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On Broadway in Manhattan this morning you could not miss them — a big blue surge of spectators lining the streets. Thousands of fans turned out to see the New York Giants, fresh from a Superbowl win on Sunday, march victoriously through the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan. But as the players were feted with a ticker-tape parade, some Iraq veterans were asking: Why not us?
Michael Nagle for The New York TimesPaul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says veterans deserve a parade as much as the Giants.
In an article published in Tuesday’s newspaper, Kate Taylor talked to some of the advocates for a veterans’ parade, including Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Everybody recognizes that the Giants deserve a parade,” he said. But, he added, “If a football team gets a parade, shouldn’t our veterans?”
But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York has cited the Pentagon’s own advice as the reason for not holding a veterans’ parade. The argument goes that it is not appropriate to hold a parade while American soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have taken their challenge of that logic directly to the Pentagon, via Twitter:
So far, there is no response on Twitter from the George Little (@PentagonPresSec), the Pentagon Press Secretary. IAVA asked the question during a “first ever DoD Twitter town hall” according to Mr. Little. The Department of Defense recently posted that answers to some of the questions are coming later today.
You can find more chatter on Twitter on the issue happening right now.
Article source: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/drumbeat-grows-on-twitter-for-new-york-parade-for-veterans/
Many users view Twitter as the epitome of freedom of expression. It’s not only played a crucial role in the way we’ve communicated for the last five and a half years, it’s also been part of movements like Iran’s Green Revolution and the Arab Spring. However, the company’s recent decision to censor tweets at the requests of governments (marking when content has been withheld and leaving the tweets available outside those countries) has many calling it a traitor to those revolutions.
Reporters Without Borders sent a letter to Twitter Founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey, saying, “By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization.”
For all of the backlash, there may be no greater condemnation of Twitter’s decision than in its praise. China’s state-run paper Global Times ran an editorial applauding Twitter’s decision. “It is impossible to have boundless freedom, even on the Internet and even in countries that make freedom their main selling point,” it reads.
Free countries don’t need selling points because freedom isn’t a commodity, and that’s just the point with Twitter’s decision: Commerce wins. For Twitter to expand its business into new countries, it has to play by their rules. “Twitter could have reduced its need to be the instrument of government censorship by keeping its assets and personnel within the borders of the United States,” said digital rights advocacy organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a statement.
Though Twitter CEO Dick Costolo frames the issue as one of transparency, he makes plain that it’s also clearly operational. “This is the most honest, transparent, and forward-looking way for a company to deal with the myriad of complex issues around the world that you experience when you have to operate in these countries,” Costolo said recently at the “Dive Into Media” conference hosted by All Things D.
China’s Global Times agrees, “The announcement of Twitter might have shown that it has already realized the fact and made a choice between being an idealistic political tool as many hope and following pragmatic commercial rules as a company.”
Free speech advocates, including Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House, measure a nation’s freedom by its adherence to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 19 of which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Freedom House makes it its mission to come up with solutions for citizens to circumvent censorship. To get around the new censorship policy on Twitter, users can go into their account settings and select their country as one that has different laws regarding free speech.
Twitter has said it will bring censorship to light through its expanded partnership with Chilling Effects. A new page, chillingeffects.org/twitter, shows Twitter-related cease-and-desist notices, though censorship doesn’t always come in the form of a cease-and-desist notice. The world saw three real-life chilling effects in the days following Twitter’s announcement: Google made a similar policy change with regard to its Blogger platform, saying that it will selectively display content according to government requests by country. In India, Google and Facebook removed “offensive” content that officials considered anti-religious or anti-social. And in South Korea, Park Jeong-Geun, a photographer, was arrested for parodying North Korea on Twitter, in part by reposting some of the North Korean government’s tweets.
Twitter says: “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression
The Tweets must continue to flow.” Active Twitter accounts number some 100 million worldwide, according to the company, and 80 percent of those are outside of the United States, says comScore data. How those accounts are used varies widely. Some countries use Twitter as a platform to counter Twitter’s notion that “freedom” and “expression” have contours, borders to expand or contract; others use Twitter as an extension of personal conversation. From region to region, here’s what society is using Twitter to say.Next: Africa
Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399900,00.asp
Twitter and Facebook are harder to resist than alcohol and cigarettes, but so is the urge to work, according to new research on people’s daily struggles with self-control and desire. The counterintuitive findings may reveal more about the complexities of defining addiction and self-discipline than anything else.
