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Doctors already use concentrated sound waves to see through solid tissue and take a look inside the body, as with ultrasound scans. But in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Caltech scientists say they’ve developed a metamaterial that focuses sound to such a high concentration that it could go on the offensive, targeting cancers or kidney stones while leaving the surrounding tissues alone. Oh, and one other thing: The military could use it to make weapons.

“The beauty of this system is that it’s just a bunch of ball bearings that we control with weights,” said Chiara Daraio [Discovery News], a member of the research team. Caltech’s acoustic lens relies on the same principle as Newton’s cradle—that toy your high school science teacher probably kept on his or her desk with metal balls on strings that demonstrated the conservation of energy. In this design, 21 parallel chains each contain 21 bearings. When the team strikes one end, it starts a compression wave that carries through the system. But instead of having the last ball swing out like a pendulum and bring the momentum back into the system, like the toy does, the acoustic lens focuses all the energy at the end of the system onto one spot, just a few inches away from the metamaterial.

Researcher Alessandro Spadoni says the team had medical uses in mind when they designed this acoustic lens. “In particular, tissue temperature at the focal point can be increased with high acoustic-energy density, which results from a compact focal volume and high pressure induced by sound bullets,” Spadoni adds [Scientific American]. Thus, he says, you could potentially target and heat up cancerous tissue without affecting surrounding healthy tissue. Or, if they modulated the system a different way, the researchers say it could be used to see inside the body without the possible risks related to radiation-based imaging. The paper also hints at use in defense systems, though it leaves the implications of that to the imaginations of others. Sound bullets could be used by the military to create submarine melting waves of pressure or shock waves powerful enough to destroy caves otherwise untouchable by conventional weapons [Discovery News].

The Caltech scientists are far from the first to tinker with acoustic lenses, but the simplicity of their design makes it appealing. The research model currently works in two dimensions and hasn’t been tested on living cells. But, researchers says, scaling up to 3D could focus sound waves even better, and the applications of such a technology will depend on how much sound wave intensity the team can focus into one spot.

Related Content:
80beats: New Laytex & Plastic Soundproofing Could Stop Even Rumbling Bass Sound
80beats: This May Sound Strange: Sonic Lasers and Sonic Black Holes
80beats: The 3D Invisibility Cloak: It’s Real, But It’s Really Tiny

Image: PNAS

O Gol Fest, evento que marca a comemoração dos 30 anos de produção do Gol, que a Volkswagen realiza no próximo sábado (10/4),contará com dezenas de atrações e atividades interativas.
No local, um show de manobras radicais, a cargo da Equipe Esteves, deverá atrair atenções que se repetirão ao longo do dia. Os pilotos irão executar derrapagens, andar em duas rodas e outras proezas ao volante de seus carros.

Simultaneamente, o público poderá participar das demonstrações práticas de como funcionam os freios ABS em piso molhado, além do acionamento do sistema de airbags em testes de colisão simulados.
A habilidade dos participantes da festa com a bola será posta a prova no espaço “É Gol do Brasil”, onde serão desafiados a acertar um chute na janela do carro.

Carros customizados radicais e modelos equipados com sistemas de som especiais terão uma área especial. Os modelos mais destacados vão receber prêmios e participarão de um desfile no final do evento.
A festa, realizada com o apoio do Banco Volkswagen e da Volkswagen Tech, será uma oportunidade inédita de um encontro entre os aficionados do Gol. Três sorteios, que darão direito a um Gol cada um, acontecerão ao longo do dia.

São esperadas mais de 20 mil pessoas. A programação contempla todas as idades e interesses e contará com áreas específicas para crianças e o público feminino.

Mais informações sobre o Gol Fest podem ser encontrados no hotsite www.vw.com.br/golfest

Informações úteis:

Local: Sambódromo do Anhembi, Av. Olavo Fontoura, São Paulo
Data: sábado, 10 de abril
Horário de entrada: das 09h00 às 17h00
Estacionamento disponível no local.

Fonte: Volkswagen

EA’s Black Box studio has announced that gamers will be able to try out Skate 3 next week. A demo is set to be release simultaneously on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network on April 15th.

Western Digital has updated its two-year-old Velociraptor range of hard drives with the SATA 3.0 drives, coming in 450 and 600GB capacities. They’re the fastest-writing hard drives around, transferring up to 6GBs a second. More »

There are people out there who are interested in a tablet computer, but refuse to buy the iPad on principle. Well, take a gander at ICD’s Gemini, an 11.2-inch tablet that’s got a damned impressive spec list. More »

With conservatives screaming from the rafters about the elimination of a business tax deduction for retiree benefits in the Democrats’ health reform law, The New York Times responds today with a pretty convincing argument for why the change makes sense.

