Saturday, June 20, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Madonna's New Daughter Leaves Malawi On Private Jet Top
LILONGWE, Malawi — Madonna's new daughter has flown out of her native Malawi on a private jet headed for London, an airport employee and a person familiar with Madonna's adoption proceedings in this southern African country said Saturday. The airport employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said 3-year-old Chifundo "Mercy" James left late Friday headed to London, with a stop in neighboring South Africa. The girl, the second child Madonna has adopted from Malawi, was reportedly accompanied on the flight by a nanny, a child nurse and a third aide. The person familiar with the adoption, who also was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the girl known as Mercy should have reached London on Saturday morning. Madonna has homes in England and in the United States. Malawi's highest court had granted the adoption June 12, overturning an April lower court ruling that Madonna had not spent enough time in Malawi to be given a child. The high court said the first judge had imposed too narrow a definition of residency, and lauded Madonna for her work with children in a poor country where half a million have lost a parent to AIDS. Madonna's Raising Malawi, a charity founded in 2006, helps feed, educate and provide medical care for some of Malawi's orphans. Madonna adopted a son, David, from Malawi last year. Children's welfare groups had expressed concern that rules meant to protect children were being bent because of Madonna's celebrity, and perhaps out of gratitude for what she has done for Malawi. Madonna met Mercy in 2006 at Kondanani Children's Village, an orphanage in Bvumbwe, just south of Blantyre. It was the same year she began the process of adopting David, whom she found at another orphanage in central Malawi. The girl's 18-year-old mother was unmarried and died soon after she gave birth. Since Madonna moved to adopt the girl, a dispute has arisen between the girl's maternal relatives, who agreed to the adoption, and a man who says he is the father and wants to care for the girl himself, but acknowledged he had never seen Mercy. Madonna first traveled to Malawi in 2006 while filming a documentary on its devastating poverty and AIDS crisis. In addition to David, the 50-year-old Madonna has two other children: Lourdes, 12, and Rocco, 8. Reports that Madonna would in the next few days visit her charity's projects in Malawi could not be confirmed. More on Madonna
 
FATHERS DAY POLL: Will These Celeb Kids Outshine Their Dads? (PHOTOS) Top
A Hollywood upbringing isn't always a recipe for professional success, but these celebrity dads have managed to raise kids who are famous in their own right. Who will go down in history as the bigger star? Take a look at the photos and cast your vote. The closer to 10 a father/child scores, the more you think the kid will end up more famous. PHOTOS: More on Photo Galleries
 
Andy Plesser: Twitter Emerging as Distributed News Source: High Number of Retweets of Iran News, Report Top
Tweets from within Iran are gettting retweeted as much as 300 times, according to a review of retweets of tweets coming out of Iran, according to an analysis done today by Simon Owens . It is quite interesting to see how the retweets have emerged as sort of distributed news source. Many of them, it appears, have been retweeted by users outside of Iran. It almost seems as a peer-to-peer news service. Last month at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference in California, I interviewed Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams on the role of Twitter as a news entity. It has surely grown in impact during this historic moment. You can find this post up on Beet.TV More on Twitter
 
Oprah The Best Boss Ever? Host Taking Entire Staff, Families On Mediterranean Cruise Top
Oprah Winfrey : the world's greatest boss? For the second time in recent years, she's making a strong case for that title by taking her entire staff and their families on vacation. This time they're going on a lavish Mediterranean cruise. More on Oprah
 
Federal Government Spends Half A Million Dollars For Study On Why Men Hate Condoms Top
The federal government has spent nearly half a million dollars to fund a study to find out why some men would prefer not to wear condoms during sex. More on Health
 