Researchers gave BlackBerrys to 205 adults and signaled them seven times a day at randomly selected daytime hours for one week. When they were contacted, participants reported whether they were experiencing desire for something, what it was that they wanted, how strong the urge was, whether they wished to resist this desire and if they did in fact yield to the temptation.
The most strongly felt desires were for sleep and sex. Unexpectedly, cravings for cigarettes and alcohol were reported as weakest. In terms of actual behavior, participants had the hardest time stopping themselves from checking social media when they preferred not to, and from working when that was not what they truly wanted to do, suggesting that these urges actually drove people’s actions more than drugs or sex did.
While people joke about “workaholism” (can I have some workahol, please?), this research suggests that many people do, indeed, find themselves working when they have a choice not to and actually want to be doing something else. It also implies that, if measured by the intensity of reported desire, sleep and sex are the most addictive of all.
But does that really that mean that work is more addictive than alcohol, or that sleep is as addictive as sex? Here is where the complexity of addiction comes in. We tend to think of addiction as being located in a substance or perhaps an activity — one that is so inherently attractive that it displaces everything else. In the classic case, an addictive drug is viewed as changing the brain to make it unable to resist.
MORE: Siblings Brain Study Sheds Light on the Roots of Addiction
In reality, however, addiction is a matter of imbalance — between your own personal desire to engage in the addictive behavior and your conflicting desire to avoid the negative consequences of said behavior and/or do something else. Addiction is not absolute, and these particular desires as well as your ability to resist them wax and wane over time and in relation to specific cues, stresses and situations.
For example, research by Columbia neuroscientist Carl Hart (full disclosure: Hart and I are working on a book project together) shows that people who are addicted to crack cocaine will typically choose money rather than a guaranteed dose, if they know that the dose is smaller than what they prefer. This occurs even after they’ve already sampled the various doses offered — a moment when the traditional picture of addiction would have them begging for any dose at all, not turning little ones down for a mere $5. (And no, they can’t just go use the $5 to buy better crack elsewhere; they were living in a monitored hospital ward during the study.)
“Addictive” substances don’t operate in a vacuum — whether or not someone yields to an urge depends not only on the attractiveness of the substance or desired activity, but also on the person’s other alternatives and their ability to consider the particular consequences that may result.
So, for the participants in the BlackBerry research — most were college students and employed people, ages 18-55 — the consequences of yielding to an urge to drink during the day were likely to be much worse than the consequences of having a peek at Twitter. Similarly, the negative consequences of working a bit more are probably far smaller than those of smoking in a nonsmoking office, and indeed the long-term consequences of working are far more positive.
As study co-author Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University told the Guardian:
Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist. With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs — long-term as well as monetary — and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.
MORE: Brain Changes in Video Gamers: Addiction or Just People Having Fun?
Work itself is an especially interesting case because it is socially acceptable — not doing it is grounds for social rejection and isolation — and typically leads to positive rather negative consequences. This would make it, as the behaviorists say, “reinforcing,” but not necessarily addictive. The same is clearly true for sleep: obviously, everyone is dependent on it and experiences strong desires to do it, but calling this an addiction seems absurd.
Indeed, addiction requires compulsive persistence in a behavior or activity despite negative consequences. If the consequences of the activity are positive, it’s not “addictive” — it’s simply desirable. Work can only become “workahol” when people continue doing it in ways that are destructive to their family life and other relationships.
It’s important to note, too, that although the study included smokers, it did not include people with alcoholism — among whom, it’s easy to imagine, the desire to drink would be far stronger.
But what this research does show is that it’s pointless to discuss how “addictive” a particular substance is in isolation. After all, even the most addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine only tend to hook about 15% of those who try them.
What matters is context: an individual’s own relationship with these substances, the consequences that especially concern them (for example, feeling better now as opposed to being unhealthy in the distant future), their particular psychology, unique biology and especially importantly, the other options they have.
Also crucial is yet one more part of the equation: the ability to resist desires and exercise self-control. The study’s authors noted two important findings here. First, the more times someone had resisted desire on a particular day, the more likely they were to yield to it eventually.
