Thursday 15 April 2010

CNN Sues iReporter For Insisting He Works at CNN

CNN built its iReport platform as a kind of YouTube for news: Readers report on their own news stories, which they can upload onto CNN.com. Now CNN is suing one of those iReporters for claiming he works for CNN.

Robert Paisola is getting slapped with a lawsuit from CNN, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Paisola is a Salt Lake City, Utah man who frequently identifies himself as a "senior iReporter for CNN." We left phone and email messages for Paisola and will update as soon as we hear back from him.

The network is alleging that Paisola's Twitter page includes a CNN-stylized logo and that his LinkedIn page falsely states that "Robert is credentialed by CNN iReport."

We did some more digging and don't see the CNN logo on Paisola's Twitter page anymore. But his Twitter bio states that he is a "Debt Collector Abuse Advocate, Timeshare Scam Protector, Providing YOU with News YOU CAN USE from Robert Paisola CNN."

But on his LinkedIn page Paisola lists himself as "credentialed" by CNN:

CNN Sues iReporter For Insisting He Works at
CNN

Paisola has other strange misinformation posted on his LinkedIn page. He claims that he is the CEO of Western Capital Multimedia, and that the company acquired Condé Nast's Portfolio Magazine and Allure magazine. Condé Nast's Portfolio print publication was shuttered in August 2009 and its website was acquired by American City Business Journals. Allure is still owned and printed by Condé Nast.

He also claims that he is a "regular contributor" to BusinessWeek, CNN, Sirius XM, The Wall Street Journal and NPR. But we can't find his byline at any of those publications.

Here is the excerpt from Paisola's LinkedIn:

CNN Sues iReporter For Insisting He Works at
CNN

We requested a comment from CNN, but they have not gotten back to us yet. Here's a video of Paisola, in which he promotes his services to help fight off debt collectors. He claims he is "very direct."

[Republished from www.businessinsider.com]

@'Gawker'

Dot Allison Live @ St Barnabus 2007

Palestinian media organization fabricates ElBaradei comments

A Palestinian news organization has fabricated an interview with Egypt’s leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei. In the comments, which were published by al-Qassem news site, it alleges that the former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief told them that he supported Palestinian resistance and “described resistance the only path open to the Palestinian people, because the Israeli occupation only understands the language of force.”

However, upon further checking and a message received by Ali ElBaradei, the opposition leader’s brother and press contact, it appears the entire “interview” was made up.

“If you are referring to the interview with that Palestinian media agency, it is total bogus,” the brother told Bikya Masr. “He never gave such an interview.”

According to al-Qassem, they reported that ElBaradei had said “the peace process has become a stupid joke ,which we talk about without achieving any progress.” But, the comments never occurred. The agency added that ElBaradei said that “Arabs should back their negotiation option with force and deterrence.”

It begs the question as to why an organization would create a false interview with such a high profile Egyptian politician. According to Mohamed Latif, a Palestinian media analyst and blogger based in Ramallah, the idea was probably to create solidarity with the Palestinian cause, “after so much frustration with Egyptian political leaders.”

However, Latif believes that fabricating such interviews will do more harm than good to other Palestinian news organizations and agencies who seek proper news gathering.

“Now, it will be even harder for Palestinian reporters and organizations to deal with ElBaradei because there will be a lot of suspicion as to how the quotes will be used and rightfully so,” he added.

The article did not simply stop at claiming ElBaradei believes in armed resistance, but had the opposition figure lashing out at the Egyptian government for the construction of a steel wall along the Gaza border and the conditions of Palestinians.

Al-Qassam wrote that “he [ElBaradei] also criticized Cairo’s construction of a steel wall along the border with the Gaza Strip, aimed at disrupting Palestinians’ ’survival’ tunnel network, as harmful to Egypt’s reputation.” They added that ElBaradei “described Egypt’s construction of the wall as joining Israel in its closure of the strip, which he said ‘has become the world’s largest prison’.”

“The logical solution to the problem would be to close the tunnels and open border crossings while creating a free trade zone in Rafah where Palestinians can trade and then return to Gaza,” they quoted the Nobel Peace Prize winner as saying.

Here in Cairo, activists are dumbfounded, as the interview shocked many who wondered why ElBaradei would have said such comments in the first place. Now, it obviously makes sense.

One activist, who participated in both the April 6 and 13 demonstrations that were violently suppressed by the Egyptian security forces, said that she believes these kind of false interviews will take the credibility way from the opposition and the goal of change in Egypt.

“We must be hard to expose these kind of false reporting because it will give the Egyptian government the ability to tell the world that we are violent and should not be listened to,” Dina Hisham said. “ElBaradei is our future and we can’t stand for this crap.”

International news agencies such as Iran’s PressTV and Israeli newspaper Ynet also reported the fabricated interview in their editions.

