Spinning on our Axis

US Senate Fails to Ratify UN Treaty on Disabilities (The Moderate Voice) — Hint: B/c they are @#^$%$*(%(@#$ing idiots and the idiots are already putting in a protest to downgrade the bastards to something worse.

UN’s International Telecommunications Union sets out to standardize bulk surveillance of Internet users by oppressive governments (Boing Boing)

Belgium

Protesting dairy farmers hose down EuroParl and cops with milk (Boing Boing)

Brazil

Amazon Launches Brazil Kindle Store (The Passive Voice)

Organized crime, bureaucratized (Boing Boing)

Canada

Canadians: write to Parliament about keeping generic pharma available to poor countries (Boing Boing)

Why copyright trolls will have a hard time shaking down Canadians (Boing Boing)

China

Two dozen Tibetans have set themselves on fire this month, in protest of Chinese rule (Boing Boing)

Denmark

Danish entrepreneur helps people with autism get jobs that require focus, attention to detail (Boing Boing)

Ecuador

Blogger proves flaws in Ecuadoran security system by hacking president’s identity (Boing Boing)

Egypt

Egypt’s Islamists rally for Morsi as rifts widen (The Moderate Voice)

Panel to vote on new Egypt constitution amid turmoil (The Moderate Voice)

Egypt sentences ‘Innocence of Muslims’ director to death, in absentia (Boing Boing)

Finland

In Finland, piracy fines are orders of magnitude higher than fines for rape, torture and murder (Boing Boing)

Greece

Greek schools ‘fertile ground for neo-Nazis’ (The Moderate Voice)

India

Indian village bans mobile phone use by women (Yahoo News)

India’s ‘Dancing Bears’ Retire in Animal Rights Victory (The Moderate Voice)

India to change hate speech law after Facebook row (The Moderate Voice)

Israel

Israel Settlement Bid a ‘Fatal Blow’ to Peace: Ban (The Moderate Voice)

Italy

Vandals Destroy Prized Brunello di Montalcino Wine (New York Times)

Amazons with a Cause (Boing Boing)

Mexico

Mexico: Calderon’s Legacy of Blood and Busts (Guest Voice) (The Moderate Voice)

Can Mexico’s President-elect Peña Nieto and Obama set a new tone? (The Moderate Voice)

New Zealand

Public interest groups fly to Auckland, NZ to meet with TPP negotiators, are only allowed in the building to give a 15-minute joint presentation
(Boing Boing)
New Zealand give $120M subsidy to Hollywood for local production of The Hobbit, plus a passel of new anti-union and copyright laws — and corrupt police raids (Boing Boing)

North Korea

Covert assassin weapons from North Korea (Boing Boing)

Norway

Norwegian hotel calls cops on man because they got his name wrong and thought he used an assumed name; police arrest him in the nude; hotel charges him for the room (Boing Boing)

Palestine

Israel Settlement Bid a ‘Fatal Blow’ to Peace: Ban (The Moderate Voice)

Arafat’s remains exhumed to rule out murder by radioactive polonium poisoning (Boing Boing)

Abbas wins UN ‘birth certificate’ for Palestine state (The Moderate Voice)

Russia

Ad for freelance Russian bank-robbers (Boing Boing)

Slovenia

Demonstrations in Ljubljana: Carnations, Neo-Nazis and a Water Cannon (Boing Boing)

Syria

Syria Mixing Chemicals for Sarin Gas: US Official (The Moderate Voice) — Because if a tiny terrorist group can do it, why not a country?

Syrian internet blackout continues for second day (Boing Boing)

Tibet

Two dozen Tibetans have set themselves on fire this month, in protest of Chinese rule (Boing Boing)

United Kingdom

UK home secretary says Britain needs more data retention, cites an example where a corrupt cop gave murdered victims’ details to crime boss (Boing Boing)

UK ISPs will unblock The Promo Bay (Boing BOing)

Overblocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK blocks perfectly legal, indie artist promotion site (Boing Boing)

UK record lobby wants Pirate Party to shut down its Pirate Bay proxy (Boing Boing)

Add witty title here – World News

Nov10

With Sandy blowing through, I’m a little behind on everything. Still, I’ve collected some articles and I think they might even be interesting to other people. So here we go.

