In addition, Hunt will pay $300 in special assessments for his involvement in a conspiracy to deprive citizens of their civil rights, for extortion affecting interstate commerce, and for using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime. Hunt pleaded guilty in Sept. 2006.

“It is profoundly sad when one individual abuses a position of power and public trust,” said Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to prosecuting all cases of official misconduct and to bringing these individuals to justice.”

As part of his guilty plea, the defendant acknowledged that a co-conspirator arranged to purchase a kilogram of cocaine from an individual known as "J.J." Officer Hunt, while in uniform, on duty, and using a marked squad car, made a traffic stop of “J.J.” prior to the transaction and robbed him of $1,000 in cash, a $15,000 watch, and a cellular telephone. Hunt told “J.J.” he would return the kilogram of cocaine if J.J. produced $15,000 in cash. The next day, “J.J.” produced $9,500, but Hunt took the money and kept the cocaine.

The defendant further acknowledged that on Sept. 12, 2005, a co-conspirator arranged the purchase of four kilograms of cocaine from Pedro Moreno and Victor Saucedo. While in uniform, armed, and driving a marked squad car, Hunt and his co-conspirators robbed the men of the cocaine and kidnapped them. When the men could not produce the ransom demanded by Hunt, he arrested them for possession of 189.5 grams of cocaine and split the remainder of the four kilograms of cocaine with his co-conspirators.

In related matters, former Memphis police officers Arthur Sease, Antoine Owens, and Alexander Johnson were charged in September in a 50-count indictment charging conspiracy to violate civil rights, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, violation of civil rights, extortion, possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, and use of a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime.

The Civil Rights Division is committed to the vigorous enforcement of every federal criminal civil rights statute, such as those laws that prohibit the willful use of excessive force or other acts of misconduct by law enforcement officials.  In fiscal year 2006, nearly 50 percent of the cases brought by the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division involved such prosecutions. Since fiscal year 2001, the Division has convicted 50 percent more defendants for excessive force and official misconduct than in the preceding six years. 

Assistant United States Attorney Steve Parker of the Western District of Tennessee and Trial Attorney Jonathan Skrmetti from the Civil Rights Division are prosecuting the case.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions in the state Friday after a medical examiner said that the execution of Angel Diaz earlier this week was botched. Diaz endured a 34-minute-long execution and medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Friday that preliminary autopsy results showed that a second injection was required in the execution because needles were improperly inserted into the flesh of Diaz's arm during the first injection. Hamilton did not specify whether he believed Diaz suffered a painful death. Bush appointed a commission to study Florida's lethal injections procedures and the governor halted the signing of death warrants until the commission submits its report.

After the botched execution Wednesday, death penalty critics filed an emergency petition with the Florida Supreme Court seeking to once again halt the death penalty in the state. Petitioners, including numerous people currently on Florida's death row roster, asked the court to exercise its All Writs jurisdiction and declare that the state's lethal injections procedures violate the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.

The war crimes Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted its third defendant in one week on Friday when it sentenced Dragan Damjanovic to twenty years in prison. Damjanovic was found guilty on six of the seven counts of crimes against humanity listed in his indictment, including murder, torture and rape committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

The ruling marks the War Crimes Court's ninth conviction since its establishment last year. Earlier this week, the court sentenced a Bosnian Croat to thirteen years in prison and another Bosnian Serb to twenty-four years in prison for war crimes. Last month, the court sentenced the first defendant to be transferred from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Bosnian lower courts have already tried approximately 1000 war crimes cases to relieve the backlog of the ICTY, and some two dozen other suspects are awaiting trial at the war crimes court.

A federal judge issued a memorandum of intended decision Friday, concluding that California's lethal injection procedure creates "an undue and unnecessary risk" of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. The memorandum came in the case of condemned killer Michael Morales, who argued that it was not certain that the chemical cocktail to be used in his lethal injection would not prevent him from experiencing extreme pain during the process.

Morales' execution was postponed indefinitely in February after a court ruling that medical professionals must monitor executions by lethal injection to be sure that the inmate feels no pain. The ruling imposed a virtual moratorium on executions in California as anesthesiologists refused to take part in the execution.

In his memorandum Friday, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote that:

At the present time, ... Defendants' implementation of California's lethal-injection protocol lacks both reliability and transparency. In light of the substantial questions raised by the records of previous executions, Defendants' actions and failures to act have resulted in an undue and unnecessary risk of an Eighth Amendment violation. This is intolerable under the Constitution.

Fogel set a 30-day deadline for the state to determine whether the lethal injection protocol would be modified.

An Alabama jury returned a verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. on Friday, concluding that the drug Vioxx did not cause the plaintiff in the case to suffer a heart attack. The jury also found that Merck did not withhold information prior to removing the drug from the market in 2004. The plaintiff, Gary Albright, 57, had asked for over $5 million in damages for the heart attack that he suffered in 2001. Evidence was introduced that other pre-existing conditions may have led to Albright's heart attack. Albright has not announced whether he will appeal the verdict.

The Alabama verdict marks Merck's fourth state victory; it has lost three other state suits, and a New Jersey verdict in its favor was vacated in August. On Wednesday, Merck won its fourth federal victory when a jury in New Orleans found it not liable for damages related to Vioxx. While Merck lost a federal trial in August, the judge rejected the $50 million verdict as excessive and ordered a new trial for damages. Merck continues to face thousands of individual lawsuits and hundreds of class actions over the drug, which was pulled from the market after a study showed that it could double the risk of heart attack or stroke if taken for more than 18 months. Last month, a federal judge rejected a bid to combine all federal lawsuits against Merck into a single class action.

