Israel Suspected of Bombing Sudan Arms Convoy Headed for Gaza

Israel suspected of bombing Sudan arms convoy headed for Gaza
An Israeli F-16 warplane takes off for a mission from an air force base in southern Israel

(AP)

Israeli warplanes are suspected of carrying out the bombing raid in January
Jenny Booth

Sudan admitted today that foreign fighter planes carried out an airstrike on a convoy of 17 trucks transporting arms to Gaza in January.

Israel refused to comment on reports that it was responsible for the attack, which took place inside Sudanese airspace near the border with Egypt.

CBS, the US television network, said that 39 people were killed in the strike, which happened soon after Israel’s devastating three-week military assault against Gaza. The origin of the weapons – whether Sudan or further afield, with some fingers pointed at Iran – is not clear.

“A convoy of vehicles carrying illegal weapons was bombed near the Sudanese-Egyptian border in mid-January,” said Mabruk Mubarak Saleem, the Sudanese transport minister, adding that the weapons were headed for Gaza.
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The minister, who is a former commander of the Eastern Front rebel group that signed a peace deal with Khartoum in 2006, ending decades of civil war, said that arms smuggling was rampant in the region because of the marginalisation of his Rashidiya Arab tribe.

“Rashidiya tribesmen engage in this illegal trade because they’re so poor,” Mr Saleem said.

News of the airstrike dominated news coverage in the Israeli media.

Israeli security sources told the liberal daily Haaretz that there was an international network of smugglers moving arm caches from Iran through the Gulf to Yemen, across the Red Sea to Sudan and then through Egypt to Gaza.

“If the reports are true, the bombing in Sudan was an important message of deterrence from Israel to Iran,” the paper said in an analysis.

“The timing of the operation – not long after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza – is indicative of the importance which Israel places in its execution. If the powers that be decide that it is worth taking the risk and striking targets some 1,400 kilometres [900 miles] outside of Israel’s borders, then it would appear that Israel believed Iran is seeking to supply Gaza with significant armaments."

Eitan Ben Eliyahu, a former Israeli air force chief, told army radio that the reported Sudan raid showed that it was still too early to draw up a final assessment of the offensive in Gaza.

“One of the essential elements of this operation was the strengthening of co-operation, particularly with the United States, to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas,” he said.

On January 16, just two days before Israel and Hamas implemented separate ceasefires, Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement with the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to work together to stop arms smuggling to Gaza. As well as naval patrols off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, the agreement also provides for intelligence sharing.

In recent weeks, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has alluded to a series of “major operations” carried out during his term of office.

In another unexplained incident, warplanes bombed five fishing boats off Sudan’s Red Sea coast on January 16, wounding 25 people, Sudanese security sources told AFP.

An international conference on preventing arms smuggling to Gaza is due to be held in Ottawa in May.

University Oof Nairobi Students’ Protests Marked by Destruction and Looting

University of Nairobi students destroyed property, looted business premises and robbed motorists and pedestrians in a protest that was originally meant to be peaceful.

They harassed city residents as they caused mayhem soon after marching through several streets in Nairobi to protest at last week’s killings of two human rights activists and their colleague.

Protestors help themselves at BookFirst restaurant, in Nakumatt Lifestyle, Nairobi.

The students attacked and robbed motorists, raided restaurants and robbed pedestrians soon after the march as police watched from their lorries parked at the Central Police Station.

The worst affected businesses were Kengeles restaurant on Koinange Street and BookFirst restaurant within Nakumatt Lifestyle where they stole food items before escaping.

At Kengeles, the rioters pulled out seats and tables and barricaded on Koinange Street before they sat to drink the stolen alcohol for almost two hours, to the amazement of the public.

Hurriedly Shut

Several businesses were hurriedly shut, as the marauding students became chaotic. Hapless business owners blamed police for failing to contain the situation.

In Nairobi, the students marched through various streets and made stopovers at police headquarters, Vigilance House, Harambee House, Parliament, KICC, City Hall, I&M Building, Laico Regency and Central Police Station where they made demands.

Among the demands were the sacking of Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua, Commissioner of Police Maj-Gen Hussein Ali, Attorney General Amos Wako and Town Clerk John Gakuo.

More than 200 riot police officers who were on standby said they had been instructed by their seniors not to intervene. 

Enraged wananchi at one point attempted to repulse the students by pelting them with stones.

For almost three hours, the students blocked Koinange Street, University Way and a section of Uhuru Highway while harassing motorists.

Nairobi University students demonstrate atop furniture belonging to Kengeles restaurant on Kionange Street, Nairobi.

On Tuesday evening, the Government gave in to pressure and allowed the protest though police had earlier banned it claiming it could turn chaotic.

Demo Won’t Be Banned

Prime Minister Raila Odinga had earlier assured students and civil rights activists, who had called on him at his office, that the demo would not be banned.

And when the demonstrators took to the streets yesterday, they hijacked five lorries including an oil tanker and used them to block the Uhuru Highway/University Way roundabout before confiscating their ignition keys.

The road was impassable for hours and the drivers only managed to get back their keys after the students had extorted some money from them.

The riot police only intervened at 5pm, long after the city had experienced heavy traffic snarl-ups, property destroyed and some pedestrians injured.

The officers lobbed several teargas canisters at the students but they replied the gesture with a hail of stones.

Traffic flow was, however, restored within minutes of the intervention by police.

The students had been allowed to hold a peaceful demonstration in the city to protest the killing of human rights activists Kamau King’ara and Paul Oulu and their colleague Godwin Ogato.

According to an earlier agreement, the protests were supposed to start at 9 am and end at midday.

Hundreds of the students had earlier on poured onto the streets of Nairobi disrupting the flow of traffic as they protested the shooting incidents.

King’ara and Oulu were shot by as yet unidentified assailants while Ogato was shot dead by police in a confrontation over the body of King’ara within the university hostels last Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the students marched peacefully carrying placards and most of them donning black T-shirts.

They demanded the arrest of the ‘real’ gunmen who killed the Oscar Foundation officials. They also asked that proper action be taken against the officer who shot dead their colleague.

Police on horseback escorted the students throughout the protest march. Other student leaders restrained their colleagues who tried to harass motorists.

Egerton University students also protested along the streets of Nakuru town.

Business in Nakuru town came to a standstill, as the more than 1,000 Egerton University students took to the streets in a peaceful demonstration.

Paralysed Transport

The students, mainly drawn from the University’s Nakuru Town Campus, marched along the town’s streets paralysing traffic as they chanted slogans against Internal Security Minister George Saitoti and Police Commissioner Hussein Ali.

"We are demanding for their immediate resignations and the setting up of an independent probe over the killing," said Mr Amon Matuga the chairman of the University town’s campus. 

The officers in heavy riot gear steered clear of the demonstration as the students peacefully matched along the main streets. Standard

Mdaku Says: Welcome To The Global Recession,  Kenya Style.

Alabama Gunman Kills 9 Before Taking His Own Life

Samson, Ala. -- A gunman went on a rampage across two southern Alabama counties Tuesday, killing at least nine people and burning down his mother's house before shooting himself to death, authorities said.

The victims included family members and apparent strangers, the Associated Press reported.

 

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  Sequence of events and map

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  Victims mourned

Police were investigating shootings in four locations in three communities near the Florida border, all of which were thought to be the work of a single gunman named Michael McLendon.

Investigators declined to comment on a motive for the shootings, in which at least four other people were injured, including a child.

The bloodshed began when McLendon burned down the house in Kinston where he lived with his mother, Lisa McLendon, said Coffee County Coroner Robert Preachers.

Officials saw Lisa McLendon's body inside but couldn't get into the still-burning structure to determine the cause of death or whether she was her son's 10th victim.

