President Tony Tan hosts reception for 2013 Special Olympics team

SINGAPORE: Singapore's Special Olympians had a special reception at the Istana on Saturday.

President Tony Tan Keng Yam and his wife hosted the athletes, officials and coaches who represented the nation at the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in Pyeongchang, South Korea last month.

The athletes were invited to the Istana, after bringing home an unprecedented eight medals. Four of them were gold medals.

The medals were won in the short track speed skating category.

The skaters and the floor hockey team were introduced to the president, who paid tribute to the athletes.

President Tan said: "Not only was this an achievement, the team which we sent also won the first medals for Singapore at an international skating competition. Our athletes in this Special Olympics Winter Games, have, I believe, indeed been very brave and very courageous. They flew the Singapore flag high at the Special Olympics World Winter Games, and they were an inspiration to many Singaporeans."

- CNA/xq

Read More..

Why teens are tiring of Facebook

To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadways, just watch them on their smartphones. Their world revolves around Instagram, the application adults mistook for an elevated photography service, and other apps decidely less old-fashioned than Mark Zuckerberg's main kingdom.

And therein lies one of Facebook's biggest challenges: With more than 1 billion users worldwide and an unstated mission to make more money, Facebook has become a social network that's often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom or release they crave.

For tweens and teens, Instagram -- and, more recently, SnapChat, an app for sending photos and videos that appear and then disappear -- is the opposite of Facebook: simple, seemingly secret, and fun. Around schools, kids treat these apps like pot, enjoyed in low-lit corners, and all for the undeniable pleasure and temporary fulfillment of feeling cool. Facebook, meanwhile, with its Harvard dormroom roots, now finds itself scrambling to keep up with the tastes of the youngest trendsetters -- even as it has a foothold on millions of them since it now owns Instagram.

Asked about the issue, a Facebook spokesperson would only say, "We are gratified that more than 1 billion people, including many young people, are using Facebook, to connect and share."

The data doesn't exist to slap a value on Facebook's teen problem. But we know -- from observing teens, talking to parents and analysts, and from a few company statements -- that age doesn't become Facebook with this group.

In recent weeks, Facebook has told us twice about its teen-appeal problem. When it filed its annual report, it warned investors for the first time that younger users are turning to other services, particularly Instagram, as a substitute for Facebook.

Then, earlier this week, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman admitted that Instagram, an application he described as popular among the "younger generation," is a "formidable competitor" to Facebook. Which seems odd until you realize that the profit-hungry Facebook isn't yet making a dime from Instagram.

"What we do know is that Instagram is already a very popular service that continues to grow rapidly, and we believe, based on the information that we have, that it's quite popular among these kinds of users that you're asking about, the younger generation. It is very important for Facebook to build products that are useful to those users, and to build products that they feel comfortable ... they can have a good experience with. Definitely high on the list of priorities for us."

The under-13 tween crowd, including one CNET editor's daughter, technically isn't allowed to use the application, as dictated by the terms of service and a federal restriction (although the law is changing this July in ways that will make it easier for kids to join). Yet kids found Instagram anyway, largely because their parents wouldn't let them join Facebook, argues Altimeter Group principal analyst Brian Solis. Teens 13 and up joined Instagram, he said, because Facebook became "too great" a social network where they're now connected to their grandparents.

Isn't it ironic, as Alanis Morissete would say, that Facebook, the one-time underground drug of choice for college kids is now so readily available and acceptable that we all do it in broad daylight, and worse, at work? Sure, a 12-year-old skateboarder can derive some value from Facebook, but in the whitewashed kind of way that the rest of us use LinkedIn.

"We take pictures of food and landscapes," Solis said, "but teenagers use [Instagram] to share pictures of themselves ... the more you share, the greater the reaction, and the more you push outside comfort zones, the more people react."

