China shuts down 60,000 porn sites and arrests 5,000 people in massive censorship crackdown

China shuts down 60,000 porn sites in 2010
China shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year, netting almost 5,000 suspects in the process, a government spokesman said yesterday. He vowed no let-up in the country's campaign against material deemed obscene. Beijing has run a highly publicised drive against what officials said was smutty and lewd content, threatening the emotional health of Children. Critics accuse the Chinese Government of tightening overall Censorship, and say that the push has netted many sites with pol...

China shut down over 60,000 porn sites in 2010
BEIJING - China shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year, netting almost 5,000 suspects in the process, a government spokesman said on Thursday, vowing no let-up in its campaign against material deemed obscene. Beijing has run a highly publicised drive against what officials said was smutty and lewd content overwhelming the country’s Internet and cell phones, threatening the emotional health of Children. Critics accuse the Chinese Government of deepening the crackdown, la...

...shuts down 60,000 'pornographic websites'; arrests 5,000 people...
China has shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year and arrested 5,000 people as it steps up a campaign against obscene material. Beijing has run a highly publicised drive against lewd online content which it claims is overwhelming the country's Internet and Mobile Phones and threatening the emotional health of Children. Critics have accused the Chinese Government of deepening the crackdown, launched last December, and said Censorship had blocked many sites with politically sens...

China: 450 M. Internet Users and No Fun
More than a third of China's population is online, the Chinese Government announced today, after a year of meteoric growth. Also today, China banned Skype and shut down 60,000 Chinese porn sites. The porn crackdown came after a government-run contest that gave cash to citizens who reported offensive sites. With no Skype, no porn, no Twitter and no Facebook, it's not clear what these 450 million people do on the Internet. Oh right, this. ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries Tweet ...

China shuts over 60,000 porn websites this year
Beijing has run a highly publicized drive against what officials said was smutty and lewd content overwhelming the country's Internet and cell phones, threatening the emotional health of Children. Critics accuse the Chinese Government of deepening the crackdown, launched last December, and tightening overall Censorship, and say that the push has netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content. But Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office, or cab...

China Is Not Backing Down Versus Porn
The Chinese Government's anti-pornography campaign shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year and led to 2,200 porn-related criminal cases, a Chinese state-run news agency said on Thursday. Officials claim to have received 170,000 tip-offs this year regarding online or cellphone-based Pornography, with the porn-perusing tipsters receiving 544,000 yuan ($81,964) for providing the information. Last summer, thousands of previously blocked porn sites suddenly became available in Ch...

Chinese government shuts down blogger's cutting-edge magazine
The Chinese authorities have shut down a fashionable and influential magazine run by one of the world's most popular Bloggers, whose subtle questioning of power in China appears to have irritated the ruling Communist Party. Party magazine, published by Han Han, a glamorous figure who, in addition to being known as a dashing racing car driver, writes novels and a blog, appeared to have been blocked by government officials after only one issue. The first edition of Party, which has a less edgy t...

Skype could be designated illegal in China
Beijing | Fri Dec 31, 2010 7:13am EST Beijing (Reuters) - China will Crack Down on what it called illegal Internet telephone providers, according to a circular from the Chinese Government seen on Friday that could potentially affect Internet calling service Skype. The statement, from the powerful Ministry of Information and Industry Technology, did not mention any carriers by name. It called for a crackdown "on illegal VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) telephone services" and said it was co...

Skype could be designated illegal in China
Beijing | Fri Dec 31, 2010 7:13am EST Beijing (Reuters) - China will Crack Down on what it called illegal Internet telephone providers, according to a circular from the Chinese Government seen on Friday that could potentially affect Internet calling service Skype. The statement, from the powerful Ministry of Information and Industry Technology, did not mention any carriers by name. It called for a crackdown "on illegal VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) telephone services" and said it was co...

Chinas online population hits 450 million
China's boom in Internet usage has come with the growth of an equally extensive policing system, from technical filters that block sites based on certain words to human monitors who scan bulletin boards and micro-blogging posts for political dissent. Wang said a yearlong government campaign to Crack Down on Pornography, violence and other harmful material accessed on the Internet has resulted in the shutdown of more than 60,000 websites. In addition, government censors deleted 350 million entrie...

China cracks down on abuse at animal parks
China has stripped the licences of seven animal parks and ordered more than 50 others to Crack Down on abusive practices after inspections revealed a host of violations, state media said Wednesday. The punishments came two months after the government had called on local authorities to ban animal performances in zoos and improve park management amid persistent concerns about the poor conditions in the nation's wildlife parks. Since that announcement, six government teams inspected 500 animal park...

China to crack down on official partying
BEIJING - China is expected to announce a crackdown on lavish parties and seminars organized by officials in the coming year in the latest effort to curb Corruption seen as undermining the government. China's ruling party met Tuesday to address excessive spending on official functions as well as public money spent on cars for officials, the China Daily newspaper reported. Communist Party officials will hold a news conference later Wednesday to release a paper on efforts to fight corruption...

