The Economist's View on the Court

Charlemagne, the European columnist of the Economist wrote an Op-Ed earlier this month on Europe's two highest Courts: Supreme muddle - Europe’s highest courts can be annoying, but they do more good than harm. The gist of the article is that even though the two, the ECJ and the ECtHR, might at times be annoying to politicans, on the balance it is good that we have them (sic!). The article is neither very positive, nor very negative. As Charlemagne says "Judicial nonsense should be restrained wherever possible but may be a price worth paying for the protection of Europe’s prosperity and freedom." Note the "may" in that latter sentence: not really a wholehearted statement of support!

Article on Children's Right to be Heard

Aoife Daly of Trinity College Dublin has written an article on the rights of children in legal proceedings, entitled 'The right of children to be heard in civil proceedings and the emerging law of the European Court of Human Rights'. It was published in the third issue of volume 15 (2011) of the International Journal of Human Rights. This is the abstract:

The right of children to be heard in civil proceedings affecting them as enshrined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child is not expressly contained within the European Convention of Human Rights, nor has such a right been explicitly determined by the European Court of Human Rights. However considering the principles of evolutive interpretation, the positive obligations inherent within art. 6 and art. 8 as well as the case law on hearing children to date, it is to be argued that such a right can be derived under the Convention.

The Week in Review - 29th May, 2011

Another Sunday, another dollar. Or złotówka, or euro... Those of you with children will no doubt have been to, or are planning to go to, some kind of family picnic or other sort of public party in honour of Children’s Day, which hits us this coming Wednesday. The Little Proofreaders had a fun time yesterday – despite the rain – at our local dwór, meeting Bolek i Lolek, listening to live music and munching parówki.

 Meanwhile, work continues apace for the Big Proofreader; April and May are historically very busy months and this year has been no exception. Still, an end is in sight, which pleases my aching eyes and sore pupa, and worries my shrinking bank account. The srebrny lining to that impending chmura is that I have more time to think about the Article.

 After a recent unexpected hiatus this month which precluded any posting for nearly two weeks, I was finally forced to admit that our so-far packed schedule would have to be trimmed further down. So from now on, the schedule will look like this:

Wednesdays: New translating issue discussion,
Sundays: Sunday Review, which will be broader in scope and could contain minor flirtation with smaller translating issues,
Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri: Other Things, as and when (if) they occur.

 The upside is that the main Wednesday articles can be longer, more thoughtful, and contain more precise explanations. Last week’s look at dag is an example of what I’m thinking about here.

 The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how to make it easier for you to talk here, if you so wish. I know many people have been having problems with the ‘log-in to comment’ system here on Blogger.com. Again, the easiest way is to use your Gmail or Google account details, since Blogger is owned and operated by Google.

 Even so, it doesn't always work so easily. So you may already have noticed the FaceBook comments box at the bottom of each page. Knowing that more people are signed in to FaceBook at any one time than any other website or service, I think that this will perhaps be a big help. You don’t need to write a whole thesis to comment or ask a question, plus it opens things up for you guys to talk amongst yourselves. Just remember that the comments are not specific to each page, but rather are universal across the whole blog.

 Even better, the whole thing is linked to our actual BadArticle FaceBook Page! Yes, that’s right, The Article is now on The Book! We’ve got pictures and videos already, and any other handy, illuminating or amusing resources we find can also find a home there. Have a look; it’s something else. :)

ECHR and Human Rights Violations in Chechnya

The Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, in its December 2010 issue, includes an article on remedies offered by the European Court to victims of the armed conflict in Chechnya. The article, written by Kirill Koroteev of the University of Strasbourg, is entitled 'Legal Remedies for Human Rights Violations in the Armed Conflict in Chechnya: The Approach of the European Court of Human Rights in Context'. This is the abstract:

