Skype Laughter Chain

Skype is a software program created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype allows users to make telephone calls from their computer to other Skype users free of charge, or to landlines and cell phones for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer, short message service, video conferencing and its ability to circumvent firewalls.

Now, Skype has launched the Laughter Chain. They're creating the world's first and longest giggling fit, and they want you to join it. Just plug in your webcam, watch the start of the Laughter Chain video, and film yourself watching it. Send them your video and your laugh could be added to the chain.

Jerusalem bulldozer 'terrorist' kills 3

Israeli authorities are investigating why a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem rammed his bulldozer into several cars and buses Wednesday, killing three people before Israeli police shot him dead.

Israeli authorities are labeling it a terrorist attack, although they say there is no clear motive and the man -- a construction worker -- acted alone. It is not known if he had links to any terrorist organization.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CNN the bulldozer operator drove down a busy thoroughfare in West Jerusalem, crashing into four cars and two buses, before heading toward a crowded market.

"We believe he acted on his own and tried to kill as many people as possible," Rosenfeld said.

"If he would have continued ... he would have made his way into an open market, hundreds of people doing shopping there ... and this could have been (an) even worse terrorist attack than we have experienced today."

The rampage lasted about four to five minutes before a police officer climbed up the side of the swerving bulldozer and fatally shot the driver.

Police identified the attacker as a Palestinian man from a village in East Jerusalem with a criminal record. He worked at a construction site in the area, one of several along Jaffa Road.

Rosenfeld said because the man was a Jerusalem resident, "he was able to arrive in the main part of Jerusalem without any problem whatsoever."

In addition to the fatalities, two people were seriously wounded and 42 others sustained minor injuries, paramedics said.

President Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Wednesday morning to express his condolences over the attack, a White House spokesman said.

According to police and witnesses, the bulldozer ran over a car, crushing its front end and killing the driver before bumping into a bus shortly afterwards. It then struck another bus further down the road -- knocking it over leaving a gaping hole in its side -- and three other cars before a special police patrol unit arrived on motorcycles.

When the driver did not stop, one of the motorcycle police jumped onto the cab of the bulldozer, Rosenfeld said.

"There was a struggle that took place inside the actual cabin of the bulldozer," he said. "The terrorist himself was shot both by a security guard as well as a police special patrol unit that arrived at the scene, thus ending the killings."

Video footage shows the end of the incident, with several onlookers giving chase to the construction vehicle as it swerves away from the camera.

A man is then seen to climb up the side of the bulldozer and reach into the cab before it finally comes to a halt. Police said that the driver was shot in the head at point blank range.

The attack happened right in front a building housing several news organizations -- including CNN's Jerusalem bureau -- on Jaffa Road, one of the longest and oldest streets in the city. The busy avenue is lined with shops and businesses. Several bulldozers and other construction equipment are in the area because a light rail service is being installed.

City residents walked about shocked and dazed, many of them witnesses to the attack.

"When I came down it was utter pandemonium," CNN's Ben Wedeman said. "Hundreds of people in the street not knowing what was going on."

Wedeman said he had just arrived when the Israeli police officer climbed onto the bulldozer's cab and shot the driver at point blank range.

Yosef Spielman described how a car had been picked up "like a toy" by the bulldozer, The Associated Press reported, adding: "All the people were running. They had no chance."

And Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old religious student, told the agency how the shovel of the bulldozer came down on a car. "He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat."

Soldier Hen Shimon, 19, said that the driver "had a gun and started shooting at a police officer," AP added.

If confirmed, it would be the first terrorist attack to be carried out on Israeli soil since a gunman opened fire on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem in March, killing eight students.

Israel has been the target of numerous rocket strikes launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

A cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza came into effect last month.

French Army Chief Quits After 16 Spectators Shot at Military Show

PARIS — France's army chief resigned Tuesday following a weekend military show in which 16 people were shot and wounded when real bullets were used instead of blanks.

President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted Gen. Bruno Cuche's resignation, Sarkozy's office said Tuesday, and the country's defense minister suspended the use of blank munitions at public military shows.

Meanwhile, the soldier who fired the bullets was handed preliminary charges for involuntary injury. The 28-year-old was taken into custody soon after Sunday's display of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks in southern France, in which 16 people were hit with real bullets.

Most of those injured were civilians, and three were children. Officials at a hospital in Toulouse, where five of the victims are being treated, said Tuesday their condition was "stable." A day earlier, hospital officials had said that none of the injuries appeared life-threatening.