China to Crack Down on Lavish Public-Funded Fetes
Wednesday, December 29, 2010 By Cara Anna, Associated Press Beijing (AP) - China plans to Crack Down in the coming year on lavish parties and seminars organized by government officials, hoping to placate a public angered by Corruption and accounts of sex and booze-fueled fetes held at Taxpayer expense. Along with vast improvements in quality of life for most Chinese, China's booming Economic Growth has led to an ever-larger gap between rich and poor and a surge in Corruption that garners un...

China cracks down on Skype, other VOIP services
Fran Wang, Agence France-Presse · Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010 Beijing — China has pledged to restrict Internet phone services — a move that could affect thousands of businesses and individuals making cheap calls via Web-based communications companies such as Skype. “We are carrying out with relevant authorities a campaign to Crack Down on illegal Voice over Internet Protocol phone services”, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a circular posted on...

Manning chat logs contain no smoking gun, Wired editors claim
Wired editors claim"> Stumble This! Editors with Wired Magazine have finally come forward to say that the chat logs in their possession contain no further evidence of a Conspiracy between Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the soldier accused of leaking 250,000 US State Department cables. In his Monday column, Salon's Glenn Greenwald suggested that Wired Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen committed "one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year" by withholding the majority of chat logs that co...

Audio: Liberal Claims That Ritalin May Turn Children Into Conservatives
By now, many have already heard that being a conservative is a brain disorder: Study: Conservatives have larger ‘fear center’ in brain. Larger fear center as in primate, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior c...

Headline men
Some of the men who have made the headlines in 2010, left to right: Kiki, Wayne Bridge, Carlos Slim Helu, Tony Hayward (top), Danny Alexander, Nicholas Mahut, Julian Assange, Gareth Williams (middle), Walter Kasper, Luis Urzua, Edward Woollard, Eddie Afekafe (bottom). JANUARY An eight-year-old boy name Kiki provided one of those heart-rending moments that so often give relief from the misery of Natural Disasters. He was pulled from the ruins of a two-storey building that had been flattened in t...

Call for openness after Wikileaks
Ministers should be more transparent and resist any urge to "clam up" after the Wikileaks revelations, according to the information commissioner. Christopher Graham said the government should be more proactive in publishing communications after the release of thousands of secret documents online. He said ministers needed to "wise up" to the fact that almost any official document could now be made public. Mr Graham, who became information commissioner in June 2009, added: &quo...;

Assange claims Arab officials spy on their own countries for the CIA
In an interview with al-Jazeera's Arabic language network on Wednesday, Wikileaker Julian Assenge claimed to have names of Arab Diplomats who are spying on their own countries for the CIA. “These officials are spies for the U.S. in their countries,” Assange said, according to Qatar's Peninsula newspaper. More: The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the

Poll: Assange 2010's 'Most Intriguing'
Published: Dec. 31, 2010 at 3:30 AM Atlanta-based CNN.com said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was chosen by visitors as the "Most Intriguing Person" of 2010. UPI/Hugo Philpott ATLANTA, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Atlanta-based CNN.com said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was chosen by visitors as the "Most Intriguing Person" of 2010. The news organization said Assange received 25 percent of the votes in the online poll, with runners-up including President Barack Obama, Facebook mastermind Mark...

"Many Arab officials are US spies in their own countries"
"... Top Officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks. “These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday. The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview wh...

Newsweek's Julian Assange Christmas Photos Are Really Quite Magical
One of the many faces of possibly being extradited, via Robert King/Newsweek ​Did anyone ever watch the sentimental, autobiographical Truman Capote short called "A Christmas Memory"? In it, an orphaned boy lives with a group of elderly relatives, one of whom is his best friend, an eccentric, childlike old woman known as "Sook." They gallivant through the hills and dales together, buying whiskey and making fruitcase and chopping down their very own Christmas Tree. That kind of sums up how...

China launches fresh crackdown on corruption
China's ruling Communist Party has announced a fresh campaign against Corruption and official excess, promising to rein in the culture of boozy banquets and cruising around in fleets of official cars that so angers ordinary Chinese....

Anonymous topples, defaces Zimbabwe government websites
Stumble This! The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu-PF) website, Zimbabwean government website and Zimbabwean Finance Ministry website were the target of cyber attacks on Thursday by a loose-knit group of online hacktivists known as "Anonymous." The websites were hit with distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's wife, Grace Mugabe, sued a newspaper for publishing a Wikileaks cable that alleged she was connected with illicit diamond trade. All t...

WikiLeaks' Collateral Damage
Source: Wall St Journal Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and the leader of its democratic opposition, has endured countless indignities at the hands of President Robert Mugabe. In 1997, thugs tried to throw him from the window of his 10th floor office. In 2002 and 2008, he had Elections stolen from him and his party, the Movement for Democratic Change. After that most recent ballot, he had to hide at the Dutch Embassy in Harare for fear of his life. A year later his wife died in...