The article discusses the efficacy of the remedies offered to successful applicants by the European Court of Human Rights in the cases coming from the armed conflict in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation. It submits, firstly, that proper establishment of facts constitutes a remedy in itself for victims of human rights violations in an armed conflict. It then analyses the establishment of facts by the Court in the Chechen cases and argues that the assessment of evidence under the Court's burden of proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' was applied unevenly in different cases. The paper suggests that the Court obtains evidence proprio motu, which it has never done in the Chechen cases. Secondly, this paper evaluates the European Court's practice to limit the just satisfaction by monetary awards and to consistently deny the applicants' requests for non-monetary awards. It then discusses the developments in the international law on reparations for human rights violations under the ECHR and in the Inter-American and UN systems, and argues for a need to enhance the European Court's awards of just satisfaction. Finally, the paper assesses the supervision of the execution of judgments in the Chechen cases, finds it ineffective, and suggests that more actions are required from the Court in order to deal effectively with alleged human rights violations arising from armed conflicts.

dag - gram

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of recipes and restaurant menus, which is cool because a), I always enjoy reading about food and learning new recipes (I love to cook almost as much as I love to eat!), and b), such translations tend to touch on a variety of languages all in one go (Italian, French etc).

 In all that time, one thing that I’ve often seen and that makes my teeth itch whenever I see it, is dag, and the bastardised plural form, dags. To me, Dags is a made-up sweet form of Dagmara. I have neighbours and colleagues called Dagmara, and I call ‘em Dags. It’s also a mis-spelling of dogs, or a literal spelling of that word in various Irish dialects.

 One thing it’s not though, is a unit of measurement for English speakers.

Professor Wiktoria Pedia tells us that a dag is the “symbol for decagram, a unit of mass equal to ten grams.” In other words, 1 dag (common Polish term) equals 1 decagram (common English term), which equals 10 grams.

 Note that in British English, we don’t even really use decagrams, or dg; rather, if a recipe calls for 10 grams of flour, we just say ‘10g flour’. The fix for dags then, is to just use g, or write grams, instead of 1 dag, 3 dags etc. An example from a cake recipe on the BBC Food website:

For the lemon drizzle
4 lemons, juice only
75g/2¾oz caster sugar

For the sponge
200g/7oz caster sugar
200g/7oz unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
2 lemons, zest only
3 free-range eggs, beaten
200g/7oz self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting

Note that the OED doesn’t even have a definition for dag that says anything about it as a unit of measurement. (Although it says quite a lot about it being a term for a piece of sheep dung stuck to wool!).

 This issue is also interesting because it highlights the fact that not only are there different ‘established’ measurement systems – all with their own terminology – that depend largely on what country (or language) you’re in, but that some of them are considered current and some not. This is the type of thing that can change based on your age and generation – older translators may tend to use different words which are no longer relevant to the systems employed today. It all depends on what you’re used to and how capable you are of remembering these details and being flexible in your translation; ideally you’d be aware that this kind of thing is a potential issue and would endeavour to check your vocabulary and use the current, standard terms for the TT language and text you’re working in.

 I think that this issue highlights an important point – Your dates, money amounts, punctuation usage, time formatting and all weights and measurements etc, are all equally as important as the actual words and body text. Be a Marine in your translating work, and leave no character behind! 

 (also, anyone who gives me cake automatically becomes A Friend For Life ;)

The Court and Changes at the Domestic Level

What is the effect of the European Court's rulings on other countries than the one in the specific case at hand? An intriguing question not only of legal theory, but especially of practice. A political scientist and a legal scholar have joined forces to make some forays into answering this question. Laurence R. Helfer of the Duke University School of Law and Erik Voeten of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service have posted a working paper on SSRN entitled 'Do European Court of Human Rights Judgments Promote Legal and Policy Change?'. The paper explores the more general question by looking at the follow-up of the Court's LGBT case-law. This is the abstract:

Do the rulings of international courts set precedents that influence actors other than the parties to the dispute? Are international courts agents of change or do their judgments merely reflect ongoing social and political trends? We answer these questions in the context of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. ECtHR judgments often explicitly reflect evolving practices in Council of Europe’s member states. We suggest three mechanisms through which such judgments could push lagging states toward adopting policies and laws in line with those of more progressive countries. First, national courts can rely on ECtHR jurisprudence to invalidate domestic laws. Second, ECtHR rulings can help inform and mobilize domestic constituencies to push for legislative change. Third, ECtHR rulings can have an indirect effect by affecting the conditions the EU and the Council of Europe set for membership. We investigate these hypotheses using a new dataset that matches ECtHR judgments on LGBT issues with national laws and policies in Council of Europe member countries. We address endogeneity concerns by modeling the Court’s decision-making process. We find that ECtHR judgments have a significant and positive effect on the probability that lagging countries will adopt legal reforms that expand LGBT rights and that all three mechanisms contribute to this. Even though the implementation of ECtHR rulings is far from perfect, the precedential effect of these rulings sometimes induces states to adopt policies that they might otherwise not have adopted or would have adopted later.

