Link: New ‘semi-solid’ battery could be new oil, revolutionize energy storage

Link: UN report: “three strikes” Internet laws violate human rights

An official appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council has released a new report on the state of online free speech around the world. In addition to calling attention to long-standing censorship problems in China, Iran, and other oppressive regimes, the report devotes a surprising amount of attention to speech restrictions in the developed world—and it singles out recently enacted “three strikes” laws in France and the United Kingdom that boot users off the Internet for repeated copyright infringement.

Link: Police vultures

German police is training three feathered detectives, appropriately named Sherlock, Miss Marple and Columbo. They will be used to find dead bodies. The article doesn’t say if they can grab a bite on the job.

Link: U.S. used ‘unmitigated gall’ and B.C. court to jail exec

The giant computer company Cisco and U.S. prosecutors deceived Canadian authorities and courts in a massive abuse of process to have a former executive thrown in jail, says a B.C. Supreme Court judge.

The point, said Justice Ronald McKinnon in a stinging decision delivered orally on Tuesday, was to derail a lawsuit launched by the former employee, and involved a series of machinations that would make a normal person “blanch at the audacity of it all.”

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/used+unmitigated+gall+court+jail+exec/4885299/story.html#ixzz1OGkpfU32

Link: Japan pensioners volunteer to cleanup Fukushima.

A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.

They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.