Those amusing YouTube video clips that Internet users send to friends gobble up large chunks of bandwidth and may cause the Net to crash, some elements of the telecom industry warn.
It's an admonition many dismiss as political posturing intended to dissuade lawmakers from restricting the freedom of phone companies to manage Internet traffic as they wish.
But no one disagrees that the Web's capacity is being pushed to its limits.
DUBAI, UAE, 21 February 2007. (revised 23 Feb 2007). Code named by US military planners as TIRANNT, "Theater Iran Near Term" has identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a "Shock and Awe" Blitzkrieg, which is now in its final planning stages.
According to the Kuwait-based Arab Times, an attack on Iran under TIRANNT could occur any time between late February and the end of April. This assessment, however, does not take into account the disarray of US ground forc... (more)
WASHINGTON - Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.
The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civ... (more)
In light of the series of laws passed in Congress and precedents set by the Bush administration, people have good reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in America.
Can it happen here? Is it happening here already? That depends, as a recent president might have said, on what the meaning of "it" is.
To Sinclair Lewis, who sardonically titled his 1935 dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here," "it" plainly meant an American version of the tota... (more)
Action Alert! Please vote for this article on Digg and Reddit
Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.
A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries f... (more)
There was a time not long ago when a trip across the border from the United States to Canada was accomplished with a wink and a wave of a driver's license. Those days are over.
Take the case of 55-year-old Lake Tahoe resident Greg Felsch. Stopped at the border in Vancouver this month at the start of a planned five-day ski trip, he was sent back to the United States because of a DUI conviction seven years ago. Not that he had any idea what was going on when he was told at customs: ... (more)
IT WAS MUCH LIKE the usual Nigerian e-mail scam, but it had a dispiriting twist.
"Greetings," went the e-mail, "I am Captain Smith Scott of the US Marine Force … in Baghdad-Iraq. On the 10th day of February 2007 … we captured three (3) of the Terrorists…. In the process of torture they confessed being rebels for late Ayman al-Zawahiri and took us to a cave in Karbala…. Here we recovered…. some US Dollars amo... (more)
FORT WORTH — The Army's highest-ranking officer and the former leader of the secretive world of Special Operations offered his thoughts on the importance of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden during a luncheon here Friday.
They're probably not what anyone expected.
"I don't know whether we'll find him," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said in a speech to the Rotary Club of Fort Worth. "I don't know t... (more)
Ahmed Chalabi, the former deputy prime minister of Iraq who has come under suspicion for his pre-war involvement in supplying questionable intelligence supporting the invasion, has assumed a new role within the Iraqi government, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal.
According to the Journal, “Mr. Chalabi will serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces mounting an aggre... (more)
BAGHDAD, Feb 23 (IPS) - Iraqi journalists are outraged over yet another U.S. military raid on the media.
U.S. soldiers raided and ransacked the offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists (ISJ) in central Baghdad Tuesday this week. Ten armed guards were arrested, and 10 computers and 15 small electricity generators kept for donation to families of killed journalists were seized.
This is not the first time U.S. troops have attacked the media in Iraq, but this time t... (more)
The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.
A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involveme... (more)
AUSTIN — The state auditor's office issued a sharply critical report on the Trans-Texas Corridor on Friday, concluding that taxpayers may never know how much they could end up paying for a toll road that would parallel Interstate 35 from San Antonio to Oklahoma.
And if the Texas Department of Transportation doesn't improve its accounting of project costs, taxpayers won't know if the public costs are appropriate, auditors said.
LONDON - The British tolerate millions of surveillance cameras watching their every public move. They agreed to let roadside cameras record their vehicular movements and store the information for two years. But when they discovered that their garbage is being bugged, they howled that Big Brother had gone too far.
Local governments have attached microchips to about 500,000 "wheelie bins," the trash cans residents wheel to the curb for collecti... (more)
The Dallas County district attorney's office said Thursday that a man sent to prison for a 1982 gang rape was wrongly convicted and that it will join his attorneys' request to have his name cleared.
Prosecutors now acknowledge that Dallas police had evidence that would have implicated another man but did not turn it over to defense attorneys.
Attorneys for James Curtis Giles asked state District Judge Robert Francis on Thursday to find that Mr. Giles was not one of... (more)
The "diableros" (hand truck hostlers) from Lagunilla market clustered around La Lupita's Ricos Tacos in the rough and tumble barrio of Tepito were not smiling. "Yesterday these cost me six pesos. Today, it's eight. Tomorrow, who knows, ten?" complained Rodrigo Aldama, 28, pointing at the three greasy tacos on his paper plate, "Vitamin T is rich man's food now." Vitamin T, a staple of urban diet here, includes tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortillas,... (more)
As it lobbies shareholders to vote for an $18.7 billion buyout proposal, Clear Channel Communications Inc. today announced that its fourth-quarter 2006 earnings fell 54 percent. Beating analyst expectations, the nation’s largest radio station operator reported fourth-quarter 2006 net income of $211.3 million, or 43 cents a share, down from $461.6 million, or 86 cents a share, including income from discontinued operations, for the same quarter in 2005. Fourth-quarter 200... (more)
