The Children of Sodom and Gomorrah

How Europe's Discarded Computers Are Poisoning Africa's Kids

People in the West throw away millions of old computers every year. Hundreds of thousands of them end up in Africa, where children try to eke out a living by selling the scrap. But the toxic elements in the waste are slowly poisoning them.
According to the Bible, God rained down fire and brimstone to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Sodom and Gomorrah" is also what officials in Accra, Ghana, have come to call a part of their city plagued by toxins of a sort the residents of the Biblical cities couldn't even have imagined. No one sets foot in this place unless they absolutely have to.
Acrid, black smoke drifts over the huts of the slum. The river, too, is black and thick like used oil, as it carries empty computer cases toward the ocean. Fires are blazing on the bank across the way, fueled by foam and slivers of plastic. Their flames consume the plastic material from cables, plugs and motherboards, leaving behind only metal...

Very similar to above , very interesting ,

Google unveils real-time search including news, Twitter feeds

For the first time, the 10 blue links on an Internet search page are not static.
Google on Monday launched its first ever real-time search results, serving up a page where breaking news stories, Twitter feeds, blog entries and other content automatically refreshes in an attempt to capture the world's ongoing online conversation.
At a slick announcement attended by members of the world's financial media at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, complete with a rock sound track and giant video screens, Google executives sought to make the case that their launch of real-time search was a historic moment for the Web.
"This is the comprehensive real-time Web, with Tweets, with news articles, with blogs and so on," said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who oversees the relevancy of searches. "I've worked in this field for many years, and I didn't think we would develop these technologies as quickly as we did."
For smartphones running its Android operating system, Google announced "Google Goggles," which allows users to do a visual search with an image from a cell phone camera, as well as the company's plan for early 2010 to enable smartphones to tap into Google's voice search ability to essentially become audio linguistic translating devices....

US Air Force confirms 'Beast of Kandahar' drone

The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the "Beast of Kandahar," a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy.
The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the "Beast of Kandahar," a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy.
The RQ-170 Sentinel is being developed by Lockheed Martin and is designed "to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces," the air force said in a brief statement.
The "RQ" prefix for the aircraft indicates an unarmed drone, unlike the "MQ" designation used for Predator and Reaper aircraft equipped with missiles and precision-guided bombs.
Aviation experts dubbed the drone the "Beast of Kandahar" after photographs emerged earlier this year showing the mysterious aircraft in southern Afghanistan in 2007....

News in Pictures from Boston Gllobe

The year 2009 is now coming to a close, and it's time to take a look back over the past 12 months through photographs. Historic elections were held in Iran, India and the United States, some wars wound down while others escalated, China turned 60, and the Berlin Wall was remembered 20 years after it came down. Each photo tells its own tale, weaving together into the larger story of 2009. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days.


Please watch for part 2
and part 3

Make your own conclusions from this

US plane attack suspect quizzed after 'terror attempt'


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The suspect's name was in a database indicating "a significant terrorist connection" although it did not appear on a "no-fly" list,