First, here’s how the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law has benefited companies:

For every $100 the company spends on retiree drug benefits, Medicare sends it a subsidy payment of $28. On top of that, the companies got a rare double tax break. The $28 subsidy is tax-free, and the company was allowed to deduct the entire $100 as a business expense.

Under the new reform law, the 28 percent subsidy remains, and it remains tax free. “But companies will no longer be allowed to deduct the subsidy as if it were an expenditure of their own,” the Times writes.

Sounds reasonable, right? Not in the eyes of the companies that benefit from the current system. They’re claiming that the change will hobble their hiring abilities (i.e., lower their profits). And conservatives are listening.

“This added burden to corporate America would be significant at the best of economic times, but unfortunately we’re living in the worst of times — when every spare corporate dollar should be spent on retaining or hiring new employees,” an emblematic critic wrote recently for Townhall.

“Added burden,” of course, implies an initial burden. But, as Ben Armbruster of Think Progress recently pointed out, some of the companies making the most fuss over the elimination of their pet tax deduction are among those that pay the least to Uncle Sam. It’s tough to cry for Boeing when its actual tax rate, at 3.2 percent, is about one-sixth of a middle class family’s.

These days, all you ever hear about are iPhones, iPads, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and stuff like Gowalla and Foursquare. Do you ever wish you could just go back to a simpler, more linear, 2400 baud type of time? Well, there are a number of sites out there that can help you revisit your pre-Internet past as if it were enshrined in resin and on display at the ancient history museum.

And at some of these online museums, you can not only look, but you can touch – we’re talking door games, DOS games, ANSI drawings and more.

Sponsor

The Early Web – The Truth (About Your Bad Web Design) Is Out There

The Wayback Machine is all the evidence you’ll ever need that you, too, once totally sucked at Web design. It’s like the Internet yearbook you never really asked for and a great way to see how websites have developed over time.

The site has “over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.” The site uses data from Alexa, and gives you snapshots of websites at various stages in their life cycle, beginning usually with the site’s conception on the Web.

That first, test website you built in Microsoft Frontpage? Yeah, it still, sorta exists in some incarnation on the Wayback Machine.

The BBS Days

Stepping back a little further into the history of the Internet past, we find BBSes, those dial-up messaging, file transfer, chatroom, “door game” communities that predated websites and the Internet as we’ve come to know it.

And honestly, in some ways, the Web as we now see it has become more and more like those gathering places of yore. Websites like Facebook and Myspace are oddly remniscent and represent more of a come-full-circle experience than a revolution in online experiences.

Making Old Friends

So, if you aren’t friends with your old BBS pals on Facebook yet, you might be able to find them on BBSmates, a list of more than 75,000 BBSes and the people that ran and used them. (I’m in there, somewhere, but I’ll let you try to find that embarassing nugget of my BBS years.)

Aside from taking credit for your exploits as Co-SysOp on that one BBS for six months, you can fill your hankering for a little game of Global Wars, Baron Realms Elite and even Usurper.

BBS Source Codes, Door Games and Even ANSI Art

BBS Archives makes you feel like you’ve entered the late 90s from the second the site loads and it has all the files to back it up. From ACiD, the ANSI art group that’s been around since 1990, to executables for L.O.R.D. and every other game you can remember, this throwback site (with its gradient fade background image) will take you right back to the days of modem init strings and BBS meets.

And please, for the sake of all of us, download that Renegade or WWIV BBS code, get it running, and lets get some Trade Wars going.

Before Text Became Hypertextual

Going even a little bit deeper into the early days of the online world we have textfiles.com, the one stop shop for everything ASCII.

The site describes itself as offering “a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them. The focus is on mid-1980’s textfiles and the world as it was then, but even these files are sometime retooled 1960s and 1970s works, and offshoots of this culture exist to this day.”

We’re talking everything from those “Anarchy texts” you showed off to your friends in school to those terrible hacker group zines you and your friends made in Word Perfect. If you thought you were cool then, wait until you read this stuff now!

Nevermind AR: We’ve Got Scorched Earth

Last, but surely not least, we find ourselves with a DOS emulator for Windows made especially for game play called D-Fend Reloaded, that we found over at Lifehacker and admittedly started this whole Internet/BBS remniscing tirade.