Officials had earlier said 17 people were injured, but Montpellier Prosecutor Brice Robin on Tuesday put the total at 16.

In a statement Tuesday, Cuche said his decision to resign was a direct response to Sunday's incident."As the military chief, I must fully accept my responsibilities," the statement said.

Speaking on France-Info radio, Defense Minister Herve Morin praised Cuche, the general who resigned, as "a man with a conscience" who had made the decision to resign himself and had not been forced out.

"He felt that the ... tragedy, beyond the incident linked to personal mistakes, revealed organizational defaults, malfunctionings," Morin later told reporters at a news conference Tuesday. He added that the general had brought up the possibility of resigning on Sunday, only hours after the incident.

The military blamed the shooting at a parachute regiment's open day on "serious failings."

Montpellier Prosecutor Robin said the shooting appeared to be unintentional.

"According to (the soldier's) early statements, it appears that he made a mistake while loading his gun," Robin said. "This act was absolutely not premeditated; I want to be clear about this point."

The soldier said he "forgot" to hand in unused bullets, as rules stipulate, Robin said. He then "made a mistake" and loaded his weapon with those munitions, Robin said.The soldier, a sergeant, was freed pending the investigation.

Under French law, preliminary charges mean investigating judges have strong reason to suspect involvement in a crime. Judges decide later if there is enough evidence for a trial.

Without waiting for the results of the judicial and military investigations, Morin ordered the army chief of staff to prepare punishments for those responsible, the ministry said in a statement. It did not elaborate on what the sanctions would be.

Sarkozy had promised there would be "consequences" after the shooting.

"If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service... he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates."

Said retired Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith... speaking as a surrogate for the McCain campaign.

Questions:

1. Is it really so bad to use surrogates to articulate the arguments that wouldn't sound too pretty coming from the candidate's mouth?

2. Is every supporter who makes an argument a "surrogate" for the candidate? I think that "surrogate" implies that the campaign authorized the person to say something on behalf of the candidate and that it should not cover supporters who happen to say things, even when they say things that make you want to ask the candidate whether he would adopt the supporter's statement as his own.

3. Was Wesley Clark sent by the Obama campaign to say that John McCain's military experience — "riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down" — is not the kind of executive decisionmaking that a President needs to do and is therefore not much of a qualification for President? Clark was responding to a question about Barack Obama's lack of equivalent experience, and the point was to minimize McCain's service — which would be stupid — but to defend Obama's qualifications.

4. Wasn't Clark correct on the precise point that he made about executive experience?

5. Wasn't Clark a fool not to see how the other side would be able to use his remark?

6. How should Obama respond now? He has to say something today, and I feel as though I could type out the appropriately Obaman professorial distinctions and explanations that I expect to here, but this post is too long already.

7. Wesley Clark can't be the VP pick now, right? Or does the uproar over his remarks show that McCain supporters think Clark is a formidable opponent?

Child prostitutes sell themselves on Craigslist

For more than two years, undercover cops on the Sacramento Police Department's vice squad have been working one of the most draining beats: trying to crack down on online child prostitution.

Sacramento police have nabbed nearly 70 underage girls for child prostitution since 2005.

Police have nabbed nearly 70 girls under the age of 18 since 2005. Most of the girls were released to foster or group homes. Those are just the official figures; investigators think there are many more child prostitutes out there.

It is no easy task.

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

Sacramento police are working with the FBI as part of a nationwide campaign to combat underage prostitution called Innocence Lost. The goal of the program, which is now in almost 30 U.S. cities, is to decriminalize the girls and concentrate on catching the pimps who control them.

"It really makes me angry," Seyffert said. "I think everybody on the team has different reactions to it, but I just flat out get really angry that some guy thinks he can take this girl and basically deprive her of her freedom."

It is not uncommon for the officers on the unit to put in 30-hour shifts. Oftentimes, their work is heart-wrenching.

Child prostitution is even tougher on the parents of these girls. Roslyn and Sergio's daughter had been missing for more than two weeks. They waited for hours at police headquarters in hopes that their daughter would be found.

Vice squad officers found her in a downtown apartment with Bruce William Carter, a 21-year-old man who police said had posed on the Internet holding fistfuls of cash. He pleaded not guilty to charges of statutory rape and was held in lieu of $35,000 bail.

The couple's daughter, who had just turned 17, was detained but not arrested.

"It hurt," said Roslyn, who appeared weary and a bit shell-shocked. "Because you don't want to see your children involved in things like this. You don't realize how dangerous the Internet is. Now, we got to keep her away from the Internet."