McLendon then headed about 12 miles southeast to Samson, in Geneva County, where he shot and killed five people -- four adults and a child -- at a home, authorities said.

He killed one person each in two other homes, authorities said.

"He started in his mother's house," Preachers said. "Then he went to Samson and he killed his granny and granddaddy and aunt and uncle. He cleaned his family out."

Police said McLendon also shot at a state trooper's car, striking the vehicle seven times and wounding the trooper with broken glass.

Samson contractor Greg McCullough said he was pumping gas at a service station when the gunman opened fire, killing a woman and wounding McCullough in the shoulder.

"I first thought it was somebody playing," he said. The gunman fired a rifle, which appeared to jam, but "went back to firing" and drove off.

"I'm just in awe that something like this could take place, that someone could do such a thing. It's just shocking," McCullough told the Associated Press.

McLendon also killed someone at a Samson supply store, authorities said.

Police pursued McLendon to Reliable Metal Products just north of Geneva, about a dozen miles southeast of Samson, where he fired an estimated 30 rounds from a semiautomatic weapon, authorities said. One bullet hit Geneva Police Chief Frankie Lindsey, who was saved by his bulletproof vest.

McLendon then went inside the plant and shot himself, authorities said.

The night security guard, whom The Times reached by telephone, remained shaken hours later. "It was frightening," said the guard, who refused to give his name. ". . . It's kind of a shaky thing when a man holds up his gun and shoots himself."

Reliable Metal Products makes grills and vents for heating and air-conditioning systems, mainly for hotels. State Rep. Warren Beck, a Republican whose district includes Geneva, said McLendon had worked at Reliable Metal.

State Sen. Harri Anne Smith said some of those killed in Samson were sitting outside.

"He was just driving down the street shooting at people sitting on their porches," she told the Associated Press.

Smith described Geneva County as small-town America, where news usually revolves around high school sports, and where people grow peanuts and cotton and raise chickens and cattle. In Samson, she said, there is no Hardee's or McDonald's, just a seed business and a couple of mom-and-pop shops.

"Our community is centered around family," she told The Times. "So we'll take care of the families. We'll take care of their children."

Local officials are "baffled," she said. "There's been no clue as to why this gentleman -- I shouldn't say gentleman; I'll say individual -- did this."

John Rainey, an administrator at Wiregrass Medical Center in Geneva, told the Associated Press that a child was brought in with injuries, but was flown to another hospital. The staff had geared up to try to help survivors, but their hopes were dashed when reports of the deaths came in, Rainey said.

"It's something you'd expect in Atlanta or your bigger cities, but in a little town it puts a lot of people in stress," Rainey said. "Our nursing staff broke down in tears hearing what was going on and realizing they weren't going to be able to help them." Source LaTimes

Mdaku Says : It Looks Like The Shooting Season Has Began In Earnest, How Sad.

German Police Say School Shooting Kills at Least 10

German police say a gunman killed at least 10 people and injured several when he opened fire at a secondary school near Stuttgart in the southwest of the country. The gunman is reported to have fled the school.

 

At least 10 people were killed on Wednesday when a gunman fired shots at a secondary school in southwestern Germany, a regional government official said.
"We have to assume a death toll in the double-digits," a spokeswoman for the interior ministry in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said. "These are students."

The incident took place at 9.30 am local time at the Albertville school in Winnenden, a town of 27,600, near Stuttgart in southwestern Germany. 

German media said the gunman, dressed in a black camouflage suit, was a 17-year-old former student at the school.
Police, rescue workers and fire fighters were at the scene and helicopters circled the town. The school has been evacuated.

Wednesday's shooting followed a rampage in the United States on Tuesday in which a gunman shot dead 9 people then killed himself in southern Alabama.

String of school shootings

The Winnenden incident hooting is the latest in a spate of school shootings in Germany in recent years.

In 2006, a masked man opened fire at a school in the western German town of Emsdetten, wounding at least eleven people before committing suicide.

In April 2002, a gunman killed 17 students and teachers before killing himself at a high school in the eastern city Erfurt in the worst such incident. Deutsche Welle

Mdaku Says: Unfortunately It Looks Like Shooting Season Is Here With Us Yet Again

TECH HABITS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

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Extend your router's signal, throttle your bandwidth, review usage charts, and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs, and even router overclocking to extend your signal

Want to make your Wi-Fi router's signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they've achieved gains by fashioning a foil "windsurfer" parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.

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Kenya Rainmakers: The Suba People
A story of rainmaking amongst the Kenyan Bantu Suba people of Southern Nyanza.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1497595/kenya_rainmakers_the_suba_people.html

Forest Where Moi Found Peace And Serenity And A Few "Herbs" To Run Kenya 24 Yrs.

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As we veer off the tarmacked Sacho-Kabarnet road, we run straight into the thick indigenous Kipng’ochoch Forest.
It is a relief when we finally reach the lush green edge of the forest since the road has been steep and winding.
For a moment, one is awed by the fresh air in Kipng’ochoch and serenity accentuated by a cool breeze.

Part of Kipng’ochoch forest. The community plans to open up the site for tourism. [PHOTO: AGNES WAMBUI/STANDARD]

The forest used to have a unique visitor who made it famous. Former President Moi visited it at least four times a year during the 24 years he was Head of State.

According to ex-Senior Chief Weldon Labat, who was among those who accompanied Moi on most visits, the retired President seemed to derive peace of mind as he bore the heavy-burden of leading the nation.

"He always went in looking tense and quiet but he came out of the forest jovial, more relaxed and with a radiant smile," said Labat.
Mr Labat’s tenure as the area chief ended with that of the President when Moi also retired.

"I used to accompany him whenever he visited the forest," he said.
Hot season

Labat said the former President would visit any time of the year, mostly during hot seasons. There is no single year during his presidency that he failed to visit Kipng’ochoch.

Labat said the former Head of State would go to a particular spot accompanied by former Kabarnet Mayor, the late Philemon Chelagat and Mr Joel Bultut, who was Baringo District Kanu chairman. Others who accompanied Moi, he said, included elders of his age set — the Chumo and former Co-operative Bank chairman Hosea Kiplagat.

The former administrator said Moi last visited Kipng’ochoch in 2002 to talk with elders while he was drumming up support for then Kanu presidential candidate Mr Uhuru Kenyatta.
He said the former Head of State spent at least three hours but would at times spend the whole day chatting with elders as they sat on low chairs.

Labat said Moi’s security would remain at a safe distance while his cooks were on hand to serve him and his group food brought from his Kabarak or Sacho homes.

Ex-Chief Weldon Labat shows the scenery, which the former President Moi enjoyed seeing while at Kipng’ochoch picnic site. [PHOTO: AGNES WAMBUI/STANDARD]

The first thing Moi would do, said Labat, was to check some trees he attached a lot of importance to, before moving to the high point where one could see the eastern and western part of Rift Valley from a panoramic view.

"Moi would first check on specific indigenous trees before proceeding to the high point and finally settle down for a chat with elders," he said.

At the peak of the site, one is able to espy Lake Baringo basin, the steaming geysers of Lake Bogoria, Laikipia Range and the imposing Tugen Hills on the eastern side.


Beautiful scenery

On the Western side, the magnificent Elgeyo Escarpment tantalises the eye, while the fluorspar mines and Kerio Valley are also within eyesight.

Labat says the former President would listen to stories from the elders recalling their youthful escapades that would send him into prolonged laughter.

"He would share stories with the elders about their youthful days," he said.

Always, the Head of State would end up advising the leaders on the need to conserve forests and good leadership qualities.

"As usual, Mzee is a man of wisdom and after light moments, he advised the leaders and elders on issues of importance to the country and their community," he said.