Africa

An African Election: Rhetoric Around Voting In Close Elections (Racialicious)

Middle East

New respiratory virus identified in the Middle East: What you need to know (Boing Boing)

Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s first female rapper tells the stories that might otherwise be lost (The Guardian)

Canada

Inside Montreal’s Mafia Wars (Guest Voice) (The Moderate Voice)

Canada gets a huge raft of user-rights in copyright (Boing Boing)

Survey: Canadian retailers losing $10.8 million per day to shrink (Security Director News)

U.S., Canada test harmonization of cargo screening at border (Security Director News)

China

China won’t permit human rights monitors in Tibet, because hey, come on, nothing bad is going on there, you guys

What it’s like to be a journalist in China (Boing Boing)

China’s leadership change leaves Obama little respite (Moderate Voice)

Egypt

Egypt Plans to Pull Plug on All Night Shopping (The Moderate Voice)

Greece

In Greece, financial tragedy creates horrific conditions for cancer patients (Boing Boing)

Germany’s Merck halts supply of cancer drug to Greek hospitals (Reuters)

Guatemala

7.4 quake strikes Guatemala; at least 15 dead, 100+ missing (Boing Boing)

Hungary

Man steals phone on subway (Boing Boing)

India

World’s Biggest School Gives Indian Kids Lessons for Life (The Moderate Voice)

Starbucks Launches First Cafe in India (The Moderate Voice)

Israel

Israelis Aim to ‘Fix World’ with Custom Cannabis (The Moderate Voice)

Kebedom Mengistu’s little newspaper gives hope to Africans who’ve fled to Israel (Guest Voice) (The Moderate Voice)

Italy

Manslaughter Verdict For Italian Experts Who Failed To Warn Of Earthquake (The Moderate Voice)

Italian scientists guilty of manslaughter after failing to predict L’Aquila quake; face 6 years in prison (updated) (Boing Boing)

Former Italian PM Berlusconi gets 1-year reduced sentence for fraud (RT News)

Seismologists guilty in Italy: More on the L’Aquila verdict, and what it means for the future of science (Boing Boing)

Collective Intelligence: Science on Trial, Berlusconi sentenced. Dispatch from Italy, by Jasmina Tesanovic (Boing Boing)

Netherlands

Dutch government scraps “weed cards” – foreigners will still be able to smoke weed in Amsterdam’s “coffee shops” (Boing Boing)

New Zealand

New Zealand has Hobbit Coins(I Can Has Cheezburger)

New Zealand record industry flubs its first three-strikes prosecution (Boing Boing)

Mexico

Second to US in Obesity, Mexico Wants Kids to Slim Down (The Moderate Voice)

Kidnapped radio engineers forced to build comms networks for the Zetas, never seen again (Boing Boing)

Pakistan

Pakistan Girl Shot by Taliban Stands Up for First Time (the Moderate Voice)

Pakistan acid attack parents ‘feared dishonour’ (BBC)

Panama

Panama leader tells Germany he wants to adopt euro (Reuters)

Russia

Pussy Riot activists sent to secret harsh labor camps (Boing Boing)

Spain

Spain’s Empty Highways Lead to Bankruptcy (The Moderate Voice)

Spanish Novelist Javier Marias Refuses Spain’s National Narrative Award, 20,000 Euro Prize (Writers Write)

South Africa

South African Police Unit Prosecuted for Fighting Violence with Thuggery (The Moderate Voice)

South Korea

Quack medicine pills made from babies and super bacteria smuggled from China to South Korea (Boing Boing)

Syria

Free/open source programmer and Creative Commons activist Bassel Khartabil faces torture in notorious Syrian prison (Boing Boing)

United Kingdom

English town wins its war against chain coffee (Boing Boing)

UK record industry demands expansion of the Great Firewall of Britain (Boing Boing)

Accidental CC from wedding planner to couple reveals thriving English class snobbery (Boing Boing)

UK surgeon accused of misdiagnosing cancer to perform unnecessary surgeries on women (Boing Boing)

Britain’s free press cringes in anticipation of coming regulation; plutocrats and oligarchs celebrate (Boing Boing)

Creeped out by the World… news

Oct5

Remember, this is drained through the filter of my interest…

United Nations

U.S.-led “war on drugs” questioned at U.N. (The Moderate Voice)

European Union

EU working group produces the stupidest set of proposed Internet rules in the entire history of the human race (Boing Boing)

Middle East

Alleged Anti-Muslim Film Maker Arrested, in Court (The Moderate Voice)

Man behind “Innocence of Muslims” video ordered jailed for violating fraud probation by using computers (Boing Boing)

Bahrain

CNN suppresses its own award-winning doc on human rights abuses in Bahrain; has commercial ties to the regime (Boing Boing)