MORE: Mind Over Mind? Decision Fatigue Saps Willpower, If We Let It
This supports prior work suggesting that willpower is a resource that can be depleted — the more worn down one gets, the harder it is to say no. (Interestingly, however, providing energy to the brain in the form of sugar can often replenish willpower — unless sugar was what you were trying to resist!)
The researchers also found a possible “training” effect. Like a muscle, your will seems to get stronger the more often you exercise it appropriately (too much exercise too fast, after all, can cause injury). The people who had a greater number of desires were better, on average, at resisting them, compared with those who fought with temptation less frequently.
The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science.
MORE: The Authentic Self: How Do You Know if You’re ‘Really’ Racist or Sexist?
Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.
Article source: http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/07/is-twitter-really-more-addictive-than-alcohol-the-vagaries-of-will-and-desire/
Facebook changes features like Kim Kardashian changes husbands.
Just when users get comfortable with the latest iteration of “New Facebook,” Zuckerberg and company go and change something else, drawing the ire of its millions of users. Here are six Facebook annoyances that are currently grinding our gears and ways to deal with each.
Problem #1: News Ticker Shoves TMI Updates in Your Face
Sarcastically called the “stalker feed” by some users, the News Ticker has replaced the News Feed. Right above their list of friends available to chat, users are assaulted by an ongoing barrage of inane news including everything their friends liked and what they commented on.
Solution: Users looking to ditch the News Ticker can install Facebook News Ticker Remover (Google Chrome) or the Facebook Ticker Removal (Firefox) add-on which will automatically remove the offending feature.
Problem #2: Facebook Timeline Shares Your Worst Moments With the World
There used to be a time where you could just delete that embarrassing photo from Facebook, and if you were prone to drunk posting, you could rest easy in the knowledge that soon it would disappear from your timeline never to be seen again. With the new iteration of Timeline, every bad picture and misspelled status update will be on display forever.
Solution: While you might not be able to erase all those regrettable photos and statuses of yore, you can control who gets to see them. Simply pull down the menu next to the Home button on your Facebook page and click Privacy Settings then Timeline Viewer Settings. From there, scroll down to Limit the Audience for Past Posts column and hit the Manage Past Post Visibility tab. Click OK and your timeline goes from public to friends only.
Problem #3: Your Facebook Subscribers Keep Spamming You
People looking to make part of their private Facebook pages public can open themselves up to subscribers, people who can sign up to read your updates without being approved “friends.” Users can then follow those pages and hopefully have an invigorating exchange of ideas. However, many people are complaining of inordinate amounts of spam and inappropriate content filling their news feed.
Solution: Freedom from that unwanted spam is only a few clicks away. To turn off Facebook Subscribe, click on Subscriptions in the left side menu. From there, click Edit under Subscribers and switch On to Off.
Problem #4: Gallery Photos Take Too Long to Load
Remember when you could quickly and easily scroll through all your friends’ Facebook photos without being held up by slow loading times? Facebook took all the convenience and fun of scrolling through photos and replaced it with theater-style pop-up photos. Sure the image is bigger, but some images can take longer to load than others, making photo-cruising an unnecessary exercise in patience.
Solution: Installing Revert Facebook Photo Viewer on Google Chrome or Facebook Photo Theater Killer on Firefox will display your photos in Facebook Classic style. Firefox users must have the Greasemonkey add-on installed first.
Problem #5: Facebook Apps Share Too Much Info About You
By default, apps like Spotify, Ticketmaster and Foursquare share every tiny detail of your life with all of your friends. Instead of just learning about a job promotion or a new relationship, all your contacts can now be privy to what tickets you purchased from Ticketmaster or what song you’re listening to on Spotify. It’s great for advertisers, but an overshare nightmare for everyone else.
Solution: Don’t want everyone to know you just listened to Kenny G. on Spotify? Just go to Privacy Settings, click Edit Settings next to Apps and Websites, and then hit Edit Settings by the Instant Personalizations Header.
From there, uncheck the “Enable instant personalization on all partner sites” tab.
Problem #6: Annoying App Invites
Facebook has become a haven for casual gamers who sink hours into tending their farms, building a criminal empire or creating villages for their virtual insect colonies. Unfortunately many of these misguided souls insist on inviting you to join the “fun,” sending you invite after invite to join the next big “Ville,” deluging your Facebook notifications and annoying you to no end.