Fenced for security

The point, which was fenced off for the security of the former Head of State, is also a prayer site for the community during periods of calamity like drought.

Recently, students from Sacho High School went to the site to pray before they sat their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education.

Chief Philip Korir said elders of old used to converge at Kipng’ochoch to perform rituals and pray for the prosperity of the community.

"During the drought of 1984, elders spent days at the site praying for rain and eventually it rained," said Mr Korir.
He said Kipng’ochoch has trees with medicinal properties, and which Moi has always been keen to see preserved.

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Ruto Breaks Ranks With ODM

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Agriculture Minister and ODM deputy leader William Ruto has broken ranks with his party and told off its disgruntled MPs to shape up or ship out.
Ruto said this even as it emerged that a new political alliance between himself and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta could be in the offing.
Ruto led Rift Valley MPs in roundly condemning their party’s demand that the power sharing accord for the grand coalition be renegotiated.
Speaking at a fundraising at Chematich Secondary School in Cherangany on Sunday, Ruto challenged "dissatisfied ODM MPs" to quit the Grand Coalition Government.
He accused the disgruntled ODM MPs of frustrating the working spirit of the coalition.
"We should be talking about hunger, the failing education standards and not the improper sharing of power," said Ruto.
To prove that he would be willing to go it alone, Ruto further challenged the dissatisfied ODM MPs to quit the coalition as "individuals instead of threatening that the party was about to withdraw from Government".
Ruto, who was accompanied by several ODM MPs, said the current government had a mandate of five years to serve Kenyans.
Fair share
The Rift Valley MPs drove their message even more clearly yesterday when they joined Ruto at yet another fundraising at Kapsabet Showground in Emgwen Constituency of Nandi District, where they made it clear that they would quickly take up Cabinet positions if their ODM colleagues walked out of the coalition.
And even as ODM pushes for a fair share of government positions in the coalition, the Rift Valley MPs re-opened dispute over the sharing of government positions among their party members.
The MPs included Assistant ministers Charles Keter, William Cheptumo and Aden Duale.
Others were area MPs Elijah Lagat, Magerer Langat (Kepkelion), David Koech (Mosop), Peris Simam (Eldoret South), Jackson Kiptanui (Keiyo South), Charles Keter (Belgut), Julius Kones (Konoin), Lucas Chepkitony (Keiyo North), David Koech (Mosop), Cherangany MP Joshua Kutuny, nominated MP Musa Sirma, Isaac Ruto and politician Alex Kosgey.
The possibility of the alliance between Ruto and Uhuru — and possibly Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka — was given credence by Assistant minister Kareke Mbiuki, who sensationally revealed that he had been involved in meetings between the two and that a political union was in the offing.
Mbiuki disclosed that Uhuru and Ruto had met and worked on a possible political alliance.
Mbiuki, a close ally of the Finance minister, said majority of Central Kenya MPs —including the chairman of the region’s Parliamentary caucus Ephraim Maina, who is also the Mathira MP — were in support of Uhuru’s move to forge an alliance with Ruto.
Mbiuki said he had mediated talks between Uhuru and Ruto, which could result in a key political partnership in the run-up to the 2012 General Elections.
Speaking at Ngunga Primary School in his Nithi constituency where he distributed relief food to residents of the remote Igamba Ng’ombe division on Sunday, Mbiuki said the two had been holding meetings aimed at a political union.
"Mr Ruto is my minister while Mr Kenyatta is my party chairman. Both of them are youthful and have a long history in Kanu. I relate with them well. I have been the middleman in talks that could result in a major political alliance," said the Nithi MP. He hinted that the alliance would also include the Vice-President.
Efforts to reach Ruto about Mbiuki’s claims were unsuccessful as his mobile phone went unanswered.
The ODM MPs from the North and South Rift region who attended the Ruto function said those demanding re-negotiations should tell Kenyans of their political intensions.



Mr Lagat dared those who wanted to quit the coalition saying, "We will move in swiftly and replace them as soon as they quit."
Isaac Ruto said if fresh negotiations will be done, then a third principal should be engaged because "the half a loaf ODM received was not fairly distributed."
Kutuny said if there was to be any renegotiations, then the distribution of the half loaf in ODM should first be addressed.
Simmering rows
"The party should not be personalized. It belongs to all Kenyans and there should be fairness," Kuttuny said, revealing the simmering rows within ODM.
Ruto said "As leaders we must strive to focus our energies to develop the country by addressing pertinent issues affecting Kenyans," said Ruto.
Cherangany MP Joshua Kutuny and nominated MP Musa Sirma said some MPs had hatched a plot to weaken and destroy the coalition. They vowed to stick to the principles of the one-year-old grand coalition.
"Those out to scuttle the grand coalition have a hidden agenda and we challenge them to declare their interests without compromising the party," said Kutuny.
Duale said ODM MPs from Rift Valley, Coast, Western and North Eastern would protect the coalition and termed those agitating for its collapse as daydreamers.
The Agriculture minister censured his Cabinet colleagues for allegedly abdicating their responsibilities and instead wasting time in unnecessary and unhealthy political talk.
Ruto’s sentiments were echoed by nine MPs at the function who also dismissed threats by their colleagues to quit the Government.
"It is an unrealistic plot to return the country backwards when we have many challenges to overcome," said Ruto.
The MPs said ODM was a senior partner in the coalition and would not pull out of Government.
They termed the quit threats orchestrated by some MPs from Nyanza province as misplaced.
This is a clear breakaway from ODM’s National Executive Council (NEC) that kicked off the storm last week by demanding that the coalition National Accord be re-negotiated to provide for a 50-50 stake for their party and PNU.
Addressing a press conference then, ODM Secretary-General Anyang’ Nyong’o said the party was tired of staying in a marriage where their rights were being ignored. Thanks To The Standard


Mdaku Says- Show Us The Maize First Then Tutahama Chama,Mahindi, Bande, Oduma, Just Give Us A Few Cobs We Roast And We Will Be All Good Mr Roots!!

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Google Universe-Google CEO Hints Google/Linux Netbooks May Be Cominer

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People have been speculating about Google getting into the desktop business ever since Good OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux built around online Google applications showed up in 2007. Then, the rumor-mill really got churning when it was shown that Google mobile operating system, Android, would work just fine as a desktop operating system. Just because something can be done, though, doesn't mean a company actually going to do it though. On March 3rd, though, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "What's particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point. Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That's another new model that's coming."







Making money from online advertising. Hmm... Now what company, with a name that starts with 'G' and ends with 'e,' do we know that's the absolute tip-top at making money from online advertising? Could it be Google!? I think so.
The idea of selling netbooks cheaply with a service contract is already being tried. Dell and AT&T offered a Dell Mini 9 for $99 with an AT&T Data Connect contract. I have no doubt you'll see similar mobile phone like discount netbook pricing from other PC companies and telecoms soon. Look for these offers to start showing up everywhere later this year or early next year, as high-speed WiMAX networking starts to come into its own.
It makes perfect business sense for Google to jump into this business. Netbooks continue to be the one bright spot in computer sales and Google already has a Linux that will work on them. Google, of course, also has many online applications that work perfectly on a netbook. Making it even more attractive, Google is making it possible to use their applications, such as GMail, without a Internet connection.
Now take all this, combine it with putting data and applications on the cloud and Google's online advertising savvy, and I see a business model that, even in this grim economy, can't help but make money.
We've gone from pure speculation, to speculation based on facts, and now Google's CEO is talking about how much sense this kind of idea makes. I hereby predict that we'll see the first netbooks with an official Google Linux desktop on them by the second half of this year. It will happen that quickly because Google won't want to give Microsoft a chance to regroup with Windows 7 from its Vista disaster.
In 2010, the big desktop operating system battle will be between Apple, on the high-end, Google and the other Linuxes on the netbook and other low-priced systems, and Windows getting squeezed in the middle. If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on it.