A teen's Instagram account.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Michelle Meyers/CNET)

Tweens and teens are addicted to the idea of eliciting more reactions in the form of likes, followers, and comments, he said. They employ like-for-like photo tactics, use a myriad of hashtags to get their pictures in front of more users, and promote their desire for additional followers in their profiles.

Ascertaining the extent of Instagram's popularity with teens is particularly tricky -- until you talk to them. And some data on the phenomena does exist. Nielsen, one of the few companies to measure teens' online behavior, can only track web usage for this youngest demographic. The analytics firm told me that Instagram was the top photography website among U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 with 1.3 million teens visiting the website during December 2012. By the analytics firm's count, roughly one in 10 online teens in the U.S. visited Instagram in their browser during the month.

Anecdotally, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Instagram as the preferred social network of tweens and teens. A personal relationship provided me with a direct lens to view how two teenage boys used the application in their everyday lives. I also chatted with other kids, some the children of friends, and others I found through friends of friends.

Beth Blecherman's 14-year-old son, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, downloaded Instagram when he was 13 because all of his friends were using it as their social network. Marisa, a 16-year-old girl who attends Cathedral City High School in southern California, has been using Instagram for more than a year. She said that a majority of her high school friends are using the application. And a San Diego friend's 12-year-old son is so hooked on the application that he was in tears when his account was temporarily suspended earlier this year.

"Teens recognized Instagram as a social network before anyone else," Solis said. "Everyone else treated it as a camera app."

At the same time, Instagram could disappear from teen consciousness just as easily at it arrived. Remember: Instagram was only 17 months old when Zuckerberg bought it in the weeks prior to Facebook's IPO last May. Parents are starting to understand that their kids haven't developed a fascination with the application to share artistic photos of landscapes and architecture. All of the teens I spoke to have watchful parents who keep an observant eye on their Instagram accounts.

Teens searching for a cyber hangout to call their own Adam McLane, a former youth pastor who hosts educational social media seminars for parents of teens in San Diego, told me that his sessions are dominated by talk of Instagram, with frenzied parents fearful that their innocent young ones are participating in unsavory activities such as bullying or posting inappropriate photos.

This Snapchat message will self-destruct in seven seconds.

(Credit:
Snapchat)

The parent factor alone could send kids fleeing to other applications such as Snapchat, Pheed, and Tumblr, all of which appear to have strong teen followings. Investors are betting on Snapchat in particular, which sends more than 60 million short-lived messages daily, because they don't want to miss out on the next Facebook.

"Teens are looking for a place they can call their own," Danah Boyd, a senior researcher that studies how young people use social media for Microsoft, told me. "Rather than all flocking en masse to a different site, they're fragmenting across apps and engaging with their friends using a wide array of different tools. ... A new one pops up each week. What's exciting to me is that I'm seeing teenagers experiment."

This experimental nature puts Facebook in the tricky position of reacting to the whims of transitory teens. Take Facebook's impromptu release of Poke, a mobile phone application, modeled after Snapchat, for sending messages that self-destruct moments later. The company's most reactionary move, however, was its surprise purchase of Instagram, an impulse buy that ultimately cost about $715 million.

Now that Instagram has more than 100 million active users, Facebook's impulsive pickup looks like a smart one. But the dangerous reality is that Facebook is bleeding attention to an application with no advertising model, nor does the social network even understand how Instagram ties in with its own applications.

Facebook doesn't know what teens want. Ebersman said as much, albeit in less direct terms:

"Facebook is a very young company in terms of the age of our employees, and I am hopeful that continues to be an asset for us in terms of having our finger on the pulse of what matters to that particular constituency of users and how we can provide products to satisfy them."

Put that way, Facebook's saving grace might be that its employees are also tiring of Facebook.

Read More..

Boehner: No reason to block Keystone XL pipeline

WASHINGTON A new State Department report is the latest evidence that the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be approved, supporters say.

The draft report, issued Friday, finds there would be no significant environmental impact to most resources along the proposed route from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The report also said other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries are worse for climate change.

