ABUJA (Reuters) – At least 11 people were killed in an explosion at a popular market in Nigeria’s capital Abuja late on Friday, witnesses and security sources said. The blast occurred at Mammy market,…
Continue reading …Early this morning, Perfect Third Inc. — makers of the less than perfect WakeMate wristband — issued a recall for the sleep analyzer’s USB charger, which apparently has a tendency to go up in smoke , and we don’t mean disappear. An e-mail sent out by the company’s CEO at 12:30 AM states, “we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers.” A little vague if you ask us, considering the video we received shows the device “smoking after exploding.” The recall ensures that the WakeMate itself is perfectly safe, and that the Chinese-manufactured USB cables are at fault, but if you ask us, anything that is supposed to help you sleep soundly shouldn’t put you in danger of catching fire. [Thanks, Ringram and Nick] Continue reading WakeMate sleep-aid recalled due to ‘exploding’ USB charger, gives new meaning to being hot in the sack WakeMate sleep-aid recalled due to ‘exploding’ USB charger, gives new meaning to being hot in the sack originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …enlarge Remember how the white supremacists at Council of Conservative Citizens got their panties in a wad over the plan to have a black man portray a Norse god in the movie version of Thor ? Now we have right-wing nimrods getting into the act, all because DC Comics has created a Muslim version of the Batman : The argument against Nightrunner, led by conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston, is based on the bigoted belief that a Muslim superhero is by definition an exercise in deceitful political correctness, and that Muslims are natively evil. Introduced in this month’s Detective Comics Annual #12 and Batman Annual #28, Nightrunner is a 22-year-old Algerian Muslim who’s lived in Paris his entire life (it seems reasonable to assume he was born in France, but at the very least he was raised there). Born Billai Asseiah, the character is uncommonly adept at the highly YouTubeable gymnastic form known as parkour. That and Asseiah’s sense of justice make him an ideal recruit for Bruce Wayne’s new Batman, Inc. initiative, whereby he franchises Batmen to cities all over the world. Huston views French Muslims — which is to say, immigrants or those descended from immigrants — as inauthentically French, and, as such, that Batman would choose a Muslim as Paris’ champion is gravely offensive to him and his loathsome ilk. DC Comics has decided that the “French savior,” the French Batman is to be a Muslim immigrant. The character’s name is Bilal Asselah and he is an Algerian Sunni Muslim and an immigrant… Apparently Batman couldn’t find any actual Frenchman to be the “French savior.” …it is pretty condescending to France, too. France is a proud nation. Yet DC Comics has made a foreigner the “French savior.” This will not sit well with many Frenchmen, for sure. What we really hope will not “sit well” with Frenchmen and Frenchwomen is Huston’s ugly assertion that French identification is exclusive to non-immigrants (read: white people). I’m not as sure as Andy Khouri that Huston — who is one of the regular contributors at the right-wing media critic outfit, NewsBusters — is a racist per se. What’s self-evident, however, is that he is a religious bigot and an ignorant, hatemongering xenophobe: Huston doubles down on the disgust and writes that a Muslim hero is patently ludicrous because Muslims are apparently congenitally terrorists. …in this age of international Muslim terrorism assaulting the whole world, Batman’s readers will be confused by what is really going on in the world. Through it all DC makes a Muslim in France a hero when French Muslims are at the center of some of the worst violence in the country’s recent memory. The true cause of the riots and violence between Frenchmen of European stock and that of immigrant Muslim stock is glossed over as if it doesn’t even exist. DC Comics makes the whole problem as simplistic as mere racism as if that is all there is to it ignoring the fact that Islam is the single most important factor in the strife. Huston refers to the civil unrest France saw in late 2005, when a state of emergency was declared after Muslim youths began rioting in Paris and other cities, burning thousands of cars and several buildings. Huston, Green and other bigots in the conservative media read the tragic situation as an expression of nefarious Islamic purpose, but most commentators and reporters who followed the event described a matter having more to do with social inequality than religion. As is the case in America, where there have also been riots, the economic and social underclass of France is populated largely by minorities and immigrants, and many of those immigrants are Muslims. You can read all of Huston’s attack here. We recommend a shower afterward, though.