With help from sites like DOSGames.com you can get your game on, with classics such as Scorched Earth and Nethack.

And if all of these websites and tools aren’t enough, we’d recommend checking out BBS: The Documentary for a full look at the way things were.

Oh, and did I mention – welcome back to your online childhood?

Discuss

Citroen acaba de publicar en su twitter oficial las primeras imágenes oficiales del nuevo Citroen Aircross. Es la primera vez que podemos observar a este modelo sin ningún tipo de camuflaje.

Tras observar detenidamente estas fotografías nos queda claro que es ni más ni menos que una variante crossover del C3 Picasso aunque con una parrilla totalmente nueva.

Esta versión será de venta exclusiva en Brasil aunque Citroen ha confirmado que podremos verlo en directo en el próximo Salón de París.

Related posts:

1. Citroen C4 Millenium
2. Citroen C-Cactus, nuevas imágenes
3. Fotos reales del Citroen C3 2010

From Green right Now Reports

Whole Foods Market is starting a wine cork recycling program to make it easy for wine enthusiasts to properly dispose of corks. The company said it will accept natural wine corks at all of its 292 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Austin-based Whole Foods Market is partnering with Cork ReHarvest to help collect and recycle the corks.

There are about 13 billion natural corks produced each year. The Mediterranean oak forests that supply cork support one of the world’s highest levels of forest biodiversity and the second-highest number of plant species in the world. Whole foods said that no trees are cut down during cork extraction — instead, bark is hand-harvested every 9 to 12 years.

The new cork recycling program will result in virtually zero increase in carbon footprint, Whole Foods Market said. Corks will make their entire journey from stores to recycling centers on trucks that already are en route to each destination.

“We often forget that cork is a renewable, recyclable material that does not belong in landfills,” Erez Klein, wine and beer buyer for Whole Foods Market’s Pacific Northwest Region, said in a statement. “Whole Foods Market is excited to make cork recycling more accessible to our shoppers. Cork ReHarvest allows us to help sustain cork forests, a critically important resource for our planet, and to do so with near effortless local community action.”

West of the Rockies, corks will be delivered to Western Pulp, where they will be turned into recyclable wine shippers containing 10 percent cork. In the Midwest, corks will be sent to Yemm & Hart, which produces cork floor tiles. And on the East Coast and in the UK, corks will be transported to Jelinek Cork Group, one of the oldest cork manufacturers in North America, where corks will be made into post-consumer products.

From our perch, we’re starting to see positive economic signs in various places we’re looking.

And yesterday we noted one huge “V” in Treasury rates.

But David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff is not convinced yet, and his run through of various economic indicators he claims he’s not seeing what everyone else is seeing.

See the charts and see if you agree >

Join the conversation about this story »

MARS HILL — Sometimes it may seem that “the hungry” are far away and that there is nothing that the average person can do to alleviate their suffering.  But the organizers of Hunger Week, to be held next week at Mars Hill College, are hoping to change those perceptions for students, faculty and staff.

“Hunger is an issue across the world and even here in western North Carolina,” said Dallas Thompson, North Carolina Campus Compact AmeriCorps*VISTA worker at Mars Hill College.  Hunger Week is a way that we can demonstrate that the choices we make, including the food we eat ourselves, and the way we live our lives, can make a difference in the availability of food for other people.”

Hunger Week includes a series of activities on the campus which will educate students, staff and members of the public about food and its distribution around the world.  The week will also include several fund raising opportunities for Neighbors in Need of Madison County and MANNA foodbank…

>>Read the full article at the Asheville Citizen-Times

Maoists kill dozens of police in India attack

SUJEET KUMAR | RAIPUR, INDIA – Apr 06 2010 11:27

Maoist rebels killed at least 73 police by setting off explosives and firing from hilltops around dense forest in central India on Tuesday in one of the worst attacks by the insurgents in years.

The ambush in Chhattisgarh state highlights the strong Maoist presence in large swathes of India, especially remote rural areas, and underscores how many parts of the country have been left out of India’s booming economy.

“Something has gone very wrong,” Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram said. “They seem to have walked into a camp or a trap.”

Recent high-profile rebel attacks on police have raised questions over how well prepared India’s security forces are to tackle the Maoists, especially during a counter-offensive by security forces this year.