The new report "again makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. After four years of what he called "needless delays," Boehner said it is time for President Barack Obama "to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline."

Environmentalists see the State Department report in a vastly different light.

They say it was inadequate and failed to account for climate risks posed by the pipeline. The report also is based on a false premise, opponents say -- namely, that tar sands in western Canada will be developed for oil production regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is approved.

"Americans are already suffering from the consequences of global warming, from more powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy to drought conditions currently devastating the Midwest and Southwest," said Daniel Gatti of the group Environment America. Production of oil from Canadian tar sands could add as much as 240 billion metric tons of global warming pollution to the atmosphere, Gatti said, a potential catastrophe that would hasten the arrival of the worst effects of global warming.

Gatti and other opponents said development of the vast tar sands is far from certain, despite assurances by the project's supporters.

"Tar sands can be stopped, and we are stopping it," Gatti said, citing a rally in Washington last month attended by an estimated 35,000 people. Project opponents also have blocked construction in Texas and Oklahoma and have been arrested outside the White House gate.

The pipeline plan has become a flashpoint in the U.S. debate over climate change. Republicans and business and labor groups have urged the Obama administration to approve the project as a source of jobs and a step toward North American energy independence. Environmental groups have been pressuring the president to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry "dirty oil" that contributes to global warming. They also worry about a spill.

The State Department review stopped short of recommending approval of the project, but it gave the Obama administration political cover if it chooses to endorse the pipeline in the face of opposition from many Democrats and environmental groups. State Department approval of the 1,700-mile pipeline is needed because it crosses a U.S. border.

The lengthy report says Canadian tar sands are likely to be developed, regardless of whether the U.S. approves the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The report acknowledges that development of tar sands in Alberta would create greenhouse gases but makes clear that other methods of transporting the oil -- including rail, trucks and barges -- also pose a risk to the environment.

The State Department analysis for the first time evaluated two options using rail: shipping the oil on trains to existing pipelines or to oil tankers. The report shows that those other methods would release more greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming than the pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline, according to the report, would release annually the same amount of global warming pollution as 626,000 passenger cars.

A scenario that would move the oil on trains to mostly existing pipelines would release 8 percent more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide than Keystone XL. That scenario would not require State Department approval because any new pipelines would not cross the U.S border.

Another alternative that relies mostly on rail to move the oil to the Canadian west coast, where it would be loaded onto oil tankers to the U.S. Gulf Coast, would result in 17 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, the report said.

In both alternatives, the oil would be shipped in rail cars as bitumen, a thick, tar-like substance, rather than as a liquid.

The State Department was required to conduct a new environmental analysis after the pipeline's operator, Calgary-based TransCanada, changed the project's route though Nebraska. The Obama administration blocked the project last year because of concerns that the original route would have jeopardized environmentally sensitive land in the Sand Hills region.

The administration later approved a southern section of the pipeline, from Cushing, Okla., to the Texas coast, as part of what Obama has called an "all of the above" energy policy that embraces a wide range of sources, from oil and gas to renewables such as wind and solar.

The draft report issued Friday begins a 45-day comment period, after which the State Department will issue a final environmental report before Secretary of State John Kerry makes a recommendation about whether the pipeline is in the national interest.

Kerry has promised a "fair and transparent" review of the plan and said he hopes to decide on the project in the "near term." Most observers do not expect a decision until summer at the earliest.

Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said Friday that Canada will respect the U.S. review process and noted the importance of the pipeline to the Canadian economy.

Obama's initial rejection of the pipeline last year went over badly in Canada, which relies on the United States for 97 percent of its energy exports.

Read More..

Sequester: What Will Happen, What Won't Happen

When it comes to critical elements of the sequester timeline, not much is known -- because federal agencies have been tight lipped.

Asked when specific effects will be felt, officials at three federal departments declined to discuss the timing of sequester cuts and their consequences. Some departments were waiting for President Obama's Friday night sequester order and subsequent guidance they expected to receive from the Office of Management and Budget before talking about what would and wouldn't happen and when.

