Australia to apologize for mistreatment of aborigines

World: In a historic moment, Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will apologize Wednesday on behalf of his nation to the indigenous people for past mistreatment, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Rudd will say “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.”

Tech: Britons are protesting a controversial form of young people crowd control called the mosquito, the BBC reports. The device emits a high-pitch noise that can be heard only by people 25 and under.

Journalism: Here we go. CNN has launched a Web site featuring news gathered by citizen journalists, Reuters reports. The Web address is iReport.com. Video will be edited and selected by CNN staffers. “The community will decide what the news is,” said Executive Vice President Susan Grant of CNN News Services said. “We are not going to discourage or encourage anything… iReport will be completely unvetted.”

World: Two Russian bombers flew over the USS Nimitz in the Western Pacific on Saturday, the BBC reports. It was the same day that a Russian bomber intruded into Japanese airspace.

Tech: Twice in a year now, BlackBerry service across the nation has gone down, the New York Times reports after Monday’s outage. Service coming back online was delayed by the deluge of backed up incoming messages, Research In Motion — creator of the BlackBerry — said. The failure was linked to a problem with servers, R.I.M. said.

♣ Nation/world news tally in my local paper today: 1½ pages