Jarvis Coffin: Conde Nast research tells us something we know, and something we ought to know Top
MediaPost reported on a study by Conde Nast and McPheters & Co. documenting that ads running on web sites with related content were 61% more likely to be recalled than ads running on web sites with unrelated content. This is not especially news, but it is always welcome news among publishers, on and offline, who invest considerable time and energy creating quality content for their audiences. There was an interesting twist at the end of its report about the Conde Nast study, however, that MediaPost may have felt obliged to insert in the spirit of full-disclosure. I should do likewise. It's truthfully more interesting (and bigger) than the news that the right message in the right place produces better results, which has been shown to be true since, maybe, 1517 when Martin Luther tacked his 95 Theses on the door of a church instead of a tavern. (One wonders if the Protestant Reformation would have got off the ground quite as well if patrons passing through the door were headed in for a drink instead of spiritual reflection.) According to MediaPost, a Conde Nast study from earlier in the year (April, as I learned) revealed this about online advertising generally versus offline: "According to data released earlier in the year by Condé Nast and McPheters & Co., nearly two-thirds -- 63% -- of banner ads were not seen by Web users. Respondents' eyes "passed over" 37% of the Internet ads and "stopped" on slightly less than a third, McPheters found. In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled, according to the research. Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value." I missed that story last time. It is clearly - sadly- the most newsworthy piece in the context of Conde Nast's research. And, rats, if you sell online advertising. One assumes Conde Nast went to market with partners McPheters & Co. (and CBS Vision) to bring back answers in defense of print and afterwards went back to the well for news to support their digital team. Well, they got it: Content matters. Thanks. Very interesting. Frankly, however, I'm inclined to want to pay careful attention to those results reported again at the end of today's story. I suspect they may be more right than wrong in regard to Internet advertising, the distribution of which has appeared - and continues to appear - largely indiscriminate despite improved targeting features. Most of those features are late to the game and still devoid of consumer partnership - meaning, consumers don't get that the messages may be targeted usefully towards them; they just see the same @$%! advertising everywhere and have conditioned themselves to ignore it. The "content matters" question, therefore, is quite possibly more important than what it has been shown again to contribute to advertising that relies upon it. In the negative sense, advertising (and marketing) that does not offer proper context to its targets and customers may be cheating the advertising body politic as a whole. Interesting. This may be an acute side-effect of an Internet pumped-up on data hormones; though magazines, most of which are specialized, might also be vulnerable if they were to suddenly start mainlining data. Consider a Fortune magazine edition with no business advertising and a Parenting magazine with nothing but business advertising. The effect would probably start to chip away at the 83% value quotient that print enjoys versus the :30 spot. The rational basis for the advertising in both publications might be the consumer, but the consumer's associations are with the media. Eliminate the associations and advertising stops being break-through in the way that data can enhance break-through. It simply breaks. It stops making sense. Conde Nast's research is telling us something we know. More importantly, it is telling us something we ought to know and perhaps do something about (quick). More on Conde Nast
 
Cynthia Boaz: It's People Power, not "Democratic Diddling" in Iran Top
"I suppose that human beings looking at it would say that arms are the most dangerous things that a dictator, a tyrant needs to fear. But in fact, no - it is when people decide they want to be free. Once they have made up their minds to that, there is nothing that will stop them." -- Desmond Tutu Over the past several days, a very worrisome trend has emerged in the commentary about the uprising in Iran. Several observers- understandably wary of a possible US role in any unexpected activities abroad- have been making the case that the Iranian election uprising is not homegrown, but rather the result of US intervention in the form of a "soft coup." Not to put too fine a point on it, but that insinuation is patently insulting to the millions of people who are, at this moment, risking their lives in what could become the biggest game-changer in Iran in decades. The regime itself recognizes this, and each time it escalates the repression, it betrays its loss of legitimacy and galvanizes the pro-democracy activists just that much more. Ivan Marovic, a veteran from the Otpor movement which helped to bring down Milosevic in Serbia in 2000 compares this dynamic to Newton's 3rd law: "Every time they [the oppressor] increase the level of repression, the resistance goes up as well." But none of this would be possible if the Iranian regime had not already lost its legitimacy from the inside- something that nearly a decade of neoconservative Bush-Cheney "democracy promotion" was unable to accomplish. In fact, it is safe to say that the displays of people power we've been witnessing on the streets of Iran over the last week are despite, not because of, American propaganda. Although every mass nonviolent struggle is unique in its own way, there are a few requirements for success, and it appears that the Iranian pro-democracy movements have met each of these. The first is indigenousness. No mass nonviolent struggle can succeed unless it comes from the people. There is a very simple reason: the level of risk and commitment required to carry out a struggle of this magnitude can only be accessed when a person feels ownership over the outcome; when they understand that it is up to them to withdraw their complicity in oppression, and that their actions will inspire others to do so as well. Think for a moment - if you can imagine- about what would mobilize you to leave your home under conditions like the ones we now see in Tehran, go to the streets, and stay there, despite a very real risk of violence. Would you do it for a few dollars, a cell phone, or at the behest of an imperial power? There is absolutely no reason for any Iranian who genuinely does not feel a stake in this struggle to be on those streets. The second is nonviolent discipline. Despite the regime's pathetic claims to the contrary, the actions on the part of the pro-democracy movement in Iran have thus far been nonviolent. This is critical for a couple of reasons: one, the use of violence by a movement undermines its legitimacy as a genuine source of alternative power, and two, violence on the part of the movement creates the pretext for the regime to respond violently itself. As it stands, the use of violent repression by the regime against scores of nonviolent protesters continues to whittle away at the last shreds of the regime's legitimacy, especially as the world watches via Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The movement seems to understand-- as pointed out by Desmond Tutu in the quote above-- that they have more to fear from strict adherence to nonviolent tactics by the movement than any use of weapons. The third requirement for nonviolent success is strategy. Although most media have been covering the events in Iran as spontaneous, the reality is that the movements there have been preparing for this opportunity for several years. The creativity of actions, continuous implementation of tactics, and skillful use of digital media in communicating to people both inside and outside of the country all indicate that the uprising in Iran is not ad hoc . And despite what advocates of "soft coup" conspiracy theories might argue, the indigenousness requirement extends to strategizing. It is Iranians alone who understand their political and cultural setting well enough to create an effective movement with messages that fit into the pre-existing civil society. Finally, in order for a movement to sustain the momentum we've seen over the past week, there must be a genuine will to resist. What is missing from media coverage, and frankly, from Western attitudes, about the events in Iran, is a recognition of the political energy and dynamism that characterizes the movement . Is the cynicism the result of years of the neoconservative agenda of democracy promotion- a concept that has very little to do with actual democracy? Or is it a general uneasiness with anything that does not fit neatly into our preconceived notions of what people power is supposed to look like? While no one else but the Iranian people can bring this struggle to fruition, we observers- especially in the West- should think carefully about the degree to which we are willing to undermine what may turn out to be the most significant show of grassroots people power in decades. More on Middle East
 
