This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news… This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive.

If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

The list goes from oldest to newest news.  See you on Sunday, for our weekly Twitter Sunday!

A short history of a peacekeeping mission
Over recent months I’ve been writing about the withdrawal of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic and Chad, known as MINURCAT, and discussing the missing logistical and financial details of the Government of Chad’s, plan to take over from the mission. However, for the majority of people who can’t access regular information about the situation in eastern Chad, and don’t have the luxury of a job…
http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/short-history-peacekeeping-mission

How Forced Labor in Asia Costs You Money
Do you think it’s possible that slavery in the Thai fishing industry can impact the price of your home in California? What about whether children forced into domestic servitude in Malaysia affect the U.S. job market? The fact is that forced labor anywhere in the world can affect your bottom line, right here in the U.S. And here’s why. First, let’s look at how forced labor costs anyone money. The main cost of forced labor comes in…
http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/how_forced_labor_in_asia_costs
_you_money

International Adoption: A Tricky Business
International adoptions have gotten a lot of press in recent years.  Stories of celebrities adopting children from other countries are so common that such adoptions are hardly even considered trendy anymore.  Celebrity adoptions have fueled the popularity of international adoptions in the U.S., with over 10,000 children arriving from abroad each year. This is the first in a series of posts on the business of international adoption…
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/international_adoption_a_tricky_business

Imprisoning Children for Life
The University of San Francisco School of Law Center for Law and Global Justice and the Frank C. Newman International Human Rights Law Clinic, in association with the Berkeley-based Human Rights Advocates, work for global abolition of juvenile life without parole (LWOP) sentencing, calling it inappropriate for children and illegal. In November 2007, they published a report titled, “Sentencing Our Children to Die in Prison,”…
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/051510Lendman.shtml

Europe’s Debt Crisis Is Casting a Shadow Over China
The pain of the European debt crisis is spreading, with the plummeting euro making Chinese companies less competitive in Europe, their largest market, and complicating any move to break the Chinese currency’s peg to the dollar. Chinese policy makers reached a consensus last month about breaking the dollar peg. But allowing the renminbi, which is also known as the yuan, to rise against the dollar now would mean a further increase in…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/business/global/18yuan.html

Graffiti artist Banksy leaves mark on Detroit and ignites firestorm
Banksy was here. But what’s really fascinating is what happened after he left. The British-born art world celebrity and provocateur, who hides behind a cloak of anonymity and whose graffiti paintings have made headlines from Los Angeles to London, has tagged Detroit — most prominently a crumbling wall at the derelict Packard plant. Discovered last weekend, the stenciled work shows a forlorn boy holding a can of red paint…
http://www.freep.com/article/20100515/ENT05/100514077/Graffiti-artist-
Banksy-leaves-mark-on-Detroit-and-ignites-firestorm

Why universities should hate the iPad
If students embrace textbooks on the iPad, college bookstores may lose their shirts. It may be the season for graduation parties and commencement speeches, but colleges and universities are already prepping for next year, even in the bookstore. Next fall, during opening weekend, students will once again file into university bookstores to purchase course materials, school supplies, and a college sweatshirt or two…
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/17/why-universities-should-hate-the-ipad/

UN official sounds alarm on increasingly global nature of organized crime
As organized crime increasingly transcends national borders, the best way to combat these networks is to strike at the heart of their markets, not just intercept criminal groups, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today. Diffuse criminal networks with a global reach have replaced national criminal groups, and the modern crime business model values control over trafficking routes more than control…
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34724

Beauty of Future Airplanes is More than Skin Deep
An 18-month NASA research effort to visualize the passenger airplanes of the future has produced some ideas that at first glance may appear to be old fashioned. Instead of exotic new designs seemingly borrowed from science fiction, familiar shapes dominate the pages of advanced concept studies which four industry teams completed for NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program in April 2010…
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airplanes.html

Hank Jones Is Dead at 91; A Versatile Jazz Pianist
Hank Jones, whose self-effacing nature belied his stature as one of the most respected jazz pianists of the postwar era, died on Sunday in the Bronx. He was 91. His death, at Calvary Hospital Hospice, was announced by his longtime manager, Jean-Pierre Leduc. Mr. Jones lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and also had a home in Hartwick, N.Y. Mr. Jones spent much of his career in the background. For three and a half decades…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/arts/music/18jones.html

NIGERIA: When water becomes a curse
A 15-year river blindness immunization programme in the fertile bread-basket of otherwise-arid Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, now in its 11th year, hangs in the balance for lack of funds. The disease, also known as onchocerciasis, reduced agricultural activities in the past two decades as farmers fled riverine areas, but this flight abated when aid agencies started the immunization programme. Now, two-thirds of the way through…
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=89167

Suu Kyi furious at comrades’ new party
The Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has reacted with surprising anger to the decision of her former colleagues to form a breakaway party and contest the upcoming polls. Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) last month announced that it had decided to boycott controversial elections planned by the junta for later this year, termed the move “undemocratic”. Because of new rules imposed by…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suu-kyi-furious-at-comrades
-new-party-1976392.html

Win Sex and the City 2 Earrings from Wendy Brandes
Jewelry designer Wendy Brandes’s gold and diamond Cleopatra earrings are worn by Samantha in Sex and the City 2. Show us how you would style your favorite SATC girl — Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte or Miranda — with the Cleopatra earrings and at least one additional piece of Wendy Brandes jewelry…and you could win a pair of silver Cleopatra earrings worth $450! D I D E S I™ A Stylish Turkish and Wendy Brandes will pick one…
http://www.polyvore.com/win_sex_city_earrings_from/contest.show?id=173690

Intel Freaks Out, Shuts Off Protest on Facebook
It turns out that even a high tech company like Intel can fail to understand the power of social media in the hands of activists – and so far, their public relations response has been a gaffe a minute for the past several days. It was all part of a grassroots campaign using Facebook in a new way to get support for the bipartisan Conflict Minerals Trade Act that is making its way through Congress. The bill would regulate the global trade…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/19/13440/5568

Scientists Fault Lack of Studies Over Gulf Oil Spill
Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/science/earth/20noaa.html

Jupiter cloud belt missing again, scientists say
Scientists don’t know why, but one of Jupiter’s two main cloud belts has disappeared — again. Like a wayward pet, the belt has gone missing before and has always returned. “This is a big event,” said planetary scientist Glenn Orton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. “We’re monitoring the situation closely and do not yet fully understand what’s going on.” The brown cloudy band, known as the South Equatorial Belt, or SEB…
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/space/05/20/jupiter.cloud.belt.missing
/index.html