enlarge Noted terrorist Nicky Wishart, 12, with his mother at home in Witney. Isn’t it interesting, the lengths to which “civilized” Western nations now go to stifle even the least threatening protest? This one really takes the cake: A schoolboy trying to save his youth club was hauled from class after his plan to protest outside David Cameron’s constituency office was spotted – by anti-terror police. In an astonishing over-reaction, 12-year-old Nicky Wishart was warned he faced arrest. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “The policeman asked me lots of questions about why we were having a protest and who would be there. “I said it was simply because we didn’t want our youth centre to close – it’s a fantastic place to go and there isn’t much else for us to do round here.” The full-scale security operation swung into effect days after Nicky made an innocent request on Facebook to “save our youth centre”. The surprised boy was told police were now monitoring his Facebook posts – which are mainly gossip and banter from school about lessons and friends’ haircuts. He was told he would be responsible for any “trouble” at the well-mannered picket on Friday night. Public-spirited Nicky, one of the PM’s constituents in the Oxfordshire seat of Witney, said: “All this is because Mr Cameron is our local MP and it’s a bit embarrassing for him.” He said the police arrived during an English lesson on Tuesday afternoon. “I was taken out of class – and the policeman said, ‘Are you aware that the anti-terrorist squad are looking at your Facebook account?’ He said that if anything got out of hand, they would arrest people. “Then he said that I could get arrested for organising it. I was frightened and wished my mum was with me.” Nicky, who describes himself as a “maths geek, not a rebel or rioter”, said: “Then the policeman asked, ‘Does your mum know about this?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course, she supports it.’ “But the policeman carried on, ‘Are you sure your mum wants you out protesting at night?’ He was trying to scare me off – but there was no way I wasn’t going to go.” In opposition, Mr Cameron often spoke of the need to keep youth clubs open to give youngsters a constructive way to spend their time. He said in 2007: “Before people break the law, we need strong families, we need youth clubs, we need things to divert people from crime.” But, as part of the Con-Dem cuts, Tory-run Oxfordshire County Council is axing £4million of funding for 20 clubs – including the one in Nicky’s home village, Eynsham. The council claims volunteers might take over as part of Mr Cameron’s “Big Society”.
Continue reading …Ahead of mass rally marking the 23rd anniversary of its founding, Islamist group tries to show Gazans it is still ‘close to the street’ by distributing boxes of chocolate to more than 300,000 families
Continue reading …photo: technicolorcavalry / Creative Commons India’s National Solar Mission is certainly impressive in ambition: Over one gigawatt installed by 2013 and over 20 GW installed over about the next decade. So what’s not to like about it? If you listen the words of
Continue reading …Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide ! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season. Portable media players: from grandma to the nieces and nephews, it seems like everybody’s got one. But if they’re only using it on the road, they’re not getting their money’s worth. That’s why we’ve assembled this selection of alarm clocks and docks for every locale and every budget, with the features your loved one will need to get the most out of their device. Continue reading Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Docks and Alarm Clocks Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide: Docks and Alarm Clocks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Kaleidescape has fulfilled its promise of launching the industry’s first Blu-ray server by releasing its new 100-disc Blu-ray disc vault we saw at CEDIA that, when paired with its M300 or M500 players , can rip, store, and stream copies of Blu-ray movies throughout the home. However, despite its pricetag of $1,495 (plus $2,500+ for the player) there’s still some serious restrictions — each disc vault has to be connected to an individual player, and the discs have to remain in the vault for the player to stream their ripped copies over the network. Sony’s 400 disc changer can store more movies, but this should load them faster and offer easy browsing with cover art and title info. We suppose this is the “simplest” ripping solution available for now, but a year and a half later we’re still wondering if Blu-ray’s Managed Copy feature will ever launch and make a legitimate movie jukebox option a reality . Continue reading Kaleidescape launches 100-disc Blu-ray movie server Kaleidescape launches 100-disc Blu-ray movie server originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Photo via Library of Congress , public domain. Now THAT is Old-School Amateurs of vintage bikes will like this one. Tthe caption for this photo at Shorpy says: “Detroit, Michigan, circa 1912. ‘Metzger bicycle shop. Detroit City Gas Co.’ This photo of a cycle (and phonograph) shop was taken to show off the gaslight fixtures.” I recommend you check out the high-resolution version (even bigger … Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Personal conclusions? Like prime minister, foreign minister is sure that comptroller’s report is enough and that ‘there no need to search for pretexts for political bashing. Knesset committee expected to vote against probe
