Quotation from the news

First you have to find some news. That's why the Japan Times, Japan Today and Google News are in the sidebar. Click on them and find some news that interests you about Japan or maybe about the whole world. I have Google News customized for my own interests, so I can easily get news that interests me. It might not interest you, but you should find your own news for this assignment anyway. Google News tells me I would be interested in Business Week's article about the iPhone.

The most immediate impact of the iPhone has been on hardware design, encouraging a rash of imitators with big touchscreens. That includes the new Samsung Instinct, which Sprint Nextel (S) has been billing as an iPhone killer. Even Research In Motion (RIMM), whose executives have ridiculed the iPhone's lack of a physical keyboard, is rumored to be developing a touch-based BlackBerry. (The company declined to comment on future product plans.)

Such efforts largely miss the point. Certainly, the beautiful hardware design adds tremendously to the emotional appeal of Apple products. But it's the software that makes the iPhone, the Mac, and the iPod stand out from the pack of wannabes.

I guess I am, but not much. I like news articles to tell me things I don't know.

I was more interested to note that the obscure dictatorship of Equatorial Guinea had made the top of Google News. The top story seems to be about how the former colonial power Spain had backed a failed coup attempt.

une 19 (Bloomberg) -- Spain, South Africa and the U.S. approved a bid to topple Equatorial Guinea's president in 2004 after oil companies said the nation was unstable, Agence France- Presse reported, citing a Briton accused over the failed coup.

Simon Mann, 55, told a court in the capital, Malabo, that Spain, the former colonial ruler, and the other two countries welcomed a change of government, AFP said. Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman Manuel Cacho denied the allegation, according to AFP.

It's hard to think of a better country, at least in Africa, for someone to overthrow. The dictatorship is in the category with Myanmar, North Korea and others for the suffering that its people have undergone. A large percentage of the people are refugees in neighboring countries. But this news doesn't tell me much that I didn't already know, except that Spain might have been involved in an attempted coup d'etat.

How about the search for the missing in the recent earthquake in Japan? That certainly interested me, and I thought I'd share the latest with you.

SENDAI--The Miyagi prefectural police continued their search Wednesday for a couple who went missing near a waterfall in Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, after the Iwate-Miyagi Inland Earthquake on Saturday.

The couple and nine other people are still missing. The police and the Self-Defense Forces are working to find them.

Masahiro Mori, 61, from Izumi Ward, Sendai, and his wife, Yoko, 59, were last seen Saturday morning near a suspension footbridge leading to the Shiraito-no-taki waterfall.

A 52-year-old company employee from Tochigi Prefecture said he met a couple that fit the description of Mori and his wife just before the earthquake. The man also sent photos of the collapsed bridge to The Yomiuri Shimbun.

You can find more at the link above.