“We have confirmation of 73 deaths in the attack. At least two dozen have been injured,” Amresh Mishra, a senior police officer, told Reuters. Reinforcements trying to collect the dead bodies came under fire by the Maoists who have surrounded the area.

The Maoists regularly attack railway lines and factories, aiming to cripple economic activity in many of the mineral-rich and remote mining regions of India. But they have made few inroads into cities.

The Congress-led government has come under criticism by the opposition for failing to deal with the insurgents and the security issue could be important in several state elections over the next two years.

Taken by surprise

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoists as the gravest threat to India’s internal security.

The rebels number between 6 000 and 8 000 hardcore fighters in nearly a third of the country’s 630 districts. Each year they extort more than $300-million from companies, the government says.

Tuesday’s attack echoed a similar ambush in February, when Maoists caught police off guard in a daylight attack on in the state of West Bengal, killing at least two dozen police.

Maoists have stepped up attacks in response to a police offensive that began late last year in several states, which Indian officials say has for the first time weakened the decades-old movement.

Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers and landless labourers, are trying to expand their influence in east, central and southern India.

Thousands have been killed in the insurgency, which began in the late 1960s.

On Sunday, rebels triggered a landmine blast that killed 10 police in the mineral-rich eastern state of Orissa. — Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-06-maoists-kill-dozens-of-police-in-india-attack

Morning Exercises

To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the following guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning (May 27):

Degree candidates will receive a limited number of tickets to Commencement. Parents and guests of degree candidates must have tickets, which they will be required to show at the gates in order to enter Tercentenary Theatre. Seating capacity is limited; however, there is standing room on the Widener steps and at the rear and sides of the theater for viewing the exercises.

Note: A ticket allows admission into the theater, but does not guarantee a seat. Seats are on a first-come basis and cannot be reserved. The sale of Commencement tickets is prohibited.

Alumni/ae attending their reunions (25th, 35th, 50th) will receive tickets at their reunions. Alumni/ae in classes beyond the 50th may obtain tickets from the College Alumni Programs Office, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, sixth floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617.495.2555, or through the annual Treespread mailing sent out in March.

Alumni/ae from nonreunion years and their spouses are requested to view the Morning Exercises over large-screen televisions in the Science Center, and at designated locations in most of the undergraduate Houses and graduate and professional Schools. These locations provide ample seating, and tickets are not required.

A very limited supply of tickets will be made available to all other alumni/ae on a first-come, first-served basis through the Harvard Alumni Association, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, sixth floor, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Afternoon Exercises

The annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association convenes in Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement afternoon. All alumni and alumnae, faculty, students, parents, and guests are invited to attend and hear Harvard President Drew Faust and featured Commencement Day speaker David H. Souter deliver their addresses. Tickets for the afternoon ceremony will be available through the Harvard Alumni Association, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, sixth floor, Cambridge, MA 02138.

— Jacqueline A. O’Neill
University Marshal

According to a recent survey by Changewave, Android has overtaken the iPhone as the most desirable smartphone on the market. Building on their December 2009 report, Changewave now reports that of those who are buying a smartphone in the next 90 days, 30% prefer Android. Which is more than iPhone. To be fair, the survey lists that 29% of users prefer iPhone but hey, whether you win by an inch or a mile, you still win. And 1% more than the vaunted iPhone is a win.

Android has grown significantly since the onslaught of amazing Android devices. Since September, interest in Android has grown five-fold. Ah, to remember the good ol’ days. [electronista]

Google launched Buzz with a good helping of hype, hope and good faith, but what followed wasn’t exactly what the company had in mind. A couple of rushed decisions made Google Buzz a privacy nightmare and most of the harm had been done by the time developers scrambled to fix the issues and make the necessary changes. And the changes also di… (read more)

Health care reform is done. Financial reform is on its way. What’s next? Rich Gold, the head of the lobbying group at Holland and Knight, says it is only a matter of time until Washington is consumed in a major battle over tax reform. Here is a brief edited transcript of our conversation on Monday.

Whom do you represent as a lobbyist?

I work for a diverse bunch of interests. Local governments, a variety of corporate industry firms, manufacturing firms, service industry, green tech. I do a lot of climate change and budget work.

Why do you think major tax reform is inevitable?

