web page views could be on the Facebook-Enhanced Web (FEW) instead of the rest of the World-Wide Web (WWW) that Tim Berners-Lee gave to the world so we could roam it freely like pandas in the bamboo forest.
Remember, the WWW consists of millions of websites, of which Facebook is now the world’s third biggest by unique users. However, if we measure by Web page views, Facebook is bigger than the next 99 websites combined, so the FEW is already huge.
We the Web users have chosen the FEW over the WWW for what seem like good reasons: Facebook promises us a spam-free, porn-free, crime-free world where we can do everything with people we know in real life. Who wouldn’t want that?
Proponents of a stable Web, for one. Facebook has spread its seed all over the Web now—with Facebook Connect and Share and Like buttons everywhere—so much that when Facebook goes down, the Web goes down. Facebook has bequeathed the WWW a single point of failure.
Note that Facebook did this without being closed: they have APIs, and buttons, and export mechanisms. They’re not closed; they’ve just redefined open. I’ve made my peace with the idea that Facebook will be the biggest service on The Open Internet; what we all should want to avoid is a future where Facebook is the Web. That would be as lame as spending eternity in a 1971 Ford Pinto with all of your friends.
Reliability issues aside, there’s a deeper principle at stake here. Facebook has divided the Web into two: the Web with Facebook (your friends), and the Web without Facebook (people cooler than your friends). Our friends are who we are interested in, but they are not what we are interested in.
All the time we spend looking at repetitive posts and photos from people we already know, could be spent instead on the Web meeting new people who are interested in the same things we are. In other words, making cooler friends. Ambient Findability, as I like to call it, means that what (and who!) we find changes who (and what!) we become. Enabling that is what has always made the Web great.
So, in the spirit of One Web and Ambient Findability, I’m asking Facebook on behalf of all Web citizens to give us the benefits of being able to just look at things online without being tracked by you. Give us the option to treat Facebook like every other part of the Web, whenever we want, and I assure you it will benefit us all.
Give us an easy one-click way to truly and totally disconnect from Facebook Connect whenever we want. I’ll still spend just as much time on Facebook, I promise! But now I won’t have to see my friends’ faces every time I look up a restaurant review on Yelp, read the news on the New York Times, or wait for external modules to load on TechCrunch. It’s just an option, and an option confers value… I’m sure the vast majority of users love Facebook Connect and will continue to use it. But having the option to return the rest of One Web to its pre-Facebook status—useful but not fundamentally social—would be the best gift that Zuck could give back to the Web.
from http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/25/facebook-web/
I enjoy Facebook and would be happy spending a quarter of my Web life there, if I could leave Facebook for the other 75%. But even if I log out completely, most of the Web’s most popular sites are tied to Facebook, through Share or Like or Connect buttons. Facebook is not just another Web site: it is a service that “Facebookizes” every Web site it touches, making me bring all of my friends with me, like luggage. It’s disconcerting being on a Web site that I’m used to browsing anonymously, and seeing my friends’ faces there. And so I have a holiday wish: Facebook, let me dance if I want to, let me leave my friends behind.
For the last twenty years, we’ve enjoyed One Web that is united through the common policy of letting us be whoever we want to be, wherever we go. One Web allows us at times to be cooler than we are in real life, aspirational, anonymous, and/or fanatical about a particular subject. And that is why the Web is wonderful.
Over the last five years, Facebook added a new hat to the One Web haberdashery, by giving us the ability to be a person who is a friend online with the people we have known in real life (as well as people we’ve never met). In 2010 Facebook added Instant Personalization, with the explicit goal of letting us be our Facebook selves everywhere. But in so doing, we have lost the On/Off button: I love being my Facebook self some places, but how do I turn it off on-the-fly?
This presents an opportunity for Facebook to give back to the Web: please let us take off our Facebook hats whenever we want by replacing the Connect button with an On/Off button that lets us see clearly whether we are being Facebookized on any given page of the Web.
One Web is as old as the Web itself: The 1993 New Yorker joke was that on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog. But now you can’t go anywhere without people knowing your pedigree, where you went to obedience school, and the status of your latest puppy love.
