Yemen teacher jailed for 10 years for aiding rebels
(AFP) – 18 January 2010, SANAA – A Yemeni school teacher has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for supplying Shiite rebels with information ranging from how to make rockets to getting images from Google Earth, said a report posted Monday on a defence ministry website.
[…] Bahari also helped the rebels, who are sometimes referred to as Huthis, to use Google Earth to get pictures of the Hajjah district northeast of Sanaa, and aided them in creating websites for communication, it said.
(Note that the Huthis are a Shi’a insurgent group in the northwest of the country, not the al-Qaeda cells recently in the news. Yemen has multiple conflicts brewing simultaneously.)
Re Haiti: I haven’t written about it because of work deadlines and other professional commitments (and instead of writing something derivative hastily, I’d rather not write anything at all). However, in the aftermath of the quake Ogle Earth has seen an strong surge in visitors landing here via Google Earth’s download site, and thus a surge in Google ad revenues. I can’t take that money. I’ve now sent all revenues since the quake and a further contribution (totaling USD $1,000) as a non-earmarked donation to the Doctors Without Borders Emergency Relief Fund. It’s the right thing to do. (And I’m glad to have that off my chest.)