Google, the world’s leading search engine, shows about 40 million search queries for Web 2.0, the buzzword everyone in the Internet business today is talking about.
Then what in the world does Web 2.0 refer to? Is the Internet becoming a version of a software application? Even tech gurus are hesitant to answer these simple questions.

In fact, Web 2.0 is ill defined and its exact meaning is extremely elusive. Some even decry it as a marketing catchphrase, while others accept it as nothing but renewed conventional wisdom.

However, efforts are now underway to figure out the characteristics of the next-generation Internet and more and more folks are accepting the concept of Web 2.0.

Most experts pick brisk participation of Internet users in creating contents or the increased importance of collective intelligence as core factors of this.

In addition, they agree techsavvy South Koreans have already applied Web 2.0 to their Internet usage, starting years ago, even before the term was coined.

Advent of Web 2.0

There is no agreement on exactly what Web 2.0 means but there is an agreement on who first created the term - O’Reilly Media of the United States first used it in early 2004.

O’Reilly indicated that the dot.com bubble burst in the fall of 2001 signified the beginning of Web 2.0 and a flurry of new technological applications.

The most outstanding principle that the Web 2.0 companies share is that they use the power of the Internet in order to collaborate, communicate and grow, according to O’Reilly.

Under concepts that the Web is a platform, O’Reilly further defines Web 2.0 as a set of core principles and practices like participation, collective intelligence and rich user experiences, to name but a few.

Since then, Web 2.0 gained credibility in the tech world but the term caused confusion _ it does appear to mean different things to different people.

Observers point out Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary and it is a trend to explain the evolution of the Web from a producer- oriented world to a consumer- centered space.

“At its heart, Web 2.0 is about the participation of end users. They are no longer passive consumers of Web contents but are proactive producers,” said Kang Rok-hee, an analyst at Daishin Securities.

“In a sense, Web 2.0 lies on a natural development path of the Internet and the characteristics that go beyond the enhanced role of Internet users might be called Web 3.0 some time in the future,” Kang said.

Collective Intelligence

To understand the new crest of the Internet, Kang said that it is important to understand a host of Web 2.0-esque services such as Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a copyright free online encyclopedia, which relies on volunteer writers from across the world to pen upside of 4 million articles in several languages.

“Wikipedia involves as many people as possible _ ordinary users create articles and others upgrade them around the clock. Readers become writers and that is a norm in the Web 2.0 era,” Kang said.

“The result is encouraging as the new-born Wikipedia boasts of a wide coverage and correctness comparable to the timehonored Encyclopedia Britannica,” Kang said.

Wikipedia came out in 2001 when enough people worldwide had gained access to the Internet at an affordable price.

This contrasts to Britannica, first published in around 1770, which many top-tier experts in each field embellished through seamless updates and revisions over time.

Naturally, concerns are flaring up that Wikipedia entries might not be reliable because unpaid amateur contributors can make miscues or unscrupulous writers may intentionally mess things up.

Late last year, however, the British-based journal Nature confirmed the reliability of Wikipedia by finding the site comes just as close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries.

Among articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum in the two encyclopedias, Nature reviewers conducted a side-by-side comparison to detect eight serious errors, four from each source alike.

“The openness of Wikipedia can be just as much of a strength as it can be a problem _ the openness that allows vandals to cause troubles also allows other contributors to restore order and self-police the site,” said Min Kyung-bae at Kyung Hee Cyber University.

“This amply demonstrates the power of collective intelligence and Web 2.0-based services. You can find a similar example in the emerging open-source programs against proprietary ones,” he said.

Korean Edge

Wayne Lee, an economist at Woori Securities, is saying Web 2.0 started in Korea a few years ago, even before the term was coined.

“Take a look at the so-called knowledge search services of NHN. It began in the early 2000s but it retains elements and components of Web 2.0,” Lee said.

“In addition, social networking sites like Cyworld and user created contents, which are huge in Korea, are all evidence that Web 2.0 is already burgeoning here,” he noted.

Under the knowledge search of NHN, users post their questions that are answered by other users _ creating a database that now totals tens of millions of entries.

The services were devised because Koreans often come up short when attempting to find information in their native tongue _ the number of Koreanlanguage sites is just 1 billion in comparison to 20 billion of English ones.

“The logic of the knowledge search is to extract what exists inside people’s brain to the Web site. It was designed to increase the Korean-language database,” NHN chief executive officer Chae Hwi-young told reporters late Sept. in a closed-door meeting.

Experts project Korea will be able to preempt the global thrust for Web 2.0 services and applications thanks to its tech-savvy children, called “digital natives,” who continue to spring up.

Digital native refers to the first generation of people who were born and grew up in the 21st century Internet era surrounded by gadgets such as computers and cell phones.

“With a majority of its preschoolers going online regularly, Korea is filled with digital natives who will spearhead the full-fledged advent of Web 2.0 era and beyond,” said Park Junghyun, a senior researcher at the LG Economic Research Institute.

Indeed, a majority of Korean children between the ages of three and five go online periodically _ a recent government survey found that 50.3 percent of this age group use the Internet at least once a month.

“Korea has bright prospects regarding Web 2.0. Currently, it already has an edge and digital natives are expected to sharpen it down the road,” he said.