210 Census Will Count Same-Sex Couples In Reversal Of Bush Policy Top
SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. Census Bureau officials said Friday that married same-sex couples will be counted as such in the 2010 national tally, reversing an earlier decision made under the Bush administration. Steve Jost, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said officials already were identifying the technical changes needed to ensure the reliability of the information, but remained committed to providing an accurate tally of gay spouses. "They will be counted, and they ought to report the way they see themselves," Jost said. "In the normal process of reports coming out after the census of 2010, I think the country will have a good data set on which to discuss this phenomenon that is evolving in this country." Same-sex couples could not get married anywhere in the United States during the last decennial count. But last summer, when two states sanctioned gay unions, the bureau said those legal marriages would go uncounted because the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevented the federal government from recognizing them. Since President Barack Obama took office, his administration has been under pressure from gay rights activists to take a fresh look at the issue. The White House on Friday announced that its interpretation of the act, known as DOMA, did not prohibit gathering the information. Gay marriage is now legal in six states, although the first weddings have not yet commenced in three of them. "The president and the administration are committed to a fair and accurate count of all Americans," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "We're in the midst of determining the best way to ensure that gay and lesbian couples are accurately counted." Enumerating married gay couples will not require any immediate changes in the census forms, which includes boxes for the genders of people living in a household and their self-reported relationships as "husband," "wife" or "unmarried partner," according to Jost. "This is about folks' identity," Jost said. "We are experienced in dealing with changing social phenomena and how to measure and report that, and we want to get it right." Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called the policy change a significant step. "The census, I like to say, is on its face about numbers. But what the census is really about is telling the story of our country," said Carey, whose group has been among those lobbying the White House. "Many people, including people in the administration, are realizing just how important it is to make sure that (lesbian and gay) Americans are not rendered invisible." Gary Gates, a demographer based at the University of California, Los Angeles who has been working with the bureau on the issue, said producing a reliable count of same-sex married couples is a doable, but complicated task. One issue is that some same-sex couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships already identified themselves as husbands or wives, both in the 2000 census and in the annual American Community Survey that the bureau produces each year. So the bureau needs to figure out a way either to separate those couples from legally married couples in the next census, or to create a new designation to capture both groups. "Thirty percent of same-sex couples in the year 2000 used the term 'husband' or 'wife,' and none of them were married," Gates said. "Granted, now we think maybe there are 35,000 who are legally married, but they are finding 10 times as many using that term." More on Gay Marriage
 