Solution: Go to Privacy Settings and select Manage Blocking next to Blocked People and Apps.
Then enter the offending person’s name in the Block App Invites field and voila! It’ll be game over for all those unwanted game invites.
Copyright 2012 Laptopmag.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/07/top-6-facebook-annoyances-and-how-to-fix-them/
Enlarge image
Facebook Governance Draws Scrutiny
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. employees work at the company’s new campus in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011.
Facebook Inc. employees work at the company’s new campus in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Facebook Inc., the social-networking
company planning an initial public offering, faces corporate-
governance scrutiny from one of its investors, the California
State Teachers’ Retirement System.
“We are in fact in the beginning stages of engagement with
Facebook” over governance issues, Ricardo Duran, a spokesman
for the pension fund, said in an interview. “We are planning to
send them a letter.”
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg controls
56.9 percent of voting power at the social network, which filed
last week to raise $5 billion in an IPO. Corporate-governance
experts have said that the CEO’s majority control puts too much
power in the hands of one person.
Calstrs, the second-largest U.S. pension, has a history of
pushing for changes at companies. It lobbied last year to get
corporations to disclose their political donations. In 2009, the
pension sent a letter to 300 of its largest portfolio companies
asking them to let shareholders have an advisory vote on
executive compensation.
Calstrs is an investor in Facebook through two of its
private-equity managers, Duran said.
Zuckerberg owns 28.4 percent of Facebook, the largest
single stake in the company, and he extended his voting power by
implementing a dual-class stock structure in 2009. Some of his
shares have 10 times more voting power than common stock,
according to Facebook’s IPO filing. The CEO also gained voting
power through agreements with individual stockholders. He owns
an “irrevocable proxy” over those shares, Facebook said.
Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based
Facebook, declined to comment.
Reuters reported earlier that Calstrs has approached
Facebook about governance.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Douglas MacMillan in San Francisco at
dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-07/california-pension-fund-to-engage-with-facebook-on-governance.html
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 2012 tax bill could be one for the record books.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Facebook’s upcoming IPO will make founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire — but it will also stick him with an eye-popping tax bill that could reach as high as $2 billion.
Industry experts say that might be one for the record books.
“I personally have never seen a bill into the billions — close, but not quite,” said Anthony Nitti, a Colorado-based CPA and partner with Withum, Smith and Brown. “I talked to a few buddies of mine at the Big Four accounting firms, and it’s something not many people have seen.”
The giant tax hit is a consequence of Zuckerberg’s plan to exercise stock options worth billions. The move will significantly increase his ownership stake in the company he founded eight years ago.
Zuckerberg currently owns almost 414 million shares of Facebook, but he also holds options to buy another 120 million shares at the bargain price of 6 cents a piece. Facebook said in its IPO paperwork that Zuckerberg plans to exercise those options and will sell some of his shares during Facebook’s initial offering to cover the tax bill.
The type of options Zuckerberg holds are taxable as ordinary income when they’re exercised, even if the shareholder hangs onto the shares and doesn’t sell them. That means Zuckerberg will owe taxes on the difference between what he pays for his Facebook shares — 6 cents — and their market value the day he exercises the options.
Facebook said in its IPO filing that it values its shares at $29.73. At that price, Zuckerberg’s options windfall would be worth $3.6 billion.
But analysts expect Facebook shares to go for a premium when they’re sold to the public. A private-market trade last week valued Facebook’s shares at $40 each — giving the company an overall valuation of around $100 billion. That price tag would make Zuckerberg’s options worth almost $5 billion.
Either way, the windfall lines him up for a whopping tax bill. The top U.S. marginal tax rate this year is 35%. Zuckerberg’s home state of California also carves off a big slice, hitting those with incomes of $1 million or more with a 10.3% income tax.
Stock options are a tax swampland, and it’s hard to estimate precisely what Zuckerberg will end up paying. But tax analysts are ballparking the total at somewhere in the $1.5 billion to $2 billion range — a nearly unprecedented sum.
The IRS doesn’t comment on individual tax bills, but an analysis of the top 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest reported incomes for 2009 (the most recent year available) shows that the average tax bill for a member of the ultra-1% club was $49 million. The top 400 collectively paid income taxes totaling $19.6 billion.
