Up and Coming

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Iranian activist dies in scuffle

Ezatollah Sahabi was a member of the interim government installed after the revolution

An Iranian opposition activist has died after scuffles with security forces at her father's funeral.

Haleh Sahabi, 55, had been allowed out of prison to attend the funeral of Ezatollah Sahabi, a former Iranian MP and prominent dissident.

Her son, Yahya Shamekhi, said she had become upset after security officials tried to stop the ceremony and is thought to have had a heart attack.

Funerals involving other opposition figures have also been broken up.

Three months ago, the funeral ceremony of Mir Esmaeil Mousavi, father of leading opposition figure Mir Hussein Mousavi, was halted, and two members of the Mousavi family were arrested.

Mr Shamekhi described what had happened at Ezatollah Sahabi's funeral.

"When we took the body of my grandfather out for the funeral ceremony, officials tried to stop the ceremony - that made the atmosphere very agitated," he said.

"Finally they forcefully grabbed the body and took it away. Then my mother fell down and become unconscious. The doctor told us she died because of a heart attack."

Another witness told the BBC: "Following the uprisings in the Middle East, the Iranian government is very nervous about people's gatherings for any reasons, particularly if it is related to an opposition figure."

Ms Sahabi, a member of the "Mothers for Peace" group and a campaigner for women's rights, was one of a group of government critics who were arrested in front of the parliament during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's swearing-in ceremony. She was sentenced to two years in prison.

Ezatollah Sahabi was a member of the interim government installed after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which resigned in protest over the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-middle-east-13613032

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Owen signs new Man Utd contract

Striker Michael Owen signs a one-year extension to his contract at Manchester United.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/sport1/hi/football/13594839.stm

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Blatter on verge of Fifa victory

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is on the brink of a fourth term in office after attempts to delay the election fail.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/sport1/hi/football/13610973.stm

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Google to track dengue fever hubs

The tool maps instances of dengue fever-related queries on the Google search engine

Google is using search patterns about dengue fever in an attempt to help health officials prepare for outbreaks.

It hopes to develop an early-warning system by monitoring dengue-related search terms by users in Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Singapore.

Google said that its results are collected in real-time, whereas official data can take weeks to be analysed.

In 2009, Google used a similar approach to track the spread of flu.

"Using the dengue case count data provided by Ministries of Health and the World Health Organization, we're able to build a model that offers near real-time estimates of dengue activity based on the popularity of certain search terms," Google software engineer Vikram Sahai wrote in a blog post.

"Google Dengue Trends is automatically updated every day, thereby providing an early indicator of dengue activity."

The project was developed together with Boston's Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The methodology for the project has been shared in an article for the Public Library of Science's journal on neglected tropical diseases.

The tool is part of Google Correlate, a new service which connects search analysis with data collected in real life.

Correlate was created following Google's success with Flu Trends in 2009, a tool which tracked searches for flu-related searches worldwide.

Public health officials were able to use the data to distribute vaccines and treatments more effectively.

Google published a report in Nature, the highly-respected journal, and soon received attention by other researchers hoping to use the service to monitor other issues.

Correlate, launched last week, allows experts to upload their own data sets to compare against Google searches.

The software highlights when the real world data and online searches share the same patterns, such as flu outbreaks occuring at the same time as a large number of searches for "treatment for flu".

Professor Peter Sever, an expert in disease prevention from Imperial College London, said the tool could prove very useful for researchers that currently collect data using slower methods.

"It will of course be highly selective because you'll be picking out the people who are using Google, but of course year on year that's an increasing proportion of the population anyway," he said.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-13599859

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Last.fm to become 'more social'

The online music service says it wants to offer users a more mainstream and social experience.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/newsbeat/13561508

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VIDEO: Augment your reality with new app

The advertising industry is pinning great hopes on augmented reality technology.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-13607303

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Twitter 'gives data to council'

Councillor Ahmed Khan said the case breached his human rights

An English council has taken Twitter to court in the US in a bid to discover the identity of a blogger behind allegedly libellous statements.

South Tyneside Council went to court in California after three councillors and an official complained they were libelled in a blog called "Mr Monkey".

Twitter said it could not comment on individual court requests.

Media law experts suggest the case may prompt more UK citizens to take action in the US, where Twitter is based.

Independent South Shields councillor Ahmed Khan is suspected of being the author of the blog, which has made a series of unfounded allegations against council leaders.

Mr Khan, who denies being the author of the blog, said he was told by Twitter in April that a request had been lodged relating to his account and messages he had sent.

He said: "I don't fully understand it but it all relates to my Twitter account and it not only breaches my human rights, but it potentially breaches the human rights of anyone who has ever sent me a message on Twitter.

"This is Orwellian. It is like something out of 1984."

The Mr Monkey blog has made a number accusations against the council's Labour leader Iain Malcolm, as well as David Potts, the former Conservative leader who now serves as an Independent councillor, Labour councillor Anne Walsh and Rick O'Farrell, the council's head of enterprise and regeneration.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens says he is unaware of anyone from the UK taking action like this before

They are all named on papers delivered by the council's lawyers to the Superior Court of California.

A spokesman for South Tyneside Council said: "This legal action was initiated by the council's previous chief executive and has continued with the full support of the council's current chief executive.

"The council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible."

He said he had no knowledge of councillors attending court hearings in the US or whether Twitter had as yet handed over any confidential information.

A spokesman for Twitter said: "We cannot comment on any specific order or request.

"As noted in our law enforcement guidelines, it is our policy to notify our users before disclosure of account information."

Lawyers challenged Twitter in the High Court in London to reveal the identities of its users who violated a super-injunction involving Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs.

MP John Hemming named the star in Parliament as the footballer who had used a super-injunction to hide an alleged affair, after Mr Giggs' name had been widely aired on Twitter.

“This is not a waste of taxpayers' money”

Councillor David Potts

Media lawyer Mark Stephens, who represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, said: "I am unaware of any other occasion where somebody from this country has actually gone to America and launched proceedings in a Californian court to force Twitter to release the identities of individuals.

"The implications are that people who have had their name released can actually now go to California and begin proceedings.

"Local authorities cannot sue for libel and, if individual councillors have been defamed, they should take proceedings at their own cost."

Mr Potts said: "We are public figures and we expect to take flack. But this isn't flack, it's a hate campaign.

"I'm a well-known businessman and if someone ran a hate campaign against one of my employees, I would do everything in my power to aggressively track down those responsible.

"This is not a waste of taxpayers' money. When we recover damages - and we will - I will hand over every penny to the borough."

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-england-tyne-13588284

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