also

‘Better late than never’ is a common English idiom, often used by people embarrassedly giving you a birthday present or anniversary congratulations days or weeks after the event. And so it is with some small degree of embarrassment that I present our next translating item for your consideration, somewhat later than I would have liked had real life not once again grabbed me by the collar and stuck a big gun loaded with commitments between my shoulder blades!

 Never mind though, because this is a BIG one, and if you’re going to claim any right to those degrees hanging on your wall (or rolled up and shoved in a drawer – apparently not everyone feels the need to frame their diplomas), then like James Bond in Q’s office before another exciting mission, you must “pay attention”!

 Seriously, this is a big one, one of the universal errors which everyone everywhere makes when coming into English from another language. The culprit today is also, and the charge is Appearing in all the wrong places. Let’s look at the suspect line-up:

 The bad guys:
1a. Celebrations for the opening of the event will be also attended by Jerzy Kowalski, Chairman of the Board.
 2a. Since 2010, he has been also the Head of the Retail Banking Department.
 3a. Previously, the artist had based also her realisations on the poems of William Butler Yeats.
 4a. It is a historical place, but with an atmosphere created also by contemporary technology.
 5a. These preserved images of America’s most important celebrities at the time prove the artist’s recognition also in this part of the world.
 6a. Appearing also was the flagship representative of his work with Richard Constantine – the Oscar-winning 1997 score to Twice a Mother.
 7a. Apart from the many historical items depicting the everyday life of the Kraków burghers in the Middle Ages, the research provided also many new insights into their lives.

 The porridge

As we know, also is an adverb. There are five different kinds of adverbs; those of manner, frequency, time, comment and degree. Now, I’m not entirely sure myself which of these nefarious groups also belongs to. It works like frequency, but feels like a comment.

 Adverbs work with verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and clauses to modify or adjust their meaning, and depending on the type of adverb, will either appear at the start of the sentence (comment), after the main verb (degree, manner, time), or before it (frequency).

 As you can see from those grizzled recidivists above (the ‘a’ examples),  also is all too often appearing after the main verb (for argument’s sake, by ‘main’ we here could mean ‘auxiliary’ too).

 The answer then, according to The Rules of Grammar (one book you don’t want thrown at you), is to always remember to put also  BEFORE the main verb!

 A better, brighter tomorrow:
 1b. Celebrations for the opening of this largest business event in Central Europe will also be attended by Jerzy Kowalski, Chairman of the Board.
 2b. Since 2010, he has also been the Head of the Retail Banking Department.
 3b. Previously, the artist had also based her realisations on the poems of William Butler Yeats.
 4b. It is a historical place, but with an atmosphere also created by contemporary technology.
 5b. These preserved images of America’s most important celebrities at the time also prove the artist’s recognition in this part of the world.
 6b. Also appearing was the flagship representative of his work with Richard Constantine – the Oscar-winning 1997 score to Twice a Mother.
 7b. Apart from the many historical items depicting the everyday life of the Kraków burghers in the Middle Ages, the research also provided many new insights into their lives.

 Now then Bond, as long as you remember the simple rule, you will be able to eliminate a huuuuge source of zepsutyness from your work. Seriously, getting this right is the difference between gently nudging the car behind you when you’re parking, and slamming it into a tree at 110 Kmh. It’s the difference between ‘What a brilliant translation!’ and ‘That was a translation? I couldn’t tell!’. It’s the difference between waxing your legs and having the skin torn off them with fishing hooks by sadistic, demonic forces (although I’m told it feels like pretty much the same thing anyway).