What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, I don’t know how you roll… but I personally spend a lot of my time on the Internet doing things that I’m not ashamed of in principle, but don’t want broadcast to my mom, former schoolmates, and coworkers. Mostly I’d just bore them to tears because almost nobody I know gives a rat’s ass about my obsessive love of Logan Couture of the San Jose Sharks, Showtime TV shows like LOOK, or photos of panda babies. But also… I admit that I waste a lot of time on the Web when I “should” be doing other things. If you put together all the time I’ve spent just looking up song lyrics, watching videos of kittens, and studying cupcake recipes—all perfectly innocent and life-affirming activities, I might add—some small-minded people might think badly of me.
So imagine that every time you looked at any Web page, Facebook could tell all your friends what you were looking at in real time. Would you be OK with that? From a technical point of view, Facebook could do it right now. They have the data from a large percentage of the top websites; they just aren’t exposing it yet. When we talk about the benefits of anonymity, for the average person it amounts to their boss not knowing how much time they’re spending on fantasy football or shoe shopping at work. (Vibram Five Fingers for the win!)
In Facebook’s march to a billion users by 2012, Facebook seems to be everywhere we Web users want to be. Someday soon more than half our Web page views could be on the Facebook-Enhanced Web (FEW) instead of the rest of the World-Wide Web (WWW) that Tim Berners-Lee gave to the world so we could roam it freely like pandas in the bamboo forest.
Remember, the WWW consists of millions of websites, of which Facebook is now the world’s third biggest by unique users. However, if we measure by Web page views, Facebook is bigger than the next 99 websites combined, so the FEW is already huge.
We the Web users have chosen the FEW over the WWW for what seem like good reasons: Facebook promises us a spam-free, porn-free, crime-free world where we can do everything with people we know in real life. Who wouldn’t want that?
Proponents of a stable Web, for one. Facebook has spread its seed all over the Web now—with Facebook Connect and Share and Like buttons everywhere—so much that when Facebook goes down, the Web goes down. Facebook has bequeathed the WWW a single point of failure.
Note that Facebook did this without being closed: they have APIs, and buttons, and export mechanisms. They’re not closed; they’ve just redefined open. I’ve made my peace with the idea that Facebook will be the biggest service on The Open Internet; what we all should want to avoid is a future where Facebook is the Web. That would be as lame as spending eternity in a 1971 Ford Pinto with all of your friends.
Reliability issues aside, there’s a deeper principle at stake here. Facebook has divided the Web into two: the Web with Facebook (your friends), and the Web without Facebook (people cooler than your friends). Our friends are who we are interested in, but they are not what we are interested in.
All the time we spend looking at repetitive posts and photos from people we already know, could be spent instead on the Web meeting new people who are interested in the same things we are. In other words, making cooler friends. Ambient Findability, as I like to call it, means that what (and who!) we find changes who (and what!) we become. Enabling that is what has always made the Web great.
So, in the spirit of One Web and Ambient Findability, I’m asking Facebook on behalf of all Web citizens to give us the benefits of being able to just look at things online without being tracked by you. Give us the option to treat Facebook like every other part of the Web, whenever we want, and I assure you it will benefit us all.
Give us an easy one-click way to truly and totally disconnect from Facebook Connect whenever we want. I’ll still spend just as much time on Facebook, I promise! But now I won’t have to see my friends’ faces every time I look up a restaurant review on Yelp, read the news on the New York Times, or wait for external modules to load on TechCrunch. It’s just an option, and an option confers value… I’m sure the vast majority of users love Facebook Connect and will continue to use it. But having the option to return the rest of One Web to its pre-Facebook status—useful but not fundamentally social—would be the best gift that Zuck could give back to the Web.
from http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/25/facebook-web/
Assange memoir to give full details of WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's new memoir will give a full account of his life and the secretive group that has leaked large amounts of documents, US publisher Alfred A Knopf said on Monday.
Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards said Assange and the publishing house reached a deal for his autobiography "just before the holiday" and that a manuscript was expected to be delivered in 2011.
Assange told The Sunday Times newspaper in Britain that he agreed to book deals due to financial pressures from legal issues.
The deals would bring in USD 800,000 from Knopf and another 325,000 pounds (USD 500,000) from British publisher Canongate, both part of the Random House stable owned by Bertelsmann AG.
