Topic: NEWS english - on December 23, 2011 at 3:23:00 PM CET
Nigeria on alert as Shell announces worst oil spill in a decade
The oil company says up to 40,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled 75 miles off the coast of the Niger delta
Nigerian coastal and fishing communities were on Thursday put on alert after Shell admitted to an oil spill that is likely to be the worst in the area for a decade, according to government officials..
The company said up to 40,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday while it was transferred from a floating oil platform to a tanker 75 miles off the coast of the Niger delta.
All production from the Bonga field, which produces around 200,000 barrels a day, was last night suspended. "Early indications show that less than 40,000 barrels of oil have leaked in total. Spill response procedures have been initiated and emergency control and spill risk procedures are up and running," said Tony Okonedo, a Shell Nigeria spokesman.
guardian.co.uk Nigeria: Funding of civil war and arms trafficking cooperation with military regimes [wiki DE]
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Topic: AUSTRIA - on December 23, 2011 at 3:00:00 PM CET
Ansturm auf Bürgerinitiative gegen Vorratsdaten
Die Bürgerinitiative "Stoppt die Vorratsdatenspeicherung" hat innerhalb von zwei Tagen mehr als 10.000 Online-Unterstützungserklärungen auf der Website des österreichischen Parlaments erhalten. Die Initiatoren vom österreichischen AK Vorrat sehen darin ein klares Signal an die Politik.
Seit Dienstagnachmittag kann die Bürgerinitiative "Stoppt die Vorratsdatenspeicherung" auf der Parlaments-Website online unterstützt werden. Mehr als 10.000 Unterstützter hat die Initiative bis Donnerstagmittag in weniger als zwei Tagen gefunden. Gemeinsam mit den in den vergangenen Monaten gesammelten Unterschriften auf Papier hat die Initiative damit bereits knapp 15.000 Unterstützungserklärungen gesammelt, wie es auf der Website der Bürgerinitiative heißt. "Das ist ein Riesenerfolg für uns", sagt Andreas Krisch vom österreichischen Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (AK Vorrat), der die Bürgerinitiative Mitte Oktober startete. Die rasant wachsende Anzahl der Untersützter sei auch ein "klares Signal" an die Politik.
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Topic: COPYRIGHT - on December 23, 2011 at 2:58:00 PM CET
Go Daddy boycott threat for backing hated anti-piracy law
Internet users have called for a boycott of web hosting giant Go Daddy over its public support of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the US.
While the company has publicly supported SOPA and similarly controversial proposed legislation for months, its position went largely unnoticed until a thread on Reddit gained legs yesterday.
User "selfprodigy" said he planned to move 51 domain names he has registered with Go Daddy to another registrar, adding: "I'm suggesting Dec 29th as move your domain away from GoDaddy day because of their support of SOPA. Who's with me?"
theregister.co.uk Go Daddy Faces Boycott Threat From SOPA Opponents wired.com/threatlevel readwriteweb.com reddit.com
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Topic: POLITIK - on December 23, 2011 at 2:56:00 PM CET
Hungary police detain opposition MPs in chain protest
Hungarian police have broken up a demonstration by green liberal opposition MPs who chained themselves together outside parliament.
Former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany was among several MPs detained by police at the scene in Budapest, Reuters news agency says.
The LMP party activists were blocking the parliament's car park, trying to prevent MPs entering, reports say.
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Topic: Phone - on December 23, 2011 at 2:53:00 PM CET
EFF reverse engineers Carrier IQ
At this point we have a fairly good idea of what Carrier IQ is, and which manufacturers and carriers see fit to install it on their phones, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — the preeminent protector of your digital rights — has taken it one step further and reverse engineered some of the program’s code to work out what’s actually going on.
There are three parts to a Carrier IQ installation on your phone: The program itself, which captures your keystrokes and other “metrics”; a configuration file, which varies from handset to handset and carrier to carrier; and a database that stores your actions until it can be transmitted to the carrier. Now, the Carrier IQ program is a binary application and fairly hard to reverse engineer, and the database sounds like it’s stored in RAM and thus hard to obtain — but the configuration profile… well, it turns out that that is very easy to crack.
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Topic: DRUGS - on December 23, 2011 at 12:10:00 PM CET
It Turns Out That Smoking Marijuana May Actually Make You A Safer Driver
An amazing study authored by professors D. Mark Anderson (University of Montana) and Daniel Rees (University of Colorado) shows that traffic deaths have been reduced in states where medical marijuana is legalized.
According to their findings, the use of medical marijuana has caused traffic related fatalities to fall by nearly nine percent in states that have legalized medical marijuana
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Topic: POLITIK - on December 23, 2011 at 12:08:00 PM CET
Das Geheimnis der weißen Seegurke
Als ihm zwei Jahre später das Amt des Parteichefs übertragen wurde, kommentierte das Medienberichten zufolge auch Mutter Natur: „Angesichts der geheimnisvollen Naturerscheinungen sagen sich die Nordkoreaner, dass Genosse Kim Jong Il tatsächlich der Größte der großen vom Himmel geschaffenen Männer ist und dass die Blumen zum Zeichen für dieses großartige Ereignis blühen“, hieß in einer Agenturmeldung.
Zu den Vorboten, die mit Beginn des kühlen Herbstwetters gemeldet wurden, gehörten Hunderte blühende Birn- und Marillenbäume sowie das Auftauchen einer seltenen weißen Seegurke: Am Morgen des 22. September sei Fischern in den Gewässern von Chongjin eine zehn Zentimeter lange weiße Seegurke ins Netz gegangen, meldete KCNA. Dieses seltene Tier sei aufgetaucht, um das Ereignis der Wahl des Genossen Kim Jong Il zum Generalsekretär der Partei zu begrüßen, hieß es in dem Bericht.
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Topic: DRUGS - on December 23, 2011 at 11:56:00 AM CET
Spanish model smuggles cocaine into Italy inside her implants
2.5 kilos of cocaine were found inside her breast and buttock implants when she was searched at Rome airport
The 33 year old model arrived there on a flight from Sao Paolo, Brazil, and aroused suspicion with her vague answers when she was questioned by police about her planned stay in Italy.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on December 23, 2011 at 11:54:00 AM CET
Physiker entdecken neues Teilchen
Die Entdeckung des mysteriösen Gottes-Partikels lässt auf sich warten - doch jetzt haben Wissenschaftler am Kernforschungszentrum Cern ein anderes, bisher unbekanntes Teilchen entdeckt.
Schlagzeilen macht der Large Hadron Collider (LHC) am Kernforschungszentrum Cern in Genf vor allem durch die Suche nach dem Higgs-Boson, das der Materie ihre Masse verleihen soll. Doch das sogenannte Gottesteilchen ist nicht alles, was an dem riesigen Teilchenbeschleuniger erforscht wird. Ein Team um Roger Jones von der britischen Lancaster University hat nun mit Hilfe des LHC erstmals ein neues Teilchen entdeckt.
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Topic: COPYRIGHT - on December 23, 2011 at 11:48:00 AM CET
How SOPA's 'circumvention' ban could put a target on Tor
A little-noticed section of the Stop Online Piracy Act could make it illegal to distribute Tor and other software that can "circumvent" attempts by the U.S. government to block pirate Web sites.
The controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill allows injunctions to be filed against "any" person, nonprofit organization, or company that distributes a "product or service" that can be used to circumvent or bypass blockades erected against alleged pirate Web sites such as ThePirateBay.org.
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