Third Time No Charm for XXX Domain

The multiyear effort to create a .xxx top-level domain, sticken down in a 9-5 vote by ICANN on Friday, has been a controversial one, with ICANN board members expressing concern over whether ICANN, by approving such a domain specifically designed for adult material, could find itself in the content-regulation business.
The Internet's agency for overseeing domain names on Friday rejected a proposal for creating a voluntary domain ending in .xxx. The 9-5 vote to block the plan is the third time the agency has decided against some form of the proposal.

The Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), meeting in Lisbon, voted against a request by ICM Registry to create the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) for adult sites.

"This decision was the result of very careful scrutiny and consideration of all the arguments," ICANN Chairman Dr. Vint Cerf said in a statement. "That consideration has led a majority of the Board to believe that the proposal should be rejected."

'Extremely Disappointed'

ICM President and Chief Executive Stuart Lawley said in a statement that his Florida-based company "was extremely disappointed" by this most recent rejection. The proposal had initially been presented by ICM nearly seven years ago.

"It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board," he said, adding that the vote "ignores the rules ICANN itself adopted for the RFP (request for proposal), and makes a mockery of ICANN bylaws' prohibition of unjustifiable discriminatory treatment." He reportedly said that a lawsuit was "likely."

Larry Walters, a Florida attorney with extensive experience in First Amendment and online adult issues, had expected ICANN to approve the new top-level domain.

"Any other TLD with this amount of supporting material," he said in an interview before the vote, "would have been approved a long time ago. The contract being proposed by ICM Registry is well within the range of other TLD contracts."

Opposition in Adult Industry

The multiyear effort to create voluntary, adult site .xxx domains has been a controversial one. Some Board members have expressed concern over whether ICANN, by approving such a domain, could find itself in the content-regulation business.

ICANN board member Steve Goldstein said in Friday's meeting that, if passed, the resolution would mean that the agency would need to "assume ongoing management and oversight roles regarding the content." ICANN defines itself as the agency "responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers," not as a manager or definer of content.

ICM's Lawley criticized this concern over content management, saying that ICANN itself put those sections into the proposal during negotiations.

There is opposition to the idea among the adult Web site industry. Some have said that the .xxx domain, even if voluntary, would create an online ghetto that could more easily be controlled and isolated by governments or others. Religious and other groups also oppose the domain as a way to legitimize adult sites and make them easier to find.

Because the .xxx domain would be voluntary, questions have been raised as to whether parents and teachers would actually be able to block all such sites.

After its initial proposal was tabled and effectively rejected in 2000, largely because of ICANN's concern about becoming a content regulator, ICM resubmitted it in 2004 with provisions to handle any regulation issues outside of ICANN.

ICANN's board rejected that proposal in mid-2006, expressing concern that the language was vague and that ICANN would end up having to step in as a regulator. The newest proposal, rejected Friday, was the result of negotiations between ICANN and ICM to clarify enforcement.

Source: http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Third-Time-No-Charm-for-XXX-Domain/story.xhtml?story_id=13200G4SSQ7O

Rich populist woos Romanians

Less than three months after Romania joined the EU, the country is in deep political crisis, with the president and prime minister accusing each other of lying and corruption.

Meanwhile, a third man is climbing in the polls. He is Gigi Becali, the multi-millionaire boss of the champion Steaua football club.

From humble beginnings as a shepherd, Mr Becali made his fortune in real estate after the fall of communism to become one of Romania's richest men and the second most popular politician after the president himself.

His New Generation Party (PNG) headquarters is as flamboyant as the man - a palace in Bucharest being polished back to its former glory with no expense spared.

Restorers carefully apply gold leaf to every moulding, while Gigi Becali, a dark-haired man in his late forties, looks on whistling O Sole Mio.

In Berlusconi's footsteps

His soulmate among European politicians is Silvio Berlusconi. Like the former Italian prime minister, Mr Becali wants to use football and money to get to the top. But he is also a devout Orthodox Christian.