"I don't want to write this book, but I have to," Assange told the Times, citing a growing legal bill that has reached more than 200,000 pounds (USD 308,000). "I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.
Bogaards said the book is still untitled.
"In terms of the subject matter, it will be a complete account of his life through the present including the founding of WikiLeaks and the work he has done there," said Bogaards. "We do not have a timetable for publishing the memoir as yet."
Assange, 39, is an Australian computer expert who has angered the United States by releasing secret diplomatic cables on his website and teaming up with newspapers around the globe to amplify the impact of the disclosures.
He is now on bail and living in the English countryside under house arrest as he prepares to fight extradition to Sweden, where authorities want to question him over alleged sexual offenses.
Assange's memoir would come hard on the heels of a volume from his former second-in-command Daniel Domscheit-Berg, whose "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website" is set to tell the story of the site. The book is due out from German publisher Econ Verlag in January.
from http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/assange-memoir-to-give-full-detailswikileaks_508709.html
Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards said Assange and the publishing house reached a deal for his autobiography "just before the holiday" and that a manuscript was expected to be delivered in 2011.
Assange told The Sunday Times newspaper in Britain that he agreed to book deals due to financial pressures from legal issues.
The deals would bring in USD 800,000 from Knopf and another 325,000 pounds (USD 500,000) from British publisher Canongate, both part of the Random House stable owned by Bertelsmann AG.
"I don't want to write this book, but I have to," Assange told the Times, citing a growing legal bill that has reached more than 200,000 pounds (USD 308,000). "I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.
Bogaards said the book is still untitled.
"In terms of the subject matter, it will be a complete account of his life through the present including the founding of WikiLeaks and the work he has done there," said Bogaards. "We do not have a timetable for publishing the memoir as yet."
Assange, 39, is an Australian computer expert who has angered the United States by releasing secret diplomatic cables on his website and teaming up with newspapers around the globe to amplify the impact of the disclosures.
He is now on bail and living in the English countryside under house arrest as he prepares to fight extradition to Sweden, where authorities want to question him over alleged sexual offenses.
Assange's memoir would come hard on the heels of a volume from his former second-in-command Daniel Domscheit-Berg, whose "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website" is set to tell the story of the site. The book is due out from German publisher Econ Verlag in January.
from http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/assange-memoir-to-give-full-detailswikileaks_508709.html
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Heathrow passengers land in Edmonton
Relieved passengers landed Wednesday afternoon on the first Edmonton-bound Air Canada flight to arrive from London's Heathrow Airport since snow stranded thousands of passengers on the weekend.
"I was stuck at Heathrow Airport from the 20th and then I had to take a four-hour train back to where I was from and then I finally got out today," said Rupaly Toor, who travelled home to Edmonton for her Christmas break from school.
"So yeah, it's horrible there ... it's exactly how it is on TV. There's tents outside and just people camping and it's not good."
Weather delays forced Air Canada to cancel many of its flights to and from London. The airline was able to resume its full schedule Tuesday but officials warned it might take more than a week to lear the passenger backlog.
Two incoming flights, and two outgoing flights from the Edmonton International Airport were cancelled because of the snow in London.
"It took them three days without snow to get a runway cleared. It's just ridiculous," said Howard Singleton, who flew to Edmonton to visit his brother.
Singleton was supposed to fly out of Heathrow on Monday but his flight was cancelled after the plane wasn't allowed to land.
All the worries and delays were forgotten when Diane Hill's daughter and son-in-law walked through the arrivals gate with their new baby girl.
"It feels fabulous. Christmas will be Christmas," Hill said.
from http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/12/22/edmonton-heathrow-edmonton-flight-lands.html
"I was stuck at Heathrow Airport from the 20th and then I had to take a four-hour train back to where I was from and then I finally got out today," said Rupaly Toor, who travelled home to Edmonton for her Christmas break from school.
"So yeah, it's horrible there ... it's exactly how it is on TV. There's tents outside and just people camping and it's not good."
Weather delays forced Air Canada to cancel many of its flights to and from London. The airline was able to resume its full schedule Tuesday but officials warned it might take more than a week to lear the passenger backlog.
Two incoming flights, and two outgoing flights from the Edmonton International Airport were cancelled because of the snow in London.
