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28 Mar 2010 12:04

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World: Mass killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo under-reported

  • 321+ were reported killed
    in the December
    attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army
  • 180+ were abducted by Congo rebels, 80 of them children, Human Rights Watch says
  • yes the UN knew about the attacks, but says communication lines are weak source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 10:59

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Biz: What’s for dinner? Chicken is up there with beef nowadays

Pork, a firm number two for years, has now been relegated to number three. Turkey’s seeing a rise in popularity, too. We don’t see tempeh on this chart. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 10:40

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Biz: Volvo cars: Once Swedish, then American, now going Chinese

  • $1.8 billion sale of Volvo cars from Ford to China’s Geely source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 10:35

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Tech: Microsoft admits it screwed up search, focused on the wrong thing

  • Google owns the “long tail” results. MS is just trying to accept its niche. Why did Microsoft reboot its entire search engine last year? Simple. They realized it was focusing on the wrong thing, good results for obvious searches, when the real money was to be made in more obscure results. “On any given a month,” said Microsoft Bing manager Yusuf Mehdi, “one-third of queries that show up on Bing, it’s the first time we’ve ever seen that query. A huge chunk of those, we’ll never see again.” As a result, Bing has a different focus, one that involves partnerships with startups and depth on intelligent queries. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 10:13

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Culture: “Battlefield Earth” scribe apologizes for writing worst movie ever

  • OK dude, but that still doesn’t get us our refund! In today’s New York Post, J.D. Shapiro apologizes for the mess of a movie that is Battlefield Earth (a.k.a. Travolta’s Waterloo). He notes that he had written it in a different way than it had been portrayed (with Travolta calling it, we spit you not, “The Schindler’s List of sci-fi”), but many changes were forced upon the film due to John Travolta’s influence. (Apparently L. Ron Hubbard kept a lot of notes.) In other news, Scientology is a cult. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 10:02

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World: Benjamin Netanyahu’s probably gonna fire the guy who said this

  • We’ve got a real problem. You could say that Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel – a strategic disaster.
  • An anonymous quote from a Benjamin Netanyahu confidante • Regarding the Obama administration, who Netanyahu had a fun meeting with last week. The quote, which was paraphrased in a banner headline in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, was bashed by Netanyahu’s office in a statement: “The prime minister emphatically rejects the anonymous quotes about President Obama that a newspaper attributed to one of his confidants, and he condemns them.” Who’s getting fired? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Mar 2010 09:50

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World: Thai protests turn a civil corner, get a live-television airing

  • protesters Thailand’s red-shirt protesters, supporters of ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, were able to get a debate on live TV. One key statement: “Our request is simple and direct: dissolve parliament for the people to decide again.”
  • leader Thai leader Abhisit Vejjajiva was willing to talk to protesters, but made it clear he wouldn’t bend to their demands. “I have to make a decision based on a consensus from the entire country, not just the Red-Shirts,” he said. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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