Mdaku Says-It is slowly but surely turning into a Google universe soon we will have Google guided surface to air missiles, Google rocket launchers and Google microwaves or do we have them already? Google is on fire.

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Ever Heard Of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships?

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Ambassadorial Scholarships

  This post comes as a follow up to the other post about UCAS and the Common App for making educated and informed decisions when you are in pursuit of Higher Education. You will notice that in that post i said i will make it a point if time and tide allow to post for all you good people very, very helpful sites, links and other resources to keep you well informed on what opportunities lurk over yonder, which are but waiting for you to reach for and pluck,,,Ok Enough of the poetry and sentimentality already did you know that these guys, The Rotarians, are the largest Non Govermental Awarders of scholarships in the whole wide world? Guess you did not huh., well they award all types of scholarships from undergraduate all the way to postdoc.,to get an idea through the 2005-2006, they gave out grants totaling $500 million dollars which benefited people from 70 countries who went on to study in some 70 other countries. All that is required is that you sign up to be a Rotarian which is as easy as walking up to the nearest office and signing up,,Ok enough from me read on and sign and be empowered.Good Day.-By Mdaku



You Can Decide To Skip The Rhetoric And Go Directly To The Application Pages Here

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A mbassadorial Scholarships, The Rotary Foundation's oldest and best-known program, was founded in 1947. Since then, nearly 38,000 men and women from about 100 nations have studied abroad under its auspices. Today it is the world's largest privately funded international scholarships program. Nearly 800 scholarships were awarded for study in 2005-06. Through grants totaling approximately US$500 million, recipients from about 70 countries studied in more than 70 nations.

"The Rotary Foundation does some terrific things, not the least of which is the Ambassadorial Scholarships program." — Michael R. Whiteman, international programs director, University of Idaho

The purpose of the Ambassadorial Scholarships program is to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries and geographical areas. The program sponsors several types of scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for qualified professionals pursuing vocational studies. While abroad, scholars serve as goodwill ambassadors to the host country and give presentations about their homelands to Rotary clubs and other groups. Upon returning home, scholars share with Rotarians and others the experiences that led to a greater understanding of their host country.
Generous contributions from Rotarians worldwide represent a continued faith that today’s Ambassadorial Scholars will be tomorrow's community and world leaders.

Martha Karua Sorry-Central MPs Have Endorsed Uhuru Madrinks For Presidency

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Political supremacy war in Central Province went a notch higher at the weekend with 15 MPs throwing their weight behind Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta.

And in a bare-knuckle rejoinder, Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua said Kenyans would not be easily hoodwinked.

"I don’t think Kenyans will be enticed to build dynasties," she said adding, "Every individual must be judged by his track record."

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua after attending a church service in Githunguri, Kiambu, on Sunday. Photo: Jonah Onyango/Standard

Speaking in Githunguri, Kiambu, Ms Karua added, "I expect to be judged by Kenyans, not 220 MPs in Parliament."

The MPs meeting in Gatundu South told Karua to go slow, saying the region’s bloc vote was Uhuru’s.

"Let everybody know that Uhuru is the undisputed leader of Central Kenya," said Kamukunji’s Simeon Mbugua. 

The leaders were speaking at Kimunyu Secondary School during a fundraiser. The move by the MPs will certainly pit Uhuru against Karua.

"Others moving around saying they want to be President are day dreamers," said Mr Mbugua.

Juja MP George Thuo set the ball rolling, saying Uhuru was politically mature and tested. Mr Thuo said time was ripe for the community’s political leadership to speak in one voice.

Uhuru, who accepted the endorsement, however, said the political leadership needed to focus on issues affecting Kenyans.

"We have problems facing the nation which need our attention," he said. 

Forget renegotiation

The MPs, mainly drawn from PNU, said there would be no renegotiation of the National Accord and urged ODM leaders to quit the coalition if they were dissatisfied.

Kigumo MP Jamleck Kamau said ODM was given an equal number of positions as PNU and should stop lying to Kenyans they got a raw deal.

"They know that most positions given to ODM in the power-sharing deal went to one region," said Mr Kamau.

Uhuru dismissed the Geneva meeting called by Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. "Annan should instead come to Kenya and meet us here," said Uhuru.

On the killings of the Oscar Foundation officials, Uhuru told leaders not to politicise the murders and called for speedy investigation.

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Jailbreak Kid Busted Creeping Back Into Jail

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Jail guards in the US state of Georgia searching for an escaped inmate did not have to look very far - the fugitive was caught sneaking back into prison.

Guards spotted Harry Jackson, 25, trying to creep back in with 14 packs of cigarettes allegedly stolen from a nearby store.
The alarm had been raised earlier after a jail door was found unlocked.
He had opened a door to the exercise yard and climbed an outer fence to get away, Sheriff Tommy Gregory said.



Jackson now faces new charges of breaking out of prison and burglary, reported AP news agency.
He was in jail in Woodbine, Camden County, on charges including possession of a controlled substance and violating probation, reported AP.

Mdaku Says: The Guy Should Have Listened More Often To The Song "Now Why You Wanna Go And Do That Huh,,Huh,,Huh,,". Good People Imagine Trying To Pull Such A Stunt At Our Very Own Kamiti Max.,,,Utashangaa!!Utaona Siku Mrefu Sana Mwanan'gu.
For You Who Don't Speak Kiswahili The Above Simply Means,,Why? Man, Why?

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TECH HABITS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

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You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly (here's how to set them up).

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox's address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don't involve searches, too--for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark's Properties dialog box. Once you've set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.
Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up-to-date wherever you're working.
More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips Thanks To PcWorld

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Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga On The Warpath

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Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Saturday tore into the country’s security agencies over extrajudicial killings and said acts of impunity must be brought to an end and the rule of law restored.

Mr Odinga spoke a day after the US Embassy in Nairobi offered help in investigating the latest killings – those of Oscar Foundation director Oscar King’ara and official Paul Oulu.

And the matter threatened to throw the struggling grand coalition government into a fresh crisis over the strong positions taken by cabinet ministers.

The Prime Minister, one of the two principals in the coalition, has twice this week lashed out at the same government he serves and half of whose Cabinet members belong to his ODM party.

Mr Odinga appears to be growing frustrated with the government he helped form a year ago and this week asked for a renegotiation of the deal that brought his ODM and President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity together.

On Friday, he fired a salvo at government spokesperson Alfred Mutua saying that he did not speak for the grand coalition government.

Mr Mutua issued a statement on Wednesday alerting the public that the Oscar Foundation and members of the proscribed Mungiki sect were planning to paralyse transport the following day and warned that the law would take its course.

The protests went ahead Thursday, but the day ended tragically with the execution-style killings of Mr King’ara and Mr Oulu.

On Saturday Mr Odinga called for a halt to the “rule by the gun the security officers have displayed while purporting to discharge their duties in recent times. People should not be shot without following the due process of the law. We have had cases where the officers shoot dead innocent citizens before they plant a gun on the body of the deceased.”

He attributed the lawlessness to the collapse of the country’s justice system and said the office of the Attorney-General was guilty of abetting the practice after officers implicate defenceless people with trumped up charges to justify their actions.

On Saturday the police said they were questioning six people in connection with the killings Thursday evening near the junction of Mamlaka Road and State House Road

Intense scrutiny

Two weeks ago, the police and the AG came under intense scrutiny in a report prepared by UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston who accused the force of engaging in such killings, sparking outrage from the public.