"It took them three days without snow to get a runway cleared. It's just ridiculous," said Howard Singleton, who flew to Edmonton to visit his brother.
Singleton was supposed to fly out of Heathrow on Monday but his flight was cancelled after the plane wasn't allowed to land.
All the worries and delays were forgotten when Diane Hill's daughter and son-in-law walked through the arrivals gate with their new baby girl.
"It feels fabulous. Christmas will be Christmas," Hill said.
from http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/12/22/edmonton-heathrow-edmonton-flight-lands.html
Canada urges UN sanctions against Gbagbo regime
Canada is threatening the Ivory Coast with sanctions, a tactic many believe could actually work to defuse the dangerous political showdown there if the United Nations could muster a global clampdown.
Right now, it's a country with two presidents. One, incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, refuses to admit he lost an election, and most of the world is demanding he cede power. The other, election winner Alassane Ouattara, is holed up in an Abidjan hotel surrounded by 800 UN peacekeepers effectively serving as his bodyguard.
Now two clocks are ticking: the speed with which the world can heap pressure on Mr. Gbagbo to leave, and the stamina of the UN to stay in, and guard Mr. Ouattara, until that happens.
The race could decide whether the country splits into civil war and has implications for UN peacekeeping, the price of chocolate, and a Canadian oil company.
It's turning into an international showdown: Mr. Gbagbo wants UN peacekeepers to leave, but the world doesn't recognize him as president. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon instead called on countries to support besieged peacekeepers, arguing the UN's legitimacy is at stake. On Wednesday, the United States said it's talking to countries, mostly in Africa, about expanding the peacekeeping mission.
How willing African countries will be to send troops is unclear, but war-weary Western nations such as Canada will be reluctant. But international sanctions, often seemingly futile, might be persuasive in the Ivory Coast.
Canada wants the UN to impose new sanctions on Mr. Gbagbo's regime, and is working with other countries, including UN Security Council members, “to determine how best to achieve the desired result of pressuring Laurent Gbagbo to cede power,” said Melissa Lantsman, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. The real hope is putting together sanctions that could cut away the domestic support Mr. Gbagbo needs to stay in power. If his funds dry up, he won't be able to pay government officials, and crucially, the army.
The election crisis is often seen as part of an intractable north-south split in the country, with Mr. Ouattara from the Muslim north, and Mr. Gbagbo from the Christian south.
But it is, according to experts, less clear cut: many Muslims live in the south, and Mr. Gbagbo doesn't have monolithic backing of Christians or others there. The country has suffered under his regime. Some think he doesn't have deep enough political support to stay if he doesn't control the levers of power by paying the salaries of civil servants and soldiers and keeping state radio and TV running.
“He would have to keep three or four of these balls in the air in order to hang on to power,” said Michael McGovern, a Yale University expert on the Ivory Coast. “The army is the key.”
The trick is to quickly fashion sanctions that could persuade backers he can't hang on.
The United States and the European Union have imposed travel bans on Mr. Gbagbo and some associates, but it's mostly symbolic. The World Bank froze loans to the country on Wednesday. A more debilitating move has been suggested: having the West African central bank, which controls the money supply in eight countries, freeze Ivory Coast accounts.
The UN Security Council can approve broad economic sanctions to freeze assets or restrict trade. That's also the easiest route for Canadian sanctions, because our laws make it easy to adopt UN measures; the law to impose unilateral sanctions has several legal tests and takes longer – and global sanctions have more impact.
Tough UN sanctions could restrict sales of the country's big cash crop, cocoa. Aside from making the price of chocolate rise, it would hit the country's economy and population hard. But one of the regime's major sources of funds now is oil. “Gbagbo has very good control of the receipts that come out of that,” Mr. McGovern said. That's where Canada, with small trade and aid ties with the Ivory Coast, has an interest at stake.
A Calgary-based oil company, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., operates the Espoir oil field in Ivoirien waters, pumping out 30,000 barrels a day, and the Ivory Coast's national oil company, PETROCI, owns a 20-per-cent stake. International sanctions to really cut off Mr. Gbagbo's flow of funds would probably have to cut the flow of oil profits, and hit a Canadian firm, too, perhaps by banning Ivoirien oil sales or the supply of equipment for operating rigs. (The company declined to comment.)