Joseph Mayton @'Bikya Masr'

Ex-Israel PM named in bribe case

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a prime suspect in a large corruption scandal, law enforcement sources have told the BBC.

Mr Olmert returned to Israel from a holiday in Europe on Thursday after police asked he make himself available for questioning. He denies involvement.

Jerusalem officials are alleged to have taken bribes to advance a property development while Mr Olmert was mayor.

His successor as mayor was arrested on Wednesday over the case.

A judiciary spokesman said Uri Lupolianski was suspected of receiving bribes, money laundering, fraud, breach of trust, tax avoidance and conspiracy, in connection with the Holyland property development.

The controversial circle of high-rise luxury apartment blocks in West Jerusalem is regarded by many Jerusalem residents as an eyesore.

Last week, Mr Olmert's former lawyer, Uri Messer, was also arrested in connection with the affair.

According to Israeli police, during his time as deputy mayor under Mr Olmert, from 1993 to 2003, and later as mayor, Mr Lupolianski received more than 3m Israeli shekels ($810,000) in bribes from the developers in return for helping to advance the project by rejecting hundreds of objections.

Mr Lupolianski rejected the allegations, telling Channel 10 news: "This was 20 years ago. I don't know why everyone suddenly remembers now. A deputy mayor has no responsibility - it's merely a title."

Police say their serious crime unit has in recent weeks been investigating a "vast affair", of which the Holyland scandal is part.

@'BBC'

Kyle Hall interview & Mix

Smoking # 61

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"Ooer Missus" (Wildlife Edition)

A newly discovered relative of Indonesia's famous komodo dragon grows to gigantic proportions -- and has two penises, according to biologists.

The secretive but brightly-colored beast, a monitor lizard, is a close cousin of the komodo dragon and grows as long as a full-grown man is tall. But unlike the fearsome dragon, it is not a carnivore, nor does it feast on rotting meat.

Instead, it is entirely peaceable and tucks into fruit.

Dubbed Varanus bitatawa, the lizard measures two meters in length, according to the account, published by Britain's Royal Society. It was found in a river valley on northern Luzon Island in the Philippines, surviving loss of habitat and hunting by local people who use it for food.

Males have a double penis, called hemipenes, also found in some snakes and other lizards. The two penises are often used in alternation, and sometimes contain spines or hooks that serve to anchor the male within the female during intercourse.

How many of the lizards have survived is unclear.

The species is almost certainly critically endangered, and might well have disappeared entirely without ever being catalogued had a large male specimen not been rescued alive from a hunter last June.

Finding such a distinctive species in a heavily populated, highly deforested location "comes as an unprecedented surprise," note the authors, writing in the journal Biology Letters.

The only finds of comparable importance in recent decades are the Kipunji monkey, which inhabits a tiny range of forest in Tanzania, and the Saola, a forest-dwelling bovine found only in Vietnam and Laos.

@'Fox'

Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase

Inmates from the old prison at Bagram have been moved elsewhere

Afghan prisoners are being abused in a "secret jail" at Bagram airbase, according to nine witnesses whose stories the BBC has documented.

The abuses are all said to have taken place since US President Barack Obama was elected, promising to end torture.
The US military has denied the existence of a secret detention site and promised to look into allegations.
Bagram was the site of a controversial jail holding hundreds of inmates, who have now been moved to another complex.
The old prison was notorious for allegations of prisoner torture and abuse.
But witnesses told the BBC in interviews or written testimony that abuses continue in a hidden facility.
Sleep deprivation
"They call it the Black Hole," said Sher Agha who spent six days in the facility last autumn.
"When they released us they told us we should not tell our stories to outsiders because that will harm us."

BAGRAM AIRBASE

I could not sleep, nobody could sleep because there was a machine that was making noise

Mirwais, former detainee

Sher Agha and others we interviewed complained their cells were very cold.
"When I wanted to sleep and started shivering with cold I started reciting the holy Koran," he said.
But sleep, according to the prisoners interviewed, is deliberately prevented in this detention site.
"I could not sleep, nobody could sleep because there was a machine that was making noise," said Mirwais, who said he was held in the secret jail for 24 days.
"There was a small camera in my cell, and if you were sleeping they'd come in and disturb you," he added.
The prisoners, who were interviewed separately, all told very similar stories. Most of them said they had been beaten by American soldiers at the point of arrest before being taken to the prison.
Mirwais had half a row of teeth missing, which he said was from being struck with the butt of a gun by an American soldier.
No-one said they were visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross during their detention at the site, and they all said that their families did not know where they were.
In the small concrete cells, the prisoners said, a light was on all the time. They said they could not tell if it was night or day and described this as very disturbing.
Mirwais said he was made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet.
The ex-prisoners said they were imprisoned at the secret jail before being taken to the main detention centre at the Bagram airbase, a new complex called The Detention Facility in Parwan.
Bagram's prisoners were moved to the Parwan complex from the old notorious Bagram prison site on the airbase earlier this year.
In 2002, two prisoners were killed in the Bagram prison while in US custody after being suspended from the ceilings of their cells and brutally beaten.
New jail
The BBC was allowed into the new Bagram prison for an hour.
This was one of the first opportunities any outsider has had to set eyes on Bagram's interned prisoners since a jail was first established at Bagram soon after 9/11.
In the new jail, prisoners were being moved around in wheelchairs with goggles and headphones on.