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

"There's no calendar of dates for specific actions or cuts on specific dates," Department of Health and Human Services public affairs officer Bill Hall told ABC News. "Again, these cuts need to be applied equally across all agency programs, activities and projects. There will be wide variation on when impacts will occur depending on a given program."

Some cuts won't be felt for a while because they have to do with government layoffs, which require 30 days notice, in most cases.

For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration won't begin layoffs until at least April 7, one FAA official estimated.

But some cuts don't involve furloughs, and could conceivably be felt immediately.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the timeline of layoffs to cybersecurity contractors and first responders funded through states, as well as limited Coast Guard operations and cuts to FEMA disaster relief.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it could not comment on cuts to housing vouchers, rent assistance for AIDS patients, maintenance for housing projects.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to discuss the specific timing of cuts to Head Start services, low-income mental-health services, AIDS/HIV testing, and inpatient substance-abuse treatment.

Read More: Automatic Cuts Could Hurt on Local Level

So even as the sequester hits, we still don't know when some of its worst effects will be felt.

Here's what we do know:

What Will Happen Saturday

      Air Force Training. At a briefing Friday, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned that "effective immediately, Air Force flying hours will be cut back."

More from Carter, via ABC News' Luis Martinez: "What does that mean for national security? What it means is that as the year goes on, apart from Afghanistan, apart from nuclear deterrence through two missions we are strictly protecting, the readiness of the other units to respond to other contingencies will gradually decline. That's not safe. And that we're trying to minimize that in every way we possibly can."

      Closed Doors at the Capitol. ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports that Capitol Police issued a memo announcing it would have to close some entrances to the Capitol, writing: "At this time it is anticipated that the U.S. Capitol Police will be required to close some entrance doors and exterior checkpoints, and either suspend or modify the hours of operation for some of the U.S. Capitol Complex posts located inside and outside of the CVC and Office Buildings."

      Capitol Janitor Furloughs. After President Obama warned that janitors at the Capitol will be furloughed, ABC News' Sunlen Miller reported that was not entirely true: The Senate sergeant at arms, Terrance Gainer, told ABC News that no full-time salaried Capitol Police officers would face furloughs or layoffs at this time. They will, however, see a "substantial reduction in overtime," Gainer told ABC News.

      Delayed Deployment for USS Truman Aircraft Carrier. This has already happened, the Associated Press reported Friday morning: "One of the Navy's premiere warships, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, sits pier-side in Norfolk, Va., its tour of duty delayed. The carrier and its 5,000-person crew were to leave for the Persian Gulf on Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg."

Read More..

Kerry to stress need for Egypt consensus for IMF deal

CAIRO (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry will stress the importance Egypt achieves political consensus for painful economic reforms needed to secure an IMF loan, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

Kerry arrived in Egypt on his first visit to the Arab world since taking office for talks with the leaders of a country mired in political and economic crisis two years after the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

With Egypt's pound and foreign currency reserves sliding, the official said that if Cairo could agree on a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF, this would bring in other funds from the United States, European Union and Arab countries.

However, the official said the United States believed Egypt needed to increase tax revenues and reduce energy subsidies - measures likely to prove highly unpopular.

"His basic message is it's very important to the new Egypt for there to be a firm economic foundation," the official told reporters as Kerry flew to Cairo.

"In order for there to be agreement on doing the kinds of economic reforms that would be required under an IMF deal there has to be a basic political ... agreement among all of the various players in Egypt," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Egypt said on Thursday it would invite a team from the International Monetary Fund to reopen talks on the loan and the investment minister expressed hope that a deal could be done by the end of April.

The loan was agreed in principle last November but put on hold at Cairo's request during street violence the following month that flared in protest at a planned rise in taxes.

While the tax rise was withdrawn, Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is likely to face violent protests as any cuts in subsidies demanded by the IMF will push up living costs in a country where poverty is rife.