Systemically revenues are obviously well out of balance with expenditures. With mandatory spending only getting worse, we’ll have to start fundamentally looking at entitlement reform. Sixty-five percent of the budget is mandatory, 15 percent is defense, 20 percent is discretionary. You can take defense down a little bit, but we’re fighting two wars. There’s not money there on the discretionary side to have an impact. It’s hard to know whether health care bends the cost curve up or down significantly, although I like some of the things like the review board for Medicare. But we’re way overdue for something on tax policy. We’re in the 1990-1991 tax deal moment, and I don’t think Obama wants to go into reelection year without doing something on deficit reduction.

What items are guaranteed to be on the menu for tax reform? Tax expenditure reform? Higher standard deductions? A value-added tax?

I think you’ll see corporate taxes go up first. The closing of tax loopholes (to encourage corporations from moving capital overseas) would be front and center. That would be first.

Then what?

There is only so much jimmying you can do with rates, and Obama’s painted himself in a corner by saying he won’t raise taxes on anybody under 250K. The real problem with all of this is that the Republicans used to be the party of limited government and now the Tea Party is making them the party of no government. To reform tax law you gotta have a dance partner.

Democrats like social engineering, so I think in climate change or elsewhere we’re going to see
changes to to Section 45 [the Income Tax Credit for Renewable Energy]
to encourage investment in wind and solar. I think you’re going to
continue to see social engineering in the tax code, like sin taxes
related to Americans’ diet. Democrats tend to go down that road on the
tax credit and new tax side.

Because you need to spread the blame for the pain or because Congress will be more balanced and it will be impossible to pass anything without bipartisan agreement?

Both things. It will be really hard for one party to take on raising revenues and making cuts without a grand compromise. The GOP is supposedly very interested in fundamental tax reform but the Tea Partiers have them in a box because they want to shrink the government so dramatically.

In the meantime, what do you see as the major sticking points in the financial regulation bill that’s working its way through the Senate?

Right now consumer protection must be in chains for the GOP to agree to it. They don’t want the consumer protection bureau going after the big banks. But the Democrats can’t message on this and explain to the tea party folks and the rest of the America that we’re are trying to deal with the folks who got the bailout, then we might as well just give up.

Big day at Six Flags planned sometime soon? No natural sense of direction? Constantly worried that you’ll lose your friends at a large theme park, and end up having to spend the night all alone in the cold, hiding from Crazy Jimmy the Maintenance Man? Own an iPhone or iPod touch? I’ve got some good news for you: Six Flags have just launched a brand new iPhone/iPod Touch app that has you covered.

The free app, available now, offers 4 main features:

• An interactive map showing you your exact location, as well as the location of rides, games, entertainment venues, food and retail outlets, ATMs, bathrooms and even characters (so you shouldn’t get lost)
• A friend finder, that shows you the location of, and allows you to chat with, any of your Facebook Friends that are also using the application (so they can come find you when you do get lost)
• Some kind of social club and big scream, which, while making little sense to me, somehow allows you to pick all the coolest bits in the park and arrange to meet your friends there (I love planning)
• An events listing, so you know what you’re missing out on while you’re waiting for your friends to find you/running from crazy Jimmy

Horror themes aside, I think the interactive map/friend finder would actually be a pretty useful tool for those inevitable situations where you do end up getting separated from your pals, and could turn a bad situation into the great day it was supposed to be.

Oh, and yes: The Six Flags song is now stuck in your head. Snap.

Same-sex marriage got majority support in the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll — much like a similar poll by the Public Policy Institute of California earlier this spring.

But does that mean that a measure to repeal Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state, would have smooth sailing?

Not necessarily.

First, the numbers: Registered voters surveyed in the latest poll said 52% to 40% that “same-sex couples should be allowed to become legally married in the state of California.” 

That’s the latest in a string of surveys that have found similar results. A PPIC poll released March 25 found respondents backing gay marriage 50% to 45%.  And a Times/USC poll last November found a 51% to 43% split on the issue.

As with the previous surveys, the latest Times/USC poll showed a sharp polarization by political party and ideology, with Democrats and liberals supporting same-sex marriage by large margins and Republicans and conservatives opposing it by equally lopsided margins.

The poll also showed a huge variation by age, with registered voters younger than 30 supporting same-sex marriage by roughly 3 to 1, while a majority of those 64 and older were opposed.

That age division, also seen in every other poll on the issue, suggests that over time, the state’s electorate probably will become even more supportive of same-sex marriage — unless today’s voters in their 20s become more socially conservative as they age. But the divide also poses a challenge for gay rights advocates: Older voters are substantially more likely to turn out to vote than younger voters.

