Associated Press – An anti-abortion group plans to air radio ads in three congressional races calling for the defeat of Democratic incumbents, among the first ads to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling this year that freed corporations to directly influence elections. The group, AUL Action, is targeting Democratic Reps. John Boccieri of Ohio, Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania and Baron Hill of Indiana. AUL Action is the legislative arm of the nonprofit Americans United for Life. Ad spending is on a record pace as outside groups raise more money from corporations, individuals and unions. Read Article
Daily Mail – TV should be banned for toddlers and severely rationed for other youngsters to protect their health and family life, a leading psychologist will tell MEPs today. Dr Aric Sigman claims that millions of children spending hours slumped in front of TVs and computers is ‘the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time’. He says it is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades and lack of empathy. Read article
Associated Press – Human Rights Watch has urged Bahraini authorities to immediately look into allegations of torture made by four Shiite activists in detention since mid-August. In a statement Wednesday, the group said Abdul-Jalil al-Singace, one of the detainees, told prosecutors that his captors beat him on his fingers with a hard instrument, slapped him around, and pulled and twisted his nipples and ears with tongs. Read Article
NY Times — The front pages of South Africa’s newspapers are regularly splashed with articles about politicians living it up at public expense in a country blighted by poverty. Reporters recently pounced on news that a black empowerment deal meant to benefit “previously disadvantaged” South Africans under government guidelines was enriching a company led by President Jacob Zuma’s 28-year-old son, Duduzane, among others, giving them a lucrative stake in the South African arm of a steel giant, ArcelorMittal. Read article
Telegraph – The extension of existing laws to the internet, which will come into effect from next March, has “the protection of children and consumers at its heart”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said. Currently the ASA’s remit only extends to advertisements in paid-for space and all sales promotions. But the change will see its rules on misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children will be applied in full to all online marketing by all sectors, businesses and organisations, regardless of size. Read Article
The Guardian – Following a firestorm of criticism from civil society groups in Italy and abroad, and a slap on the wrist by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, the Italian government’s draft “gag law” has been amended. The original bill restricted the use of wiretaps as an investigative tool and imposed an outright ban on publishing transcripts of telephone conversations and other evidence obtained covertly without permission from a judge. The new bill removes the publishers’ liability, but leaves journalists liable if they publish transcripts leaked to them by investigators – something that happens frequently in Italy. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Research published today has discovered that a third of television viewers now watch their favourite programmes online, on computers and mobile phones.
The joint study by the Radio Times and SeeSaw.com has highlighted changes in the way people now view programmes. Read article
PhysOrg.com – USA Today on Friday announced a major restructuring that will trim 130 jobs at the national news publication as it reshapes itself to better fit Internet Age lifestyles. “This significant restructuring reflects USA Today’s evolution from a newspaper company to a multi-platform media company,” said president and publisher David Hunke. Read article
The Guardian – Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has launched a scathing attack on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, warning that BSkyB is too powerful and threatens to “dwarf” the BBC and its competitors. He said that News Corp, in effect controlled by the Murdoch family, now enjoys unprecedented industry power in the UK. News Corp owns 39% of Sky and is in the process of buying the part of the broadcaster it does not already own. Read article
Reuters – Japan opened up its gallows to local media for the first time on Friday, a move that could spark debate in a country where the majority supports the death penalty. Justice Minister Keiko Chiba has called for more disclosure and discussion on executions in light of a lay judge system introduced last year under which ordinary citizens, along with professional judges, can hand down death sentences. Read Article
Physorg – Tobacco companies have always vehemently denied advertising on the Internet. Several of them signed up to a voluntary agreement to restrict direct advertising on websites by the end of 2002. The authors targeted YouTube, because it has the largest market share of the online video market, and searched through the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to five tobacco brands. Read Article
NY Times – The front pages of South Africa’s newspapers are regularly splashed with articles about politicians living it up at public expense in a country blighted by poverty. Reporters recently pounced on news that a black empowerment deal meant to benefit “previously disadvantaged” South Africans under government guidelines was enriching a company led by President Jacob Zuma’s 28-year-old son, Duduzane, among others, giving them a lucrative stake in the South African arm of a steel giant, ArcelorMittal. Read Article
