NEAR EAST MOVEMENT: Wikipedia, home to more than 19 million articles, will launch a pilot program in Cairo in an effort to boost the number of Arabic language articles. Currently there are roughly 150,000, a small number given the 400 million Arabic speakers around the world. (In contrast, there are about 800,000 Japanese articles despite "only" 130 million speakers.) Students across seven classes at Ain Shams University and Cairo University will edit and write articles as part of their class assignments. For all you skeptics out there, the Guardian article did point out that a similar program in India was suspended after reports of widespread plagiarism.