Energy subsidies soak up about 20 percent of the government budget, bloating a deficit set to soar to 12.3 percent of annual economic output this financial year.

CLASHES IN MANSOURA, PORT SAID

Early on Saturday, young protesters fought interior ministry police in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, where one protester was killed and dozens injured. In the Suez Canal city of Port Said, protesters torched a police station, security sources said.

While the protests were unrelated to Kerry's visit, they were examples of the frequent outbreaks of unrest faced by Egypt's government.

Clashes are commonplace, with young people and Egyptians demanding Mursi reform the interior ministry's police force. The president is accused of not taking police reform, a key demand of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, seriously.

Kerry will stress the need for agreement across the political spectrum on reforms and winning approval in the Shura Council, Egypt's upper house of parliament.

"What they need to do is ... things like increasing tax revenues, reducing energy subsidies, making clear what the approval process will be to the Shura Council for an IMF agreement, that kind of thing," said the official.

Hopes for consensus between the ruling Islamists and opposition parties seem slim. Liberal and leftist opposition parties have announced a boycott of parliamentary elections, scheduled for April to June, over a new constitution produced by an Islamist-dominated assembly and other grievances.

Kerry meets opposition leaders on Saturday but many senior figures were not on the list of expected participants, including Hamdeen Sabahy, who came a close third in presidential elections last year and former U.N. nuclear agency head Mohamed ElBaradei.

Kerry does not wish to be seen as lecturing Egyptians and will not explicitly tell opposition parties to renounce their boycott of the lower house polls, the U.S. official said.

However, he will make the case for them to take part.

"If they want to ensure that their views are taken account, the only way to do that is to participate. That they can't sit aside and just assume that somehow by magic that all of this is going to happen," the official said. "They've got to participate."

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Jason Webb)

Read More..

Canada's Q4 GDP flat, growth at 1.8% for 2012

OTTAWA: Canada's economy grew 1.8 percent last year, a bit less than the central bank's forecast and down from 2.6 percent in 2011, the government statistics agency said on Friday.

Gross domestic product in the fourth quarter was up 0.2 percent, similar to the previous quarter's gains, as mining and oil and gas extraction was up and manufacturing recorded a significant decrease.

The arts and entertainment sector, transportation and warehousing as well as wholesale trade also declined while construction, the public sector, utilities and the finance and insurance sector increased in the last three months of 2012.

Household spending was up.

Business investment on machinery and equipment continued to be weak, with fewer purchases of heavy trucks and buses, and more aircraft and computer outlays. Following 12 months of anaemic government spending, it ticked up slightly in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Business inventories were "sharply lower" in the fourth quarter, said Statistics Canada. Manufacturers' and wholesalers' inventories were down while retailers' inventories rose.

Imports were down, and exports edged up. Disposable income inched up, but Canadians saved less.

- AFP/al

Read More..

Google's European conundrum: When does privacy mean censorship?

Google's New York City headquarters.

(Credit:
Zack Whittaker/CNET)

How Google and other American Internet companies operate in Europe could come down to a link that, depending on what side of the Atlantic Ocean you're on, should or should not be deleted.

A case heard Tuesday before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) hinges on a complaint submitted by a Spanish citizen who searched Google for his name and found a news article from several years earlier, saying his property would be auctioned because of failed payments to his social security contributions.

Spanish authorities argued that Google, other search engines, and other Web companies operating in Spain should remove information such as that if it is believed to be a breach of an individual's privacy. Google, however, believes that it should not have to delete search results from its index because the company didn't create it in the first place. Google argued that it is the publisher's responsibility and that its search engine is merely a channel for others' content.

The ECJ's advocate-general will publish its opinion on the case on June 25, with a judgment expected by the end of the year. The outcome of the hearing will affect not only Spain but also all of the 27 member states of the European Union.

