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.

Laurent Gbagbo: Democratic martyr turned dictator
‘Did the French head of state control the streets in May ’68? Did the British Crown master the street during Cromwell’s revolution? There are moments in every country where there is ebullience and it is ridiculous to say, ‘The head of state should have…’ When the French were looking for Louis XVI to cut his head off, would it have been fair to ask him if he controlled the streets?” So said Laurent Gbagbo…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/dec/26/profile-laurent-gbagbo-david-smith

Firms Linked to Conflict Minerals May Face Prosecution
New proposals to pursue those who benefit from the illegal exploitation of minerals have been broadly welcomed by activists – although some argue this would impoverish communities dependent on the trade. Under new measures put forward by lawyers and human rights activists, companies who profit from the trade in so-called conflict minerals in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, could face…
http://www.theproxylake.com/2010/12/firms-on-conflict-minerals-to-face-prosecution/

Iran hangs man convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad
Iran has hanged a man after finding him guilty of spying for Israel’s intelligence service, the official Irna news agency says. Ali Akbar Siadat, an Iranian, was executed inside Tehran’s Evin prison, according to judicial officials. Irna said he was in contact with the Israeli spy agency Mossad for several years, and had passed on information about Iran’s military activities.  He was arrested in 2008…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12084885

Did the first humans come out of Middle East?
Israeli researchers claimed to have found eight human-like teeth in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin, 10 miles from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University said the teeth were 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, which would make them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered in the world. If true it overturns the belief that homo sapiens, the direct descendant of modern man…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8227204/Did-the-first-humans-come-out-of-Middle-East.html

Hollywood Moves Away From Middlebrow
When negative Twitter commentary seemingly torpedoed the Sacha Baron Cohen film “Brüno” in July 2009, movie executives started talking in solemn tones about the ability of social networking to sway attendance. The era of using marketing to trick consumers into seeing bad movies was drawing to a close. It was mostly lip service. As Hollywood plowed into 2010, there was plenty of clinging to the tried and true…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/media/27movies.html

George Clooney and Google launch satellite plan to avert Sudan violence
Google has joined the UN, Harvard University and a pressure group founded by George Clooney to use satellites to scour Sudan for evidence of state-organised violence before next month’s referendum that could see the country split in two. Clooney said that he had launched the Satellite Sentinel Project to “stop a war before it starts” by warning the government in Khartoum that it would not be able to hide war crimes…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/29/satellites-sudan-google-george-clooney

Isabelle Caro Dead: Anorexic Model Dies At 28
Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model whose anorexic image appeared in a shock Italian ad campaign, has died at the age of 28. Her longtime acting instructor, Daniele Dubreuil-Prevot, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Caro died on Nov. 17 after returning to France from a job in Tokyo. Dubreuil-Prevot said she did not know the cause of death but that Caro “had been sick for a long time,” referring to her anorexia…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/isabelle-caro-dead-anorexic-model_n_802424.html

Kinect Hacked to Play World of Warcraft: Welcome to the Future of Gaming
Kinect hacks are coming thick and fast, but here is one that will set millions of PC gamers’ hearts a-flutter: A hack that lets you gesture control a game of World of Warcraft. The tech is coming from the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, where a team has built a toolkit, dubbed the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit, which lets them quickly harness Kinect’s various image…
http://www.fastcompany.com/1712771/kinect-hacked-to-play-world-of-warcraft-the-future-of-gaming-is-here

Google: Your new phone carrier?
From robot cars to wind farms, Google’s expansive ambitions have taken it into some surprising corners of the tech field. Here’s another it could tackle: Becoming your telephone company. Google has assembled all the pieces it needs to be a mobile provider like Verizon, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) or Sprint (S, Fortune 500). The search company dabbles in selling phones, it licenses the ultra-popular Android smartphone operating system…
http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/30/technology/google_wireless_carrier/