britain

Voice of America’s Somali Service, which has been providing extensive coverage of the devastating drought in Africa, is now being offered to mobile phone users throughout Great Britain. VOA Director David Ensor says the new “call to listen” service is another example of the way technology can be harnessed to reach people who need information the most.

The best way to diffuse a sense of injustice for those people involved in the Arab Spring is through improving material circumstances, London said. British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in a speech before delegates at the British Council in London said the British government has committed more than $180 million during the next four years to development in the Arab world.

The See No Evil project on Nelson Street in Bristol will see several multi-storey buildings in the street covered with art over the coming days. Organisers hope that the project, which has involved top graffiti artists from all over the world, will become a major tourist attraction for the city, often said to the spiritual home of Banksy.

The servers that house Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger don't have a political, social or legal agenda. Their job is simply to transmit what people post and deliver it to people who want to see it. But the same technologies can also be used to espouse unpopular causes or even rally people to anti-social, illegal or destructive acts.

Iranian media affiliated to the Islamic regime have been accused of using library images from different times and locations in Britain and other parts of the world to portray the UK riots as "the uprising of the oppressed against the British monarchy".

The morning after devastating riots swept across London, hundreds of people gathered in Twitter-organized crews to sweep up broken glass, clean vandalized buildings and show the world — and themselves — that their city is about more than mindless destruction.

In a sphere often dominated by celebrities and lighter fare, the presence of a prayer campaign is a bit unusual. At the heart of the #prayforlondon tweets is the Evangelical Alliance, the largest body serving Evangelical Christians in the UK. It called for a prayer vigil in the Gaumont State of London at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Christians were invited to join in prayer for those afflicted by the riots shaking the country.

Dame Vivienne Westwood has teamed up with Yoox.com and the United Nations Agency to provide much-needed ethical employment for the people of Nairobi. Her Ethical Fashion Africa Collection for the e-tailer comprises handbags and totes created with from all sorts of refuse, from flip flops to old tent fabric, and transformed into covetable accessories by impoverished people in Kenya, through fair labour conditions.

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