News in Brief 28/02/11

Libya

Many countries have spoken out against Col Gaddafi's rule over Libya at an emergency UN Human Rights conference called yesterday, minutes from the meeting show US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, taking a firm stance against Gaddafi by out fight stating he 'must go'. After this conference the EU has imposed a travel ban around Libya for all of it's citizens. Gaddafi is still refusing to step down even as the battle is slowly going against him after defected military pilots made a crippling air assault on Gaddafi's eastern ammunition dumps. British military extraction efforts have been doubled after small arms fire entered the cockpit of a RAF C130 Hercules.

Technology

Google have accidentally wiped the inboxes of approximately 150,000 Gmail users. A spokesperson for Google said "This is affecting less than .08% of our Gmail user base, and we've already fixed the problem for some individuals". Google are now trying to restore the erased data and have stated that the messages were not 'permanantly deleted'

Religion

A British high court has ruled that some Orthodox Christian couples will not be allowed to foster children if they have homophobic views. Lord Justice Munby said that the ruling was necessary to protect people from being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

Bizarre

A German man who has been convicted of armed robbery has launched a compensation case against the German police asking for £200, 000 ($322,339). The unnamed man is claiming that his basic human rights were breached after being lead to a police car with his trousers around his ankles. I wonder if the 5 bank staff he threatened to kill at gun point feel the same?

- What are your opinions?

News in Brief 24/02/11

Libya
Britain is expected to have extracted all of it's citizens from Libya by this afternoon in it's final flight from the country's capital Tripoli. Over the last few days Britain has been extracting EU citizens from Libya using commercial airplanes and military aircraft such as the 'Hercules' gunship and the AC-130. Yesterday a Royal Navy battleship extracted over 200 people of European decent as well as citizens of New Zealand as their authorities deal with the current earthquake crisis.

New Zealand

The earth death toll now stands at 144 with 200 people still reported missing. The Prime Minister John Key has accepted that rescue workers are now looking for bodies in the wreckage and are longer expecting to find survivors, after meeting with the relatives of those reported missing the PM released a statement saying "I think its fair to say they fear the worst but there is still a glimmer of hope."

Bizarre

The London restaurant, Convent Garden has added a new product to it's menu, an ice cream made entirely from breast milk. The ice cream 'Baby Gaga' is churned from the breast milk of local resident, Victoria Hilet, who hopes that the new ice cream will encourage more women to breast feed. The man behind the new ice cream, Matt o'Conner has said "Some people will hear about it and go yuck - but actually it's pure organic, free-range and totally natural"

Technology

In an attempt to counteract the increasing levels of cyber-crime, the British government have set up a new website with the National Fraud Authority (NFA) for people to forward all their 'scam' emails to. The hope behind the new scheme is to give the NFA "unprecedented information about criminal activity", for more information visit the site Action Fraud.

-What are your opinions?

Government Approved Massacre

Image Courtesy of BBC

Scenes of violence and conflicts are increasing in scale as Col Gaddafi fights hard to maintain control of Libya's capital, Tripoli. What Gaddafi first thought would be a small revolt has grown into a small army as the number of protesters rise bolstered by large numbers of defecting soldiers.

The main conflicts are in the west of Tripoli as the east are still largely under the control of what have been referred to as 'Gaddafi's death squads'. Reports from within eastern Tripoli claim that these 'death squads'  are killing anybody caught on the streets, these reports including a group of civilians being gunned down whilst queuing at a local bakery. There have even been reports from city doctors stating the death squads opening fire within hospitals, bringing the death count up to a 300 confirmed dead with many more feared unconfirmed.

In response to these reports Col Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi went live on air to inform the Libyan public that everything was 'normal' and that airports, schools and hospitals were still open.

President Obama

President Obama who has up until now been reluctant to form a public opinion has said Gadaffi's actions were 'Outragus' and that his government must be held accountable for the actions, Obama finished his address by stating; "Change is taking place across the region, being driven by the people of the region - it is not the work of the United States or any other power but the aspirations of people seeking a better life". The US join many other countries and all of the EU in advising it's citizens to leave Libya immediately.

In the first public address in days, Gaddafi referred to the protesters as 'rats and cockroaches' and pledged that he would either crush the revolt or die a martyr.

-What are your opinions?

Violent Extremism: Speak Up

Today was the day of my organisations 'Speak Up' event at a local college, which is relevant because I live in the most cultural diverse city (Birmingham) in one of the most culturally diverse countries on the planet (England). The event itself was six weeks of planning, but it went really well with presentations from a  man who spent three years undercover in the British National Party (BNP) and a former recruiter/brainwasher for Al-Quada; both of whom can not be named for fears of reprisal. We even had a few local artists play, expect the event video to be up and running at some point over the next few days.

On a side note continuing on from the Libya post, there have been reports of two top ranking Libyan pilots defecting to Malaysia after being told to use military aircrafts to bomb protesting civilians.

The Start of Civil War

Protesters before 'massacre'

Libya has become the most recent Arab country to suffer deaths due to protests, with protesters rallying against the country's 41-year old regime under their leader Col Gaddafi.

Officials with Gaddafi say they fear for civil war after last night marked the first large scale conflict between the protesters and supporters of the regime. The streets of Tripoli, Libya's capital city, were filled with civilian conflict into the earliest hours of this morning until Libyan authorities were ordered to use live ammunition to forcefully disperse crowds. After a confirmed 233 dead, the streets in Tripoli now only play host to patrolling authorities.

Col Gaddafi

Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was quick to release a lengthy speech after video footage of what has been described as a 'massacre' was released. In this speech Col Gaddafi stated that he would make some changes to his regime in order to quell protests but warned that he would not be steeping down and that he would 'fight to the last bullet' with protesters if it came to civil war, however Gaddafi did admit that the country's second largest city Benghazi was now under protester control.

Leaders of the US, UK and France have all firmly condemned Gaddafi's actions with senior military and political officials worldwide predicting much more violence, the UK is also the first country to schedule emergency flights out for all British citizens currently in Libya. Oil prices are now at an all time as a result of British Petroleum (BP) pulling all employees out of it's Libyan oil refineries.

- Can anything be done to prevent further violence? 

Jilted Generation

Short post today, check other post to find out why. Here is the video of my interview with the authors before the release of their book 'Jilted Generation' on the 2nd of February. In case your not aware Jilted Generation is a book that talks about how young people are being over looked in society and now face a massive debt left to us by previous generations. Had to manually upload because YouTube was being a dick.

If you are British and get a chance to download it then gove it a read, if you are not British and are aged between 12- 26 do you feel as though your opinions are being listened to?

Fighting a Losing Battle

Cybercrime is something that we are all aware of, latest figures researched by Norton suggest that 60% of those that use the Internet on a regular basis have been a victim to it at some point in their lives. I can't confirm the validity of that as Norton may be 'sugercoating' these figures in an attempt to sell software, but what I can be sure of is the independent report by intelligence officers at the National Counter-terrorism Centre which suggest cybercrime now costs corporations over $1trillion worldwide.

The most common forms of cybercrime are spam, hacking and copyright infringement, but this is just the public face of a crime that delves into terrorism, assisted suicide and child pornography. Many governments world wide have come up with various unsuccessful methods of tackling cybercrime, in an attempt to counteract the effects of cybercrime the British government, which is one of the hardest hit with a loss of $42b (£27b) annually have pledged to enforce the law in full to anybody involved in cybercrime from organised crime to 'spotty boys on their computers'.

- What more can be done to prevent cybercrime?   

*Note- Short post today as I've got to edit 4 hours of footage for work*