Zuckerberg could single-handedly boost that stat significantly in 2012.
Still, accountants said Zuckerberg’s tax plan is the right move.
The 27-year-old entrepreneur is famously loathe to give up any ownership control over his company, and he plans to sell only enough stock to cover his tax bill, Facebook said in its regulatory paperwork.
That means that the rest of Zuckerberg’s billions will remain hypothetical paper wealth, and his financial fortunes will stay closely entangled with Facebook’s.
“He’s doing it the smart way,” said Stan Pollock, a San Francisco CPA who specializes in stock options planning. “We learned from the dot-com bust that people should do it that way — sell shares to cover the tax bill.”
During the dot-com bubble peak in 2000, countless tech industry workers got burned by roller-coaster stock prices. For tax purposes, the value of most stock options is fixed the day they’re exercised — even if you don’t sell any of the stock. If you pay $5 to exercise an option and buy shares valued at $30, the IRS views your gain as income of $25.
What happens if the stock plunges before you sell any shares? You’re still on the hook for the price it was the day you exercised it.
“People were exercising options and holding them in anticipation of the stock going up and up. The stock would go and up and up and up — and then go down,” Pollock said. “A lot of people were stuck with huge tax bills and no money to pay the bills.”
Facebook will also get a significant boost from its employees’ stock windfalls.
That’s because companies can take a “mirror” tax deduction for stock option compensation when the options are exercised.
Thanks to its deduction on Zuckerberg’s staggering tax bill and other stock-related expenses, Facebook expects to show a net operating loss this year for U.S. federal tax purposes. That means it will qualify for a refund on some of the taxes it paid last year on its $1 billion profit.
“We anticipate that this refund could be up to $500 million and payable to us during the first six months of 2013,” Facebook said in its IPO filing.
Here’s the ironic twist: While Zuckerberg’s 2012 income will be stratospheric, his 2013 earnings could drop him straight back into the lowest possible tax brackets. At his request, Facebook’s board agreed to slash his annual salary next year to $1. 
Article source: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/07/technology/zuckerberg_tax_bill/
By
Sportsmail Reporter
Last updated at 10:42 AM on 7th February 2012
Attorney General Dominic Grieve has defended his decision not to prosecute footballer Joey Barton for a series of online comments about John Terry ahead of his trial, insisting they would not jeopardise the case.
QPR midfielder Barton posted the remarks on Twitter on Friday after Terry, who has been accused of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, was stripped of the England captaincy.
Mr Grieve said comments made ‘in bad taste’ on Twitter were ‘neither here nor there’ and would be judged only on whether they would prejudice a fair hearing.
No charge: Barton will not be prosecuted for comments about Terry’s ongoing court case
‘As far as I could see, in this particular case, whatever Mr Barton had been doing didn’t seem to me, on the facts, to amount to creating the risk we have just been talking about,’ he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
‘I think it is a matter of common sense. If people put out into the public domain by publishing or by broadcasting material that might influence or prejudice the course of a trial by putting background material out that is prejudicial and irrelevant to the trial process, then that has the capacity to create the risk.
Twitter ye not: Barton took to the micro-blogging site to air his views
‘Mere invective or unpleasantness doesn’t necessarily meet that test, though in some circumstances it could.’
After airing his views about Terry on the micro-blogging site, Barton added: ‘I’ll probably get a letter now from “the powers that be”.’
He later returned to Twitter and defended his comments on the grounds of free speech.
Terry,
who was removed from his role as England captain on Friday, denies the
allegations and will stand trial in July, only days after Euro 2012
finishes.
The Attorney
General is the Government’s senior law officer, whose remit includes
ensuring defendants facing criminal allegations receive a fair trial.
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‘It should of been dealt with . . .’ Should of. And this bloke tries to pretend he’s intelligent.
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Joey BARTON is entitled to his opinion as long as it does not prejudice the case whether we like his opinions or not. If not dont go on TWITTER
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Article source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2097635/Joey-Barton-Attorney-General-defends-decision-prosecute.html
She won five Logies, the Australian equivalent of an Emmy Award, becoming the
youngest actress to win the high-profile awards.
In July 1987 she released her first single; a remake of the 1962 Little Eva
hit “Locomotion”, which hit No1 in her home country before becoming the
biggest Australian single of the 1980s.
