Sir Patrick Stewart (centre) and Samuel West (r) are among actors against arts cuts
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Some of the UK’s leading actors have gathered in London to protest against the recent round of Arts cuts.
Sir Patrick Stewart, Penelope Wilton and Samuel West are among the stars who have signed and delivered a petition to Downing Street calling for a “coherent” arts policy.
Last week, more than 200 organisations lost out on annual funding from Arts Council England.
Sir Patrick told the BBC he felt the cuts were “unnecessary”.
The petition asks the government for an “arts summit” involving funding bodies and artists to give the industry a clear direction.
“We don’t know what policy exists,” said Sir Patrick. “We know that we represent part of British culture, which is a massive success. It seems as though we’re just adrift.”
Some 695 groups will get funding for 2012 to 2015 – down from 849 – while 110 new groups have been successful.
West said the arts industry was the “second most profitable sector in Britain” and it was important funding continued to keep the sector going.
“It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it, a £100 million cut to a £450 million budget is not minor,” he added.
“We want a government funded Arts Council that allows us to be as successful as we are at the moment and continue to play our part in paying for hospital beds. We’re profitable. We want to continue to be.
“I would accept the need for cuts if they were equal across sectors but I don’t think banks are paying their due.”
Meanwhile, Sky has launched a £1.2 million fund, which is aimed at supporting arts organisations across the UK.
The Sky Arts Ignition Series, will pledge up to £200,000 to six arts organisations over the next three years.
Each of the projects created from the money will be promoted on Sky Arts.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Anti-government campaigners in Egypt use laptops to help their campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak
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The United States government is spending millions of dollars developing technology to help pro-democracy activists in the Middle East and China.
Washington has begun to open-up about the projects which include a “panic button” that lets protesters wipe their mobile phones if they are arrested.
State department official Michael Posner said that the US was investing money “like venture capitalists”.
He also revealed that it was providing campaigners with technology training.
The US has budgeted $50m (£30m) since 2008 for its activist projects, which include developing systems to get round internet-blocking firewalls.
“We are working with a group of technology providers, giving small grants,” said Mr Posner, who is assistant secretary of state for human rights and labour.
“We are looking for the most innovative people who are going to tailor their technology and their expertise to the particular community of people we’re trying to protect.”
Mr Posner described the challenge of keeping ahead of government controls in certain countries as “a sort of cat and mouse game”.
In what has become an almost standard reaction to growing political dissent, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain have all restricted access to the internet and, in some cases, temporarily shut it off.
Ironically, in some cases, US made technology has been used to help impose those restrictions, according to reports.
While private firms may take a more free market approach, the US government has been keen to leverage social networking to aid campaigners.
In 2009, it asked Twitter to postpone planned maintenance downtime so the site would remain available to Iranians who were protesting against the country’s disputed election outcome.
Mr Posner also addressed the issue of government eavesdropping, citing the example of a Tunisian activist who had attended a US led training session.
His computer was found to contain key-logging software, designed to record and report everything typed on it.
Around 5,000 activists have received training, funded by the US government, said Mr Posner.
He insisted that the State Department was committed to pressing ahead with such programmes, but conceded that some of the technology could fall into the wrong hands.
He warned that putting tools for evading detection into the public domain might aid drug dealers or terrorists.
“The fact is that Al Qaeda probably has their own way of gathering some of these technologies,” he said.
“The goal here is to protect people who are, in a peaceful manner, working for human rights and working to have a more open debate.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
President Medvedev has enthusiastically embraced new media
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has condemned as “outrageous and illegal” a cyber-attack on a popular social networking website that hosts his blog.
The LiveJournal site was hit by a denial-of-service attack on Wednesday.
The site crashed after being bombarded with messages from thousands of infected computers, an expert from the Kaspersky Labs computer company said.
Russian media say a similar attack has now hit Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper often critical of official policies.
In his blog, President Medvedev said: “As an active user of LiveJournal I consider these actions outrageous and illegal.
“What has occurred should be examined by LiveJournal’s administration and law enforcement agencies.”
The internet has become a major forum for free speech in Russia, where many broadcasters and newspapers are influenced by powerful state or corporate interests.
Novaya Gazeta’s website could not be accessed on Friday, following the cyber-attack, which began on Thursday.
Alexander Gostev, of Kaspersky Labs, told Moscow Echo radio the attack was coming from thousands of infected computers from China, the US and Western Europe.
A spokesperson for Novaya Gazeta, quoted by Interfax news agency, linked the attack to the paper’s effort to launch an “online parliament”.
Nadezhda Prusenkova said: “We would like to create a platform to serve as an alternative to the incumbent authorities, where the problems which the authorities either ignore, or just choose to ignore, could be discussed.”