Speaking in his Gatundu South constituency, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta called on security forces to ensure that the killers of the two human rights activists were apprehended immediately.

“We need justice, and police should speed up investigations. People should also stop politicising the killing and instead seek the truth … you cannot politicise everything,” Mr Kenyatta said.

“We should stop persistent wrangles in the coalition and concentrate on solving problems that face Kenyans for development. We should stop shouting at each other every now and then. ODM should accept whatever the party has been given and serve Kenyans.”

The Sunday Nation learnt that the US government has offered the services of Nairobi-based detectives from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate Thursday’s killings. A diplomatic note to the Foreign Affairs ministry says the American detectives are ready to “offer immediate assistance.”

“The FBI within the US Mission (Nairobi embassy) is standing by and is able to begin working immediately on the investigation,” read part of the note dated March 6, 2009 ....Read More

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Kenyan Police Kill Varsity Student

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Police Breaking Up Riots
Police Commissioner Maj Gen Hussein Ali has ordered the arrest of three police officers who shot dead a University of Nairobi student last night.

The student was killed was when police used live ammunition against students who were protesting the gunning down of Oscar Foundation's executive director Oscar King'ara near the university's Halls of Residence. Mr King'ara was in the company of a colleague said to be a former University of Nairobi Students' Union leader, who was also killed by unknown gunmen.



The varsity student's killing occurred as the police tried to retrieve the bodies of the murder victims. According to Police Spokesman Mr Eric Kiraithe, some students removed the body of one victim from the scene and took it the Halls of Residence and a confrontation ensued between the students and the officers.

In a statement, Mr Kiraithe, however, said the use of "lethal force" was "unprofessional and uncalled for". He said the concerned officers would be investigated and the results made public.

He added that the firearms used have been taken to the Criminal Investigations Department headquarters for analysis. Thanks To The Nation

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Brave Kenya Go Down Fighting

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Brave Kenya Go Down Fighting



Kenya’s Humphrey Kayange tackles Argentina’s Lucas Amorosino in during their IRB Rugby World Cup Sevens semi-final match in Dubai, on Saturday. Argentina won 12-0. Photos/REUTERS

Kenya’s Humphrey Kayange tackles Argentina’s Lucas Amorosino in during their IRB Rugby World Cup Sevens semi-final match in Dubai, on Saturday. Argentina won 12-0. Photos/REUTERS
By CHARLES NYENDE in Dubai, UAEPosted Saturday, March 7 2009 at 20:04


Kenya bowed out at the semi-final stage of the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Dubai after losing 12-0 to Argentina in an absorbing match at the Emirates Rugby ground.


Two tries either half from Horacio Martin and Martin Moyano were enough to pull the Argentines into their first world cup final where they were to meet another first timer Wales later in the evening.



Wales upset Samoa 19-12 to set up a final date with Argentina later in the evening.

The match started edgily as both sides probed for an opening.

It was the Argentines who opened the scoring after some deft exchanges ended with the supporting Martin on hand to dive over.

Kenya pressed but excellent defending by Argentina denied them any openings for the running game that had come to be loved by an involve audience at the Emirates Sevens stands.

Moyano sealed victory with, diving to touch down after a neat grabber kick past Collins Injera.

Stepping Down

The sight of a deflated Kenya squad after the final whistle was blown told how disappointed the rank outsiders felt but it was a performance they will be proud of.

“I am very happy with the boys. Making it to the semifinals of a world cup is no mean achievement more so considering that this is an amateur sports in Kenya,” Kenya coach, Benjamin Ayimba, said.

Ayimba, who has been involved with the sevens game for over 15 years, first as a Kenya team player before becoming the coach in 2000 said this was the best national sevens team the country had ever had.

The coach added that he was considering stepping down next year.

“I am looking at 2010. Maybe someone else should come in with new ideas. We put in so much of our time into this game and you know its status,” he said.

Thanks To The Nation

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Kenya and Wales Join Big Guns In Cup Quarters

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Kenyan Skipper Humphrey Kayange Kicking Ahead

Kenya and Wales have secured their places in the Melrose Cup quarter finals at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Dubai as the two best runners-up across the six pools, joining New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, Samoa, England and Argentina at the top table approaching the business end of the tournament.

The second day's play at 'The Sevens' provided a number of absorbing encounters, with several matches decided after the final siren.

To underline the competitive nature of play across the 24 teams, co-leaders on the IRB Sevens World Series South Africa and England were both taken to the wire on a day when New Zealand made light of their injury woes, Fiji quietly built up momentum and Argentina went about their business with some clinical performances.

Pool A

Even without injured Super 14 star Victor Vito, out with a claf injury, New Zealand proved too strong for all comers in Pool A. Tonga finished second courtesy of their 31-10 win over Italy. The Arabian Gulf went close to earning the biggest roar of the day but were pipped at the post by a tenacious Italy, 19-17.

Pool B

After a less than convincing 12-point win over the USA, Fiji finished strongly on the second day of their title defence, overpowering impressive France with a 38-5 victory. Les Bleus were rampant early on in seeing off Georgia 33-0 and with two good pool wins can count themselves unlucky not to make the last eight in the Cup.

Pool C

South Africa were tested by Canada in their first match of the day before sealing a 15-7 win. They needed all 14 minutes against the Cannucks and then scored again at the death to account for Scotland, 19-16.


Scotland were impressive winners over Japan earlier in the day and unlucky not to be in contention for the Melrose Cup, cruelly denied by Bok captain Mpho Mbiyozo at the death.

Pool D

Pool D was dominated by Samoa who remained undefeated on day two with a 19-0 over Australia and a 13-point victory over battling Portugal. But it was Ireland who sent out the early shockwaves with a 24-21 win over Michael O’Connor’s Australian side in the dying moments of the match. Ireland weren’t able to continue their run, though, downed by Portual 17-5.

All three eventually shared the honours on the second rung in the pool with one win apiece, none of them with a strong enough points difference to reach the Cup.

Pool E

England were pushed all the way by a determined Tunisia, who outscored them three tries to one in the second half, but got away with a nervous 28-24 win to ensure their quarter final aspirations remain on track.

Ben Ryan's side followed up with a much-improved performance over Kenya 26-7. Despite that loss, Kenya also advanced to the quarter finals after a solid win over Hong Kong 43-7 earlier in the day.

Tunisia and Hong Kong provided one of the more entertaining matches of the day with the score see-sawing throughout, the North Africans finally clinching the game on the final siren.

Pool F

Winners of the recent IRB World Sevens Series event in San Diego, Argentina crept under the radar all day with fine wins over Zimbabwe and Wales. They didn’t have it all their own way against the Welsh, who also booked a deserved place in the Melrose Cup quarter finals with a good win over Uruguay.

Zimbabwe and Uruguay also fought out a closely-contested match, Zimbabwe squeezing out a four-point win. Source IRBWC

Mdaku Says

Let Us Pray For Our Boys As They Check In For The Quarters, Go Kenya.

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Interview With Janice Brand VP Content And Community At Helium Dot Com

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Your work in networked/citizen/collaborative journalism.

You Can Check Out My Helium Profile Here

I am VP, Content & Community at Helium.com, an international community of active writers who use social networking to rate each other’s work. Our writers range from newbie to published professional, all contributing to a growing trove of more than 450,000 articles on subjects ranging from auto repair to Zen Buddhism. Our members actively engage each other through our community boards to help each other with writing and improving.

What are your goals?

We are building the richest resource of experience-based knowledge, wisdom and creativity. To achieve this goal, we are building an inviting, yet competitive community of members who write quality articles on subjects they care about. Today, you will find over 65,000 unique subjects on the site – and our aim is for double that very soon!

Notable achievements?

