Newseum has a short, interesting article up on how many newspapers made fairly hefty mistakes covering the Titanic‘s sinking. The Los Angeles Express rang with the heading “All passengers are safe”, while The New York Herald had “The Titanic Sinks With 1,800 on Board; Only 675, Mostly Women and Children, Saved”.
There were 2,200 people on the Titanic, of whom 1,500 died.
Egypt has freed a blogger who was detained more than a month ago for being a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, who is also a correspondent for British-based Arabic television channel al-Hewar, had not officially been charged. He had been detained along with 23 others, who were also set free.
Human rights group the El Nadim Center has claimed Mahmoud was taken into custody because of “the role he played in exposing crimes committed by the Ministry of the Interior through his blog, where he called for the release of detainees”.
The organisation also points out that Mahmoud took part in media activities arranged by Amnesty International after that group released a report documenting torture in Egyptian police stations.
The Muslim Brotherhood advocates an Islamic state — and let me state quite clearly that I support complete separation of clergy and state — but with democratic reforms Egypt needs.
For example, Egyptian presidents, with whom almost all power rests, have typically been elected in single-candidate votes since the country became a republic in the 1950s. September 2005 saw the first multi-party presidential vote; however, candidates were screened by an electoral commission which only allowed 10 of the 30 applicants to run. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has the broadest support of the opposition groups, had no candidate.
Unsurprisingly, Hosni Mubarack was re-elected.
A March 2007 referendum — which Amnesty International said represented the biggest erosion of human rights since 1981, when emergency laws were introduced following the assassination of Anwar Sadat — gave the president the power to dissolve parliament.
It also prohibited parties using religion as a basis of political activity, ended judicial supervision of elections and allowed for civilians to be tried by military courts in terrorism cases.
Isn’t politics fun?
A man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers has been arrested. He’s apparently one of the 10 worst offenders in the world, and has been charged with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
The English Premier League is suing YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. According to the BBC, the league has filed a lawsuit in New York and is seeking unspecified damages.
The case claims the ridiculously popular website “knowingly misappropriated and exploited” league property. The soccer power group wrote to YouTube in October, asking it to take down material it said infringed the rights of its clubs. YouTube is already being sued by Viacom for $1 billion. I wonder if Google have any regrets about their purchase?
It’s been a bad week for many people’s favourite search engine, as there’s speculation Microsoft and Yahoo! are working on an alliance to tackle Google’s dominance when it comes to online advertising. Ah well, it’s about time Microsoft had to work for their market share.