Canada

Art textbook with no art: school trying to fix it (Boing Boing)

Denmark

Michael Sinan, Mr. Gay Denmark 2012, On Being Out And Proud As A Muslim (Huffington Post)

Egypt

Let Us Boycott and ‘Put on Trial’ Those Who Mock Muhammad) (Gomhuria, Egypt (The Moderate Voice)

‘Prophet Mohammad Endured Personal Insults without Retaliating’ (Web Site of the Grand Mufti, Egypt)

France

French doctors on trial for cancer radiation overdoses (The Guardian)

Greece

Greek State Tries to Stem Neo-Nazi Rise (The Moderate Voice)

Honduras

Pinochet 2.0: US economist talks Honduras’ military dictator into establishing a private city owned and regulated by offshore corporations (Boing Boing)

India

Walmart Aims for First India Store in 12-18 Months (The Moderate Voice)

Italy

Eurocrisis Spurs Italy’s ‘Big Baby’ Boom: Grown Children Living with Parents (The Moderate Voice)

Iran

Iranian cleric beaten and hospitalized by “badly covered” woman (Boing Boing)

Mexico

In Mexico, Breaking Out of Jail the Easy Way (Guest Voice) (The Moderate Voice)

New Zealand

New Zealand’s spies illegally bugged Kim Dotcom, complicity may go all the way to the prime minister’s office (Boing Boing)

Prime Minister of New Zealand apologizes to Kim Dotcom for letting spy agency wiretap him (Boing Boing)

Pakistan

Pakistan Rejects Filmmaker Bounty as Muslims Keep Up Protest (The Moderate Voice)

Pakistan Minister Offers Bounty for Anti-Islam Film-Maker (The Moderate Voice)

New Film Protests in Pakistan as Death Toll Rises to 21 (The Moderate Voice)

Panama

Panama’s new copyright law is the worst in the history of the universe (Boing Boing)

Russia

Pussy Riot Punks and the ‘Innocence of Christians’ (Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia) (The Moderate Voice)

Spain

Man dresses as car seat in attempt to move to Spain without the usual red tape (Boing Boing)

After Spain Nixes New Fiscal Deal, Catalonia Considers Independence Push (The Moderate Voice)

United Kingdom

UK government spent millions arming and training Congolese and Sudanese soldiers (Boing Boing)

UK banks use robo-callers to make fraud-check calls, conditioning customers to hand out personal information to anonymous machines that phone them up out of the blue (Boing Boing)

Pranksters crash final speech of corporate tax avoidance taxman, posh hilarity ensues (Boing Boing)

Serious Business of the World

Aug27

As always, these are the stories that have caught my eye, nothing more, nothing less.

Olympics

UPDATED: 17-y-o arrested in England for sending nasty tweet to losing Olympian (Boing BOing)

Olympics spectator with Parkinson’s wants ‘exoneration’ after arrest (The Guardian)

Why do Olympic records keep getting broken? (Boing BOing)

Wikileaks – Assange

Ecuador’s president denies granting asylum to Wikileaks’ Assange (Boing BOing)

WikiLeaks: From ‘Torch of Democracy’ to Anti-American ‘Cudgel’ (Die Presse, Austria) (The Moderate Voice)

UK/Ecuador Assange asylum standoff continues (Boing BOing)

A Global Glimpse at the Diplomatic Standoff Over Julian Assange (Sweden, Ecuador, Britain and Australia News Providers) (The Moderate Voice)

Ecuador claims UK threatens to barge in to embassy and grab Assange (Boing BOing)

Belarus

Belarus sacks top brass over teddy bear scandal (Reuters)

Canada

Canadian border guards stop looking for dope exporters, focus on stolen cars and fissiles (Boing BOing)

China

Houses built on the roof of a shopping mall give residents a yard in town (i09)

Traffic hacks: elderly woman in China ties sex doll to tree to slow motorists (Boing Boing)

Man in rural China loses arms in industrial accident, makes his own prostheses (Boing Boing)

China’s one-percenters make ready to take the money and run (Boing Boing)

Pigs Depicted Having Sex Doggy-Style In Zhengzhou Public Square Are Said To Represent Filial Piety (Beijing Cream)

France

France’s batshit HADOPI copyright law on life-support; three strikes is dying (Boing BOing)

Gambia

Gambia: Free activist jailed for life over anti-government T-shirts (My Joy Online)

Germany

German copyright trolls will single out cops, Arab embassies and clergy for accusations of porn downloads (Boing Boing)