That’s particularly true in non-presidential election years, when turnout in general tends to be lower.

So compared with 2008, the electorate in 2010 is likely to have a higher representation of the age groups most opposed to same-sex marriage.

And 2008, of course, was the election in which Proposition 8 passed. No surprise, then, that gay rights groups have decided to sit this election out.

The poll was conducted for The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences by two polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint.

The margin of error for the survey, which included 1,515 registered voters, was plus or minus 2.6 percentage points for the overall sample and slightly larger for smaller breakdowns. Questioning took place March 23-30.

— David Lauter

Photo: Protesters in support of same-sex marriage march in downtown L.A. in 2009. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Face-off at Terreblanche hearing

Scuffles have broken out between black and white South Africans outside a court where two alleged killers of a white supremacist leader were charged.

Police stepped in to stop the face-off between people from the local black community and supporters of Eugene Terreblanche, found dead on Saturday.

Officers built a barricade from razor wire to keep the two groups apart in the north-western town of Ventersdorp.

The killing has raised racial tensions in the country.

Hundreds of AWB flags are flying and Afrikaner nationalist songs are playing as hundreds of Afrikaners protest outside the court.

Some 200 police officers have formed a human barricade around the court. There is a smaller group from the local black community.

Tension fills the air as both groups begin to sing songs linked to their race – Afrikaners singing the old national anthem – the black group responded with anti-apartheid songs.

Many Afrikaners say the murder is proof of a “siege” against farmers in South Africa. There are placards in green and red ink, some accusing former President FW de Klerk of “selling out Afrikaners” to the blacks, referring to his partnership with Nelson Mandela to end apartheid.

Police said the pair, aged 28 and 15, had admitted beating him to death in a dispute over unpaid wages.

The court proceedings are not in public because one of the accused is a minor.

Terreblanche’s paramilitary group AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) had threatened to take revenge for the killing, but retracted their threat on Monday.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Ventersdorp says about 500 people gathered outside court – divided equally between white supremacists, local black residents and the police.

The police stepped in after tensions between the two groups led to pushing, shoving and scuffles.

Pieter Steyn, an AWB leader, said the organisation had called for calm and anyone who disregarded this call would not be acting on behalf of the organisation.

“Everybody has adhered to our request to remain cool,” he told AFP news agency.

“As soon as the court proceedings are completed, we will all disperse and go home and gather again on Friday for the funeral.”

The group blames ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema for contributing to the killing by recently singing a song from the anti-apartheid struggle called “Shoot the Boer”.

Boer is an Afrikaans word for farmer, which has become a derogatory term for all white people.

Mr Malema has denied any responsibility for Terreblanche’s death and the ANC argues that the song does not incite people to kill but is part of the country’s history and the fight against white minority rule.

It is planning to appeal against a court judgement banning the song as hate speech.

The authorities are keen to stress that the killing was not politically motivated.

President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm and condemned the killing.

Terreblanche, 69, was fiercely opposed to the end of apartheid in South Africa, which led to the ANC winning the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 and Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first black president.

He served three years in jail after being convicted in 2001 of the attempted murder of a farm worker.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8604375.stm
Published: 2010/04/06 13:10:06 GMT

Workers charged for Terre’Blanche’s murder

VENTERSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA Apr 06 2010 15:59

Two farm workers, aged 15 and 28, were officially charged with four crimes including the murder of former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche in the Ventersdorp Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) advocate George Baloyi said the accused, Chris Mahlangu (28) and a minor, who cannot be named, were formally charged with murder, housebreaking and robbery with aggravating circumstances, crimen injuria and attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances.

The charge of crimen injuria was explained by Baloyi: “[After the murder] … they pulled down his [Terre’Blanche’s] pants to his knees and exposed his private parts.”

The case was postponed to April 14. The two had not yet pleaded to the charges.

“We had two sessions today [Tuesday], one was informal and one was formal,” Baloyi said.

“In the informal session we outlined the charges we intend to bring against the two accused and the summary of facts we are relying on.

“In session two, we spoke about complying with the provisions of the new Act.”

He said the Act provided for the treatment of children who committed an offence and laid down the procedure that needed to be followed, adding that the probation officer had compiled a report as per the Act.

The accused’s rights were explained in court and necessary documentation, such as birth certificates, was handed over.

Baloyi said the inquiries were “all but finalised except for one issue”.

“That is the criminal capacity of the accused [the minor].”