She quit Neighours in 1988, to move to Britain and concentrate on becoming
singer and her career blossomed with a string of smash hits.
Her first UK chart-topper was I Should Be So Lucky in 1988. Her debut
self-titled album, which included her hit I Should Be So Lucky, sold more
than seven million copies worldwide.
But her sugary image faded and she reinvented herself as a sex symbol in
recent years, leading to increased attention from men.
In 2003 she received more than 700 threatening letters in one year to
addresses near her home in Chelsea, and to the office of her British record
company, EMI in Hammersmith, both in west London.
The letters, which all bore a West Country postmark, started as ordinary fan
mail but become increasingly aggressive. In one the writer, who was never
identified, threatened to kill the Aussie star and perform depraved sex acts
on her.
It prompted one of the singer’s management team to attend Fulham police
station, west London to report the harassment.
Officers given her security advice and she has employed bodyguards for public
events. The singer’s management later said the letters “were of an
annoying nature” rather than being dangerous.
“There have been no death threats but letters of an annoying nature have
been reported to the police and are being investigated,” her spokesman
said at the time.
“The situation has simply been blown out of proportion. I spoke to her
this morning … she is her usual self, absolutely fine and happy as ever.”
No arrests were ever made.
The previous year, the singer disclosed that she had been stalked by a fan for
five years.
She said at the time: “He turns up at loads of my shows and even manages
to find out where I’m shopping sometimes. It’s been on and off for five
years but I haven’t seen him around for a while. I’m sure he means no harm.”
More recently, in 2010 she has faced harrassment from former postman Mark
Taylor, who sent a string of lewd fan mail to her and other female stars
including Jennifer Aniston, Fearne Cotton and Dannii Minogue.
Minogue was awarded an OBE in 2008 in recognition of a pop career that has
seen her sell millions of albums and singles and transform herself from a
manufactured pop star into a glamorous disco diva.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and underwent surgery and
chemotherapy to beat the disease, before being given the all-clear the
following year.
She later admitted to battling depression following her diagnosis of breast
cancer, which led to partial mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy and
radiotherapy.
The Grammy winner abruptly cancelled her Showgirl concert tour to make time
for surgery and chemotherapy, a break from work that plunged her into a
depression.
Minogue said she struggled with the perception that she’d “never be
normal again,” she said in 2007. Gradually, she came to realise that
breast cancer would change her life.
She said: “I learned that you never go back to a normal state, instead
you have to create a new normal state.
“I have to accept my life for its triumphs and its other sides, take the
good with the bad. “I experienced a world of illness and positive
attitudes. These experiences contributed to making me a more mature person.”
This year is celebrating 25 years in showbusiness, which she has dubbed K25,
by re-recording some of her old hits.
She has sold more copies of eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live
concert DVD’s as well as a series of “Greatest Hits” albums.
According to her official profile, she has recorded more than 50 singles, “all
of which have been hits”. She has sold-out nine “record breaking”
world tours and closed the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Last year, her Aphrodite Les Folies tour took in five continents, 27 countries
and 77 shows. The Daily Telegraph said of the tour: “Kylie Minogue is
not just a pop star any more, she is a veritable goddess”.
She is also a successful businesswoman, launching her own ranges of lingerie,
clothing and perfume. The singer, once dismissed as a “Singing Budgie”,
is also an “icon” amongst the homosexual community.
Currently dating Spanish model Andres Velencoso, 33, she was previously in a
relationship with Olivier Martinez, the French actor.
She once dated Australian rock singer Michael Hutchence, who was found hanged
in a Sydney hotel. She has been linked with a series of leading men,
including Lenny Kravitz and Robbie Williams.
She has also spoken openly about starting a family.
Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/9065736/Kylie-Minogue-Twitter-threats-a-decade-of-stalker-problems.html
7 February 2012
Last updated at 07:57 ET
The RadarBlitzGO account suspended its alert service following the Brazilian’s government’s action
The Brazilian government has filed a lawsuit against Twitter, demanding that the firm remove accounts in the country that warn citizens of police speed traps and roadblocks.
The authorities are concerned the service is undermining its efforts to tackle drink-driving in the country.
The lawsuit also orders Twitter to pay 500,000 reals ($290,000; £183,000) for each day that it does not comply with the request.