The Guardian – Iranian newspapers have been banned from publishing the names or photos of the leaders of Iran’s green movement, according to a confidential governmental ruling revealed by an opposition website. The move is part of a new round of censorship, which follows the recent closure of a newspaper and the suspension of two magazines. The ruling, issued by Iran’s ministry of culture and Islamic guidance on 18 August, was stamped “top secret” and “urgent”. Read article
NY Times — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out. In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000. Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives. Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Read article
Deutsche Welle – A European Commission spokesperson said Friday that starting in January 2011, European consumers will be able to finally purchase a standard mobile phone charger for nearly all mobile phones sold in the 27 member state bloc. This move comes over a year after major manufacturers, including Nokia, Apple, Samsung and many other mobile companies agreed with the European Commission to provide a single charger to reduce waste and inefficiency. Read article
Deutsche Welle – On Saturday, Chris Paget, an American computer security researcher, revealed how he could tap mobile calls using $1,500 worth of radio equipment and an antenna. He showed, while presenting at the DefCon hackers conference in Las Vegas, how his device broadcasts a GSM signal, allowing it to pose as a cell phone tower. The device only works on mobile phones using the second-generation of the GSM standard, which is used by the overwhelming majority of mobile phone users around the globe. Read article
Deutsche Welle – Google will double the amount of time that German residents have to file requests blocking images of their home on the company’s Street View service prior to their being published on the Internet, the company wrote on its blog Thursday. Last week, when Google announced that it would begin its Street View service for the 20 largest cities in Germany sometime before the end of the year. At the time it provided residents four weeks to file a request for removal. Read article
Comcast.net — A stunning one in five teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found. Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting loud music through earbuds may be to blame — although hard evidence is lacking. They warn that slight hearing loss can cause problems in school and set the stage for hearing aids in later life. Read article
Epoch Times – An executive of an independent radio network that focuses on Chinese human rights issues was refused entry to Singapore on Aug. 11. The broadcast network and commentators suspect the refusal relates to the Chinese regime’s influence over the Singaporean government, and have decried the move as a violation of media freedom. Read article
Nature – Supercomputer time will help ornithologists make ecological sense of millions of records of bird sightings. A database that records the vast numbers of sightings routinely made by dedicated birders around the globe, eBird has been growing steadily since it’s launch in 2002. More than 48 million observations have been entered so far — 10 million of them in 2010 alone. The data represent millions of hours of eye-straining — and sometimes leg-breaking — observations. Read article
Nature – Networks of human minds are taking citizen science to a new level, reports Eric Hand. The whole thing began by accident, says David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was 2005, and he and his colleagues had just unveiled Rosetta@home — one of those distributed-computing projects in which volunteers download a small piece of software and let their home computers do some extracurricular work when the machines would otherwise be idle. The downloaded program was devoted to the notoriously difficult problem of protein folding… Read article
RSF – Reporters Without Borders condemns the one-year jail sentence and fine of 5 million CFA francs that an Abidjan criminal court has imposed on Traoré Médandjé, a leading reporter for the daily L’Intelligent d’Abidjan, on charges of defaming and trying to blackmail a former health ministry official. The case was prompted by an article headlined “Vavoua’s illegal boutique clinics,” published on 4 September 2009, in which Médjandé accused then departmental director of health André Tia of getting rich by setting up many illegal private clinics in the Vavoua area that had not been authorised by the health ministry. Read article
WSJ – THREE in four Australian households now have digital televisions, according to the latest TV-conversion figures released today. Digital-television penetration surged during the June quarter due to growth in the Sydney and Melbourne markets, figures released by the federal government’s Digital Switchover Taskforce for the second quarter of 2010 showed. Read article
NY Times — As the nation with the world’s largest number of Muslims, Indonesia every year sends the most pilgrims to Mecca by far. About one out of 10 believers who performed the hajj last year were Indonesian. Some 1.2 million of the faithful are now on a government waiting list to go to Mecca, filling this country’s annual quota through the next six years. But if the rapidly lengthening list is a testament to Indonesia’s growing devotion, it has also become a source of one of its perennial problems: corruption. Read article
ABC – The big tobacco companies are fighting back against the Government’s plans to introduce plain cigarette packaging by funding small retailers in a massive advertising campaign timed to coincide with the final weeks of the election campaign. The Alliance of Australian Retailers (AAR) has taken out full-page advertisements in tomorrow’s papers criticising the plan, which they argue will hurt small business and lead to job losses. Read Article