Thursday is our one-year anniversary. In that short time, we’ve gathered more than 80,000 writers to the site. Well, some testimony:

* I have enjoyed the readily available ability to publish immediately.
* Beefing up the portfolio and attempting brand-new subject areas have been quite helpful for practicing freelancing skills too.
* I’ve often wondered if publishers browse about here looking for writers and now I see they do!
* Began writing for Helium about six weeks ago - a mere blip in time ago. I was thrilled just to have a place to write and share my views and experiences with others, and getting paid to do so was the icing on the cake!


* My ten weeks in Helium has gained me more experience than a US$900 long distance writing course has….
* I love writing, but this is the first place that has built my confidence.

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)

Our Community boards were started to really help the Help desk answer questions for the members. But the boards have turned into a vibrant aspect of Helium, with nearly a million page views a month.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

We are generating revenue from ads (small) and from our partner publisher program called Marketplace (growing).

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?

We are about to kick off a College Writing Contest aimed at college students. But our goal here is to provide a platform for journalism professors to have their students write to specific, pre-determined topics online and get rated by the member community. The students will also be able to read and rate each other’s work.

Anyone you’d like to talk with, learn from, or work with at the summit
We’re interested in talking with colleges and universities, and anyone looking for trusted, community-generated content from our members.
Thanks To David Cohn

Mdaku Says.

NB-This Interview Was Conducted Sometime In Late 2007 Since Then Helium.com Has Grown By Leaps And Bounds, I Can Attest To The Fact That It Now Has Over 160,000 Active Writers I Can Attest To That Since I Am But One Of The Many Legion Of Writers Who Ply Our Craft There, Why Dont You Sign Up We Hook Up There

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SHENG DOT CO DOT KE-The Best Thing To Happen To Us Since Sliced Bread And Butter

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You should check out this very innovative Kenyan made website that is run and maintained by RasDunkie sheng.co.ke. It is not only a marvel in technical design but also a very functional and easily navigable website. The black background blends extremely well with the stark earth hues making it aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

But wait that is not the half of it, for those of you who might not be familiar with the word sheng, here goes. Sheng is a compound word that is derived from the words Swahili and English. It is a patois that is the language of choice for Kenya’s, especially Nairobi youth, a distinct lingua franca that cleverly blends and merges English and Kiswahili to come up with a unique inimitable slang.

It has spawned an entire genre of music,genge the Kenyan hiphop popularized by jua cali the master and a vibrant counterculture that revolves around it. This website is a portal to these world and to the language that is spoken and understood by over 90% of Kenya’s youth making it easily the most widely spoken tongue in the republic if not pardon my projection the entire region, with over 15 million strong speakers and people who can understand it in one way or another.

Sheng.co.ke is a repository of our fast evolving counterculture and it boasts of over 3000 members who interact exchanging and enriching its vocabulary more so in the popular language of jesting native to sheng known in these parts as mchongoano. It boasts of a vibrant forum a kamusi/dictionary of sheng words and a lyrics section. Sheng is a unifying language that can be used to heal the wounds of a fragmented nation still smarting from last years post-poll chaos.

Sheng in my opinion is the healing of the nation, being as it is the majority of the people who bore the brunt of the fighting were the youth, if only we can harness this collective language tool we can learn to speak with one voice and to listen to each other and flow with one spirit. So sign up and see you at the forums and lets speak sheng.

Poa wasee ebu tuchekiane asapo na tukule maristo zetu poa tumakesure sheng ina stay alive,mimi niko na 16A vile ni smatta, wazi Ras Dunkie na crew big up man. Wacha niambae.

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NASA's Kepler Seeks Another Earth Among The Stars

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Associated Press

This artist rendition provided by NASA shows the Kepler space telescope. Kepler is designed to search for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

The spacecraft launches Friday night to embark on the most exhaustive hunt for a potentially habitable planet beyond our solar system.

March 6, 2009

The first spacecraft dedicated to finding potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system is poised to blast off from Cape Canaveral tonight on a three-year mission to probe 150,000 stars in the most sweeping hunt for Earthlike objects ever undertaken by NASA.

By the end of the Kepler mission, scientists will probably know whether planets like ours -- where liquid water can exist on the surface to nurture life -- are common in the universe, or so rare that we are virtually alone in the cosmic sea.

 

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"This is not just another science mission," said NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler in a news briefing at the space agency's headquarters in Washington. "If you ask me, are there other Earths out there, I'd say absolutely. But I can't prove it."

"We certainly won't find E.T.," added Bill Borucki, the lead mission scientist from UC Berkeley, "but we might find E.T.'s home."

The $590-million Kepler mission, scheduled to lift off at 7:49 p.m. Pacific time, consists of the widest-field telescope ever flown by NASA. The nearly 15-foot-long instrument has a 55-inch-wide mirror that can simultaneously scrutinize thousands of stars in its search for extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will accomplish this by looking for periodic dimming -- or winking -- of a star's light caused by planets crossing in front of it, which scientists refer to as a transit.

Many of the 340 or so known exoplanets, principally discovered by a team in Europe and another at UC Berkeley headed by well-known planet hunter Geoff Marcy, have been found using the same method.

But most of those planets are gas giants, like Jupiter, that orbit very close to their parent stars. Those planets would be far too hot to sustain life, even if they had a rocky surface.

No potentially habitable planet has been found outside our solar system.

Finding one by using ground-based telescopes has been extremely difficult because of atmospheric interference. Even the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a larger mirror, falls short because its field of view is too narrow. It's designed to look deeply rather than widely.

The Kepler spacecraft -- named after 17th century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion -- will be able to scan a region of the northern sky between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra that contains about 4.5 million stars. Of the total, according to mission scientist Natalie Batalha of San Jose State University, 150,000 stars have been selected for intense study.

These are stars that are most like our sun, middle-aged and relatively cool, so that the "habitable zone" where life might flourish is close enough to the star that Kepler will be able to see a transit.

To spot a transit, Kepler will measure the brightness of each of these stars every 30 minutes for 3 1/2 years.

Even so, finding another Earth will be a challenge. Scientists figure that the change in brightness caused by an Earth-type planet will be less than 84 parts per million, or 0.008%. That's equivalent to measuring from several miles away the change in brightness caused by a flea crawling across a car's headlight.

Adding to the difficulty of the task is that dimming can be caused by events other than a transit, such as sunspots. Also, it is estimated that fewer than one star system in 100 will have planets properly aligned so that they pass between the star and Kepler's camera.

Kepler scientists are trying to overcome all these problems with brute scientific force. They figure that by looking at thousands of stars, at least some will be in the right configuration with the right temperature to produce another Earth. "It's all a numbers game," Batalha said.

Finding a planet is just the first stage of the process. After detecting a wink, Kepler would measure how often the dimming occurred. Knowing the orbital period and the star's size would allow scientists to discover the planet's location and size.

The dimming caused by an Earth-type planet orbiting its star at about the same distance as our home planet from the sun would occur once a year, or about three times during the mission.

Kepler will launch on a three-stage Delta II rocket and eventually drift about 45 million miles away so it won't have to contend with the reflected light of the moon and Earth.

Most of the stars in its survey are relatively close, from tens of light-years to 3,000 light-years away.

The first planets to be discovered in the coming months are likely to be more of the same gas giants that have been found so far. The earliest possible announcement that another Earth has been found would be December 2010.

Whatever Kepler uncovers, it is likely to change our view of our place in the cosmos. "It's possible that Earths are very, very common," Weiler said.

It's also possible that Kepler will discover how rare Earths are, he said. "That to me is scary, because I don't want to live in a universe where we're the best there is."

john.johnson@latimes.com

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CoolWeb Apps for Struggling Startups

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Cool Web Apps for Struggling Startups

Are you starting a business or already have a small business in operation? Taking the headache out of routine administrative tasks definitely goes a long way in freeing up more of your time to concentrate on building a great product for your company.