Twitter is not commenting on the case.
The lawsuit comes after Twitter announced in January that it could block messages that contravened local laws if requested by governments.
It said it would publish all censorship requests it received to the website Chilling Effects, but nothing relating to the case has been submitted yet.
Suspension
The lawsuit was filed by the Attorney General of the Union (AGU), Luis Inacio Lucena Adams, to a federal court in the state of Goias. It claims accounts that provide information to road users violate both traffic and criminal laws.
Chief Prosecutor Celmo Ricardo Teixeira da Silva said: “The prosecution responded to a necessity to ensure the effectiveness of action on surveillance of the federal highway police.”
There are several popular accounts that warn road users of incidents in Brazil, with one, @LeiSecaRJ, followed by more than 285,000 users.
Another, @RadarBlitzGO, which has almost 12,000 followers, has already ended its service in light of the filing.
“We are suspending the updates until justice has ruled,” it said.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16926871
The estimate counts 311,000 jobs at companies making the apps and another 155,000 at local merchants who have expanded their payrolls in an economic ripple effect caused by increased spending at their businesses.
The study asserts this so-called “app economy” is still in the early stages of a boom driven by the mobile computing and social networking crazes unleashed by Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Facebook’s online hangout.
“This is a telescope into what the future looks like,” said Michael Mandel, the economist hired by TechNet to put together the report. “This is one part of the economy that is actually expanding and hiring. Once you point people in that direction, they can realign their compass pretty quickly.”
Apps makers were adding jobs even when the overall U.S. unemployment rate climbed to as high as 10 percent in late 2009, Mandel said. That bodes well for even more vigorous growth if the economy can extend a gradual recovery from the Great Recession. The national unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent in January, the lowest level in three years.
Government labor statistics don’t yet track jobs focused on apps, partly because the market is still relatively new. That prompted TechNet to try to fill the void. The 15-year-old group represents executives at companies that employ more than 2 million people and generate more than $800 billion in annual revenue combined.
The app economy began to percolate in 2007 — the year that Apple introduced the iPhone and Facebook turned its website into a platform for other programs designed for its rapidly growing audience.
Today, there are more than 500,000 apps available for the iPhone and Apple’s iPad tablet. Some are given away for free in an attempt to make money from ads. Others are sold by young and old entrepreneurs, as well as major companies.
As its audience has grown from about 58 million users in 2007 to 845 million today, Facebook has hatched perhaps the most successful apps company so far in Zynga Inc. The San Francisco-based maker of online games such as FarmVille and Words With Friends already employs about 2,800 people and has leased enough office space to hire thousands more during the next few years.
The seeds for even more job growth have been planted by a proliferation of other mobile devices designed to run on operating systems made by Google Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and Microsoft Corp. More apps are likely to be coming into homes as more TVs and appliances, including refrigerators and washing machines, are wired for Internet access.
For all its progress and future promise, the app economy remains a small fraction of the broader technology industry. TechNet estimates about 3.5 million people are working in technology jobs — occupations revolving around computers and mathematics.
But not all the jobs being created in the app economy require geeky credentials.
TechNet reasons every apps programming job hatches another position in other non-technical areas such as sales, marketing, human resources and other administrative chores.
The study also presumes the job growth in apps spurs more local spending on goods and services that encourages more hiring at neighboring businesses. Quantifying this domino effect can be tricky.
Mandel, president of the consulting firm South Mountain Economics says he believes he was conservative in his calculations. He estimates that one peripheral job is created for every two jobs added to the payroll of an apps maker.
The TechNet study found that the highest concentration of app jobs is in the technology hotbeds of the San Francisco Bay area (nearly 15 percent), New York (9 percent) and Seattle (nearly 6 percent).
But the study also found app jobs cropping up in places such as Philadelphia (nearly 2 percent), Detroit (1 percent) and Phoenix (1 percent).
TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey is optimistic apps jobs will be widely dispersed across the country because it’s a specialty that doesn’t require big factories, close proximity to railroads and highways or even other technology hubs. All that is really required, he said, is a good idea and online access.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/study-concludes-growth-in-mobile-facebook-applications-has-created-466000-us-jobs-since-2007/2012/02/07/gIQAnnlYvQ_story.html
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