Polish Web Sites To Go Dark To Protest ACTA

Vanessa Gera
Sci-Tech Today
January 25, 2012

Poland’s support for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has sparked days of Internet protests by groups who fear it could lead to online censorship. Now several sites plan to go dark in protest. ACTA shares some similarities with the hotly debated Stop Online Piracy Act in the U.S., which was shelved by lawmakers last week.

Several popular Polish Web sites are planning to go dark for an hour Tuesday evening to protest the government’s plan to sign an international copyright treaty.

Poland’s support for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has sparked days of Internet protests by groups who fear it could lead to online censorship

The sites that are protesting are primarily ones that are popular with young people and carry a mix of celebrity news, jokes, funny photographs and other entertaining material.

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Radioactive iodine in rainwater: Canada’s public was in the dark

ALEX ROSLIN
Montreal Gazette
January 15, 2012

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada.

But last March, a Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine (an isotope released by the nuclear accident) in rainwater, the data shows.

The level easily exceeded the Canadian guideline of six becquerels of iodine per litre for drinking water, acknowledged Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada’s radiation-surveillance division.

[...] Canadian authorities didn’t disclose the high radiation reading at the time

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