Six stories (updated originally both to reflect a newer version of the AP story on the source page, and to add the ones from AFP and Reuters; updated further to add the ones from the "Los Angeles Times" and VOA):
(See also the original press release.)
From CNN...
If you Google the word Darfur, you will find about 13 million references to the atrocities in the western Darfur region of Sudan -- what the United States has said is this century's first genocide.
As of today [Tuesday], when the 200 million users of Google Earth log onto the site, they will be able to view the horrific details of what's happening in Darfur for themselves.
In an effort to bring more attention to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has teamed up with Google's mapping service literally to map out the carnage in the Darfur region.
Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million more have been displaced since the conflict flared in 2003, when rebels took up arms against the central Sudanese government.
The new initiative, called "Crisis in Darfur," enables Google Earth users to visualize the details in the region, including the destruction of villages and the location of displaced persons in refugee camps. [...]
Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president of global communications and public affairs, joined museum director Sara J. Bloomfield to make the official announcement about the new feature.
"At Google, we believe [that] technology can be a catalyst for education and action," Schrage said. " 'Crisis in Darfur' will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the museum's efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe."
The Google Earth mapping service combines 3-D satellite imagery, aerial and ground-level maps, and the power of Google, one of the Internet's most widely used search engines, to make the world's geographic information user friendly. Since its inception in June 2005, nearly 200 million people have downloaded the free program.
Using the high-resolution imagery of Google Earth, users will be able to zoom into the Darfur region for a better understanding of the scope of the destruction. [...]
More than 1,600 damaged and destroyed villages will be visible, as will the remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by the Janjaweed militia and Sudanese forces.
The Holocaust museum also has compiled a collection of photos, data and eyewitness testimony from its archives and number of sources, including the U.S. State Department, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and individual photographers. That material also will be available when Google Earth users visit the Darfur site.
The "Crisis in Darfur" initiative is the first of what is expected to be several collaborations between the museum and Google Earth to highlight the dangers of genocide around the world.
The museum also announced Tuesday the creation of a mapping project with Google Earth on the Holocaust, when Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II.
That project will use Google Earth to map key Holocaust sites, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Warsaw and Lodz, with historic content from its collections to illustrate the enormous scope and impact of the Holocaust. Each place links to a featured article with related historical photographs, testimony clips, maps, artifacts and film footage.
"Educating today's generation about the atrocities of the past and present can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth," Bloomfield said.
"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope [that] this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most."
From the AP...
Google is using its popular online mapping service to call attention to atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan.
In a project with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, inaugurated [on] Tuesday, the Internet search company has updated its Google Earth service with high resolution satellite images of the region, to document destroyed villages, displaced people and refugee camps.
Google Earth allows those who have downloaded its free software to focus on satellite images and maps of most of the world. When users scan over the Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million [have been] displaced in four years of carnage, Google Inc. hopes to attract their gaze with icons.
The icons represent destroyed villages with flames and refugee camps with tents. When users zoom in to a level of magnification that keeps most of Darfur on a computer screen, the icons seem to indicate that much of the region is on fire. Clicking on flame icons will open windows with the village's name and statistics on the extent of destruction.
Google enhanced the resolution for certain areas of the region, so that users can zoom in to see the burnt remnants of houses. Google says [that] it will periodically update the images.
The online maps of the region also include an icon that links to a presentation by the Holocaust museum on the crisis in the region with photos, video, historical background and testimony on atrocities.
Sara Bloomfield, the museum's director, said [that] museum staff members had approached Google about the project as they sought ways to highlight what they believe is genocide to many people who remain unaware. In Google Earth, which the company says has been downloaded by 200 million people worldwide, they found an ideal medium.
"This is like the world's biggest bulletin board," Bloomfield said.
Sudanese officials, including President Omar al-Bashir, have denied that widespread atrocities have occurred in Darfur. But [the] Hague-based International Criminal Court has accused officials and militias of orchestrating massacres, mass rapes and the forcible transfer of thousands of civilians from their homes. The United States characterizes the massacres as genocide; other countries and international organizations do not.
