WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appears on the latest segment of Rap News, a satirical take on the world issues told in hip hop rhyme by two Australians in their living room. The fifth episode of Rap News, entitled “News World Order: War on Journalism”, features Assange in a cameo role (4’56″), filmed in London in October before WikiLeaks began publishing US State Department cables and before Assange’s arrest for sexual offenses in Sweden.
Rap News is the creation of a university researcher, Giordano Nanni, and an English teacher, Hugo Farrant, who do the makeup and costume work themselves and film and record in Nanni’s living room.
Links to other sites: AFP, Sydney Morning Herald
Source: Juicemedia.com
2,149 Spanish-speaking people from around the world will read “Don Quijote de la Mancha”, the 17th century masterpiece by Miguel de Cervantes, in its entirety on Youtube. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE in its Spanish initials) will kick off a project today 30 September in an agreement with Google, owners of Youtube. The novel is often begun and then put down. The 2004 edition runs to over 1,200 pages including the index.
The RAE is promoting the project in an effort to make this and other Spanish literary masterpieces appeal to a younger generation.
The 400-year anniversary edition has been divided into 2,149 sections, each of which will be read and filmed by a different reader using the Quijote platform on Youtube. The project will be kicked off in Madrid today by Víctor García de la Concha, president of the RAE, who will read the first section, which begins: “In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind…”
The Royal Spanish Academy is the custodian of the Spanish language. It publishes a definitive dictionary and promotes Spanish language and culture.
Links to other sites: Herald Sun, Punto Digital
Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels. Read more…
Google has issued a statement in advance of quarterly reporting saying that the online advertising market appears to be stabilizing, after a period in the first quarter of the year where consumers delayed purchases and cut the amount they were spending, reports the Financial Times. Earnings for Q2 are $5.2 billion. The company also said that YouTube is finally starting to get the attention of advertisers and the company expects it to turn a profit but no date for that was given.
YouTube, the online video service, has been reporting near-zero traffic in China since Tuesday 24 March but the reasons for it are unclear, sparking speculation that it might be linked to videos of Tibet or of an encounter between US and Chinese ships, but Google, owner of YouTube says it has no information on this and the Chinese government have not offered any information. CNN, PC World (Ed. note: Chinese media do not mention a problem)