I met him on his return from Mount Athos, the holiest site in Eastern Orthodoxy. He often goes there in a private jet to pray before key matches.

His office looks more like a shrine, with Byzantine icons on every wall, a life-size painting of himself as St John in the desert and on his desk a statuette of his namesake St George killing the dragon.

"I too want to kill the devil in Romania, the corruption and lies," he tells me, with an eye on the huge TV screen in the corner to check how often his own face pops up on the news channel.

So how does he explain his spectacular rise from shepherd to multi-millionaire politician?

"In the Byzantine Empire, the great kings were shepherds. And if you want me to quote the Bible, Jesus didn't say I am your captain or your driver, but I am your shepherd. So in Romanian politics, I see myself as an apostle because I'm trying to do something no one has tried before", he said.

"Now that Europe has been reunited, I also want to see a spiritual reunification of Europe, I want western Christian-democracy to be enriched by Eastern Orthodoxy. If we don't counter sin with faith, then the end of the world is nigh," Mr Becali says.

Fan base

This messianic tone goes down well in a country where the Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution. Football too enjoys cult status.

At a match in the Black Sea port of Constanta, I saw Steaua fans furiously chanting and waving their red and blue banners.

Some even had flags that looked suspiciously like iron crosses. Notorious for their violence and their racist taunts against Hungarian, Roma or black players, they are a force to be reckoned with, on the pitch and at the polls.

"Gigi would make Romania a cleaner and fairer country, because he has faith in God and he wants to clean out the mafia," one young man said. "He helps poor people, he understands their difficulties, while other politicians do nothing," said another.

Help for poor

For leading political analyst Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Mr Becali "satisfies an important need in the voters right now - the need to denounce the whole corruption of the political system".

"He managed to create an image for himself of a person who not just speaks differently from the rest of the political class, but also is different. He's a man of his word, he is a provider, he delivers what he says he does," Alina Mungiu-Pippidi says.

The proof can be seen in a village in eastern Romania called Vadu-Rosca. It is now known as Becali's village.

The houses here were swept away by catastrophic floods two years ago. Then came Mr Becali in his trademark Maybach limousine and promised to build them all up again. And so he did.

Eleonora Lazar showed me into one of 200 identical small white bungalows, all built by Mr Becali. A widow with three children, she told me she had more faith in the football boss than in the government.

"He's so generous, he deserves to become president," she says. "Why should we elect someone who didn't even bother about us? We pray for him every day, for his health and so people should stop accusing him of all sorts of things. He's never done anything bad," Mrs Lazar told me.

Mr Becali has fought off accusations of tax evasion and dodgy deals. He equally rejects any charges of extremism and intolerance.

Anti-gay stance

But what about an offer he made last year to give a few million dollars to anyone who would root out homosexuality in Romania? Amid the faint smell of incense that pervades his office and with three bodyguards looking on, he got visibly angry.

"I love homosexuals like everyone else. I have nothing against them. But I insist, it's a sin. And I will repeat it everywhere, including in the European Parliament, because I'm not afraid of any European policy or whatever, homosexuality is a sin, and that's that!" he shouted.

If he is elected, I asked him, what are the first three things he plans to do?

"I will ask God to give me wisdom," came the answer after a pause. "He will tell me, this is the first thing you should do, this is the second, and this is the third. I can't tell you now what God will tell me then."

Mr Becali's parting words were just as striking. "We'll see," he told me with a smile, "if you are on the side of God or on that of the devil."

In one of Europe's poorest countries, his voice is unashamedly anti-liberal, promising some sort of salvation to those angered and frustrated with conventional party politics.

Political turmoil

Mr Becali's party is gaining ground on the more established Greater Romania Party, which recently caused a stir in the European Parliament by helping to form a new ultra-nationalist group.

