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Like reported from Tech Crunch, Apple stocks go down at 11:56 till 12:02 PM period, 17 May 2007 local time. The decrease from US $107.89 to $103.42 is referred same as loss of market capitalization fund equal to US $4 billion.

Latter, Engadget is correct the news. That news in fact came from a fake e-mail, even though that fake e-mail looks original because coming from inside of Apple network. Apple stocks get restored in about 20 minute after the correction.

The news source represents an internal memo about the delay of iPhone and OS X Leopard launching. Michael Arrington, observer of 2.0 web sites, confessing that source in the internal memo form is a "gold farm" that usually wrong rarely. But in this time, that e-mail content is spurious although mentioned come from Apple server.

Even cannot be blamed, Engadget blog estimated will experience of the crisis belief from the reader. "In future if Engadget present the news kind like this, people will make the speculation concerning its truth. Need some time before its recover," said Arrington.

On the other side, Arrington noticed, Apple exactly can be blamed if the e-mail correctness comes from the internal network of Apple Company. "Other mistake from Apple is not immediately response the rumor after engadget post the news," Arrington enhance.

20/5/2007

Abbas is just part of a wave of Middle Eastern bloggers who are eroding tight government control on information and thus drawing intense scrutiny from police.

Egyptian authorities arrested a string of prominent bloggers last year, including one who remains jailed and is on trial for allegedly defaming Islam by posting criticism of Islamic institutions on his Arabic-language blog.

"I might be next," Abbas said at a Cairo coffee shop. He said his family has received anonymous phone calls asking about him, which he suspects come from state security.

"I think there is a campaign against the bloggers here," he said. "We are exposing what all Egyptians know but weren't talking about."

Mideast governments for decades have dominated the media, trying to keep a monopoly on information and deter criticism of authorities. But bloggers are chipping away, writing about everything from human rights to the region's rulers to the most taboo topic — Islam.

Weblogs — or blogs for short — started taking off in the Mideast a few years ago as access to the Internet and technology for creating sites grew. There are now hundreds of Arabic- and Farsi-language blogs posted from the Middle East.

Many of the blogs are just personal musings. But many others strive to tackle political and social issues, and their authors are increasingly getting into trouble, with governments blocking their sites and throwing them in jail.

"I firmly believe that blogs now with normal people using them have become the fifth estate. They watch the watchers, especially in this area of the world, because there are no controls over them," said Mahmood al-Yousif, a Bahraini blogger.

Al-Yousif said his blog was blocked by authorities briefly last year after he published articles about an election-related scandal on the Persian Gulf island kingdom.

Reporters Without Borders has five Mideast countries — Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Syria — on its list of the globe's 13 worst Internet freedom enemies that block Web sites and detain bloggers.

Governments defend their Web regulations, saying they are protecting citizens from "immoral" and "defamatory" content. But rights groups and bloggers say officials are really trying to retain their media control.

"Five years ago, authorities didn't care about bloggers because the Internet's reach was less," said Julien Pain, head of Reporters Without Borders' Internet Freedom Desk. "Now, what is most interesting is the Weblogs in the local languages. You look at what the authorities censor — they censor content in local languages."

Rights groups have been especially critical of Iran, where there have been some arrests of bloggers. Iran has also blocked some Web sites critical of the government — even shutting down access to the video-sharing forum YouTube.com, where Iranian opposition groups abroad have posted videos.

Hamed Mottaghi, an Iranian freelance journalist, blogs in Farsi about human rights from the Iranian holy city of Qom. But Iranians can't view his Web site inside the country — authorities blocked it last year.

That hasn't stopped Mottaghi. He and another Iranian blogger recently won awards from Reporters Without Borders for taking strong stances on freedom of information.

"The number of bloggers is increasing in Iran since people cannot express themselves easily in the society, which lacks freedom. Young people especially are looking for a different place to open dialogue," Mottaghi said.

But some say the jury is still out on whether online opposition will transform into social and democratic reform in the Middle East. Though the number of Internet users has grown nearly fivefold since 2000, only about 10 percent of the region's people have access to the Internet, according to the online Internet World Stats, which monitors Web usage around the world.

A mass pro-democracy movement has not emerged, said Jesse Sage, of the U.S.-based civil rights organization Hands Across the Middle East Support Alliance, which has worked with activists including bloggers in the region.

"Blogging is about venting, and the challenge is whether we can move from venting to acting, and that remains to be seen," Sage said.

But Saudi Arabian blogger Ahmed al-Omran, a pharmacy student who runs one blog in English and another in Arabic, believes the blog movement will make a difference.

