Yes, We can Change

Ever since the launch of Google Plus , the search giant has been trying to convince the world that Facebook is old news. One of the ways it's attempting to do this? By showing off how it's able to do all the things Facebook was able to do, albeit with a cleaner, more minimalist interface. With the rise of "Farmville," gaming has become a big part of Facebook, and, starting today, it's now a big part of Google Plus. Gaming, I mean...not "Farmville." Yet. Google Plus Games is a free service available to anyone with a Google Plus account. At present, there are 16 games, many of which have already made a splash on Facebook. Familiar titles like "Bejeweled Blitz" and "Zynga Poker" are joined by the Google Plus-compatible versions of "Angry Birds" and "Diamond Dash." As with Facebook, users need to grant games access to their profiles before playing them. This usually amounts to giving those games access ...

Violence and looting spread to new areas of London on Monday — and to a second major British city — as police and politicians struggled to contain the disorder during a third day of rioting in the capital, which will host next summer's Olympic Games. The worst unrest in London in decades saw buildings, cars and garbage dumbs set ablaze and police officers pelted with bottles and fireworks, as groups of young people and police clashed in neighborhoods across the capital. In the nation's central city of Birmingham, dozens of people attacked stores in a main retail district — spreading the chaos beyond London for the first time since violence broke out on Saturday night. As authorities struggled to keep pace with the unrest, Prime Minister David Cameron's office said he would cut short his summer vacation and convene a meeting of the government's crisis committee on Tuesday to lead the response to the escalating violence. The violence began late Saturday in London's no...

Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web becoming a publicly available service on the internet. While many people use the terms web and internet interchangeably, they are in fact different services. On August 6 1991, Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir), posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. The message read: "The WWW project aims to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere." Previously the web was used to allow physicists at the CERN physics laboratory to share data, news and documentation, but Berners-Lee's post released the technology to the general public. By making the web openly available and royalty free, it quickly advanced to a globally used service, no longer the secret of the technologically minded. In the 20 years that followed, the web has become a daily part of modern life. The late 1990s and 2000s saw the boom and subsequent bust of dot-com businesses. Sites such as Amazon and...

Human Rights Watch has accused the Sri Lankan government of lacking the will to prosecute the security forces for the killings of 17 aid workers in 2006. There was widespread revulsion following the murders of the 16 Tamils and one Muslim in the north-eastern town of Muttur during the civil war. European monitors were convinced government troops were responsible, but officials blamed Tamil Tiger rebels. The government has since ruled out reopening an inquiry into the murders. "The Sri Lankan government is no closer to prosecuting those responsible," said James Ross, HRW's legal and policy director. "The Rajapaksa government is not just unwilling to uncover the truth, it appears afraid of the truth." HRW says that the government has a poor record of investigating serious human rights abuses, and "impunity has been a persistent problem". "Despite a backlog of cases of enforced disa...

A US helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan has killed 31 US special forces and seven Afghan soldiers, President Hamid Karzai's office says. The helicopter was taking the personnel back to their base after an operation. It is not clear how the crash happened but the Taliban have said they shot the helicopter down. The incident is believed to be the biggest single loss of life for US forces in Afghanistan since they began operations in 2001. The helicopter went down overnight in Wardak province, the statement from President Karzai's office said. It was returning from an operation against the Taliban in which eight insurgents are believed to have been killed. "The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan expresses his sympathy and deep condolences to US President Barack Obama and the family of the victims," the statement said. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force has confirmed t...