Daowd Salih, a native of Darfur and a former officer for the German Red Cross, who spoke Tuesday at a presentation by Google and the museum on the new project, said he hoped that Google Earth would help document atrocities for millions of users.
"We need President Bashir and other perpetrators to know they are being watched," he said.
By adding unique focus on Darfur through the addition of the media and by investing in higher-quality resolution images for the region, Google is venturing into political territory.
"This mirrors the type of things that news organizations deal with: deciding how much resources to spend on an issue and what you cover," said Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "It raises the question of what their responsibility is to decide what to cover."
Google recently came under fire for replacing post-Hurricane Katrina imagery on its map portal with views of the city as it existed before the storm.
The company backtracked after an Associated Press article highlighted the changes and a House subcommittee accused it of "airbrushing history" for depicting a New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast without hurricane damage.
The company said [that] its use of the pre-Katrina imagery occurred as part of routine enhancements and denied that the move involved political considerations.
From AFP...
The online satellite imaging site Google Earth announced [on] Tuesday [that] it was adding features that will allow users to zoom in on the crisis in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region.
The project was spearheaded by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and showcases 1,600 villages affected by the conflict, including photographs, data and eyewitness testimony.
Computer users can download the free Google Earth application online, then using the mouse "fly" over Africa to zoom in on the "Crisis in Darfur" section from a skyview perspective.
Destroyed houses, homes, mosques and schools are visible, along with links to data, eyewitness testimony, factboxes, pictures and maps that are updated regularly.
Four years of civil war in Darfur have killed at least 200,000 people and displaced more than two million, according to United Nations figures.
"The only way to stop the killing in Darfur is by informing people," said Dawud Salih, a Darfur resident, refugee and former Red Cross officer. "People must know what genocide looks like."
Google representative Elliot Schrage said [that] the service will allow "users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before," and added that "technology can be a catalyst for education and action."
The Holocaust [museum] is currently developing similar projects to educate about other world atrocities, under its "genocide prevention mapping initiative."
From Reuters...
Search engine Google and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum launched an online mapping project on Tuesday to provide what the museum said was evidence of atrocities committed in Sudan's western Darfur region.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, and some of this carnage -- which the United States calls the first genocide of this century -- has been detailed by Google Earth, the search engine's mapping service (http://earth.google.com).
Using high-resolution imagery, users can zoom into Darfur to view more than 1,600 damaged or destroyed villages, providing what the Holocaust [museum] says is evidence of the genocide. Sudan's government denies that genocide is taking place.
In addition, the remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by janjaweed militia in Darfur, Sudanese forces and others are visible.
"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope [that] this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most," said Holocaust Museum director Sara Bloomfield in a statement.
"Crisis in Darfur" is the first of the museum's "Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative" that is aimed at providing information on potential genocides early on in the hope that governments and others can act quickly to prevent them.
"At Google, we believe [that] technology can be a catalyst for education and action," Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president, said in a statement.
Sources for the project included the U.S. State Department, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and individual photographers as well as the Holocaust [museum], which is based in Washington.
From the "Los Angeles Times"...
Google Inc., whose motto is "Don't Be Evil," has launched an initiative designed to highlight some.
A scan of the globe using the Google Earth satellite mapping program shows a large swath of Central Africa trimmed in orange. If you zoom in, the words "Crisis in Darfur" appear, along with icons of flames marking 1,600 villages destroyed in fighting between government militias and rebels that has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
The Google Earth feature, unveiled [on] Tuesday, is a collaboration of the Internet company and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which hopes [that] technology unavailable during past humanitarian crises can drive home the suffering in the isolated Darfur region of Sudan.
"This project will enable vast numbers of people worldwide to locate and visualize with great specificity both the events in Darfur and the millions of individual victims of those events," said the museum's director, Sara J. Bloomfield.
The brainchild of Andria Ruben McCool, a former Google employee whose family includes Holocaust survivors from Germany, the project uses enhanced satellite images combined with downloadable photos, video and other data from the museum's Genocide Prevention Initiative. The goal is to fly viewers directly into Darfur's crisis, right down to the ghostly remains of thousands of burned-out huts.