There are skeptics about whether sanctions are effective. They have to be “smart sanctions” that hit the government without devastating citizens. Governments can find illicit ways around some of them, or endure them. But in Mr. Gbagbo's case, the threat of cutting off the payroll could convince those who keep him in power that they're backing the wrong horse.
From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-urges-un-sanctions-against-gbagbo-regime/article1847913/
Right now, it's a country with two presidents. One, incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, refuses to admit he lost an election, and most of the world is demanding he cede power. The other, election winner Alassane Ouattara, is holed up in an Abidjan hotel surrounded by 800 UN peacekeepers effectively serving as his bodyguard.
Now two clocks are ticking: the speed with which the world can heap pressure on Mr. Gbagbo to leave, and the stamina of the UN to stay in, and guard Mr. Ouattara, until that happens.
The race could decide whether the country splits into civil war and has implications for UN peacekeeping, the price of chocolate, and a Canadian oil company.
It's turning into an international showdown: Mr. Gbagbo wants UN peacekeepers to leave, but the world doesn't recognize him as president. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon instead called on countries to support besieged peacekeepers, arguing the UN's legitimacy is at stake. On Wednesday, the United States said it's talking to countries, mostly in Africa, about expanding the peacekeeping mission.
How willing African countries will be to send troops is unclear, but war-weary Western nations such as Canada will be reluctant. But international sanctions, often seemingly futile, might be persuasive in the Ivory Coast.
Canada wants the UN to impose new sanctions on Mr. Gbagbo's regime, and is working with other countries, including UN Security Council members, “to determine how best to achieve the desired result of pressuring Laurent Gbagbo to cede power,” said Melissa Lantsman, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. The real hope is putting together sanctions that could cut away the domestic support Mr. Gbagbo needs to stay in power. If his funds dry up, he won't be able to pay government officials, and crucially, the army.
The election crisis is often seen as part of an intractable north-south split in the country, with Mr. Ouattara from the Muslim north, and Mr. Gbagbo from the Christian south.
But it is, according to experts, less clear cut: many Muslims live in the south, and Mr. Gbagbo doesn't have monolithic backing of Christians or others there. The country has suffered under his regime. Some think he doesn't have deep enough political support to stay if he doesn't control the levers of power by paying the salaries of civil servants and soldiers and keeping state radio and TV running.
“He would have to keep three or four of these balls in the air in order to hang on to power,” said Michael McGovern, a Yale University expert on the Ivory Coast. “The army is the key.”
The trick is to quickly fashion sanctions that could persuade backers he can't hang on.
The United States and the European Union have imposed travel bans on Mr. Gbagbo and some associates, but it's mostly symbolic. The World Bank froze loans to the country on Wednesday. A more debilitating move has been suggested: having the West African central bank, which controls the money supply in eight countries, freeze Ivory Coast accounts.
The UN Security Council can approve broad economic sanctions to freeze assets or restrict trade. That's also the easiest route for Canadian sanctions, because our laws make it easy to adopt UN measures; the law to impose unilateral sanctions has several legal tests and takes longer – and global sanctions have more impact.
Tough UN sanctions could restrict sales of the country's big cash crop, cocoa. Aside from making the price of chocolate rise, it would hit the country's economy and population hard. But one of the regime's major sources of funds now is oil. “Gbagbo has very good control of the receipts that come out of that,” Mr. McGovern said. That's where Canada, with small trade and aid ties with the Ivory Coast, has an interest at stake.
A Calgary-based oil company, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., operates the Espoir oil field in Ivoirien waters, pumping out 30,000 barrels a day, and the Ivory Coast's national oil company, PETROCI, owns a 20-per-cent stake. International sanctions to really cut off Mr. Gbagbo's flow of funds would probably have to cut the flow of oil profits, and hit a Canadian firm, too, perhaps by banning Ivoirien oil sales or the supply of equipment for operating rigs. (The company declined to comment.)
There are skeptics about whether sanctions are effective. They have to be “smart sanctions” that hit the government without devastating citizens. Governments can find illicit ways around some of them, or endure them. But in Mr. Gbagbo's case, the threat of cutting off the payroll could convince those who keep him in power that they're backing the wrong horse.
From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-urges-un-sanctions-against-gbagbo-regime/article1847913/
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