Police say most of the ads appear on Craigslist, the popular and free Internet classifieds site, under a category named "Erotic Services." Even though Craigslist has posted a bold disclaimer warning against human trafficking and the exploitation of children, law enforcement officials said it doesn't seem to deter girls from posting the ads or men who are searching for sex.

But why would a girl sell her body online?

To help answer that question, Sacramento police made arrangements for CNN to interview a 14-year-old girl who said she'd started selling herself as a prostitute at the age of 11.

"I wanted to feel loved. ... I wanted to feel important," said the teen, who did not want to be identified.

She said she used Craigslist because it was free and she could post dozens of ads a day. Even though she understood the seriousness of what she was doing, she said she didn't care.

"You could put stuff in your ad like 'wet and wild,' 'fun and sassy,' things like that to catch their attention, to make them want you," she said.

Craigslist executives said they abhor the fact that their site is being used for child prostitution but believe that the problem could be harder to track if they removed the category.

"It would be a bigger problem if we removed that category and had those ads spread throughout the site," said Jim Buckmaster, chief executive officer of Craigslist.

Both legal experts and police say Craigslist bears no legal responsibility. Undercover officers said the fact that the listings can be traced helps them pinpoint the girls and sometimes leads them to pimps.

For her part, Roslyn has a strong message for the man arrested in connection with her daughter's detention.

"I want him to stay away from my daughter," she said. "I'm going to put a restraining order on him. Every time he goes near my daughter, I'm going to call the police and have him put in jail."

Even though they have more work than they can handle, vice officers hold out hope that they can save more girls from a life of prostitution.

Next stage of advertisement

Lowe Ad Agency sent samples of laundry detergent to potential customers in Thailand. They wrapped the sample with a new t-shirt and addressed it with washable ink. By the time the samples arrived, the shirts were pretty dirty. Then voila, the solution was right there inside! Clever marketing. See more pictures at Ads of the World.

Map of the virtual world

I've found a little map utility to help people locate bloggers around the world. There's a menu item called "blogmap". The locations are approximate, because most bloggers want a certain degree of anonymity. It's a work in progress, but eventually I hope to construct a fairly comprehensive locater.

Trying to construct a physical map of the blogosphere created some challenges. For example some blogs specialize in places they do not actually inhabit. For example, it turns out that one of the better known blogs about Russia is physically edited and written out of Texas. But sometimes bloggers absolutely, positively want people to know where they are. Professor Bainbridge and Eugene Volokh both advertise themselves as being in UCLA.

The question is why would one build such a map? One reason is the belief that eventually the information will come in handy. If there's an accident or incident somewhere it pays to have some sense of whose site I should log onto; maybe even send an email to. One never knows when it will come in handy.

History irony

Here's a very old NYT article about a certain Hitler. I would say it's funny but I shouldn't.

Limits to Growth: China and India

A long list of concerns about China is feeding the trend: inflation, shortages of workers and energy, a strengthening currency, changing government policies, even the possibility of civil unrest someday. But most important, wages in China are rising close to 25 percent a year in many industries, in dollar terms, and China is no longer such a bargain.

Both China and India are facing problems with shortages of workers, rising wages, corruption, and inflation, which are causing large western industrial companies to begin building new factories in other countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines.

Inflation in China — more than 8 percent in February, March and April and 7.7 percent in May — raises the prospect that labor costs will soar even faster soon. That could push up prices for a wide range of goods exported to the United States.

China is also phasing out its practice of charging lower corporate tax rates for foreign-owned companies. By contrast, Vietnam still offers foreign investors a corporate tax rate of zero for the first four years, and half the usual rate of 10 percent for the next four years.

...A popular saying among Western investors these days is that Vietnam is the next China. Cambodia, with even lower wages attracting garment manufacturers, is called the next Vietnam.

But how long those analogies will hold — in a world where economies evolve from agriculture to manufacturing to services in a couple of decades — is unclear.

As foreign investors leap into each new country, they drive up the cost of workers and goods, a dynamic that makes it less likely that a shift in investment patterns will hold down inflation in American imports.

...even in India, workers with industrial skills or the ability to speak English are increasingly scarce — and their wages have been rising by 10 to 20 percent a year.

That has led to worries about India’s long-term competitiveness, even at companies investing heavily there, like Ford, which is planning to spend $500 million on factory expansion.