Polls credit PNG's list headed by Gigi Becali with 10-15% of the vote, which could see it wining four to six seats of the 35 allotted to Romania in the European Parliament.

But as Alina Mungiu-Pippidi explains, it is not just happening in Romania. "People like Becali and others in Central Europe, where everywhere radical populism is on the rise, are the product of a certain failure in our political transition," she says.

"Our transitions were very successful economically, they succeeded in bringing our countries into the EU, but didn't succeed in creating normal politics. If Becali fails, it's going to be somebody else. The problem is that normal politics don't manage to deliver as they should," Mrs Mungiu-Pippidi says.

If he fails, Mr Becali told me he would buy a few thousand sheep, make cheese and stop answering journalists' questions.

But many fear his flock will be the stray sheep of Romania's long transition to democracy.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6457237.stm

Call for Spain strawberry boycott

A campaign group has urged consumers to avoid buying strawberries grown in Spain in winter because, it says, they damage the environment.

WWF says that crop cultivation is causing an "environmental catastrophe" in the country's southern wetlands.

The group claims that the irrigation required for the berries is draining water from the region's wetlands.

Some 95% of Spanish strawberries are grown around the Coto Donana national park in southern Spain.

The 5,000-hectare (12,300-acre) site, surrounded by strawberry farms, is a UN World Heritage site.

Plastic waste

But WWF says that water irrigating the farms is reducing water to the Donana marshes by up to 50%.

"By buying Spanish strawberries - on sale in supermarkets from January to April - you are supporting the destruction of the Iberian natural milieu because the impact of this cultivation on the environment is catastrophic," the group's Paris office told AFP news agency.

The group says that strawberry cultivation is highly polluting, resulting in 4,500 metric tons of plastic waste each year and pesticide pollution.

Germany and France are the largest importers of the 330,000 tons of strawberries grown each year.

A spokesman for the Spanish arm of the French supermarket giant Carrefour said they purchased their strawberries from a sole supplier whose production methods were strictly monitored in line with European standards.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6460767.stm

Russia clinches Balkan oil deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a deal in Athens to ship Russian oil to the EU via a pipeline bypassing the busy Bosphorus.

The 285km (178-mile) pipeline will go overland from Bulgaria's Black Sea port of Burgas to the northern Greek town of Alexandroupolis on the Aegean Sea.

The deal caps negotiations that have lasted 13 years.

A Russian consortium will hold a 51% stake in the pipeline. It is expected to be ready in three years' time.

The consortium brings together state oil firm Rosneft, pipeline monopoly Transneft and a subsidiary of gas giant Gazprom. Bulgaria and Greece will each have 24.5% stakes.

Prime Ministers Costas Karamanlis of Greece and Sergei Stanishev of Bulgaria joined Mr Putin at the signing ceremony in the Greek capital.

The pipeline project's estimated cost is 900m euros (£616m; $1.2bn).

Russian tankers are frequently held up for 10 days at a time as they wait to navigate Turkey's narrow, congested Bosphorus and Dardenelles Straits.

The removal of these delays should help to bring oil costs down, the BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports from Athens.

Pipeline diplomacy is helping to reassert Russian influence in the region, he says.

Earlier this month a senior US State Department official, Matthew Bryza, was in Athens and congratulated the three signatories to the pipeline accord.

He said the more oil that reached global markets the better. But Mr Bryza added that the United States was concerned that Europe could become too reliant on the Russian energy giant Gazprom as a source of natural gas.

At least one third of Russian oil exports currently leave by tanker via the Black Sea and Bosphorus Strait.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6453153.stm

Italians released in Niger Delta

Two Italian oil workers who were abducted in southern Nigeria three months ago have been released.

The employees of the oil company, Agip, were kidnapped on 7 December during an attack on an oil export terminal in the Niger Delta.

They were seized by a local militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend).

In a statement, the group said it would step up attacks on the facilities and stage bombings across the province.