 Be strong, stay safe, it’s all good. Until Wednesday,

 Your Friendly Neighbourhood Proofreader,

 Jim. :)

Rededicating the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial

Posted by Sean Carlson, Global Communications & Public Affairs

Outside 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the front pages of newspapers from all 50 U.S. states mark the entrance to the Newseum. Inside the lobby, a gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs confronts visitors with moments of triumph and tragedy captured on camera. The museum’s corridors display exhibit after exhibit highlighting the role of journalism and journalists throughout history.

One of the Newseum’s most moving tributes is its Journalists Memorial, a wall of glass paneling imprinted with the names of more than 2,000 people around the world who have died while reporting the news. Nearby kiosks narrate their stories, an online database enables anybody with Internet access to learn more, and our new YouTube channel further remembers these fallen journalists through video.

Earlier this week, Krishna Bharat, founder and head of Google News, spoke at the memorial’s annual rededication ceremony. As you can watch in the video below, he began by reflecting on what motivated those being honored “to walk a path that was not paved with gold, but with danger.”

Over the course of his address, Krishna discussed the importance of a free press to society and of high-quality content to the web, observed the rising number of online journalists and bloggers coming under attack, and recounted incidents reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists. On a personal level, he also shared his memories as a boy in India and the influence of his grandfather in inspiring his appreciation for news.

“The journalists we remember and honor today chose lives that were full of meaning and purpose,” he concluded. “Let their stories not be forgotten. Let us repeat them. Let us re-tweet them. And let us print them on our pages so the world knows that silencing a journalist simply does not pay.”

To their families, friends, and colleagues, we extend our sympathy and respect.

Kant and the Convention

Although Immanuel Kant's home town of Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg, falls within the territorial ambit of the European Convention, who would have thought that the famous philosopher's ideas could be relevant in assessing the national implementation of the ECHR? Mads Andenas of the University of Oslo and Eirik Bjorge of the University of Oxford have published "National Implementation of ECHR Rights: Kant’s Categorical Imperative and the Convention" as a University of Oslo Faculty of Law Research Paper. This is the abstract:

The effectiveness of the European Convention of Human Rights and of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights depends on national implementation. This article looks at the implementation of the Convention in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Norway, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In all of these jurisdictions there has been fundamental change over the last 10-15 years. For the ECHR system to work, the national courts must interact with Strasbourg only in ways which are capable of being universalised and applied also by other European courts. This article inquires into whether national courts have taken on board the imperative of their role and responsibility in a wider European context: a UK exceptionalism will breed a Russian etc. The inquiry concludes that the national jurisprudence implementing the Convention into national law generally has taken this imperative on board.

Expanding Google News for more variety and multimedia

Posted by Chase Hensel, Associate Product Manager, Google News

Every day, Google News crawls through thousands of news articles to present you with the most relevant and recent stories. For a long time, we’ve realized that bringing relevant news to the surface is only part of the puzzle—it should also be easy to scan for stories of interest and dig deeper when you find them.

The newly expandable stories on Google News in the U.S., released today, give you greater story diversity with less clutter.

Now you can easily see more content, see less of what you don’t use and have a more streamlined experience:

• Click-to-expand: Each story cluster is collapsed down to one headline with the exception of the top story. When something grabs you, click nearby anywhere but the title to expand the story box.
• Labeled diversity: For stories you’ve expanded, you’ll see genre labels for some of the additional articles that explain why they were chosen and how they add value. For example, you might see something labeled as an “Opinion” piece or an indication that an article is “In Depth.”
• Multimedia and more: Within each expanded story box, you’ll find a sliding bar of videos and photos, links to related sections and easier-to-use sharing options, so you can quickly digest the sights and sounds of a news story, dig into different types of publications and share what you find interesting with one click.
• Personalized top stories: The Top Stories section is expanded to six or more stories from three to give you more topic diversity. The first three stories remain unpersonalized and the same as before. The rest may be personalized based on your interests. To personalize your Google News experience you can click on “Edit” under “News for you.” You can choose the “Standard Edition” if you don’t want personalization.
• Less is more: The default view is now the popular “One Column” (formerly “Section”) view. We merged List View into Top Stories, as described above. You can still switch to “Two Column” view, which resembles classic Google News.

We hope you like these changes—please share your feedback and visit our Help Center to learn more.