"People don't know where Darfur is, so that's the first thing ... taking this event that's in the news and making it real to people," said McCool, 39, who started the project two years ago while working in Google Earth's enterprise group. Google allows employees to spend 20 percent of their time on individual projects, and McCool decided the downloadable mapping software would be ideal to raise awareness about Darfur.
She reached out to the Holocaust museum, which saw the technology's potential and has started using Google Earth on its Web site, www.ushmm.org, to map Holocaust locations in Europe during World War II. "It's our hope that by combining this up-to-date satellite imagery with authoritative data and evidence from the ground in Google Earth, we can make it harder for people to stand idly by when genocide happens,'" said Lawrence Swiader, the museum's chief information officer.
Google executives embraced McCool's idea as well, adding other employees to the project and deciding to feature it prominently on Google Earth. Elliot Schrage, vice president for global communications and public affairs, said [that] the company hoped to do other humanitarian collaborations on Google Earth, building from existing global awareness mapping features, such as United Nations Environment Program sites.
Each pop-up window on "Crisis in Darfur" includes a "How Can I Help?" link that has information from the museum, such as relief organization and government Web sites.
McCool left Google in December, but still consults with the company, and said [that] she had tears in her eyes during the unveiling Tuesday.
"I hope [that] it makes a difference," McCool said. "I hope [that] some politician sits down and has a conversation with somebody else who's a skeptic and opens up their computer and goes on the Internet and says, `How can you dispute this?' "
For Daowd Salih, a Darfur native who has worked to raise awareness of the crisis, that proof is vital to stopping the devastation in his homeland.
"We need people to understand what is happening," said Salih, board president of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, a human-rights advocacy group based in Charlottesville, Va. "People around the world need to see what genocide looks like."
From VOA...
The U.S. Holocaust [Memorial] Museum has launched a joint project with Google's satellite imagery Web site Google Earth to promote awareness of the crisis in Darfur and [to] give the public a new perspective on the death, displacement and destruction that is going on there. VOA's William Ide reports from Washington.
Lawrence Swiader, chief information officer at the Holocaust [museum], stands in front of a [PowerPoint] display of the online version of the Web site and a large satellite image of the African continent to explain the thrust of the effort. The borders of Sudan are highlighted in yellow.
"Google Earth allows us to see something that could have gone on unseen," said Lawrence Swiader. "This technology allows us to visualize something in seconds and minutes that otherwise might take pages of text and columns of figures to understand. If ever."
Over the past four years, Darfur has been torn by fighting between government-backed militias and rebel forces that have left more than 200,000 people dead and displaced more than two million others.
Swiader explains that the new addition to the Google Earth [Web site] allows visitors not only to hover over massive fields of refugee camps and begin to grapple with the sheer numbers of the displaced, but to also see the destruction they left behind.
"You're going to see these structures, you'll see them and they will be represented by hollowed blackened circles on the ground," he said.
The high-resolution images of the "Crisis in Darfur" project allow users to zoom in on the western portion of Sudan, where Darfur is located, an area about the size of the southern U.S. state of Texas. Users can view more than 1,600 damaged villages and 100,000 homes, schools, mosques, and other structures destroyed by militias.
Google Earth's vice president of Global Communications, Elliot Schrage, says [that] he hopes the [Web site] will not only spread understanding, but [also] spur countries to take action.
"The marriage of satellite imagery, 3-D mapping technology and search makes geographic information easily accessible, understandable and useful, empowering organizations like the museum to communicate, to educate and importantly to advocate in order to improve our world," said Elliot Schrage.
Daowd Salih, a native of Darfur, [and] former aid worker who has helped focus world attention on the crisis, voiced his hope that the project would put Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir under increased scrutiny.
"We need people to understand what is happening," said Daowd Salih. "We need President Bashir and other perpetrators to understand that they are being watched."
Holocaust Museum Director Sara Bloomfield said [that] she hopes [that] this new initiative will make it much harder for the world to ignore Darfur, but acknowledges the challenges as well.
"We have found sadly that even with a lot of visual information about genocide, and I am talking about post-holocaust genocide, that the difference has been somewhat, but not what we would have hoped when the world said 'never again' in 1945."
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