The NPA had to determine whether the youth had the capacity to commit murder or whether he was acting on someone else’s instruction.

“It was postponed for seven days to finalise that issue.”

In camera

Baloyi said the entire trial would be held in camera, due to the age of the one accused.

“The law is very clear the trial must take place in camera,” he said.

NPA head Menzi Simelane confirmed that there would only be one trial, saying thus far “from the information, they are the only ones involved in the crime”.

He said there were sufficient provisions to move the case to the high court but certain matters had to be taken into account, such as the Ventersdorp community wanting justice “from here”.

He said people in South Africa generally respected court outcomes and although the case might take place in Ventersdorp, it was still in South Africa with a Constitution generally obeyed by the people.

Simelane said it was difficult to say when the trial would begin.

Asked why he had attended the case, he said: “I am at work like you are. I work from any court …”

The 15-year-old’s attorney, Zola Majavu, relayed a message from the youth to the community: “Please, please don’t hurt my family.”

The youth had not eaten on Tuesday and his mother was too scared to leave the courtroom, worrying about her safety.

“I am arranging the security for her,” Majavu said.

Earlier on Tuesday, police had to separate white AWB supporters and black onlookers in a fracas during the singing of Die Stem and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

‘Pent-up rage and frustration’

Meanwhile, the murder of Terre’Blanche had unleashed a “tidal wave of pent-up rage and frustration” in certain sections of South African society, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Tuesday.

Addressing the media at Parliament, she said it was time for President Jacob Zuma to “act like a president” and rein in his party’s youth leader, Julius Malema.

“For over a decade now, farmers and farming communities have been on the receiving end of escalating criminal violence, and 3 368 have been murdered.

“Most recently, the ANC Youth League’s sinister leader, Julius Malema, has made popular again an old struggle song, the lyrics of which include the phrase ‘[shoot] the boer’.”

Zille said pointing out, as the ANC had done, that there was no direct evidence linking Malema’s reported hate speech to Terre’Blanche’s murder was unhelpful, to say the least.

“We must acknowledge the fact that songs inciting people to kill others create a climate in which murder is legitimised and romanticised.

“We must understand why people are angered and alienated by a song that calls for their murder.

“We must understand why this is multiplied many-fold when the country’s president fails to take a stand, effectively condoning the flouting of a court ruling that declared these words to be hate speech.

“This song is not experienced as ‘an attack on the apartheid system’, which its apologists claim it is; it is experienced, [and I believe it is meant by those who sing it], as a contemporary expression of a hateful attitude towards farmers and Afrikaners in particular, and whites in general,” she said.

According to the police, Terre’Blanche was murdered, allegedly by two of his farm labourers following a pay dispute, on his farm 10km outside Ventersdorp on Saturday.

Symbolic

Zille said Terre’Blanche’s murder was “symbolic”, for a number of reasons.

“It shows how close to the precipice we are with people’s pent-up rage and anger … A symbolic murder can often be the match on the dry grass, and this is what Eugene Terre’Blanche’s murder threatened to be.”

Asked how big a “seminal moment” Terre’Blanche’s murder was in South Africa’s history, she replied: “It is a big one.”

However, she had been very pleased to hear the AWB had withdrawn its call for violence to avenge Terre’Blanche’s death.

“We cannot avenge violence with violence,” Zille said.

She also called on the ANC leadership to “take a formal decision at the highest level to stop singing the song that includes the words ‘shoot the boer’.”

Farm safety had reached crisis proportions in South Africa.

“When you compare the number of farmers who have been murdered in South Africa [with] the numbers that have lost their lives in Zimbabwe, you will see the sort of crisis it actually is; farm murders in Zimbabwe don’t enter triple figures, and ours are over 3 000.”

Earlier on Tuesday, police had to separate white AWB supporters and black onlookers in a fracas during the singing of Die Stem and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. — Sapa

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-06-workers-charged-for-terreblanches-murder

SA warning against race violence

South African leaders have warned against any attempt by white supremacists to avenge the murder of their leader Eugene Terreblanche.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said such talk would not help the current situation in the country, and President Jacob Zuma called for national unity.

On Sunday the remnants of Mr Terreblanche’s AWB party vowed revenge.

It blames Julius Malema, head of the ruling ANC’s Youth League, for inflammatory actions.

Mr Malema, who last month led college students in a song about killing white farmers, is due to return from Zimbabwe later in the day, and correspondents say his response to calls for calm is keenly awaited.