Documents on EU Accession to the ECHR

With the negotiations between the European Union and the state parties to the ECHR in full swing about the accession of the EU to the European Convention, the "Informal Group on Accession of the European Union to the Convention" has a specific page on the website of the Council of Europe. It contains the reports of the meetings so far, updated versions of the draft accession agreements, reactions by states and NGOs and much more. A perfect way to remain abreast of the developments on this important issue.

Introducing “News near you” on Google News for mobile

Posted by Navneet Singh, Product Manager - Google News

Google News for mobile lets you keep up with the latest news, wherever you are. Today we’re excited to announce a new feature in the U.S. English edition called “News near you” that surfaces news relevant to the city you’re in and surrounding areas.

Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008, and today there’s a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

Now you can find local news on your smartphone. Here’s an example of a “News near you” mobile section automatically created for someone in Topeka, Kansas:


To use this feature, visit Google News from the browser of your Android smartphone or iPhone. If this is the first time you are visiting Google News on your phone since this feature became available, a pop-up will ask you if you want to share your location. If you say yes, news relevant to your location will appear in a new section called “News near you” which will be added at the bottom of the homepage. You can reorganize the sections later via the personalization page.


You can turn off the feature at any time either by hiding the section in your personalization settings or by adjusting your mobile browser settings. Please visit the Help Center for further details.

So, go to news.google.com from your smartphone and get the latest news from wherever you are.

Case Note on Humanitarian Law and ECHR

It might be an unexpected place to look for it, but the newest issue of the Chinese Journal of International Law (vol. 10(1), 2011, 129-140) includes a case note by Eriko Tamura of Kansai University in Japan entitled 'The Isayeva Cases of the European Court of Human Rights: The Application of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law in Non-International Armed Conflicts'. This is the abstract:

This note analyses the 2005 Isayeva cases of the ECtHR, involving a non-international armed conflict, in order to show whether the Court applied only and directly the stricter standards of HRL (right to life in Article 2 of the ECHR) and, if not, how the Court substantially relied on IHL, by focusing on the differences of the principles of necessity and proportionality for the use of force between HRL and IHL. It concludes, contrary to what some authors insist, that even in the absence of the invocation of a public emergency in Article 15 of the ECHR by the State concerned, and therefore cautiously, the Court did indirectly apply IHL as an interpretive guideline for HRL.

More Documents and Info on Izmir

For all information on the Izmir high level conference (of two weeks ago) on the European Court of Human Rights, a special website can be consulted here. It includes speeches of the key speakers as well as the final declaration which includes the adoption of a follow-up plan.

For the speech of the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, click here and for a summary here. He mentioned inter alia that the Parliamentary Assembly and the European Parliament have been meeting "to discuss the modalities of the participation of EP representatives in the Assembly’s process of electing judges to the Court subsequent to such accession."

The statement of Amnesty International after Izmir expressed concerns over the Court reform process. Click here to read it.

The Sunday Review, 08/05/2011

Not much to report today. Been busy with the ol' freelance stuff, most of which has consisted of extracting images from Polish PDFs and applying a fresh coat of English to their labels and signs. Always good fun because it's quite relaxing. The key is to use programmes you're comfortable with, and NOT get suckered in on the ground floor by PhotoShop if you're new to image editing. A better option is to start here, with Paint Dot Net.

In other news, our friends over at the FaceBook group Tłumacze z polskiego report the sad demise of the University of Westminster's MA Conference Interpreting course. Happily though, they seem to be replacing it with MA Interpreting. At any rate, Westminster is a very good school for linguists, so if you're thinking of going abroad to continue your education in this kind of direction, give them a look, here.

Anyway, must dash. Rest assured that there will be a few interesting things coming up this week, new items that I've been working on itd itp. Also, don't forget to sign in with your Google or Gmail accounts if you want to comment. I am looking at the possibility of transferring to WordPress or something similar, but don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, goodnight and dobranoc. Jutro is Monday znowu, so we'll need all our strength!

Jim :) 

Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Founder and Head - Google News

Google News was born in the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. An unprecedented act of terrorism on U.S. soil, by a foreign militant group led by Osama Bin Laden, changed the course of history. People around the world were trying to comprehend what had just happened, and its implications to public safety, foreign policy, financial markets, and their own lives. Much of that exploration happened online.