In principle, this fight is about freedom of speech versus privacy, with a hearty dash of allegations of censorship mixed in. In reality, this could be one of the greatest changes to EU privacy rules in decades -- by either strengthening the rules or negating them altogether.

The European view is simple: If you're at our party, you have to play by our rules. And in Europe, the "right to be forgotten" is an important one.

"Facebook and Google argue they are not subject to EU law as they are physically established outside the EU," a European Commission spokesperson told CNET. In new draft privacy law proposals, the message is, "as long as a company offers its goods or services to consumers on the EU territory, EU law must apply."

While Europe has some of the strongest data protection and privacy laws in the world, the U.S. doesn't. And while the U.S. has some of the strongest free speech and expression laws in the world, enshrined by a codified constitution, most European countries do not, instead favoring "fair speech" principles.

Google is also facing another legal twist: Spanish authorities are treating it like a media organization without offering it the full legal protection of one.

The European view is simple: If you're at our party, you have to play by our rules. And in Europe, the "right to be forgotten" is an important one.

Newspapers should be exempt from individual takedown requests to preserve freedom of speech, according to Spanish authorities, but Google should not enjoy the same liberties, despite having no editorial control and despite search results being determined by algorithms. Though Google is branded a "publisher" like newspapers, the search giant does not hold media-like protection from takedowns under the country's libel laws. This does not translate across all of Europe, however. Some European member states target newspapers directly and are held accountable through press regulatory authorities in a bid to balance freedom of speech and libel laws.

One of Spain's highest courts, the Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos (AEPD), found in favor of the complainant in early 2011 and ruled that Google should delete the search result. This case is one of around 180 other ongoing cases in the country.

Google appealed the decision and the case was referred to the highest court in Europe, the ECJ, which will eventually determine if the search giant is the "controller" of the data or whether it is merely a host of the data.

The case will also decide on whether U.S.-based companies are subject to EU privacy law, which may mean EU citizens' have to take their privacy cases to U.S. courts to determine whether Google is responsible for the damage caused by the "diffusion of personal information."

In a blog post on Tuesday, Bill Echikson, Google's "head of free expression," said the search giant "declined to comply" with a request by Spanish data protection authorities, as the search listing "includes factually correct information that is still publicly available on the newspaper's Web site."

"There are clear societal reasons why this kind of information should be publicly available. People shouldn't be prevented from learning that a politician was convicted of taking a bribe, or that a doctor was convicted of malpractice," Echikson noted.

"We believe the answer to that question is 'no'. Search engines point to information that is published online - and in this case to information that had to be made public, by law. In our view, only the original publisher can take the decision to remove such content. Once removed from the source webpage, content will disappear from a search engine's index."

EU's latest privacy proposal: The 'right to be forgotten'
Should the ECJ finds in favor of the Spanish complainant, it will see the biggest shakeup to EU privacy rules in close to two decades and would enable European citizens a "right to be forgotten."

In January 2011, the European Commission lifted the lid on draft proposals for a single one-size-fits-all privacy regulation for its 27 member states. One of the proposals was the "right to be forgotten," empowering every European resident the right to force Web companies as well as offline firms to delete or remove their data to preserve their privacy.

The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where the new data and privacy law will be voted on later this year. A vote by the Parliament's Civil Liberties (LIBE) committee in June will determine whether the Commission can push the draft proposals into law.

(Credit:

European Parliament/Flickr)

For Europeans, privacy is a fundamental right to all residents, according to Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, in which it states: "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence." It does however add a crucial exception. "There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except... for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." 

Because U.S.-based technology giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have users and in many cases a physical presence in Europe, they must comply with local laws. The "right to be forgotten" would force Facebook and Twitter to remove any data it had on you, as well as Google removing results from its search engine. It would also extraterritorially affect users worldwide outside the European Union who would also be unable to search for those removed search terms.

