The company’s decision comes at a time when horrific factory accidents are on the rise; last November a fire at Tazreen Fashions Factory in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, left 112 people dead, and another fire in Pakistan killed 262 garment workers just two months before. With the news of last week’s factory collapse that killed more than 400, Disney made the decision in order to back health and safety conditions.

“After much thought and discussion we felt this was the most responsible way to manage the challenges associated with our supply chain,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney Consumer Products.

Although the news won’t be taken lightly by those who are in favor of big companies sourcing from countries where the jobs are desperately needed, Disney reps say they aren’t averse to working with Bangladesh in the future; however, they will only be working with factories which are in a partnership with the Better Work program. Run by the International Labor Organization, it ensures health and safety conditions for factory workers.

Image: Disney.com

47- year old Feroz Khan has been arrested for allegedly conspiring with two hospital employees to kidnap the baby just hours after he was born; his plan was to sell the child to a Facebook friend whose wife had trouble conceiving. Luckily, the child’s mother found out about the plot and alerted police. The baby was returned unharmed to his mother, and a total of four people are now facing charges.

“We acted upon the complaint of the mother, who alleged that her child was stolen from the nursing home in Ludhiana,” Ishwar Singh, Ludhiana’s Commissioner of Police, said. “After investigations, we found the grandfather of the child had struck a deal with a man in Delhi and had roped-in the nursing staff to smuggle the baby out of the nursing home. We have arrested four people including the grandfather. We have also booked the buyer from Delhi.”

Khan was allegedly asking for about $830 for the child.

Classy.Baby sold on Facebook for drug money upi.com/blog/2013/04/2… via @upi

— Jill Partin (@jillpartin) April 25, 2013

God help the human race. Baby sold on Facebook for $15,000 on.myfox8.com/ObWPJPZ

— Carol Nixon (@canixon) April 25, 2013

But Samsung has decided to kill it again. At a Galaxy S4 launch event in India, the smartphone makers tapped Bollywood star Ranveer Singh to lead a Gangnam Style reimagining that replaces most of the lyrics with Galaxy S4 spec praise. Why, oh why?

[FIlms of India]

Shakuntala Devi became famous as a child while traveling with her father’s circus, astounding the people of India with her ability to calculate large sums in her head. Her father had discovered her talents while playing a card game with her at just three years old.

Devi eventually won a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records in 1982 by correctly multiplying two 13-digit numbers in under 30 seconds. The numbers were 7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779, with an answer of 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.

Devi fascinated American researcher Arthur Jensen, who once saw her find the cube root of two eight-digit numbers before his wife could even start the stopwatch. To Devi, he said, “The manipulation of numbers was like a native language, whereas for most of us arithmetic calculation is at best like the foreign language we learned in school.”

Devi performed in front of audiences throughout her childhood, earning money for her family with a talent unlike any most had ever seen.

“I had become the sole breadwinner of my family, and the responsibility was a huge one for a young child,” she once said. “At the age of 6, I gave my first major show at the University of Mysore, and this was the beginning of my marathon of public performances.”

Google first announced the Mapathon back in February, saying that they were trying to create better maps for India, “a country where even paper maps have historically lacked in details.” Google offered prizes to participants – including Android tablets, phones, and various bits of Google swag. All Google asked people to do was add location details via Google Map Maker.

The Mapathon officially began on February 12th and was over by March 25th.

According to Google India, the Mapathon was a huge success. They reported new information on 32,000 emergency locations like hospitals, 82,000 food updates, and 42,000 map updates on places of worship. None of the information collected via Map Maker had anything to do with “sensitive places,” according to Google.

But the Indian Survey agency wasn’t too happy about it, and they asked Google to cease the promotion as it was “likely to jeopardize national security interest and violates National Map Policy.”

The Indian federal survey and mapping agency has filed an official complaint, and the head of the agency says that they plan to take the issue to Parliament later this month. Apparently, local law says that companies must obtain expressed permission from the proper authorities in order to operate a map project like the one Google sponsored. Failure to do so opens up such companies to local prosecution.

But Google India spokesperson Roy Chowdhury says that Google did in fact informed local officials of its mapping project, and that it complied with all local regulations.

“We take security and national regulations very seriously, and we’re open to discussing specific concerns with public authorities and officials,” said Chowdhury.

[Wall Street Journal (paywall) via Search Engine Land]

“The iTunes Store features local artists including Elka in Russia, Sezen Aksu in Turkey, AR Rahman in India, and Zahara in South Africa, international artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang,” Apple says. “Customers can choose from over 20 million songs available to purchase and download on the iTunes Store.”

“Movie fans can choose from a wide selection of films available for rent or purchase from the iTunes Store, with many available in stunning HD, from major studios including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures, as well as leading local distributors,” the company notes.

Users, of course, have access to the App Store, which features 700,000 apps, which are actually available in as many as 155 countries.

