A serendipitous satellite image in Google Earth. Snapshots from a photographer on assignment at a Spanish air base. The crash of an Air Force fighter-bomber in the United Arab Emirates. These are some of the fragments of information that Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti has assembled to reveal the best picture yet of the Pentagon's secretive war in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

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You've probably heard of the "Pacific garbage patch," also called the "trash vortex." It's a region of the North Pacific ocean where the northern jet stream and the southern trade winds, moving opposite directions, create a vast, gently circling region of water called the North Pacific Gyre — and at its center, there are tons of plastic garbage. You may even have seen this picture of the garbage patch, above — right? Wrong.

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Yesterday evening Tara and I were riding the G train home from the park and a visibly intoxicated man got onto the car and asked us if we were “Irish or Scottish.” at first I thought he was asking about our heritage, but after looking at the bottle he was holding and the way he was sloshing around I think he may have thought we were talking with accents that is how many sheets to the wind he was. So normally when a drunk man talks to me on the subway I am mean as hell so he’ll leave me alone but  show all text

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Since there was a lot of interest in Abu Ray's recent piece on Algeria, I have asked friend-of-the-blog Geoff Porter if I could reproduce an email he sent me just before the parliamentary elections there. Geoff's take is quite unique, and while I'm not sure what to make of it (having not been to Algeria) I thought it was worth sharing. Let us know what you think of it. Parliamentary elections on 10 May have provided commentators with another occasion to discuss why Algeria did not have an “Arab...  show all text

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[inline|iid=17184] THE Chinese blogosphere has moved on very quickly from the case of Chen Guangcheng. (The blind activist arrived in America on May 19th, more than four weeks after he first took refuge in the American embassy). Mr Chen’s case has not disappeared from view entirely. Instead the accusations about the Americans scheming to assist Mr Chen in his escape from house arrest have been folded into a broader debate about foreigners in China. Ever since foreigners arrived in China in lar...  show all text

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The Internet asifa at Citi Field. On Sunday, 40,000 mostly Hasidic Jewish men in black hats and black suits gathered at Citi Field for a series of speeches concerning the corrupting influence of the Internet. The talks were broadcast to the JumboTron, betwixt the oversized bottles of Cholula censored with a white cloth over the label, which shows a woman. The 7 train from Grand Central had become packed with men in black, all in a fine mood, before we poured out at the Mets-Willets Point train ...  show all text

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The Stream is a social media community with its own daily television programme on Al Jazeera English. As the tremendous growth of social networks moulds and transforms the news agenda, The Stream aims to share these possibilities and connect its global audience into a dynamic online dialogue.

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NPR announced to staff Monday that it is creating a team to build news applications and has hired the Chicago Tribune’s Brian Boyer to lead it. The announcement represents a big bet on news applications, not just because of the… Read more

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DUBAI (Reuters) - A court in Bahrain on Monday fined Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of a prominent opposition activist, for insulting a government employee and her lawyer said she was still detained pending

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Real-Time Advice: Newlywed CEO Mark Zuckerberg may want to watch his status updates, divorce lawyers say. Facebook often gets blamed for breakups.

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A confluence of factors led to what appears to be at least a two-mile traffic jam in northwest Beijing on Saturday night. (Prepare to gape in horror around the 30-second mark as the camera pans out.) It was raining. It was a long block. It was in Zhongguancun, an incredibly busy part of town known for its electronics stores and colleges. And, most crucially, a traffic light had broken. This is my every nightmare about the city, frightening precisely because I — and any Beijinger, really — could...  show all text

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A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit a very small village. The villagers there told me this story of how they converted to Christianity and I thought it was an interesting account that gave a glimpse of their relationship with God and a few of the practical challenges of being a rural Christian. The following is a fairly close retelling of what I overheard from their congregation- Villager #1 – Before we became Christians, our village was known for quarreling with our neighbors. Outsiders ...  show all text

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Watch highlights, 5-Word Speeches, Winners'Videos and more from the 16th Annual Webby Awards, hosted by Patton Oswalt.

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Last Update: 21 May 2012 21:18 Zainab AlKhawaja 1- illegal gathering, assaulting a police officer and inciting hatred against the regime - postponed to 22th May (case since arrest in Dec 2011) 2- illegal gathering and assaulting an officer - postponed to 24th May 3- Obstructing traffic - postponed to 24th May. (no detention order) 4- Verbally insulting a police officer at the military hospital. Judge Ruled: Not guilty. (2 May) 5- Insulting a police officer - Judge Ruled: Fine BHD 200. (21  show all text

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What is being billed as the country's first free and fair presidential election has seen a lively campaign season.

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NPR has hired Brian Boyer, head of the Chicago Tribune’s news apps team, to lead a new, similar team of data grinders and designers focused full-time on interactive storytelling. That makes NPR the latest major outlet — like The New York Times and The Boston Globe — to devote newsroom resources to news apps. “Apps,” in this context, means interactive, data-driven visualizations of the news on any platform. The network was already creating these — Poisoned Places, The Fracking Boom — but with ...  show all text

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No reason was given to a Beit Jala family whose livelihood was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers earlier this month.

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We're hiding much of our newsrooms' value behind a terribly anachronistic format: voiceless, incremental news stories that neither get much traffic nor make our sites compelling destinations.

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(This post was prepared in collaboration with Dan Drinkard) Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words. Of course, what some might interpret as a dumbing down of Congress, others will see as more effective communications. And lawmakers of both parties still speak...  show all text

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We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregi

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Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf on Monday warned that Internet freedom is under threat from governments around the world, including the United States. Cerf, a computer scientist who was instrumental in the Internet’s creation, now employed by Google as its Internet evangelist, said officials in the U.

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We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregi

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Yang Rui, host of the China Central Television current affairs interview show Dialogue, responds to the controversy surrounding a message he posted online last week about the effort by Beijing authorities to root out foreigners illegally living and working in the Chinese capital.

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Three days before Egypt’s presidential elections, a combination of high stakes, suspense and confusion has made for a heady atmosphere.

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The fall of Bo Xilai from the Communist Party’s top echelons has shed light into how some of his closest allies became entwined in his fate.

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The Atavist, which helps produce multimedia storytelling for digital devices, has a content management system that has turned into a business opportunity.

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