Guatamala

Guatemala: Former police chief convicted in 1980s disappearance (Boing Boing)

Hungary

Neo-Nazi MEP from Hungary discovers he is Jewish (Boing Boing)

India

After worst blackout in global history, India’s power minister rates his performance as “Excellent” (Boing BOing)

Iran

Iran Bans Women From 77 College Courses (The Frisky)

Israel

FBI Probed GOPers’ Alcohol Plentiful Incident In Israel Where One Let It All Hang Out In Nude Swim (The Moderate Voice)

Japan

Prosecutors Start Criminal Probe Into Fukushima Nuclear Accident (Bloomberg)

Japan: record high radiation levels found in Fukushima fish, more than a year after nuclear accident (Boing Boing)

Lakota Nation

Lakota Sacred Grounds removed from auction…. FOR NOW (ontd_political)

Lithuania

Lithuania denies entry to Soviet-styled Porsche (Reuters)

New Zealand

Man suffocated to death in DIY gadget-control helmet (Boing Boing)

Norway

Anders Behring Breivik declared sane and sentenced to 21 years (Ontd_political)

Russia

Why Our Entirely Reasonable Support For Jailed Russian Punkettes Could Trigger World War III (ontd_political)

Pussy Riot’s closing statement (Boing Boing)

Pussy Riot, sentenced to two years in a penal colony, release new anti-Putin single (Boing Boing)

Gay parades banned in Moscow for 100 years (BBC)

Free Pussy Riot [Jasmina Tesanovic] (Boing Boing)

Pussy Riot solidarity protests: Topless lady with chainsaw cuts down massive crucifix in Kiev (Boing BOing)

When Putin’s Thugs Came for Me (WSJ)

Not a Pussy Riot protest: the Face-Kini is big in China (Boing BOing)

Sri Lanka

French tourists in Sri Lanka receive suspended jail terms for pretending to kiss Buddha statue (Boing BOing)

Syria

Kremlin Suspends Use of Tartus Naval Base in Syria (The Moderate Voice)

Syrian Military Defectors in Turkey: Should They Return Home and Join the Fighting? (The Moderate Voice)

Syria’s Latest and Highest-Level Defections (The Moderate Voice)

Syria: Mapping the insurgency (BBC News)

Thailand

Thailand: politician accidentally kills woman with machine gun in restaurant (Boing Boing)

Tibet

New reports of Tibetans burning themselves alive to protest Chinese opression (Boing Boing)

Uganda

Ebola in Uganda (Boing BOing)

United Kingdom

Porn Trial: How Consenting Sex May Be Illegal in the UK (ontd_political)

Disabled can go for gold in Paralympics but can’t earn brass. (ontd_political)

The Grave of Richard III may be under parking lot (Discovery News)

Gender-neutral toy department (Boing Boing)

Call centre brings in prison labour at £3/day, fires regular workers (Boing BOing)

UK prisons to open outsource call centres; David Cameron urges business to switch to prison labour (Boing Boing)

How Hollywood-funded corporate vigilantes in the UK shut down SURF THE CHANNEL and sent its owner to jail (Boing Boing)

English seaside town with no chain coffee shops fights off Costa Coffee incursion (Boing Boing)

Amazon recruits 5000 UK cornershops to act as delivery depots (Boing BOing)

Man in a coma is “fit for work,” loses disability benefits (Boing Boing)

Boots keeps selling quack remedies intended for babies, even after they are banned from US import over fears of broken glass (Boing BOing)

Spinnin’ ‘Round and ‘Round – world news

Jul7

Somehow I never seem to get ahead of these stories. Wonder why? Okay, so maybe there’s too much news in the world. This is what’s made it through my filter.

Olympics

London 2012: Oscar Pistorius set to make history at Olympics (BBC)

Sarah Robles: The strongest woman in America lives on $400 a month (Boing Boing)

US Olympic Committee says sorry to knitters whom it claimed “denigrated” the games (Boing BOing)

European Union

Powerful EU committee rejects ACTA – now it’s unanimous (Boing Boing)

EU: software licenses may be sold by consumers (Boing Boing)

Australia

Aussie parliamentary committee hates ACTA, too (Boing Boing)

Australians find a vampire-like mosquito that breeds and lurks beneath cities (i09)

Stephanie Rice, gold-medal swimmer, criticized for wearing racy swimsuit (Ontd_Political)

Are Australians Really Dumb, Drunk and Racist? (Ontd_political)