Sup Media, the owner of LiveJournal, said it was “delighted” that Mr Medvedev had “criticised the recent hacker attacks in the strongest terms”.
“We will continue to investigate the source of these attacks and work to improve our systems to prevent any recurrence,” Sup Media CEO Annelies Van Den Belt said.
Sup Media described Mr Medvedev as “an enthusiastic blogger on LiveJournal for the past two years”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Anna Hazare is on the fourth day of his fast in Delhi
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The Indian government has offered to form a new panel to draft a strong anti-graft law in response to activist Anna Hazare’s “fast unto death”.
The government says the panel will include members of the civil society.
However, differences remain between Mr Hazare and the government on who would head the panel and whether it would be “officially notified”.
Mr Hazare says he is fasting to pressure the government to enact comprehensive anti-corruption laws.
On Thursday, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi urged Mr Hazare to give up his fast, which has entered its fourth day.
She said his views would “receive the government’s full attention as we move forward to fight this menace [of corruption]”.
Earlier, federal minister Kapil Sibal announced that the government was willing to form a panel comprising five members each from the government and civil society to draft the Jan Lokpal Bill (Citizen’s Ombudsman Bill).
However, Mr Hazare has demanded that this panel be “officially notified” so that, in the words of his emissaries, it has some “legal sanction”.
“An official notification is needed to ensure that the government does not make a fool of us,” his emissary, Arvind Kejriwal said.
Also, while anti-corruption activists want Mr Hazare to head the panel, the government has proposed Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Almost 2,000 people, including various civil society activists, have joined the protest with Mr Hazare at the historic Jantar Mantar observatory in Delhi.
Protests and hunger strikes have been reported from other Indian cities.
Earlier this week, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar quit a government panel on corruption when Mr Hazare questioned his credentials.
Mr Pawar said he no longer wished to be associated with the probe.
Correspondents say that Mr Hazare’s fast has rallied people across the country disillusioned with the recent spate of scandals – he is highly respected as a social activist with an untarnished reputation.
Bollywood stars, including superstar Aamir Khan, retired police officer Kiran Bedi, social reformist Swami Agnivesh and former cricketer Kapil Dev have also added their support to his cause.
The 72-year-old campaigner is refusing all food until the government accedes to his demands.
Doctors are checking Mr Hazare twice a day to monitor his health.
Some of the recent corruption scandals to have rocked India include a multi-billion dollar alleged telecoms scam, alleged financial malpractices in connection with the Commonwealth Games which India hosted, and allegations that houses for war widows were diverted to civil servants.
Last month the head of the country’s anti-corruption watchdog was forced to resign by the Supreme Court on the grounds that he himself faced corruption charges.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The internet slang term “LOL” (laughing out loud) has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, to the mild dismay of language purists. But where did the term originate? And is it really a threat to our lexicon?
“OMG! LOL’s in the OED. LMAO!”
If you find the above string of letters utterly unintelligible, you are clearly an internet “noob”. Let me start again.
Golly gosh! The popular initialism LOL (laughing out loud) has been inducted into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Blimey! What is going on?
The OED defines LOL as an interjection “used chiefly in electronic communications… to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement”.
It is both “LOL” where all the letters are pronounced separately, but also commonly “lol” where it is pronounced as a word.
The phrase was ushered in alongside OMG (Oh My God), with dictionary guardians pointing to their growing occurrence “in e-mails, texts, social networking… and even in spoken use”.
As well as school playgrounds, words like “lolz” and “lolling” can be heard in pubs and offices – though often sarcastically, or in parody.
OED definition
LOL (ɛləʊˈɛl/lɒl) colloq.
A. int. Originally and chiefly in the language of electronic communications: ‘ha ha!’; used to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement.
B. n. An instance of the written interjection ‘LOL’.
Love it or loathe it, “lol” is now a legitimate word in our lexicon, says Graeme Diamond, the OED’s principal editor for new words.
“The word is common, widespread, and people understand it,” he explains.
The word serves a real purpose – it conveys tone in text, something that even the most cynical critics accept.
“I don’t ‘LOL’. I’m basically someone who kind of hates it,” says Rob Manuel of the internet humour site b3ta.
“But the truth is, we do need emotional signifiers in tweets and emails, just as conversation has laughter. ‘LOL’ might make me look like a twit, but at least you know when I’m being arch.”
But for young internet entrepreneurs like Ben Huh, of the Cheezburger Network of comedy sites, “LOL” is much more than a necessary evil. It’s both a tool and a toy.
Ben Huh says LOL is ‘a part of everyday life’
“‘LOL’ is a part of everyday life. I use it all the time in e-mail exchanges. It’s a polite way of acknowledging someone,” he says.
“And yes, I do say ‘LOL’ out loud. In almost an ironic sense, like a slow handclap after a bad joke. ‘Lol’ means ‘yes, I understand that was funny, but I’m not really laughing’.”
