The International Telecommunications Union head of development Sami al-Murshed has refused to rule out sabotage as the cause of several undersea cable breaks that almost cut off the Middle East from the rest of the Internet in the last few weeks. Speaking to the AFP, al-Murshed while attending a cyber-crime conference in Qatar. “We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago.”
Tag Archive: Qatar
Bible On Yr Moby
If you’re someone who likes to carry the Bible with you, it just became a whole lot easier. ChristianMobile, a South African-basedcompany, is offering downloads of the Old and New Testaments for $12 each in the UK. The company will also offer daily inspirational messages by text. The company already operates in severalcountries, including the US, offering the same services. It claims to have distributed 80,000 virtual Bibles in the South Africa alone (the Bibles are in proper English, not text speak, in case youwondered). According to their site, ChristinaMobile exists so “to enable every mobile phone user to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that each phone user may believe in Him, call uponHis name and be saved by Him. That they may be equipped with wisdom and revelation for faith and action through His leading by the power of the Holy Spirit into the ministry of reconciliation of manwith God.” Of course, this isn’t really anything new to the US, where Christian content online and on mobiles has been quickly adopted. But it brings something different to the UK,which has never been a hotbed of religion. However, according to a report in The Guardian, ChristianMobile will have its work cut out in the future, asit plans to expand its efforts to Bahrain, China, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Wikipedia Temporarily Bans Qatar
On its surface, Wikipedia seems like a tremendous thing: create a globally accessible online encyclopedia, constantly expanded, updated, and corrected by the entire Internet community. And, indeed, the project has gained substantial momentum over the years, sprouting innumerable localized versions and finding the accuracy of its science articles favorably compared to the famed Encyclopedia Britannica.
Yet the collaborative nature of Wikipedia makes it vulnerable to pranks, article vandalism, and users editing articles to put their preferred spin on events, people, and topics. Last year, Wikipedia saw U.S. political operatives engaged in partisan vandalism as they malevolently edited articles describing political opponents; now, Wikipedia has slapped a 12-hour ban on anonymous posts originating from the Persian Gulf state of Qatar due to “chronic vandalism and spam”.