Mr Terreblanche, 69, was attacked on Saturday evening at home on his farm near the town of Ventersdorp, North West province. He is due to be buried on Friday.

‘Sad moments’

Mr Zuma knows that such a prominent killing could rapidly trigger racial violence, if not handled sensitively, says the BBC’s Karen Allen in Johannesburg.
————————————————————————————-
TERREBLANCHE: KEY DATES

1941: Born on farm in Transvaal town of Ventersdorp
1973: Co-founds AWB to protect rights of Boers’ descendants
1993: AWB vehicle smashes into World Trade Centre in Jo’burg during talks to end apartheid
1994: AWB invades tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana and is defeated; three AWB men die
1998: Accepts moral blame for 1994 bombings that killed 21
2001: Jailed for attempted murder of farm-worker
2004: Released from prison
——————————————————————————————
He was quick to condemn the attack amid criticism that he had failed to rein in the ANC Youth League.

The president went on television on Sunday to condemn what he said was a “cowardly” murder.

He said he had spoken to Mr Terreblanche’s daughter and hoped to speak to the leader’s wife in order to convey his condolences.

“This is one of the sad moments for our country that a leader of his standing should be murdered,” said Mr Zuma.

He said that South Africans must not let anyone take advantage of the “terrible deed” by inciting racial hatred.

The AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or Afrikaner Resistance Movement) echoed Mr Zuma’s call for calm as relatives and friends of Mr Terreblanche gathered near his home to pay their respects on Sunday.

But the far-right movement’s secretary general, Andre Visagie, said Mr Terreblanche’s killing had political overtones.

“The next step for the AWB will be to bury their leader in peace, but thereafter we shall avenge the death of our leader,” he said.

“Of course we do blame Julius Malema,” Mr Visagie told the BBC.

“The death of Mr Terreblanche is a declaration of war by the black community of South Africa to the white community that has been killed for 10 years on end.”

He said there was “fierce anger” among AWB members. “They all call for revenge for Eugene Terreblanche’s death,” he said.

He said some some members advocated violent retribution, but he encouraged them to wait until actions could be co-ordinated “right across the country”.

More than 3,000 white farmers are estimated to have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994.

A committee of inquiry found in 2003 that only 2% of farm attacks had a political or racial motive, although critics said this figure was far too low.

Others point out that some 50 people, mostly black, are killed every day in South Africa – a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime.

Heated exchanges

Last week, South Africa’s High Court banned Mr Malema from singing the racially charged apartheid-era song with the words “kill the Boer”. It ruled the song was hate speech, although the ANC is appealing.

Boer is Afrikaans for a farmer, but is sometimes used as a disparaging term for any white person in South Africa.

Mr Malema denied responsibility during his official visit to Zimbabwe.

“The ANC will respond to that issue. On a personal capacity, I’m not going to respond to what people are saying. I’m in Zimbabwe now, I’m not linked to this.”

South Africa is a nation still nursing racial wounds from the past, our correspondent says, and in some quarters there is nervousness about the future.

Ventersdorp has already seen some heated racial exchanges since the killing.

“A black guy killed a white guy. Obviously it’s going to stir a lot of trouble,” said Kgomotso Kgamanyane, a cashier at a local petrol station.

“Just earlier a customer came in, a white guy, and he told us to go to hell,” he told AFP news agency. “It could get violent, because whites in their minds they think that we did it because of hate.”

Police have arrested and charged two male farm workers – aged 21 and 15 – who they say beat Mr Terreblanche to death in a dispute over wages.

Mr Terreblanche had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African government.

His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections, before sliding into relative obscurity.

Mr Terreblanche served three years in jail after being convicted in 2001 of the attempted murder of a farm worker.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8603048.stm
Published: 2010/04/05 11:18:24 GMT

Kia acaba de presentar una nueva versión compacta de cinco puertas del Kia Forte (muy solicitado en Estados Unidos). Esta versión se presentó de forma oficial en el pasado Salón de Nueva York.

De momento y a no ser que Kia cambie de opinión, esta versión no será comercializada en Europa. En lo que respecta a la motorización, estará disponible junto a dos motores, un 2.0 de 156CV y un 2.4 de 173CV, ambos asociados a una caja de cambios manual o automática de seis velocidades.

Sobre el resto del modelo, no debemos destacar ningún cambio drástico aunque el frontal y la parrilla han sido modificados levemente. Por el momento se desconoce el precio de esta nueva versión.

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