Scott Malcomson: Ekaterinburg: Epicenter of World Politics? Top
I'm as gripped as anyone by the Iran drama, but I can't think of anything significant to add. There's been such excellent bloggregation going on: my colleague and pal Rob Mackey, for example, has been outdoing himself at The Lede , and CFR has been doing excellent work. (CFR's Friday interview with Karim Sadjadpour offered KS's characteristically smart and judicious take on Khamenei; it made a good companion to this week's Iran blogging by another old friend, Laura Secor, at The New Yorker .) But enough breaking news and "old friend" stuff. It was also a big week for my favorite themes: currency imbalances and the new multilateralism. As usual, they are related. Along with a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (the emerging anti-NATO), Russia hosted the first-ever summit of the BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India and China -- in Yekaterinburg, which President Medvedev described as "the epicenter of world politics." It wasn't covered much little in the American press, and then often as a pendant to the story of a brief meeting, on the sidelines of the summits, between President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and his recently re-elected Indian counterpart, PM Manhmohan Singh. It was their first powwow since the Mumbai bombing, and not insignificant. Still, we have to remember that one of the reasons groups like the BRICs and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization come into existence - one of the reasons, indeed, why so many large and medium-sized countries continue to both advocate and undermine reform of the more global institutions like the UN and Bretton Woods bodies - is precisely the lack of attention and respect paid to them by the West and Japan. Teating the summits as footnotes to a handshake between Zardari and Singh is one more instance of this lack of respect. The Financial Times's editorialists at least recognized the significance of the Yekaterinburg meetings, even while taking the opportunity to make fun of Medvedev. Two steps forward, one step back... and the FT (with its weekly cousin, The Economist) is by far the most interested of the Anglophone opinion-makers in the new multilateralism. In fairness, it is hard to judge just how significant these meetings are. Consider the key question of currency imbalances. Since late last year, as readers of this blog will know, the biggest macroeconomic story of our era - the China-US, or dollar-renminbi, relationship -- has expressed itself through the debate over how to reduce the dollar's role as the global reserve currency of choice. The lead voice in this debate has been China's, with Russia and Brazil (the latter with better manners) playing strong supporting roles. Yet the statements from these players in the past ten days or so have been less than crystal clear. Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, said days before the summit that it was "too early to speak of an alternative" to the dollar, which he described (sort of) as in "good shape"; whereas Medvedev said before the Yekaterinburg summit that the dollar is not "in a spectacular position, let's be frank," and followed up at the summit with remarks on the need for creation of new reserve currencies. China, meanwhile, whose officials have been in the intellectual vanguard on this issue, stayed rather silent at Yekaterinburg. So it is hard to argue that the Yekaterinburg meetings, taken all in all, advanced the debate at all. Nonetheless, the issue was being aired, and part of Chinese politesse seems to involve not stealing the podium from summit hosts. Besides, I also suspect that Geithner's China meetings the other day involved reminding Beijing that attacks on the dollar do China no favors in Congress, which happened to be debating, simultaneous with the Yekaterinburg talks, whether to pass a huge military spending bill that included $5 billion for the IMF, as promised by the White House at the last Group of 20 summit, in London. That bill was a tough sell, and the White House spent a lot of political capital to muscle it through over very strong Republican opposition - an opposition that was tightly connected to Republican dislike of Obama's pro-IMF, and indeed pro-multilateralist, policies. That bill finally cleared both houses of Congress by Friday, rescuing, for now, the Obama administration's political credibility on the multilateral front. A certain geopolitical pudeur, then, if my analysis is correct, was in order at Yekaterinburg, and it is exactly what was exercised. This is not an indication of the insignificance of the Yekaterinburg meeting but rather of the careful good sense of some of the major players there. Put differently, it showed their seriousness in moving ahead, step by step, with the displacement of the dollar. The connections are there to be made. Certainly the IMF side of the story is developing apace - and, of course, it is closely related, both in terms of calls for greater IMF "surveillance" of American policies and with regard to debates on expanding the use of IMF Special Drawing Rights on the basis of more currencies than just the current "basket" of the dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen. Both the UK's indestructible political maestro Peter Mandelson (in the WSJ) and the IMF's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard , chose the moment to write at some length on the IMF. But neither had very much at all to say about Yekaterinburg. That is itself telling, and disappointing. * * * * * All right, I do have one little thing to say about Iran, and it is again on the theme of lack of attention and respect. It is entirely possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election, or at least a very significant proportion of the vote. What struck me most about the Iranian government's swift announcement of his victory was that it showed such a lack of calm restraint. They couldn't wait! This may well indicate some fear or insecurity on Tehran's part. But it also communicated arrogance. I think it was hard for many Iranians not to take it as a slap in the face - an indication that the regime does not respect some very sizable portion of the Iranian people. In Iran as in Yekaterinburg and elsewhere in world politics, respect matters, and a failure to show it has consequences. More on Iranian Election
 
NY Times/CBS News Poll: Wide Support For Government-Run Option Competing With Private Insurers Top
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. More on Health
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)