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Did you see all the golf references in the 60 Minutes segment on Rep. John Boehner? You can thank your donations to Blue America and Americans for AmericaPac, because CBS contacted us for permission to use our “golf ads” in their program. Lesley Stahl brought up his golf game a couple of times as she gave CBS a puff piece on Boehner just in time for Christmas. I didn’t really expect too much from her, but it would have been nice to mention a little of his sordid history of handing out checks from Big Tobacco if she was going to do a personal profile. In this 1996 documentary by PBS called “The People and the Power Game ,” John Boehner is caught red-handed in an amazing act of corruption, and his biggest critics are fellow Republicans. Boehner: Mine asked me to give out a half dozen checks quickly before we got to the end of the month and I complied. I did it on the House floor which I regret and I should not have done, it’s not a violation of the House rules, but it’s a practice that’s gone on here for a long time. Were the checks from tobacco companies? Boehner: Ahh, I think if my memory serves me correctly, I think it was a tobacco company, yes. Q)….but in this case tobacco’s well timed contributions helped save its subsidy. The people that were passing out the checks won. He did say that he’s never been to a tanning salon before so I guess it’s all that golf he plays in the bright sunlight that gives him that orange hue. Lesley also got hung up on the fact that President Obama repeatedly said that the Republicans were holding America hostage. Stahl: He basically called you a hostage-taker. Boehner: Excuse me, Mr. President. I thought the election was over. You know, you get a lot of that heated rhetoric during an election. But now it’s time to govern. {} Stahl: There have been moments of disrespect shown to President Obama. Boehner: Well, there was some disrespect, I would suggest, that was shown to me yesterday by the president. Boehner repeatedly attacked the Democratic Party and the President too many times for me to recount but here’s a few: Hmmm. So let’s see now. This would be the same John Boehner who threw an hour-long hissy fit on the House floor, called President Obama a “leftist” (when you stop laughing so hard, remember that David Gregory didn’t bother to challenge him on that either), promised to do everything within his power to make it difficult to pass health care reform , advocated layoffs of police and firefighters rather than compromise on the stimulus bill, and called President Obama a socialist before lying about calling him a socialist . He’s so sensitive, or is he? One of the most alarming things in this interview was the fact that he starts crying like a baby at the drop of a hat. There’s “sensitive” and then there’s pathological . It was truly bizarre. People think that’s it’s hard for an actor to cry during a scene, but watching Boehner weep more often than Glenn Beck illustrates that it’s not very hard at all. And on election night, in his victory speech, the public saw something they probably never expected from Boehner: it was called “the sob heard round the world.” Can you imagine if Democratic politicians acted this way? FOX News would be running stories 24/7 about how al-Qaeda and all the lone wolf cells would be emboldened to terrorism because of their weakness. It would be non-stop. How serious is a man like John Boehner after all? Here’s his take on global warming with the very serious George Stephanopoulos. Boehner cites cows’ flatulence to defend his sacred carbon emissions”> Rep. John Boehner cites cows’ flatulence to defend his sacred carbon emissions STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That’s my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change? BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it’s clear… Stahl missed that one too. His Tea Party allies will not be pleased as soon as he has to vote to raise the debt ceiling, but just think about it. He’s like the choice after VP Biden to take over the White House in case of an unforeseen emergency.
Continue reading …For hackers, Clear must have known that its iSpot mobile hotspot would be hard to resist — $100 for the device contract-free plus unlimited WiMAX for $25 a month is a pretty insane deal, after all, and the only catch is that they try to lock non-iOS devices out of the action. Indeed, it took mere hours for unlocks to start coming out of the woodwork, but now it’s easier than ever: the developer of one of the original iSpot hacks has circled back to create a new unlock that requires nothing more than a couple link clicks while you’re on a machine connected to the hotspot. How is that possible? Turns out there’s a vulnerability that makes it possible to execute arbitrary commands on the iSpot through web code, and Clear hasn’t yet updated the firmware to patch it. On that note, the developer tells us that there are actually some iPads that aren’t able to connect to the iSpot without the hack, ostensibly because Apple is using some MAC addresses that the iSpot’s current firmware isn’t expecting — so ironically, you might need this “jailbreak” just to use the thing the way Clear intended. As always with these sorts of things, proceed with caution — we don’t have an iSpot lying around to try this ourselves, so let us know how it goes. Clear iSpot gets easy web-based ‘jailbreak’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …From the AP : A federal judge declared the Obama administration's health care law unconstitutional Monday, siding with Virginia's attorney general in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson is the first federal judge to strike down the law, which has been upheld by two others in Virginia and Michigan. Several other lawsuits have been dismissed and others are pending, including one filed by 20 other states in Florida. read more
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