This is especially true if you’re running a small shop with limited staff.

So I came across this great resource for starter web apps for small businesses that I’ve found to be particularly useful and that I’m actually putting to use.

A few of the take-aways:

• Managing your projects - Basecamp
• Taking notes, capturing information - Evernote
• Billing, invoicing, client account management - FreshBooks
• Track employee status, clock-in and out times - InOutBoard
• Resume management, hiring - The Resumator

[Getty. Read via CNET Webware] Thanks To Shadrack At FortySouth

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Outlaw Gang Disrupts Kenyan Transportation

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Members of the Mungiki gang in a bullet-riddled car in outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, 28 Apr 2008
Members of the Mungiki gang in a bullet-riddled car in outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, 28 Apr 2008
An outlawed gang in Kenya disrupted transportation in Nairobi and in other parts of the country, stranding thousands of commuters and causing long traffic delays. The protest by the banned Mungiki gang follows the release of a U.N. report that accuses the Kenyan police of carrying out extrajudicial killings of hundreds of suspected gangsters and criminals.


Police estimate that about 70 percent of the public minibuses used by Kenyan commuters were not operating Thursday morning. The drivers of the minibuses - known as matatus - say they had received warnings from the Mungiki to stay home or risk being beheaded.

Commuters in private cars sat for hours in traffic waiting for the police to clear stones, tires, trees, and other obstacles the Mungiki placed on various roads to disrupt the morning commute.

In some areas of Kenya, anti-riot police and paramilitary forces were deployed to root out gang members. Tony Mwangi, a journalist based in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha, tells VOA that tensions there remain high.

"Most of the businesses are closed down," he said. "Transport is paralyzed. There are tons of policemen patrolling the main Naivasha-Nairobi-Nakuru highway."

In Nairobi, Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the disturbance is directly related to a report released last week by the U.N. special investigator on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston. The report criticized the Kenyan police for acting with impunity, especially against Mungiki gang members.

"The reason why the Mungiki is back to the activities of disrupting the lives of Kenyans illegally is because they got the strength when Professor Alston issued that brief that seemed to sanitize their illegal operations," he said.

The Mungiki has a long history in Kenya as a quasi-religious sect. But in 2002, it was banned after sect members began committing horrific crimes, including beheadings and mutilations. Its members are also accused of running extortion rings that target traders and matatu drivers.

The Alston report said that in response to a wave of killings in 2007 and 2008 blamed on the Mungiki, there is evidence that Kenyan police may have executed hundreds of suspects. The report says there is also evidence the police had formed death squads to carry out the extrajudicial killings.

The government angrily rejected the U.N. report, and it has yet to respond to Alston's call for the national police commissioner and the attorney general to step down from office.

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Dubai Sevens World Cup-Humphrey Kayange And His Boy's Are Making Kenya Proud

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GO KENYA,GO.

Humphrey Kayange Kenya Seven's Team Captain For The IRB Seven's Dubai 2009 World Cup.

This Is A Tribute To Kenya's IRB Sevens World Cup, Hampho And His Boy's Have Already Broken Through The Psychological Barrier By Hammering Tunisia 29-7.See The Full Results Below. Let's Hope And Pray They Continue With This Winning Streak As We Meet England, And HongKong In Our Pool E fixtures.You Can Download The pdf Of The Men's Match Fixtures Here.

Men, Pool E - 05-03-09 17:10
KENYA	29	-	7	TUNISIA
Result
1 Humphrey Kayange 2 Allan Onyango 3 Victor Oduor 4 Benedict Nyambu (s) 5 Wilson Opondo (s) 6 Lavin Asego 7 Biko Adema (s) 8 Innocent Simiyu 9 Collins Injera 10 Sidney Ashioya (s) 11 Gibson Weru Kahuthia 12 Horace Otieno (s)			Haithem Chelly 1 Aymen Gloulou 2 Khaled Zegden 3 Sabri Guemir 4 (s) Lotfi Nino 5 Sabeur Ben Charrada 6 Abess Kherfani 7 (s) Mohamed Yousri Souguir 8 (s) Nasreddine Hammami 9 (s) Mohammed Mhadbi 10 Amor Mezgar 11 (s) Amor Hamdi 12

Time	Player	Team Code	Action
Half 1
1:12	Abess Kherfani	TUN	Try
1:42	Abess Kherfani	TUN	Conversion
3:45	Humphrey Kayange	KEN	Try
4:17	Lavin Asego	KEN	ConMiss
6:42	Collins Injera	KEN	Try
7:21	Lavin Asego	KEN	ConMiss
Half 2
0:28	Collins Injera	KEN	Try
1:06	Lavin Asego	KEN	ConMiss
3:14	Collins Injera	KEN	Try
3:40	Lavin Asego	KEN	Conversion
6:03	Sidney Ashioya	KEN	Try
6:41	Lavin Asego	KEN	Conversion

KENYA	Shirt No	Player	PTS	TRIES	CONS	PENS	DROPS
	9	Collins Injera	15	3
	1	Humphrey Kayange	5	1
	10	Sidney Ashioya	5	1
	6	Lavin Asego	4		2
	8	Innocent Simiyu
	2	Allan Onyango
	3	Victor Oduor
	11	Gibson Weru Kahuthia
	4	Benedict Nyambu
	5	Wilson Opondo
	7	Biko Adema
	12	Horace Otieno

TUNISIA	Shirt No	Player	PTS	TRIES	CONS	PENS	DROPS
	7	Abess Kherfani	7	1	1
	11	Amor Mezgar
	5	Lotfi Nino
	8	Mohamed Yousri Souguir
	9	Nasreddine Hammami
	10	Mohammed Mhadbi
	12	Amor Hamdi
	1	Haithem Chelly
	2	Aymen Gloulou
	3	Khaled Zegden
	4	Sabri Guemir
	6	Sabeur Ben Charrada

© RWCL 2009 | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | Help | Contact

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SEO Training Made Simple-A Slightly Abrigded Version .

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Search Engine Optimization for Your Web Site

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This is for those of you who have often wondered about the expression SEO, Which Stands For Search Engine Optimization And What It Entails, This Is An Abridged Version To Get You Well In The Way Of Sorting Out The Gray Areas, And Resolving Your Doubts On The Issue.

Whether your Web site is brand new or ten years old, managing how it appears to search engines is crucial to its success. The typical Web site gets 61 percent of its traffic from organic (nonpaid) search engine results, and 41 percent of all traffic from Google alone. Ensuring that the company's site ranks highly in search results is, for most businesses, a make-or-break proposition, which is why search engine optimization (SEO) is now a multibillion-dollar industry.

No one knows exactly what combination of tactics will maximize a Web site's ranking in search results, but a lot of smart people have developed some good approximations based on history and empirical evidence. I asked three experts--Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, and Michael H. Fleischner, author of SEO Made Simple --about what tips and tricks they thought someone just starting out in the SEO game ought to know. The best and brightest of their recommendations follow.

Know What Keywords to Optimize

Search engine optimization is useless if you don't know what you're trying to optimize. For some businesses, picking appropriate keywords is straightforward: A candy merchant would probably choose candy, chocolate, and similar terms. But other business sites face more-difficult decisions. What terms should an online store that sells many different products emphasize? And how should a general-interest Web site that covers a wide range of topics determine which search terms to focus on?

For starters, you should base your decisions about which terms relevant to your business to optimize on which terms people are searching for most often. One way to gauge search term popularity is to use an online keyword tool designed to see measure what general terms are searched for the most. Both the Google Keyword Tool and the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool can help you get a quick, accurate sense of the search volume for any term of your choice, and they will recommend related terms that you might not have thought of.

