Signs of the Times:

Paris has long been the scene of protests, and the latest is focused on the Olympics over China's relations with Tibet. The New York Times reports that "thousands of people from around Europe, many with Tibetan flags, massed to protest the relay and deny China the promotional boost it hoped for in the runup to the games." The torch, which is supposed to never go out, did go out several times, and in the end the police transported the torch by bus on its last leg through the city.

Over 3,000 police were deployed to prevent interruption to the procession, according to the Times. On Sunday in London, dozens of people were arrested after "a tumult of scuffles" broke out.

China has ruled Tibet for decades now, but the Olympics have finally brought attention to the situation that hasn't existed before. (At this point, one wonders if today's protesters would have been the same people carrying around Mao's Little Red Book if this were forty years ago. Idle speculation, I suppose.)

The following from the Times article almost seems to have been written for a movie script:

A helicopter circled above as rival teams of onlookers, cheering supporters waving Chinese flags and protesters responding with chants demanding “freedom” for Tibet, crowded behind metal barriers lined by paramilitary police officers. A small truck decorated in the Olympic logo and carrying a percussion band was almost inaudible.

In the meantime, a large portion of the world stands on the brink of a major food crisis, with riots having already taken place in several countries around the world. Paul Krugman addresses the issue in the Times' op-ed pages, concluding that "Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past."

As the leader of the free world put it, "Part of the facts is understanding we have a problem, and part of the facts is what you're going to do about it." — George W. Bush, Kirtland, OH, April 2005. (We must all be pleased to know that our leader is so cognizant of the definition of "facts." Now we understand that WMD thing.)

Technology:

Yahoo again rejects Microsoft's buyout offer. At the heart of the problem is that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo with Microsoft shares, and the value of the shares have been falling. The Times reports Yahoo CEO in a letter to Microsoft CEO Ballmer, "the result of the decrease in your own stock price, the value of your proposal today is significantly lower than it was when you mae your initial proposal."

Microsoft, which has been having difficulty convincing businesses and governments to switch to its newest operating system, Vista, is coming closer to the release of yet a newer operating system. For more than a dozen years now, Microsoft has existed in fear that the computer operating system might become passé, that computing would all be done within a web browser. This fear lead to the development of the Microsoft Web browser, Internet Explorer, which was built into Microsoft's operating system and given away for free.

As Web browsers like FireFox, Safari and Opera make headway into the browser market, browsers which are independent of specific operating systems, running on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, and Unix, Microsoft's fears are beginning to be realized.