Media

This week, fans of that special can-do Google magic got a treat when Google Maps rolled out their dedicated iOS app. The Google Maps for iOS app purports to "fix" everything wrong with Apple Maps, and this new app has made a big splash with happy iPhone users.

Today, Google has gone and updated the Google+ social network with a whopping 24 new features, many of which are aimed at Android and iOS mobile users. The splash has not been quite as big.

Google rolled out 24 new features to Google+ today, many of them specific to the iOS and Android mobile platforms.

Muhammad Shahid Nazir’s “One Pound Fish” is shaping into a phenomenon, of the likes of the “Gangnam Style.” The video of “One Pound Fish” already has up to 1.5 million hits on YouTube since Monday. The old “Gangnam Style” has now recorded almost 900 million views. While some blog writers are referring to “One Pound Fish” as the “next” “Gangnam Style,” others find it necessary to disagree.

Both the songs are rather unusual and have given huge breaks to the artists.

Italy's foreign ministry said in a statement released Monday that three people, including an Italian engineer, have been kidnapped in Syria.

According to Reuters news, all three worked at a steel plant near Latakia and were kidnapped in Tartus, a stronghold of Assad's minority Alawite community.

However, the ministry said it would not provide any details on when the kidnapping took place, or on the nationalities of the two other people, in order to protect them.

But Italian Sky TG24 reported that two Russians and one Italian have been abducted outside Latakia, in Syria.

"We are wor

Ten girls were killed Monday in a rural district of eastern Afghanistan when a roadside bomb exploded. The girls were busy collecting firewood at the time of the incident. According to Afghan officials, all the girls were aged between 9 and 11 years.

In a separate incident on outskirts of Kabul, a suicide bomber targeted compound of a military contractor by ramming an explosive laden car into it. One person was killed while 15 others were wounded, including foreigners.

In July, the head of the Durango state jail, plus 10 of her prison officers, were arrested after being found to be in cahoots with the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel. Now the prison has been emptied of 500 inmates after 24 people died Wednesday during an attempted jailbreak.

It appears that the Mexican penal system is in meltdown.

More than 31,000 Americans have signed a petition to deport British CNN host Piers MorganPiers Morgan after his on air comments over stricter gun control legislation in the United States.

Last week, in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting, Morgan attacked a pro gun guest on his show calling him an "unbelievably stupid man". Gun rights activists are now fighting back and want the British host to be deported over "exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens," the petition reads.

In a report issued Monday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused armed Palestinian groups in Gaza of violating the laws of war during November 2012 by firing rockets into population areas in Israel.

"Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director for Human Rights Watch (HRW).

HRW also revealed that the rocket attacks, including the first from Gaza to strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas, killed three Israeli civilians, wounded at least 38, several seriously, and destroyed civilian propert

The US Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013 that authorizes spending of $633 billion. The final bill makes no attempt to challenge the bill's language allowing for indefinite detention of Americans arrested in the US.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 315 to 107 while the Senate vote was 81 to 14. The reconciled bill increased the budget amount compared to either the earlier House or Senate versions. It also removed the Feinberg amendment.

The Feinberg amendment was allegedly to ban the indefinite detention of Americans seized in the US.

The United Nations General Assembly voted Monday in favor of holding an Arms Trade Treaty Conference in March in order to regulate the multi-billion dollar global industry, a move which the US National Rifle Association (NRA) has been lobbying against for some time.

Negotiations between gun control activists and the UN were postponed last July due to the general elections because the Obama campaign feared that showing support for such a treaty might give former Republican rival Mitt RomneyMitt Romney another reason to attack the incumbent president.

On Novermber 8th, folks gathered for Building Our Media: a critical discussion series on independent media. We discussed Howard Zinn's Essay: The Use and Abuse of History (download pdf of article at: http://www.sendspace.com/file/1052l6) specifically looking at the concept of objectivity in both history writing and journalism.