Ultimately it's a numbers game: You need to optimize for terms that drive the highest traffic and are the most relevant to what your Web site offers. Optimizing your site for terms that no one ever types into a search engine won't generate any traffic for the site, no matter how conscientiously you pursue the optimization. So before you do anything else, carefully select a handful of relevant high-interest terms for optimizing.

Focus on Title Tags and URLs

Experts agree that your title tags should be central to your SEO efforts. When it comes to indexing content, search engines treat the words in these tags--the text that appears in the title bar in your browser--as the most important single element on a Web page. For that reason, you should load it with your keywords, and make every title tag on your site unique. Danny Sullivan says that you should think of the tags as being like the titles of hundreds of books that you've published and want potential customers to be able to find: "If you give them all the same title, no one knows they are about different things."

Years ago many people thought that URL structure was irrelevant and that only the actual content of a page really mattered. But search engines today consider keywords in your URLs much as they do keywords on the page itself.


Though most publishing systems make it easy to use keywords in URLs, many such systems (like WordPress) default to simplistic URLs that consist of numbers instead of including keywords.

It is well worth your while to take the time to make keywords part of your URL structure. Thereafter, a piece about Quantum of Solace (for example) will look more like www.pcworld.com/quantum-of-solace instead of like www.pcworld.com/11/&id=27. And readable URLs don't just help search engines, says Rand Fishkin; they help users, too.

Each page of content on your site should link to by only one URL. Multiple URLs that refer to a single page of content can confuse search spiders.

Be Aware of How Others Link to You

I love it when readers link to Filmcritic.com, my movie review Web site, but a link like Filmcritic.com is cool has far positive impact on the ranking my site receives from search engines than a link like movie reviews. Why? Because search engines take into account the anchor text used to link to a site.

If you want to rise up in the rankings for a certain keyword or phrase, you need to encourage others to use those keywords in the anchor text for the link to your site, instead of just using the name of your site. To make this easy, you can provide the actual HTML code you'd like the linking site to use: Many linkers will simply copy and paste it on their Web site rather than taking the trouble to customize it themselves.

Spell Correctly--or Have a Good Reason Not To

Your site and (especially) your keywords need to be free of spelling errors. Typos can be a huge problem for eBay sellers, who can't figure out why no one is bidding on their "Tiffanny" bracelets. On the other hand, including the incorrect form of certain words that are frequently misspelled can work for you. For example, about 5 percent of searchers misspell "absinthe" as "absinth," so it may be wise to include the misspelled term as a secondary keyword to supplement the correctly spelled version of the word.

Mind the Flash

Flash-based Web sites look pretty, but search engines don't care about that. Sullivan notes that the closer your content is to plain text, the more easily and completely search engines will be able to spider it. Search engines today are better at working with Flash than they used to be, but if you're more interested in strong search results than in a flashy interface, text and HTML are still the way to go.

Resist Duplicate Content and Plagiarism

One of the most difficult SEO problems to remedy is the issue of duplicate content--the tendency of others on the Web to steal your work and republish it as their own. All search engines are terrible at recognizing which version of a page is the original one, and you may very well be penalized as a duplicate page if an engine fails to recognize who was copying who. The penalty is severe, too: Duplicate sites won't show up in search results unless the searcher clicks the search engine's link for "repeat the search with the omitted results included," which no one ever does.

To deal with cases of plagiarism, many Web hosts have a mechanism for reporting abuses such as copyright infringement. (For example, the Google Blogger service has a notification system.) The process can be tedious, but your efforts will pay off handsomely if they help you reverse penalties that are unfairly being assessed against you.

Give OnlyWire a Try

Michael Fleischner says that he's seen clients achieve great success in getting word out about their content by using OnlyWire, which lets you automatically submit a page of content to more than 20 social bookmarking sites with a single click. OnlyWire also gives you the option of embedding a "bookmark & share" link on your pages that permits other visitors to do the same. For best results, Fleischner says, "Individuals should bookmark their home page and channel-level pages once per month and get others to do the same." Submitting select content to major social news sites such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon can produce occasional floods of traffic, too, but that strategy is very hit-or-miss. And beware of oversubmitting to social news sites, lest you be branded a spammer.

Use Word Clouds to Link Internally

If you drop a word cloud (or tag cloud) on your home page, according to Fleischner, internal linking to your content "takes care of itself." Linking from one page to another within your Web site--no matter how you achieve it--helps improve your site's search result ranking.

Put Quality First

It may seem too obvious to bear mentioning, but the quality of your Web site's content must come first in any SEO strategy. Search-engine results are, to a large extent, driven by the number of incoming links to your content, whether these links come from blogs, news stories, or social news sites like Digg. Unless you give visitors a compelling reason to link to your pages, you won't get these links and you won't rise up in the search rankings--no matter how frequently your keywords appears on your home page. Write provocative blog posts. Create entertaining and original promotional copy for the merchandise in your catalog. Include photos and videos on your pages. Do whatever you can to set yourself apart from and above the millions of other sites on the Web.

Don't Let SEO Get in the Way

A final piece of sound advice from Fishkin: "SEO should never have to compete with user experience or usability. What's good for users is almost always good for engines, too, so building the best Web site you can--with the best content, design, and architecture--will go a long way to bringing you success with search engine rankings. Just make sure that whatever you build, search engines have easy access to it, and you'll be miles ahead of the pack."

Shukran Kwa Bwana Chris Null

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TECH HABITS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE16: Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

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16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Forget basic cable--there's plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don't want to catch your favorite shows at the networks' own Web sites,


hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost, and Comcast's Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer, or Slacker.

If you're on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web Ahsante PcWorld

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Mwai Kibaki Kenya's Leader Denies Second Wife.

Kibaki Ameruka Mke Wake Salaala,Ajab.

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Kenya leader denies 'second wife'

President Mwai Kibaki threatened to sue anyone repeating the rumours

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki has held a rare press conference to deny rumours that he has a second wife.

 

Mr Kibaki said he was in a "foul mood" and warned that anyone repeating the rumours would see him "in court".
His wife, Lucy, accused the media of "tormenting" her, and said she had she considered attacking one TV station.
The BBC's Anne Mawathe in Nairobi says the president's office has denied the rumours several times in the past but they have refused to die.
Observers had said it was common knowledge that another woman was given protection on the level of the first family after Mr Kibaki took office in 2002.
But, flanked by his wife and senior government officials, Mr Kibaki told the news conference: "I want to make it very clear that I have only one dear wife, Lucy, who's here, and I do not have any other.


"Anybody who knows me and knows my family and knows how I live - they know I have only one wife."
He said he had "gotten into this foul mood" after hearing about the rumours again in recent days, and that he would take to court anyone "bent on that course" of repeating them.
Strained politics
A visibly angry Mrs Kibaki then told the news conference: "You keep tormenting us, I don't know what you get out of it."

Has power-sharing worked?

She told one station, NTV: "I almost came to your station last night to attack you." Mrs Kibaki is well known for her angry outbursts at the media.
In 2005 she stormed the offices of The Daily Nation newspaper to protest against its portrayal of her and her family, slapping a cameraman who filmed the incident.
And in 2007, she slapped an official who mistakenly referred to her by the name of the woman who was alleged to be Mr Kibaki's mistress.
The news briefing comes at a time when the political marriage between Mr Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Prime Minister Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) is also under strain, says our correspondent.
The coalition government, formed to end the post-election crisis last year, has been dogged by corruption allegations and rumours of disunity.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has accused the country's leaders of "losing momentum", and analysts say the general public has become frustrated with the lack of progress.
Shukran Kwa BBC

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