At Google we realized that our ability to display links to the freshest and most relevant news was limited by a fundamental problem: fresh news lacked hyperlinks. Google’s ranking depended on links from other authors on the web. Fresh news, by definition, was too fresh to accumulate such links. A new importance signal was needed.

I realized that if Google could compute how many news sources were covering the underlying story at a given point in time, we could then estimate how important the story was. Thus, “Storyrank” was invented. This insight led to a ranking that combined the editorial wisdom of many editors on the web in real time. In addition to making search better it led to Google News - a display of stories in the news ranked automatically by an algorithm. This also allowed us to group news articles by story, thus providing visual structure and giving users access to diverse perspectives from around the world in one place.

After 10 years Mr. Bin Laden is in the news again. The story of the killing of Bin Laden has taken the online world by storm. This time, relevant coverage from around the world is just a click away, in an automatically compiled Google News cluster with more than 80,000 sources.

We have certainly come a long way in the last decade. Indeed, Google News now has over 70 editions in over 30 languages, and sends over 1 billion clicks a month to news publishers worldwide. Additionally, 1 out of 6 web searches on Google includes a set of news results, which are computed with the help of Storyrank. This helps bring coverage of the most important news story matching the query to the top of the ranking.

In the last 10 years there has been a lot of learning, iteration, and innovation in our team. And most importantly, we have acquired a loyal audience of news enthusiasts, who appreciate diversity and the ability to access multiple points of view on a story. To our users we would like to say “Thank You!”

We wanted to share with you some of the news coverage of the death of Bin Laden. Here is a sample of 100 links to news articles from representative sources worldwide:

ABC News - Abril - Agenzia Giornalistica Italia - ANSA.it - Associated Press - Atlanta Journal Constitution - Baltimore Sun - BBC News - Billboard - Bloomberg - Boston Globe - Boston Herald - BusinessWeek - CBC.ca - CBS News - CBSSports - Chicago Sun-Times - Chicago Tribune - Christian Science Monitor - CNET - CNN - Computerworld - Corriere della Sera - Dallas Morning News - derStandard.at - Detroit Free Press - E! Online - El Pais (Colombia) - El Paí­s (España) - El Universal (Venezuela) - ESPN - Forbes - Fox News - Globe and Mail - Ha'aretz - Hindustan Times - Huffington Post - InformationWeek - Jerusalem Post - Jewish Telegraphic Agency - Kansas City Star - La Repubblica - La Stampa - Le Point - Los Angeles Times - MarketWatch - MLB.com - MSNBC - MTV - National Geographic - National Post - NDTV - New York Daily News - New York Times - New Yorker - Newsday - Newsweek - NFL News - NPR - NZZ Online - O Globo - PC Magazine - PCWorld - People Magazine - Philadelphia Inquirer - Politico - Reuters - RollingStone - Salt Lake Tribune - San Francisco Chronicle - San Jose Mercury News - Seattle Post Intelligencer - SI.com - Slate Magazine - Spiegel Online - Sydney Morning Herald - Telegraph.co.uk - The Atlantic - The Economist - The Guardian - The Hindu - TIME - Times of India - Toronto Sun - U.S. News & World Report - Us Magazine - USA Today - Vancouver Sun - Vanity Fair - Voice of America - Wall Street Journal - Washington Post - WELT ONLINE - Wired News - Yahoo! Sports - ZDNet - العربية ن - الجزيرة - 朝日新聞 - 読売新聞

For those you who enjoy digging into data, here is a much larger list of over 150,000 links to news articles mentioning Osama Bin Laden over the last 5 days (May 1-5, 2011).

One of the many lessons I learned from 9/11 is that the world is highly connected. We live in a global society crisscrossed by virtual and physical dependencies, where knowledge is power and ignorance has consequences. This is a world where knowing what is happening to people in other parts of world, and understanding their circumstances and beliefs, matters more than ever -- because their actions will ultimately affect our lives. Tools such as Google News, which bring order to information and make search smarter can help us cope with the complexity of news and understand the big picture.

Further, as the wave of revolutions in North Africa demonstrates, online information does not merely reflect world events -- it can even cause them. These are indeed exciting times for those of us who work in the news space and get to witness the impact of journalism on society first hand!