Apple launched iTunes 11 last week. The company also recently announced the addition of AC/DC’s music to its catalog, which was apparently a really big deal.

“With classes just getting started, freshman students, transfers and even empty-nesting parents can now familiarize themselves with college campuses around the world, including UCLA in the U.S., Pembroke College in the U.K., McGill University in Canada and Sophia University in Japan,” says Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth.

Here’s a look at Royce Hall at UCLA:

This is only one of a handful of Google Maps-related announcements the company made. It’s also expanding Google Maps Navigation (Beta) to thousands of towns in India (with live traffic conditions), and rolling out biking directions and Map Maker to New Zealand.

Google put together the following video in celebration of all of the progress it has made with Maps:

Amazon announced today that the Kindle e-reader is now available for purchase in India from their Web site or local Croma retailers nationwide. The company has also launched a Kindle store specifically for Indian customers. The new storefront features all the latest and greatest works from India’s most famous authors alongside plenty of free classics.

“We are proud to launch this new Kindle store for Indian customers – offering Kindle book purchases in rupees and the ability to buy and read the work of many great Indian authors,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, Amazon.com. “In addition, we are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across India.”

Amazon’s entrance into India has apparently been planned for quite some time. The company already has a few Kindle-exclusive books for sale from some of India’s most famous authors. These works include “Love, Life and a Beer Can” by Prashant Sharma and “Reality Bites: A Not So Innocent Love Story” by Anurag Anand.

Independent authors in India will also benefit from the launch of Kindle thanks to the Kindle Direct Publishing program. Now authors can easily make their works available to all Kindle owners throughout the country at no cost to themselves. Amazon will even pay royalties in rupees to authors who use KDP.

Amazon will only be selling the Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G in India. There was no mention of Kindle Fire availability, but it should come in time. It’s much easier to secure licenses for books than for the wide variety of Bollywood films that Amazon would obviously want on an Indian Kindle Fire.

As Amazon is moving into new markets, they are looking to expand in current markets. There’s already talk of a Kindle Fire 2 releasing shortly in the U.S. alongside a new 10-inch Kindle Fire to directly compete with the iPad. The company has been extremely successful with its Kindle line so far. I have no doubt that they will also be successful in India.

This time it comes from officials in India, who claim that content hosted on Facebook has led to a mass panic and exodus of tens of thousands of people from cities in the northeast part of the country. According to the Wall Street Journal, the content that sparked the panic contained rumors that there would be some sort of an attack in retaliation for violence that has rocked the northeastern state of Assam.

The violence in that area has already resulted in more than 78 deaths.

Facebook confirmed to the WSJ that they have been made aware of the requests and are working on a response.

“Facebook will remove content which breaches our terms,” they said. They called on users to help flag content, so they can quickly review and remove any of it that violates their Statement on Rights and Responsibilities. The SSR states that content cannot “bully, intimidate, or harass any user.” Also, content will be removed if it “is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”

So whether or not the offending pages are removed will come down to that. They must incite violence or harass or intimidate. And if the pages advocated any sort of violent retaliation, it’s likely that they will in fact be removed by Facebook.

Of course, India has already done what they can and blocked over 245 pages that contained the “inflammatory and hateful” content. But they’re calling on Facebook, Twitter, and Google to expedite the process. By the way, Google has also said that they’re on the case.

Facebook is no stranger to content removal requests. In March of 2011, Israel’s Minister of Public Diplomacy joined the calls for the company to remove a page called Third Palestinian Intifada. Facebook eventually did, as the page clearly proposed violence against an ethnic population. Facebook also recently removed a page targeting Australian Aborigines after a public outcry.

But Facebook is honest when they give everyone the “if it violates our terms” bit. A page being simply offensive is not enough to warrant a takedown, according to the company. Take for instance the plethora of pages that popped up following the Denver Theater Massacre either supporting alleged shooter James Holmes or making jokes about the victims. Facebook refused to remove many of them, saying they were “incredibly distasteful,” but they didn’t violate their terms.

According to the Hurriyet Daily News, India has announced a plan to send a rocket to Mars next year. The plan calls for a launch in November 2013 which would see the rocket reaching Mars at some point in 2014.

India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said that the “spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for us in the area of science and technology.” That spaceship will cost the nation an estimated $82 million. It’s reportedly being developed by the Indian Space Research Organization.

It’s great that more countries are having ambitions of sending rockets into space, but it feels a little too much like the space race of the 60s. After the U.S. sent men to the moon, the Soviet Union tried their hand at the feat. They were less than successful.

India’s mission should be more successful as they’re just sending a rocket to Mars. It’s hard to say if the country’s space program would have the resources available to them to build something like Curiosity at this point in time. If anybody could do it, it would be a country like India or China. Their economies and state funds would be enough to fund such a mission.

Maybe the space race to Mars will help encourage more international collaboration like the International Space Station. It would be awesome to see a multi-national funded mission to Mars. Even if such a thing never exists, we’ll still get a reality TV show about the first manned mission to Mars.