The article written by Lindsey Hoshaw focuses on the dumping ground in the Pacific Ocean, that has now almost turned into an island and is measured to be two times bigger than the U.S state of Texas. The huge pile of waste is combined of light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes and other pieces of commodities that we use daily and throw away in trash. However, some experts believe that, the garbage pile has now exited the Pacific Ocean and is stuck in heavy currents that has left it in a sort of a whirlpool.

There are four other similar garbage piles all across the globe in different oceans and the waste material in these dumps are the trash items that have been dumped into sewers and have washed away into the oceans. The sailing dump of waste was discovered by a sea sailing enthusiast, Charles Moore about 12 years ago, when he was returning from Hawaii after a sailing competition. Experts believe that, two other garbage piles exist off the coast of Japan and another one in the Sargasso Sea. Scientists and environmental organizations across the globe are trying hard to figure out a solution for this monumental environmental concern.

Via Mashable, New York Times & Spot.us.

News Corp., that is of the biggest and most widely acclaimed media empire has announced that, it will shortly be blocking Google Bots’ access to its websites, meaning that, websites run by News Corporation will no longer be indexed by Google. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder of News Corp., has stated that, he believes Goggle might be doing more harm than good to the websites by diverting millions of users to thew sites and thereby increasing the website traffic.

Mr. Murdoch believes that, the websites would do a lot better if they are turned entirely into a paid subscription services, thus limiting the exclusivity of the sites to those who are truly interested in visiting the website for academic purposes. Some of the major publications run by News Corporation are, The Sun, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal etc. The results of the latest shift in Google’s importance is being seen as two fold by many experts.

The impact of the exclusion of Google indexing services from News Corp. websites could have dire effects on these sites, as even though there are dedicated paid users, yet like every website, such sites also heavily depend on advertising, a feature that Google has mastered in. An alternative to the current decision could be to segregate the paid and free sections of the websites, where excerpts can be shown in the free section and the paid sections can carry the entire article.

Via TechCrunch & Techmeme.

The possible and highly probable Iran nuclear threat has stirred some worry in high places once again. This is due to two major leaks that recently occurred.

In the first leak, ‘the New York Times published an article reporting that staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear oversight group, had produced an unreleased report saying that Iran was much more advanced in its nuclear program than the IAEA had thought previously.’

This means that Iran now has all the necessary materials in terms of imperative information and useful data to actually make a nuclear bomb. US intelligence is now said to be seriously reviewing its earlier assumption that ‘Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.’

In the second leak, the British paper The Sunday Times ‘reported that the purpose of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly publicized secret visit to Moscow on September 7 was to provide the Russians with a list of Russian scientists and engineers working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.’

This points to the scenario that ‘the presence of Russian personnel in Iran would mean that the Iranians had obtained the needed expertise from the Russians. It would also mean that the Russians were not merely a factor in whether there would be effective sanctions but also in whether and when the Iranians would obtain a nuclear weapon.’

Whether these leaks are true or not, they serve as wake up call in evaluating the capability and capacity of Iran to, indeed, produce a nuclear bomb. For some, it is no longer the time to assume that Iran cannot produce a weapon of mass destruction.

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Via STRATFOR

For all you Skype fans, here is interesting news about the famous online telephony service. According to a team of reporters from the New York Times, Skype will soon be sold by eBay to a group of private investors. This includes Netscape founder Marc Andreessen’s new Venture Capital group. With recession going on at high speed, this is the fate that most companies are facing these days. Until recently, it was rumored that Skype’s founders were interested in buying the company themselves but due to financial constraints they couldn’t do so.

It is sad that such a cool site like Skype, which has nearly twice as many users as Facebook is going to be sold. Skype generates approximately $600 million annually. We as Skype user cannot do anything but to wait and watch what kind of new changes will come up along with the acquisition. I only hope that the new owners either retain the old facilities or ameliorate them.

Until proper restructure happens, this will create a lot of anxieties amongst the users of Skype. I hope this doesn’t stop the Skype users from using the site in future. At least I will not stop.

Via: ReadWriteWeb

An analysis by the New York Times about the rain and the murders in the last six years shows that when it rains substantially in the summer, there are fewer murders. The average homicide that is 17 days to ten, drops to 14 murders in ten days.

This is not surprising for Vernon J. Geberth, a former captain of a team of research of homicides in the neighborhood of the Bronx. He says that when it rains heavy, the police sometimes made the following joke: “The best cop in the world is working tonight.”

The difference is even greater when considering only the “Saturdays” of summer. These are the occasions on which records the highest number of homicides during the year.

But, when there isn’t rain, the average number of homicides for each sequence of ten Saturdays in summer rises to 24. But for each sequence of ten Saturday with at least one inch of rain, the average number of killings fell to 18.

These numbers may be good news for the city since this summer in New York began with the second highest rate of rainfall recorded in one month since June, according to meteorologists at the University of the State of Pennsylvania.

With little more than 200 murders occurred so far this year, the city is about to record the lowest annual number of murders since the beginning of the sixties. In the first days of July may rain every day.

Via NYT.

China has left the repressive shackles of Communism but vestiges of state control are hard to shake off. One of these lingering practices is censorship. Fairly recently, China censored the information on the melamine tainted milk scandal which government authorities had known even before the Beijing Olympics. For fear of tarnished image that could wipe out the fervor of the Olympic season, it waited till after the international games before the issue of melamine was even heard of.

Since last month, China has again been wielding its flair for censorship, this time on the World Wide Web. It has earlier clamped down on and blocked the websites of the BBC and the New York Times. Now, it accuses Google for displaying pornography and vulgar content. China earlier claimed that it had alerted Google about its many links to immoral sites, but according to state officials, Google has not lifted a finger to address the issue.

If the trend of its warnings being ignored continues, China threatens to punish and even close down the sites. The country feels strongly against vulgar content because it claims that these deeply harm the health of the youth. The government has responded to the clamor among parents in China to save their children from such vulgar trend. Is China just dreaming that it can lock horns with something whose nature defies the boundaries of geography? Surely, it knows what the World Wide Web really means.

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Via Inquirer