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BRUSSELS (AFP) – Europe’s justice chief Viviane Reding called Thursday for new rules to give citizens more control of their online personal data, with the “right to be forgotten” from Facebook or Google.

Reding unveiled proposals to update a European Union rule on data protection that dates back to 1995, years before the proliferation of social networking websites and web search engines.

“The protection of personal data is a fundamental right,” the European justice commissioner said.

“To guarantee this right, we need clear and consistent data protection rules. We also need to bring our laws up to date with the challenges raised by new technologies and globalisation,” she said.

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Just an hour ago as I write this, the NASA spacecraft EPOXI passed just 700 km from the nucleus of comet Hartley 2! The flyby was successful, and it took incredible images of the comet’s solid heart:

More pictures here

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Pepsi secure in the knowledge that no matter how you vote, no vote will have any adverse effect on them. No possible US government will ever ask them to reduce plastic bottle usage for the sake of the world’s oceans. Their lobbyists own the government, no matter what you vote. They are so smugly assured of the utter uselessness of your vote that they sell you the idea along with their product.

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Hansard is the official printed transcript of the proceedings of the houses of parliament — in other words, the working log of the British government.

It is an authoritative primary source, and records every speech made in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Interestingly, it also records words spoken under parliamentary privilege.

So when an eminent member of the House of Lords stands up six hours into a debate and blows the gaff on a shadowy foreign Foundation making a bid to buy the British state, and this is recorded in Hansard, one tends to sit up and take notice. And one takes even more notice when His Lordship tip-toes around actually naming the Foundation in question, especially after the throw-away about money-laundering for the IRA on behalf of the Bank of England. Parliamentary privilege only stretches so far, it seems, and Foundation X is beyond its reach. I’m going to quote at length below the cut — if you want to read the original, search for “1 Nov 2010 : Column 1538″ which is where things begin to tip-toe into Robert Ludlum territory.

Sounds like the setup for the biggest 419 fraud in history..

Now that the Republicans have control of the House, wheres the jobs? Why isn’t the economy fixed yet? Why do we still have a deficit? Why are we still in recession? Are Republicans secretly Muslim and trying to ruin our country?

Personally, I’m sick and tired of John Hussain Boehner trying to jam his Socialist agenda down our throats. And where is his birth certificate?

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We did find (quite by accident) that Apple may have more reasons behind not installing Flash by default other than the stated reason of ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date version. Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.

In case you need another reason, here it is: using FlashBlock and AdBlocker makes your battery last longer.

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It has now been nearly ten months since the devastating January earthquake struck Haiti, reducing Port-au-Prince to rubble and claiming over 300,000 lives. In the time since, Haiti’s government, the United Nations, and many other aid agencies have struggled just to keep the population healthy and fed as it tries get back on its feet. Recent weeks have seen an outbreak of cholera, which has killed more than 300 people. The cholera strain is not native to Haiti, and reportedly matches strains found in South Asia, placing suspicion on U.N. personnel from that area who were stationed nearby. Some 1.3 million people are still crammed into thousands of makeshift camps dotted around the capital, leaving them vulnerable to both disease outbreaks and the elements – of particular concern as Tropical Storm Tomas now approaches, and may grow to Hurricane strength by landfall on Friday. 42 photos total

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Men bathe in puddled water on a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) #