The Assassination of Barack Obama

Last Monday morning, July 4^th 2011, a rumor was spread that Barack Obama was dead from assassination. This rumor was apparently wrong. The fact was, a group of hackers broke into Fox News’ Twitter account and then posted a couple of tweets explaining the assassination of the president.

The first tweet was "@BarackObama has just passed. The president is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead." Further tweet described that Obama was shot twice while campaigning at a restaurant in Iowa.

A moment before the false tweets, the hackers proclaimed their access into the account, “Just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th.”

During the account takeover, Obama was actually in Washington, planning to celebrate the US Independence Day with his family that night.

Source: ABC News, Yahoo!

Thomas Edison’s 100-Year Prediction

Almost every people in the world know Thomas Alva Edison, an inspiring inventor from the US who was famous with his invention which became a benchmark of the beginning of modern era: the bulb lamp. He was also the one who found camera and direct current electric excitation.

In 1911, Miami Metropolis asked Edison for a brief prediction on a hundred year in the future, which meant the year 2011. As quoted from the Washington Post, Edison said that in 2011, electricity will replace steam power as train main power. Also, he predicted that air transportation would be a daily transportation. Moreover, Edison also predicted that steel would get cheaper and cheaper and thus make it a common material for building construction.

All of those predictions are now proven, but there was one prediction that struck all of the heaps. He predicted that there would be a two-inch book with thousands of pages. And guess what? We now have iPad and other e-book readers.

However, not all of Edison’s predictions were accurate. His inaccurate prediction was that human would find a way to transform iron into gold. Unfortunately, that prediction is still trapped in human imagination.

Homeless Man with Golden Voice

"Homeless man with golden voice", this title in YouTube Trending videos just intrigued me to open it. In no time, it made a YouTube hit and had been buzzed many times.

This gifted man's name is Ted Williams. As the title suggests, his voice is unbelievably golden. Well, he apparently didn't sing, but he has a perfect radio-announcing tenor voice. He was once, in fact, a radio announcer. However, a messy life got him fired and sent him right to the street.

Meet the guy right away!

Update:

The original video, with 13 million views, had been removed due to a copyright issue. Some suspected that Columbus Dispatch bought it and claim the copyright for the distribution.

WikiLeaks

Recently, WikiLeaks – not related to Wikipedia – has become a hot topic internationally as they decided to publicize highly classified documents and videos. WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". The main objective of this organization is claimed to be a medium in which government and corporate misconducts are revealed. The organization claims that it had received more than 1.2 million diplomatic cables and top secret documents, especially of those which related to the U.S. government.

The website of this non-profit organization was launched in 2006. The founder, Julian Assange, has numerous experiences in the internet technology, including being charged by hacking the computers of an Australian telecom. As an Australian-born, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. The latest news reported that Assange has been arrested in London for accusation on raping and molestation on two Swedish women. The interesting part here is, one of the woman was suspected to had a connection with the CIA.

With TED's Chris Anderson, Assange talked about how the site operates, what it has accomplished, and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

In 2009, Amnesty International recognized Assenge with an International Media Award for the publication of a report titled “Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances”. In April 2010, the most shocking video was published, where the U.S. armies killed 12 Iraqis, including two journalists. Its most recent publicity was the gradual publicity on U.S diplomatic cables.

Some government authorities have started to build a countermeasure. In most countries, the public can no longer has access to the U.S. embassy’s secret documents through the website. Also, students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs were prohibited to post links, to discuss, or even to give comments on WikiLeaks documents on their Facebook or Twitter accounts as by doing so would threaten their employment possibility.

In November 2010, Assange told Swiss public television TSR that he was considering to seek political asylum in Switzerland and setting up a WikiLeaks foundation in the country to move the operation there. According to him, Switzerland and Iceland are the only countries where WikiLeaks would feel safe to operate.

Following continuous U.S. diplomatic cables leak by the end of November 2010, several companies severed ties with WikiLeaks, including EveryDNS and Amazon.com that claimed the severance was due to DDoS attacks and was not initiated by the U.S. authorities.

CNN television network reported that, after being ousted by Amazon servers, WikiLeaks is now residing in a new location in Sweden. This “whistle-blower” site is now using the biggest provider in Sweden, Bahnhof, which is headquartered in a 30-meters underground bunker. The bunker, which was used as a war station during the Cold War, is approachable from Sweden capital, Stockholm. The same bunker is used as a center for WikiLeaks data and secret files.