"We will take more hostages and concentrate on locations believed to be secure to dispel the false sense of security being felt by some in the oil industry and foreign industry watchers," Mend said in an email statement.

Ransom demands

On their release, the men were reported to be in good health but suffering from stress.

They had been kidnapped along with two other Agip employees. One man, a Lebanese national, managed to escape last month, while another Italian was freed in January.

Mend is demanding the release of two prominent local leaders, regional control over oil resources and compensation from oil companies for pollution in the Delta.

In the last 12 months, more than 100 foreign workers have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta, Africa's largest oil-producing region - leading to a 20% fall in oil exports.

In most cases in the Delta, hostages are released unharmed after a week or two in captivity after a ransom has been paid.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6452673.stm

Gulf Louvre deal riles French art world

A storm is raging in France over the government's decision to build a branch of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi - the first-ever foreign annex of the world-famous art gallery.

The controversy is not over public spending on culture - French taxpayers think nothing of subsidising films to the tune of 500m euros a year ($700m; £350m).

The row centres on the fact that France stands to make money from the deal, being signed on Tuesday.

A good deal of money, in fact. According to unofficial estimates, Abu Dhabi should pay about 700m euros over 20 years for the privilege of displaying works from French museums.

This, according to critics, amounts to using France's artistic heritage for basely commercial ends.

"Our museums are not for sale", proclaims an online petition signed by 4,700 people - including many curators, art historians, and archaeologists.

Cultural exception

The French culture ministry, however, says the deal represents an "exceptional chance" for the French art world.

The deal, to be signed in Abu Dhabi by Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Sheikh Sultan bin Tannoun, paves the way for a new "Louvre Abu Dhabi", due to open in 2013.

The architect will be French. Construction costs will be borne by the emirate.

Most controversially, the agreement will allow Abu Dhabi to lease works from the Louvre and other French museums for durations of up to two years.

This is what many in the French art world find offensive.

"The purpose of a gallery should not be to make money," arts writer Didier Rykner told the BBC news website.

"People talk about a cultural exception for cinema. There should also be a cultural exception for art."

No comment

Mr Rykner, who drew up the petition and posted it on his website, La Tribune de l'Art, says the project was not designed with the best interest of art in mind.

French museums will be deprived of major works, which will be displayed in a "random, unscientific" way in Abu Dhabi, Mr Rykner contends.

He also points out that transporting hundreds of fragile works is fraught with risk.

The logic of this project is purely political and diplomatic," says Mr Rykner, who points out that the United Arab Emirates is a major ally and customer of France.

He says most French art historians and curators agree with him - although many, who are state employees, have not signed his petition for fear of damaging their careers.

The government, meanwhile, has remained tight-lipped about the deal. When contacted by the BBC, the culture ministry declined to comment ahead of the signing.

Louvre President Henri Loyrette has defended the agreement, but said he "understands the concerns".

He has announced a new body, mainly composed of curators, to oversee the "scientific quality of the project and the respect of ethical rules".

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6421205.stm

U.S., North Korea discuss relations

U.S. and North Korean officials held talks on Monday aimed at eventually normalizing diplomatic ties as part of an agreement under which Pyongyang has pledged to scrap its nuclear arms programs in exchange for aid.

The talks in New York marked the highest-level such meeting on U.S. soil since communist North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, sent a top envoy to Washington in 2000 in an abortive effort to improve relations.

North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan and his U.S. counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, held the first of two days of discussions on how to resolve problems between two countries that have been bitter foes since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

President George W. Bush in 2002 labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil." And antipathy to the United States has been a core element of Pyongyang's identity for five decades.

Despite the historic enmity, Kim Kye-gwan's meeting with U.S. nuclear and Korea experts earlier on Monday showed a "sea change in tone and substance" from recent exchanges, said nuclear expert Jim Walsh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who participated.