Continue reading …New Palestinian approach? President Abbas says peace process has turned into means for managing conflict rather than resolving it, urges Quartet to draft new peace plan
Continue reading …Man, we have to tell you: 2010 was a whopper of a year for Engadget, and for the gadget world at large. A space that was once reserved for only the hardiest tech nerds has been increasingly overrun with everyday neighbors, cousins, and parents, as product categories — the smartphone, e-readers, and tablets — became more ubiquitous than ever. Here at Engadget, for us, this meant more eyes than ever reading our stories, more tips flying in our direction, and working harder and faster than ever to bring our readers the best and most up-to-the-minute news. What follows are the biggest, best stories that we here at Engadget broke this year as exclusives. Some of them are parts of the biggest gadget stories this year, and all of them are stories we busted our butts to bring to you, dear readers. Join us after the break for a thorough retrospective of the year 2010 in Engadget exclusives, our biggest year ever. Continue reading Engadget’s biggest exclusives of 2010 Engadget’s biggest exclusives of 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …People massing in New York City for the big New Year’s celebration there offer up their resolutions for 2011. (Dec. 31)
Continue reading …What rights do you have on an airplane, the political honesty of one’s own eyes, and Virginia’s school textbooks are chock full of lies. These gems and more after the jump. On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies. The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top. What Rights Do Delayed Airline Passengers Have? The holidays haven’t been very happy for the thousands of travelers stranded in airports in the Northeastern U.S. and Europe. With delays stretching into days, passengers reasonably start to wonder whether there’s anything they can do about it. Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes It may be time to take the phrase “political viewpoint” literally. A new study suggests that liberals are more likely than conservatives to follow other people’s eye movements. Virginia Textbooks Rife With Errors Back in October, the Virginia fourth-grade textbook Our Virginia: Past and Present was caught turning Internet inaccuracies about black Confederate soldiers into schoolroom fact. Now, unsurprisingly, more bloopers have emerged from the apocrypha stew, reports the Washington Post. Death knell for ‘death panel’ debate? The debate over “death panels” is hard to kill — but at least one Senate Democratic aide says the issue has now become “Kryptonite for the Right,” thanks to the way a new Medicare regulation is written. Taboo transplant: How new poo defeats superbugs Even doctors recoil from faecal transplants – but you might get over such squeamishness if it was your only hope of beating a killer infection. Pepsi Launches Viscous “Snack” Drinks Facing stiff competition from Coke and Dr Pepper in the cola department, PepsiCo is turning to a niche market: snack drinks. “The company is hoping people will pay a premium for a new pureed fruit product that it considers thick enough to be a snack rather than a beverage,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired For more than six months, Wired’s Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed—but refuses to publish—the key evidence in one of the year’s most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks’ source. The Internet Problem: when an abundance of choice becomes an issue Self publishing a book provides a wealth of opportunity, but decisions are harder when there are no constraints Political Contributions Rise During Key Votes Throughout the year, lawmakers have received cash from donors right around the time they’re writing or voting on new laws. Such moves are discouraged since ethics watchdogs say that even if there’s nothing necessarily illegal about the practice it can raise questions about the motivations to approve or reject certain measures. Related Entries November 12, 2010 Court Allows ‘DADT’ Policy for Now October 28, 2010 Why Anita Hill’s Testimony Matters
Continue reading …You can watch the entire movie here. There must be something very wrong at the Vatican. The Pope’s new scapegoat for the Church’s sex abuse scandal is the 1970s. Belfast Telegraph: Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s. In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society. “In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said. “It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.” The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church… read on I watched this gut wrenching documentary last night called Deliver Us From Evil , about a serial pedo-rapist that the Catholic Church enabled for three decades. I cried along with Mr. Jyono, who thought Father O’Grady was a friend to his family only to find out after O’Grady was arrested in another county that he had raped his daughter for seven years. Clearly the Church covered it up, as video testimony shows, and instead of dealing with the problem, sent him out of town so he could hunt for new victims. It would be as if the Attorney General of California, after arresting Ted Bundy for being a serial killer, decided to give him a bus ticket to Iowa and told him to just stay away from girls — while the AG then offered support with prayers to Bundy and maybe even a pension plan if kept quiet. What would Ted do? I’ve been covering the child abuse cases that have been revealed in recent times along with finding out the Vatican and their hierarchy , instead of acting like the moral authority they claim to be, covered up the hundreds of abusers and actually allowed them to destroy future families for decades. And so much of this happened under Cardinal Raztinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) watch . The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm. But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, an outspoken auxiliary bishop emeritus from Sydney, Australia, who attended the secret meeting in 2000, said that despite numerous warnings, top Vatican officials, including Benedict, took far longer to wake up to the abuse problems than many local bishops did. Digby writes: I’m fairly sure that pedophilia was considered an absolute evil in the 1970s. It was just covered up — mostly because of institutions like the Church which made even the thought of sex so shameful that even innocent victims of abuse were afraid to admit it. But whatever “context” he’s thinking of, in normal society sexual exploitation of children wasn’t part of it except on society’s fringe (just as it is today among certain fundamentalist sects .) {} There are many examples of our leadership and elite institutions and leadership failing, but I think this one is the best example. When even the Church that has made human sexuality a purely procreative necessity within sanctioned marriage is making excuses for pedophilia among its priests because of “the times” then it’s fairly clear that any institution can be thoroughly corrupted to its very core. It tends to create just a little mistrust among the people. You can see why blowhard Catholic sex-abuse apologists like Bill Donohue are around. To him, these child molesters weren’t even pedophiles. They make plenty of cash off of doing their best to beat back any criticism directed at the Church.
Continue reading …A new study has shown that the weaponry used in the U.S. assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah six years ago have caused a spike in genetic damage of children born in the area. Researchers also discovered that malnutrition levels are almost 11 times higher than normal rates and have continued to rise in the first half of 2010. —JCL The Guardian: A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago. The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports. The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja’s genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys. Read more Related Entries November 12, 2010 Court Allows ‘DADT’ Policy for Now October 28, 2010 Why Anita Hill’s Testimony Matters
Continue reading …Tehran asks for UN chief’s help in learning fate of Ali Reza Asghari, former defense minister who disappeared in Istanbul in 2007
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