South Korean singer Psy Apologizes For Decade-Old Anti-American Acts
South Korean singer Psy, famed for his viral video song "Gangnam Style," has apologized for anti-American performances a decade ago. Psy made the apology on December 8, ahead of his expected participation in an upcoming concert before U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.

The Internet Revolution is a Liberty Revolution
Ron Paul
Until the late 1990s, individuals interested in Austrian economics, U.S. constitutional history, and libertarian philosophy had few sources of information. They had to spend hours scouring used book stores or the back pages of obscure libertarian periodicals to find the great works of Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, and other giants of liberty. Local library and university collections ignored libertarian politics and economics.

PR or Propaganda?
Joe Pitts
PRWeek, the public relations magazine, recently reported that the Department of Health and Human Services just signed a $20 million contract with PR firm Porter Novelli to promote the President’s health care law. It’s not the first time the administration has spent taxpayer money to promote the law. You might remember a series of advertisements shortly after passage of the Affordable Care Act that featured Andy Griffith.

Freedom of Speech Under Attack by Palestinian Authority
Despite previous promises to uphold freedom of speech, the Palestinian Authority has recently arrested or interrogated almost a dozen journalists and bloggers in addition to blocking Palestinian news websites critical of President Mahmoud Abbas. On Tuesday, the Palestinian General Intelligence Service detained Shadi Zamara, a young journalist and blogger.

First Extra-Biblical Evidence That Bethlehem Dates From First Temple Era
Sifting the City of David soil, archaeologists recently discovered a 1.5 cm bulla, or piece of clay for sealing a document or object, containing three lines of ancient Hebrew script, including the words: Bishv'at ("in the 7th"), Bet Lechem ("Bethlehem") and [Lemel]ekh (to/for the king")."

Year In Review: Highlights In Science And Technology
The most intriguing breakthrough in the world of science this past year may have taken place in a 27-kilometer-long tunnel deep below the border of Switzerland and France. That's where researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) say they moved one possible step closer to solving one of the universe's greatest mysteries.

Internet TV Channel Challenges Kremlin’s Information Monopoly
It was a familiar scenario. A Kremlin-linked website posts embarrassing wiretaps of a prominent opposition figure's phone calls in an apparent effort to discredit him and to dispirit the regime's critics. But this time the story went way off script. Less than 24 hours after the website Lifenews.ru posted recordings of Boris Nemtsov's phone calls -- in which he referred to fellow oppositionist Yevgenia Chirikova as a "bitch or an idiot" -- the two appeared together in a television studio to make up before the public.

Kyrgyz Mosques Under Greater Scrutiny As Ties Between Islam, Extremism Emerge
Even as the Kyrgyz city of Osh was racked by interethnic violence last year, its mosques were seen as a symbol of unity. But the role of the mosques may change as Islamic leaders seek to bring them under stricter central control.

Authoritarian Governments Have Immensely Benefited From The Web
Evgeny Morozov, a noted specialist on the use of new communications technologies to promote democratic values, has a new book titled "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom." In it, he argues that hype about "Twitter revolutions" and the enormous potential of the Internet to promote open societies and roll back authoritarianism is naive and overblown.

Democracies Confront Their Own Growing Censorship Tendencies
Arch Puddington
The murders of journalists in Russia, the jailing of bloggers in China, and the crackdown on the media in Iran regularly remind us that freedom of expression is under duress, even in an era of expanding global communications. However, considerably less attention has been paid to a new, more insidious threat to this fundamental human right.

PMW channel briefly removed from YouTube
Youtube ejected the Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch from its service on Sunday after receiving numerous complaints about alleged violations of YouTube’s community guidelines. The official reason given by youtube for removing PMW’s channel was that it repeatedly aired hate speech.

WikiLeaks Exploits Weaknesses in Technology, Human Nature
Historians, anti-war activists and armchair observers of human nature have had plenty to mull over in recent years thanks to the online group WikiLeaks. The Web site has published hundreds of thousands of stolen U.S. military and diplomatic documents from as recently as February of this year and as far back as the 1960s.

Chinese Web Surfers Blocked From Wikileaks
The WikiLeaks website that is attracting millions of fascinated viewers this week appears to unavailable to Chinese web surfers. People trying to log onto wikileaks.org in China are met with a notice saying the connection has been reset. That is the typical response when Chinese censors have used their sophisticated firewall to block access to a site.