But no matter how much irony we cake it in, the L-word grinds the ears of many people over the age of 25.
“The death of the dictionary” is how one blogger greeted its induction to the bastion of English.
While on Facebook, there are at least half a dozen “anti-LOL” groups, where lol-ophobes dream of loll-ageddon:
“If something is funny, ‘ha’, ‘hehehehe’, or ‘hee hee’ is perfectly fine depending on the joke, and more descriptive than ‘lol’,” writes one hater.
Another complains that lol “doesn’t sound anything like laughter. In fact you physically CAN’T say it while smiling. I’m all for bastardisation of the language, but with lol, that thing you thought was rubbish really is rubbish”.
Wags point out that “LOL” is almost always disingenuous. “How many people are actually laughing out loud when they say LOL?” asks David Crystal, author of Language and the Internet.
LOL around the worldmdr (and derivatives)
French version, from the initials of “mort de rire” which roughly translated means “dying of laughter”
חחח/ההה
Hebrew version. The letter ח is pronounced ‘kh’ and ה is pronounced ‘h’. Putting them together makes “khakhakha”
555
Thai variation of LOL. “5” in Thai is pronounced “ha”, three of them being “hahaha”
asg
Swedish abbreviation of the term Asgarv, meaning intense laughter
mkm
Afghan abbreviation of the Dari phrase “ma khanda mikonom”, which means “I am laughing”
Source: Know Your Meme
But those laughing least of all are the language purists, who lament “LOL” as a hallmark of creeping illiteracy.
“There is a worrying trend of adults mimicking teen-speak,” says Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign, in the Daily Mail.
“They [adults] are using slang words and ignoring grammar. Their language is deteriorating.”
But is “LOL” really a lazy, childish concoction?
When the OED traced the origins of the acronym, they discovered 1980s computer fanatics were responsible.
The oldest written records of “LOL” (used to mean laughing out loud) are in the archives of Usenet, an early internet discussion forum.
And the original use was typed by Wayne Pearson, in Calgary, who says he wrote the first ever LOL in reply to a gag by someone called “Sprout”.
“LOL” was “geek-speak that filtered through to the mainstream”, says Manuel.
“I first saw it in the 1990s – at the end of emails. Then it got picked up by the young kids. Then it went naff. But it came back ironically – with people saying things like ‘megalolz’.”
Lolcats brought the phrase to a whole new audience
Grandparents, for example, often adopt “LOL” as one of their first “internet words”, says Huh. “‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’ are like momma and dada.”
But many mistake “LOL” for “lots of love”, leading to some unintended “LOLs”, such as the infamous tale of the mother who wrote: “Your grandmother has just passed away. LOL.”
It has also lent its name to some wildly popular internet crazes, like Lolcats, whose appeal spread far beyond the realms of cyber-geeks.
So why has “LOL”, above all other web phrases, become such a phenomenon?
Because it’s simple and multipurpose, says Tim Hwang, founder of ROFLCon, a whole festival dedicated to “internet awesome”.
“The magic of LOL is that it’s both exclusive and inclusive,” he says. “On one level, it’s simple to understand.
“But it also conveys something subtle – depending on the situation. It means more than just ‘funny’. For example, if I had my bike stolen, my friend might reply ‘LOL’. It helps overcome an awkward moment.”
For school kids, acronyms like “LOL” and “KMT” (kiss my teeth) are a kind of secret code, a badge of belonging, says Tony Thorne, author of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang.
LOL-ternatives:D (smileys)
Simple and clear but may appear childish. Are you a Comic Sans fan?
ROFL, LMAO, BWL
Even more annoying than LOL.
!!!
One is fine, three reeks of desperation: ‘Look!!! I made a joke!!!’ Yes, we noticed.
Haha, Hehehe, Arf arf
The safe option. Effective but not very imaginative. Were you really laughing?
Hilarious! How funny!
You are living in the dark ages.
“I go into schools and record slang words – all the new terms kids are saying – words like ‘lolcano’. And if you talk to kids they will say this is our language – this is what identifies us.”
But aren’t these slang words also harmful to children’s vocabulary? Not at all, says Thorne.
“Government educationalists get all worked up about words like LOL – they see them as substandard and unorthodox.
“But the small amount of research on this issue shows that kids who use slang abbreviations are the more articulate ones. It’s called code switching.”
If we have a literacy crisis, it’s among adults as well as children, says Thorne. And slang is not the culprit. In fact, it is enriching the language.
Diamond agrees: “There will always be a minority who want the English language to remain as a frozen beast, that doesn’t admit changes,” he says.
“But language is a vibrant, evolving animal.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The cleric was about to lead Friday prayers at the mosque 
