This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news… This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive.

If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

The list goes from oldest to newest news.  See you on Sunday, for our weekly Twitter Sunday!

Clues found in mysterious childhood aging disease
Megan’s hair was the first clue. Megan Nighbor was born with a full head of thick, dark brown hair. Her mother, Sandy Nighbor, wondered why her youngest child was so well-coiffed compared with her other children, who barely had any hair at birth. By the time Megan was 18 months old, those brown locks began to thin. Nighbor noticed less hair to grasp when she tied up…
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/10/progeria.children.aging/index.html

Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent
It was late one afternoon in January when a squad of plainclothes police officers arrived at the headquarters of a prominent environmental group here. They brushed past the staff with barely a word and instead set upon the computers before carting them away. Taken were files that chronicled a generation’s worth of efforts to protect the Siberian wilderness…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/europe/12raids.html

French Filmmaker Chabrol Dies at 80
French director Claude Chabrol, one of the founders of the New Wave movement that revolutionized filmmaking in the late 1950s and ’60s, died Sunday. He was 80. Christophe Girard, who is responsible for cultural matters at Paris City Hall, announced the death on his blog. Other City Hall officials confirmed that Chabrol passed away, but declined to provide any details…
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/12/arts/AP-EU-France-Obit-Chabrol.html

Document Cites French Bid to Oust Roma
French officials insist that they are not singling out the Roma as an ethnic group in their summer-long move to dismantle illegal camps of travelers, but an Interior Ministry document suggests otherwise. The ministry circular, directed at the police prefects of French regions and first obtained and published by Agence France-Presse…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/europe/13france.html

Journalists Risk Their Lives to Expose Corruption
Despite what are often overwhelming obstacles, a gutsy minority of investigative reporters in China continues to expose official corruption and criminal behaviour. But they do so at their own peril. Both China’s constitution and the official National Human Rights Action Plan, which commits the one-party state to strengthening the “legitimate rights and interests” of…
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52794

2 More Afghans Die in Protest Over Koran Burning
 Two Afghans died in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan on Sunday when the police fired into a crowd protesting the planned burning of the Koran in Florida, a day after the burning had been called off. The deaths bring to three the number of Afghans killed in demonstrations tied to the threat made by Terry Jones, a Florida pastor, to burn the Koran on the anniversary…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/asia/13afghan.html

Jean-Luc Godard donates €1K for accused MP3 downloader’s defense
My French is very rusty, and there doesn’t seem to be any coverage of this story yet in English-language news… but apparently, the great French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard (above) donated a thousand euros toward the legal defense costs of James Climent (inset), a 37-year-old French citizen accused of downloading 13,788 MP3s…
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/13/jean-luc-godard-dona.html

Ocean dead zones
Ocean dead zones, mostly caused by manmade agricultural runoff and pollution spilling into coastal waters, are spreading both around the U.S. and the world…
http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/09/14/infographic-ocean-dead-zones

Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informant
That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am a Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. King’s room, on the night he was assassinated…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14photographer.html

Cell Phones Powered by Talking?
In news that’s certain to make every chatterbox and blabbermouth with a cell phone jibberjabber even more, scientists have discovered the next renewable energy source—the sound waves of the human voice. Discovery News is reporting that Korean scientists have “turned the key ingredient in calamine lotion into a material that converts sound waves into electricity.”…
http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/09/14/cell-phones-powered-byconversation

UN warns of refugee camp dangers to children
Camps for displaced people are among the most dangerous places for children caught up in war, a UN special investigator says. Radhika Coomaraswamy, who has produced a report on the camps for the UN human rights council, said there was a lack of protection for children. She said they were vulnerable to sexual violence, and to forced recruitment by armed groups…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11307679

Rwanda plans scheme to avoid conflict minerals
Rwanda plans to introduce a scheme to help buyers certify the origin and supply chain of tin and other ores to ensure they were not from conflict zones, a mining official said on Monday. Rwanda said it would cooperate with ITRI, a global tin authority, in a scheme that it hopes will mitigate the impact of the United States’ “conflict minerals” bill, which some in the…
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE68C0IN20100913

Sudan rejects U.S. referendum incentives
A package of incentives offered by Washington to ensure the smooth holding of a referendum on whether south Sudan should secede from the north amounts to interference in Sudan’s affairs, a ruling party official said on Wednesday. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday offered incentives including restoring full diplomatic relations and allowing some non-oil trade and investment…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100915/wl_nm/us_sudan_usa

Steve Jobs ninja story won’t die on Web
Steve Jobs is apparently not arming himself for ninja warfare. Apple has found itself in the bizarre position of having to deny that claim this week after a tabloid report that its CEO was stopped at a Japanese airport with ninja throwing stars. And the Web, presented the chance to ponder the beloved-or-reviled Jobs along with the iconic weapon of kung-fu movie lore…
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/15/ninja.steve.jobs/index.html