ON BBC RADIO 4

Hilary Andersson investigates detention at Bagram on BBC Radio 4 at 2002 on 11 May 2010.

The goggles were blacked out, and the purpose of the headphones was to block out all sound. Each prisoner was handcuffed and had their legs shackled.
Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as "cages". The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid.
Guards can see down into the cells above.
The BBC was told by the military to wear protective eye glasses whilst walking past the mesh cells as prisoners sometimes throw excrement or semen at the guards.
Prisoner accounts we logged painted a much better picture of the Parwan Detention Facility.
The US military itself has admitted that about 80% of those at Bagram are probably not hardened terrorists. It is the process of giving every detainee an internal military trial of sorts, called a Detainee Review Board.
The prisoners are represented by soldiers who are not lawyers.
"To this date, no prisoner has ever seen a lawyer in Bagram", said Tina Foster, who represents several of Bagram's prisoners in cases she has filed in on their behalf in the US. Guantanamo Bay's prisoners are able to see their lawyers.
About 100 prisoners have been released through this process, but due to an increased intake, the number of prisoners at Parwan is now 800, up from about 650 in September 2009.
The BBC put the allegations of ongoing abuses as a secret site on the airbase to the US military at Bagram. The military categorically denied the existence of a secret detention site.
"I've never heard of it. This is the only detention facility in Afghanistan" said Vice Admiral Robert Harward who is in charge of the Detention Facility in Parwan.
The US military promised to investigate any allegations of abuse.

@'BBC'

Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world

(Thanx Stan!)

Fighting for Drug Legalization Isn't Enough. You Need to Know Your Rights.

As the debate over marijuana legalization rages on and U.S. drug policy draws more public scrutiny than ever before, the arrests and injustices just keep adding up. We can debate the law until we're blue in the face, and we should, but it's equally essential that every American understand the terms of engagement in a battle that catches peaceful people in its crossfire each and every day.

It is because so few of us truly understand our basic rights that police are able to trample them so routinely. But it's also the haunting thought of that knock at the door, and the uncertainty of how to respond, that prevents so many among us from ever coming out of the closet and lending their voices to the debate. Fear and intimidation are the vital instruments without which the war on drugs would have been banished to the bowels of history long ago.

If you haven't yet seen the new Flex Your Rights video 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, please take this opportunity to do so, and please share it with the people you care about. It won't end the drug war, but it might help you get a better night's sleep. And you deserve that.

Stop the Drug War

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Wikileaks, the future of journalism and Government 2.0 with David Forbes - Technocult interview

Dutch nurse Lucy De Berk acquitted of patient murders

Lucy de Berk, after her acquittal (14 April 2010)

A Dutch nurse who was jailed for life in 2003 for the murders of seven patients and the attempted murders of another three has been acquitted.
An appeals court in Arnhem ruled that there was no evidence that Lucy de Berk had committed a crime in all 10 cases.
The Supreme Court called for a review in 2008 after evidence came to light suggesting that all the deaths could in fact be explained by natural causes.
The prosecution service said a senior official had apologised to Ms De Berk.
"This judgment means that Lucy de Berk has spent six-and-a-half years in jail as an innocent person," it added. "It is important that Lucy de Berk is financially compensated as soon as possible."
The acquittal marks one of the biggest miscarriages of Dutch justice.
Bogus statistics
"I'll have to let it sink in a little while," Ms De Berk told reporters after the Arnhem Appeals Court cleared her of all charges on Wednesday.
During last month's retrial, prosecutors conceded that the evidence they had used to build their original case was flawed, and that they had not been flexible enough after they became convinced of her guilt when investigating the deaths.

