Rene Meijer
Trying to improve learning and teaching at the University of Sheffield. Roller Derby Fanatic (skating as Flying Dutchman). All views here, yada yada...
Robin Hood Airport tweet bomb joke man wins case. 27 July 2012Last updated at 08:07 ET Paul Chambers: "I want to move on, get a job and have a holiday" A man found guilty of sending a menacing tweet threatening to blow up an airport has won a challenge against his conviction.
Paul Chambers, 28, of Northern Ireland, was found guilty in May 2010 of sending a "menacing electronic communication". He was living in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, when he tweeted that he would blow up nearby Robin Hood Airport when it closed after heavy snow. After a hearing at the High Court in London his conviction was quashed. 'Obvious joke' Mr Chambers said later: "I am relieved, vindicated - it is ridiculous it ever got this far. Continue reading the main story Analysis Clive ColemanBBC News legal correspondent This appeal was all about whether Paul Chambers' tweet, made in frustration that Robin Hood airport was closed, and threatening to blow it sky high if the problem wasn't sorted out, was a 'menacing' message and therefore criminal. 'Vindication and victory'
Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, new research reveals. The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.
James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system. Comedian Jimmy Carr became the public face of tax-dodging in the UK earlier this year when it emerged that he had made use of a Cayman Islands-based trust to slash his income tax bill. "These estimates reveal a staggering failure," says John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.
Free access to British scientific research within two years. The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet.
Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world. In an interview with the Guardian before Monday's announcement David Willetts, the universities and science minister, said he expected a full transformation to the open approach over the next two years. The move reflects a groundswell of support for "open access" publishing among academics who have long protested that journal publishers make large profits by locking research behind online paywalls.
"If the taxpayer has paid for this research to happen, that work shouldn't be put behind a paywall before a British citizen can read it," Willetts said.
Pearltrees tips. Learning Space.