"Both sides are talking differently and treating each other differently," Walsh said of the unofficial meeting, attended by eight North Koreans and 15 Americans, including Victor Cha, Asia chief of the U.S. National Security Council.

Monday's official session was followed by a working dinner and Tuesday's talks were expected to run all day, a State Department official said in New York. Neither Hill nor Kim Kye-gwan spoke to the media after their meeting.

Earlier in Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack played down expectations of any breakthrough.

"I would expect that it ... would take some time in order for that process to be completed," he told reporters. "It would be a matter of building up trust, it would be a matter of performance and today is just an initial discussion."

"Underlying all of this, North Korea can realize a different kind of relationship with the rest of the world. The pathway is open to them," he said. "There is also another pathway of isolation ... if they do not perform."

Bilateral issues to be discussed include Washington's designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and U.S. trade sanctions against it under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the State Department said.

Washington will seek Pyongyang's assurances that it is committed to following through on an agreement to shut down within 60 days its main nuclear facility and allow inspectors in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil.

The New York meeting is part of the first stage in implementing the February 13 deal reached in Beijing by the Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China after three years of talks punctuated by North Korean's October nuclear test.

Further steps to fully "disable" North Korea's nuclear weapons program will gain the impoverished state an additional 950,000 tons of oil or other forms of aid of equivalent value.

Before the next round of six-party nuclear talks on March 19, North Korea is set to hold discussions with Japan in Hanoi and separate meetings on energy aid, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and regional security.

Wendy Sherman, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea, said Kim Kye-gwan's meeting at the nonprofit Korea Society with experts that included former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, was "positive, cordial, open and fairly expansive."

"That said, at the end of the day this comes down to the negotiations that will go on," she added.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0520266920070306?pageNumber=1

Arabs want U.N. timetable for U.S. withdrawal

- The Arab League said on Sunday the United Nations Security Council should set a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa listed what the Cairo-based organization believed were the key issues for easing the crisis in Iraq.

Apart from setting a timetable for U.S.-led coalition to leave, the list also includes a call for the fair distribution of wealth and the disbanding of all militias, which are demands that Arab leaders have repeated many times.

"I suggest that these foundations be included in a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that all Iraqi and other parties with present roles in Iraq should respect and follow," Moussa said in a speech to a meeting of Arab foreign ministers.

The United States has rejected calls for setting a date for its troops, who make up the vast majority of multinational forces, to leave the country they invaded in 2003.

Arab governments have little influence in Baghdad. The Arab League representative in Iraq resigned in January because of his frustration over the situation in the country.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0464329020070304

Extra police calm Danish rioting

Fires were lit at a number of locations but protests in the Noerrebro and Christiania districts were dispersed.

About 50 arrests were made overnight, bringing to more than 600 those held since the unrest began on Thursday.

The riots started after an anti-terror squad raid to evict squatters from the Youth House (Ungdomshuset) building.

Text messages

In the worst clash on Saturday night more than 30 people were arrested near the enclave of Christiania after protesters built and then lit barricades.

Molotov cocktails were thrown in a protest in Noerrebro but it was quelled by the heavy police presence.

Police had been reinforced from other districts and had brought in security vans from Sweden.

There had been fears of major disturbances as protest organisers tried to rally supporters through text messages.

Police spokesman Lars Borg said: "We are very happy that the situation was so quiet. The people who want to demonstrate have been more... aware that the things they are doing are not the right things to do."

Police said they arrested about 100 activists in raids on houses, schools and hostels. About half were foreigners who police said would be expelled.

Earlier on Saturday, 2,000 people attended a peaceful demonstration.

Left-wing activists have occupied the youth centre in the Noerrebro district since 1982, but it was sold by the city in 2000 to a Christian fundamentalist group.

That group obtained a court eviction order last year - but the activists vowed not to leave, saying the council had no right to sell the building while it was still in use.

Last December, a protest in Copenhagen against the eviction plans turned violent, and more than 300 people were arrested.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6416421.stm