Six In The Morning

In wake of Web blackout, SOPA/PIPA support weakens



By Suzanne Choney
As websites from Wikipedia to Wired went dark Wednesday to protest anti-piracy bills, some co-sponsors of the legislation in Congress said they're withdrawing their support for the bills. Pulling out were: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who was a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, as well as Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the AP; and Reps. Lee Terry (R-Nebraska), Ben Quayle (R-Arizona) and Rep. Rick Larsen, (D-Washington), who said they had been in support of a similar measure in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Pakistani prime minister faces supreme court accused of contempt
Yusuf Raza Gilani summoned for refusing to pursue corruption charges against the president, Asif Ali Zardari

Associated Press guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 06.29 GMT
* A contempt case against the Pakistani prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, has been adjourned by the country's supreme court after a hearing that took place amid tight security in Islamabad, the capital. The court has threatened Gilani with contempt for failing to pursue corruption accusations against the president, Asif Ali Zardari, and other officials. The case against Gilani will resume in February.

It's hip to be E=mc²: Can the worlds of art and fashion help to make the lab cool?
Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into fundamental science.

Thursday 19 January 2012
Chris Hatherill is sitting in the office he shares with graphic designers, textile artists and painters in east London. Slight, speaking in a quiet Canadian accent and with thin-rimmed steel glasses he looks like the fashion, music and tech journalist for Dazed & Confused and Vice that he is. Or, rather, the fashion, music and tech journalist he used to be. Only the conical flasks, filling in for vases, on the curled desk in front of him and the illustration of a Russian space rocket on the wall behind, are clues that his preoccupation is no longer Raf Simons' winter collection or new bands from New York.

Will North Korea change under Kim Jong-un?
North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, has been in place for the month since the death of his father was announced.

By Lucy Williamson BBC News, Seoul
In that time, the country's tightly-controlled media machine has lavished him with praise, calling him a "genius" and a "brilliant" military strategist. Its political structure has also garlanded him with formal titles every bit as extravagant. But amid all the titles and the propaganda, what can we learn about North Korea's future direction under its new leader? In the weeks since Kim Jong-un has been in power, most telling is the way he remains overshadowed by his late father and grandfather.

Report: Aid dithering doomed tens of thousands in E Africa
The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier

SIMON TISDALL LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Jan 18 2012 09:11
Figures compiled by the UK's department for international development (DfID) suggest that between 50 000 and 100 000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The US government estimates separately that more than 29 000 children under five died in the space of 90 days from May to July last year. The accompanying destruction of livelihoods, livestock and local market systems affected 13-million people overall. Hundreds of thousands remain at continuing risk of malnutrition.

The myth of an "isolated' Iran
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the United States and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus: Summer 1953: The Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country's oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police