"It's a good chance now for bloggers here," he said. "Saudi Arabia is changing, and the margin for freedom of expression is getting bigger and bloggers are taking advantage of this."

www.ap.org

But there is no sign that newspapers are turning back: just last Wednesday, The Washington Post announced that it would be adding three new blogs.

Numbers recently released by Nielsen/NetRatings, the Internet traffic measurement firm, suggest that such blogs are picking up readers. NetRatings said that traffic to newspaper blogs had more than tripled over the last year, reaching 3.8 million in December. (The total unique visitors to newspaper Web sites in December was 29.9 million.) Slightly more men than women read online newspapers, and that trend is more pronounced on newspaper blogs, 66 percent of whose readers are male.

“News and information is generally a male-skewing appetite,” said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics for NetRatings, “and blogs are really getting a lot of the most engaged consumers.” ALEX MINDLIN

ALEX MINDLIN
www.nytimes.com

The case against Captain Ashraf Safwat is gaining new attention following the decision by Egypt's activist blogger community to post the details online in the wake of several other cases of police brutality in recent weeks.

"The most significant aspect of the case is this is the first state security officer to truly be put in front of a criminal court," said Mohsen Bahnasi, a member of AHRLA's board, referring to the country's feared plainclothes security service.

Mohammed Abdel Qader and his brother were summoned to a Cairo police station on September 16, 2003 by Safwat. Abdel Qader died five days later and an autopsy gave torture by electric shock combined with a weak heart as the cause of death.

More than three years later, the case continues to drag on, hampered by slow prosecutors, uncooperative security services and now the family's decision to drop the case and disappear.

In the past few months, however, torture cases have gained new prominence in Egypt as bloggers have posted videos, photos and accounts of brutality in police stations, prompting renewed investigations.

On January 20, Abdel Qader's case appeared on a blog, featuring excerpts from the forensic report and gruesome autopsy pictures showing the mangled corpse of a heavily bearded man.

"There is evidence of the application of high temperature to the right and left breast and the penis resembling the effects of electrocution with an electric wire," read an excerpt. "He was subject to those injuries hours before his death."

"The pictures have done something, because they are visual -- it is a shock," said Aida Seif al-Dawla, a veteran anti-torture activist who credits the bloggers for raising public awareness on the pervasive use of torture by security services.

Hossam el-Hamalawy, on whose Arabawy blog the pictures appear, said it comes as no surprise bloggers should take interest in such cases.

"The bloggers themselves were victims of torture during the past years," he said, referring to the case of Mohammed al-Sharqawi who was allegedly sodomised after being arrested. "We are receiving so many videos now."

Bloggers came to public attention during the political ferment surrounding elections in 2005 and then most recently when they posted the grim video of bus driver Imad al-Kabir being sodomised in a police station in 2006 -- the first of many such examples of police brutality to be publicised.

Interior Minister Interior Habib al-Adly last week lashed out at the bloggers, condemning the "intentionally unpatriotic campaign striking a national service that seeks stability in the country."

The campaign strikes at the heart of official assertions that torture is not widespread and limited to individual cases.

"The outcry has encouraged people to come forward in person and take the government at its word that it takes torture seriously and prosecutes it whenever possible," said Elijah Zarwan of Human Rights Watch.

Proving a torture case in Egypt, he added, is very difficult due to a narrow definition of torture by authorities and lengthy incommunicado detentions during which the marks often fade.

It took seven months for Safwat to answer the subpoena in the current case, and when he did it was with his own autopsy report claiming the burns came from a defibrillator used to revive the victim after a heart attack, indicating he was familiar with the case prior to the trial.

A special committee of experts then took two tries to conduct a new autopsy based on the pictures and available documents which finally concluded that there was torture, opening the way for the trial to begin in June 2006.

The repeated delays, leaking of information to defendants and allowing the suspected officers to remain free during the trial are typical of attempts to bring torture cases against police, said AHRLA president Tariq al-Khater.

"The prosecutors in Egypt are in collusion with the police," he said.

In November, the officer's lawyer suddenly produced a paper signed by Abdel Qader's family withdrawing Khater's power of attorney and dropping the civil case for damages against the officer.

Khater is convinced that state security pressured the family, which has since disappeared, by threatening their still imprisoned other son, Sameh.

With his case against Safwat threatening to fall to pieces, Khater has taken the unusual step of challenging the family's decision on the behalf Abdel Qader's three daughters on the grounds it is against their interests.

On Saturday, the criminal court will decide whether the case proceeds.

Paul Schemm
www.afp.com