The court believes that investigations have uncovered no facts or circumstances that could give grounds for suspecting an unnatural cause

Arnhem Appeals Court ruling

The 49-year-old was first arrested in 2001 after the death of a baby in her care at a hospital in The Hague, which was thought to be a poisoning.
Afterwards, investigators found what they thought was a trend of suspicious deaths among 13 patients - all of whom were very young and disabled, or very old and in poor health - treated by Ms De Berk in the previous four years. Five others almost died in what investigators said were suspicious circumstances.
In 2003, she was convicted of four murders and three attempted murders, and sentenced to life in prison.
Part of the evidence against Ms De Berk was the testimony of a statistician, who said the odds were 342 million-to-one that it was a coincidence she had been on duty when all the incidents occurred.
Then in 2004, an appeals court convicted her of three additional counts of murder and upheld the life sentence.
The Supreme Court, which had upheld her conviction in 2006, eventually ordered a review of Ms De Berk's case in October 2008, calling into doubt statistical evidence about the chances of her innocence and the cause of death of the baby.
On Wednesday, the judges said it was impossible that the baby had been killed in 2001, "much less that the baby's death was the result of intentional action".
"With respect to the other deaths and life-threatening incidents, the court believes that investigations have uncovered no facts or circumstances that could give grounds for suspecting an unnatural cause," they added.

@'BBC'

Will this ever get a release here?

The single mother's manifesto

David Cameron says the ‘nasty party’ that castigated people like me has changed. I’m not buying it.

by J.K. Rowling

Hand-held projector images respond to the real world

Powerpoint presentations are about to get a sprinkle of fairy dust. A hand-held projector can now create virtual characters and objects that interact with the real world.

The device - called Twinkle - projects animated graphics that respond to patterns, shapes or colours on a surface, or even 3D objects such as your hand. It uses a camera to track relevant elements - say a line drawn on a wall - in the scene illuminated by the projector and an accelerometer ensures it can sense the projector's rapid motion and position.

Software then matches up the pixels detected by the camera with the animation, making corrections for the angle of projection and distance from the surface.

The device could eventually fit inside a cellphone, says Takumi Yoshida of the University of Tokyo. A prototype which projects a cartoon fairy that bounces off or runs along paintings on a wall or even the surface of a bottle (pictured) was presented at the recent Virtual Reality 2010 meeting in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Yoshida and his colleagues are also developing a way for graphics from several projectors to interact, which could be used for gaming.

Anthony Steed of University College London is impressed. Many researchers have been attempting to create virtual graphics that can interact with a real surface, he says, but Twinkle can cope with a much greater range of environments.

@'New Scientist'

The Nels Cline Singers - Initiate

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President Obama has proposed the largest defense budget since World War II

Never Forgotten (A Must Watch!)

Hillsborough: "Justice for the 96"

The disgusting lies printed in The Sun
It says:
“The Truth.
Some fans picked pockets of victims
Some fans urinated on the brave cops
Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life.”

Julian Assange interviewed by Stephen Colbert

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Library of Congress: We're archiving every tweet ever made

Get ready for fame, tweeters of the world: the Library of Congress is archiving for posterity every public tweet made since the service went live back in 2006. Every. Single. Tweet.
The LOC announced the news, appropriately enough, on Twitter. Twitter isn't just about being pretentious and notifying the world about the contents of your lunch (though it's about those things too).
Matt Raymond, one the Library's official bloggers, notes that "important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election, and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter."
But even those billions of other tweets and retweets, the ones about how you just got back from the worlds' most epic jog or how you're sick at home with the crocodile flu or how your crappy Internet connection just went down again and you can't take it any more—those matter too.
There's been a turn toward historicism in academic circles over the last few decades, a turn that emphasizes not just official histories and novels but the diaries of women who never wrote for publication, or the oral histories of soldiers from the Civil War, or the letters written by a sawmill owner. The idea is to better understand the context of a time and place, to understand the way that all kinds of people thought and lived, and to get away from an older scholarship that privileged the productions of (usually) elite males.
The LoC's Twitter archive will provide a similar service, offering a social history of hipsters, geeks, nerds, and whatever Ashton Kutcher is. As Twitter continues its march into the mainstream, the service really will offer a real-time, unvarnished look at what's on people's minds.
Digital technologies pose a problem for the Library and other archival institutions, though. By making data so easy to generate and then record, they push archives to think hard about their missions and adapt to new technical challenges. While archiving the entire Web and all its changes is simply impossible, the Library of Congress has collected a curated, limited subset of Web content "since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000." Today, it has 167TB of Web data.
Raymond sums up the Library's goal: "In other words, if you’re looking for a place where important historical and other information in digital form should be preserved for the long haul, we’re it!"
People seem to agree that this is big news; as Raymond noted when I contacted him for details, "I'm already getting flooded. This is already our biggest re-tweeted tweet ever!"
So if you don't want history to remember that burrito you had for dinner last night (and its aftermath), tweet carefully—now it's for posterity.

Nate Anderson @'ars technica'

Congress to archive every tweet ever posted publicly

Banksy in LA

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The best of times...

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RT printed out the "Yes Wi-gan" poster. Taking it to tonight's Wigan Athletic game & try to get it on TV somehow. \\ any more volunteers? half a minute ago via UberTwitter