High fuel costs will soon enter the picture as well, perhaps inducing some western corporations to think closer to home when planning new factories. As automation takes over more of the manufacturing process, labour costs are less of a concern, and shipping costs take on greater relative importance.

China's remarkable growth rate has been part real and part bubble. Many analysts have been predicting an unlimited steep trajectory of growth in China for at least the next decade and a half. But the bloom may have partially gone off the rose. Chinese government duplicity has papered over much of the underlying instability in Chinese financial institutions and in Chinese society itself. Ham handed censorship of the internet and all public discourse, along with liberal arrest and harassment policies against perceived political dissidents, have projected a mirage of political stability to western analysts.

We will have to see how things look after high fuel costs, inflation, slower growth rates, less foreign investment, newer ways to circumvent government censorship, and less favourable international attention hit the CCP fan.

Another corruption scandal rocks Colombia

First it was the “para-politics” scandal which linked Colombian politicians and government allies with right-wing paramilitaries. Then came the FARC-politica brouhaha where opposition figures had been accused of close ties with leftist guerillas. Now the latest Colombian corruption scandal revolves around accusations by a former senator over the buying of votes by the government.

Yesterday Colombia's Supreme Court sentenced ex-legislator Yidis Medina to three years and four months of house arrest after she confessed that she was bribed in order to pass an amendment permitting presidential reelection. The Yidis-politica affair has led to the investigation of numerous senior government members including an ex-Interior Minister and a top advisor to President Alvaro Uribe (image).

According to Medina’s testimony, she was offered quite a prize by the government for her support:

On another occasion Medina was called to the presidential palace and met with (ex-Interior Minister Sabas) Pretelt De La Vega, President Uribe and members of the presidential staff. In that meeting “they expressed their concern about my vote and asked what I wanted in return for supporting the bill,” Medina claims.

During that meeting, Medina says, Pretelt De La Vega explicitly mentioned the possibility of offering her a consulate.

Despite mounting evidence of government corruption and malfeasance a poll released today showed that most Colombians in the five largest cities would grant Uribe a third term in the presidency. The results reflect Uribe’s high popularity throughout the country and shows that he’s untouchable in the eyes of most Colombians.

Though Colombians have mobilized en masse to march against violence it’s too bad that there isn’t a widespread protest against the fraud that has hurt the country.

Farewell Mr Gates

Bill Gates insists he is not retiring

Bill Gates has announced he will end his day-to-day role as head of software giant Microsoft by July 2008.

Mr Gates said the move would allow him to spend more time on health and education work at his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"This is a hard decision," said Mr Gates, adding that he was not retiring but "reordering [his] priorities".

Mr Gates will continue to serve as the company's chairman and advise on key development projects after July 2008. "I'm not leaving Microsoft," said Mr Gates."What's happening now is we're starting the transition plan... I'll be working as hard as I ever have during these next years."

The firm said it would take two years to make sure the transition takes place smoothly.Mr Gates said there was a "common thread" between his work at Microsoft and the foundation.

How Microsoft's market value compares

"I'm very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging," he said.

'No huge shock'

Microsoft's chief technical officer Ray Ozzie will be given the title of chief software architect and work with Mr Gates on all product issues.

Microsoft Founded in 1975, now the world's biggest software company Flagship products are the Windows operating system and Office suite of word processing and spreadsheet software Windows runs on about 90% of the world's PCs 2005 revenues - $42.6bn What now for Microsoft?

Craig Mundie meanwhile will assume the title of chief research and strategy officer.

At the same time Mr Mundie will work with general counsel Brad Smith to focus on the firm's intellectual property and technology policies.

The change comes as Microsoft gears up for the delayed launch of its new Vista operating system, now scheduled to be available to the public in January 2007.

Shares in the firm closed up 0.9% at $22.07 before the announcement but after the news emerged, they fell 9 cents in electronic trading on the Inet electronic brokerage.

Analysts said the move had not come as a huge shock and that two years provided enough time to make the change.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Fund of $29.1bn $10.5bn in grants since 1994 Aims: reducing poverty and improving health and access to education Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund 70% of aid spent outside US

"The people who are taking over are very experienced and have been with Microsoft for a while," said Jean Orr, an analyst with Nutmeg Securities.

Daryl Nanes, principal at Nanes Delorme Capital Management, said: "I don't think Gates stepping away from his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft will be negative for the rest of the market.

"But Microsoft shareholders are assumed to have some jitters about the ambiguity regarding the future leadership of the company that Gates founded and ran for over 20 years," he added.