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An Italian court convicted three Google Inc. executives Wednesday of criminal charges for breach of privacy. David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, Peter Fleischer, its global privacy counsel, and George Reyes, a former executive, were given six-month suspended prison sentences after being found guilty of violating the Italian privacy code. The Google executives were convicted for not removing a video uploaded to Google Video in 2006, showing an autistic boy in Turin being beaten and insulted by teenage bullies at school. The video w

The Russian Language Wikipedia surpassed 500,000 articles at 10:02 UTC on February 25, 2010, after "Ys", an article about a Joanna Newsom album, was created by Nurse fiction, a newcomer to the Wikipedia. The Russian language Wikipedia is the tenth largest language edition of Wikipedia, boasting over three hundred and fifty "Featured Articles" and 930 "Good Articles", shown to be the best in the freely-editable encyclopaedia. Russian Wikipedia is also one of the few languages to adopt the Flagged Revisions system. Wikipedia is a multilingual

According to a government official, at least 26 people were killed in a stampede on Thursday at a historic mosque in the northwestern city of Timbuktu, Mali. "There were 26 killed and 40 wounded," Oumar Sangare, the Internal Ministry spokesman, told Reuters. However, other news agency reports put the death toll as low as fifteen. An official, who requested to remain anonymous, said the accident could have begun as a result of renovation work on the Djingareyber mosque—which is made primarily of mud, and was built in the fourteenth century. Co

Thailand's Supreme Court today ruled that the family of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be stripped of 46.3 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) in frozen assets, more than half of a contested $2.3 billion fortune. According to the court, the seized assets were illegally gained while Thaksin was Prime Minister; specifically, his familial involvement and connections with Shin Corporation. In a statement released by the court, the judges said that Thaksin had adjusted government policies to favor telecommunications businesses, including Shin

Lt Colonel Ephrem Setako — a former Rwandan army officer — has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering the killing of between 30 and 40 people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was found guilty on Thursday of genocide, crimes against humanity, and murder. Setako was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. He was acquitted of further charges including complicity to commit genocide, murder as a crime against humanity, and pillage as a war crime. The ICTR, set up by the United Nation

At least fifteen people have been killed as the result of a landslide which occurred in Indonesia on Tuesday. According to BBC News Online, at least sixteen were killed. It is thought that up to seventy people were killed as a result of the landslide, which occurred in a village near to the city of Bandung. At one point, villagers attempted to dig out surviving victims from the rocks and mud by using their bare hands, as rescue efforts were suspended temporarily due to heavy rain, before recommencing after lifting equipment arrived. At least s

A Turkish court on Wednesday charged and jailed seven senior Turkish military officers for allegedly plotting several years ago to overthrow the Turkish government. The officers consist of four admirals, an army general, and two staff colonels. Among them were Admiral Ramazan Cem Gundeniz, Admiral Aziz Cakmak, retired General Mehmet Kaya Varol, retired Admiral Ali Deniz Kutluk, and retired Admiral Ozer Karabulut. Also arrested were retired General İbrahim Fırtına, who was Commander of the Air Force from 2003 until his retirement in 2005, a

Dawn Brancheau, a whale trainer, died in an accident at the SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida on Wednesday, at around 14:00 local time. The incident involved an 18-year-old killer whale, Tillikum, also called Tilly. The Orange County Sheriff's Office report that trainer Brancheau has 16 years of experience. Brancheau was reported dead after being recovered from the pool. Witness to the incident Victoria Biniak told WKMG-TV, "He was thrashing her around pretty good. It was violent. [The whale] ...took off really fast in the tank, and then he came ba

A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police has announced that the police force have arrested three teenagers in connection with the death of a shop owner in West Yorkshire, England. The three are currently remaining publicly unidentified. 63-year-old Gurmail Singh was killed after he was physically involved in a robbery of his shop, the Cowcliffe Convenience Store, that occurred on February 20, 2010 in the town of Huddersfield. The spokesperson said that one person aged 18 and two people aged 17, all of whom came from the Huddersfield region,

According to reports from BBC News Online and Sky News Online, a maximum of 270,000 civil servants will go on a strike in the United Kingdom due to a dispute over reductions to redundancy terms in the public sector. Staff that are due to get involved in the strike, which will last for 48 hours between the dates of March 8–9 2010, will include driving test examiners, court officials, coastguards, tax workers, customs officers, and members of staff from Jobcentre Plus. The UK Government has stated that the money that will be salvaged by the tax

Ten billion songs have been downloaded from the iTunes Store, an online digital media store which is owned by Apple Incorporated. Louie Sulcer, of Woodstock in Georgia, downloaded "Guess Things Happen That Way" by American musician, Johnny Cash, which became the ten billionth song downloaded from iTunes. Sulcer won an iTunes gift card worth US$10,000 (approximately £6,550 or €7,380), after purchasing a song on the iTunes Store to win the prize. Beforehand, Apple had launched a competition entitled "Countdown to 10 Billion Song Downloads", wher

General David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the war in Afghanistan, says the fight for the southern town of Marja — called Operation Moshtarak — is just the first operation in a long campaign. Petraeus says the battle of Marja is just the beginning. "This is just the initial operation of what will be a 12- to 18-month campaign, as General [Stanley] McChrystal and his team have mapped it out," he said. During an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Petraeus said the enemy is formidable. He did not predict how long the operation in