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JUNE 2006 - PART ONE
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"Anybody home"
It sounds like a bad joke – but having an alligator knocking at the door was no laughing matter for one couple. The 2m-long reptile was attracted by the smell of teriyaki chicken cooking at a home in South Carolina. It pounded on the front door and tried to scale the house's wall, but could not quite reach the doorbell. If he had turned around, I’d be gone in a hurry. Roslyn Loretta and her husband, Robert, were barbecuing on the porch behind their home when they first noticed the reptile. She said: 'It looked like he was going to ring the bell. It left me a little shaken.' Richard Holinski lives on the same street in Sun City Hilton Head and took the picture of the alligator. He said: 'If he had turned around, I'd be gone in a hurry.' Wildlife biologist Dean Harrigal, said: 'You get oddball behaviour from alligators this time of year when it's dry and fresh water is at a premium.' Last month three people in Florida were killed by alligators in seven days.
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£6million Turner turn around
A watercolour by master landscape artist JMW Turner has sold for a record £5,832,000. The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise, which experts considered the most important watercolour to appear on the market in more than 50 years, had been expected to fetch a little over £2million. It's the most important watercolour to appear on the market in more than 50 years. It broke the world record for a British watercolour at an auction at Christie's in London today 6th June, 2006. The 1842 painting, which was snapped up by an unnamed telephone bidder, also set a new record for any British work on paper, beating the 2000 record of £2.6million for Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Pandora (1869).
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A preacher and a politician shares a platform
The mayor of Newham Councillor Sir Robin Wales was among the guests at the Progressive National Baptist Convention in London last weekend at Calvary Charismatic Baptist Church in London where the American preacher Tommy Tenney was preaching. While addressing the congregation at the church on Friday 26th May, 2006, the mayor has this to say: As the Mayor of the most diverse community in Britain, I am proud of the many cultures and faiths that make up the community of Newham. The mayor continued to explain that Newham will be one of the host boroughs for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Something in excess of 60% of the Games will take place within the borough. Newham also falls within the boundaries of the London Thames Gateway. Unlike most English districts, its council is led by a directly-elected mayor, currently Robin Wales. Census information indicates Newham is the most culturally diverse place in the United Kingdom. The council goes on to claim it is the most culturally diverse place on Earth. The borough is the local authority with the second highest percentage of Muslims in Britain (24.3). It is considered part of Outer London for most purposes because the majority of the borough was not in the old County of London. However, economically it is one of the more deprived areas and the council is actively campaigning to have Newham officially considered part of Inner London for all purposes in order to increase the level of funding the borough receives.
 American preacher Tommy Tenney (left) shaking hands with the Newham Mayor in London as Rev. Francis Surpong the head pastor of Calvary Charismatic Baptist Church and the President of Progressive National Baptist looks on |
 "Yes, there is a big difference between a politician and a preacher, but they come to agree in the church.... let us here what Mayor of Newham Sir Robin Wales (right) has to say |
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Meet the man who created the internet
Tim Berners-Lee was knighted in the UK for his invention
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period". Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web. "What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said. "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
An equal net
The British scientist developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. Since then it has exploded into every area of life. However, as it has grown, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve. The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model. This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally. This view is backed by companies like Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to be introduced to guarantee net neutrality. The first steps towards this were taken last week when members of the US House of Representatives introduced a net neutrality bill.
Pay model
But telecoms companies in the US do not agree. They would like to implement a two-tier system, where data from companies or institutions that can pay are given priority over those that cannot. This has particularly become an issue with the transmission of TV shows over the internet, with some broadband providers wanting to charge content providers to carry the data. The internet community believes this threatens the open model of the internet as broadband providers will become gatekeepers to the web's content. Providers that can pay will be able to get a commercial advantage over those that cannot. There is a fear that institutions like universities and charities would also suffer. The web community is also worried that any charges would be passed on to the consumer.
Optimism
Sir Tim said this was "not the internet model".
The "right" model, as exists at the moment, was that any content provider could
pay for a connection to the internet and could then put any content on to the
web with no discrimination. Speaking to reporters in Edinburgh at the WWW2006
conference, he argued this was where the great benefit of the internet lay. "You
get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across
a site that I did not set out to look for," he said. A two-tier system would
mean that people would only have full access to those portions of the internet
that they paid for and that some companies would be given priority over others.
But Sir Tim was optimistic that the internet would resist attempts to fragment.
"I think it is one and will remain as one," he said. The WWW2006 conference will
run until Friday at the International Conference Centre in Edinburgh.
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