Such Web companies have said (and lobbied to that effect) that the "right to be forgotten" should not allow data to be removed or manipulated at the expense of freedom of speech. This, however, does not stop with republished material and other indexed content, and most certainly does not apply to European law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Two continents, separated by 'free' and 'fair speech'
The U.S. and the EU have never seen eye-to-eye on data protection and privacy. For Americans and U.S.-based companies, the belief is that crossover between freedom of speech and privacy overlaps in "a form of censorship," according to Google's lawyers speaking during the Spanish court case.

In the U.S., you can freely say the most appalling words, so long as they don't lead to a crime or violence against a person or a group of people. In European countries such as the U.K. words can lead to instant arrest. Europe's laws allow for "fair speech" in order to prevent harassment, fear of violence, or even alarm and distress. It's a dance between the American tradition of protecting the individual and the European tradition of protecting society.

Google is fundamentally so very American in this regard. That said, Google already filters and censors its own search results at the behest of governments and private industry, albeit openly and transparently. Google will agree to delete links that violate copyrights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which seeks to remove content from Google's search results that may facilitate copyright infringement.

Google also complies, when forced by a court, with numerous types of government requests, not limited to subpoenas, search warrants, and National Security Letters, or so-called 'gagging orders'. It also discloses those requests and when it complies with them. And it's a system not that dissimilar to what it's being asked to do in Europe.

Whose jurisdiction is Google under: U.S., EU, or both?
While Europe's privacy principles apply to the Web, it's unclear whether they apply to data "controllers" established outside of the European Union. But several European court cases have sided with local law. A German court found that Facebook fell under Irish law because the social networking company had a physical presence in Ireland, another EU member state. In Google's case, Spanish authorities are making a similar argument, claiming that Google is processing data in a European state and therefore EU law should apply.

Many American companies have voiced their objections to the proposed EU privacy law, including Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, according to a lobbying watchdog. It could still take a year or two for the law to be ratified.

"Exempting non-EU companies from our data protection regulation is not on the table. It would mean applying double standards," said Europe's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the top politician in Europe on data protection and privacy rules in the region, in an interview with the Financial Times of London.

The new EU Data Protection Regulation, proposed by the European Commission and currently being debated in the European Parliament, will likely be voted on by June.

But this fight isn't as much about censorship as one might think. It's about a cultural difference between two continents and perspectives on what freedom of speech can and should be. It's also about privacy, and whether privacy or free speech is more important.

Read More..

With no pope, cardinals summoned for conclave

VATICAN CITY The Catholic Church has awoken with no pontiff following Benedict XVI's resignation, in which he pledged obedience to his successor and described himself as "simply a pilgrim" starting the final part of his life.

Now begins a period known as the "sede vacante" or "vacant see" — the transition between the end of one papacy and the election of a new pope.

During these few days — no more than 20 — a few key players take charge running the Holy See, guiding the College of Cardinals in their deliberations and organizing the conclave to elect Benedict's successor.

In one of his first official acts as dean, Cardinal Angelo Sodano on Friday officially summoned cardinals to Rome to participate in the conclave, a formality given that most are already here. Sodano sent official "convocation letters" to the cardinals' offices around the world Friday, along with electronic versions via email, summoning them to the Vatican.

And in one of his first official acts as camerlengo, or the chamberlain who actually runs the Holy See in the transition, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sealed Benedict's apartment in the Apostolic Palace on Thursday night. It will not be reopened until a new pope is elected.

Play Video

Pope Benedict XVI officially retires

Play Video

Pope leaving behind unfinished business

With the 8 p.m. Thursday end of Benedict's papacy, every department head in the Vatican lost his job — except for those whose offices are crucial for the smooth running of the transition period itself.

Cardinals on Monday will begin formal meetings to set the date for the conclave and discuss problems facing the church; major topics of discussion are expected to be the report Benedict commissioned into the leaks of sensitive Vatican documents and the dysfunction currently reigning in the Vatican bureaucracy.

The date for the conclave of cardinals to begin their deliberations has not yet been set, although one of Pope Benedict XVI's final acts before resigning his office was to amend the rules governing the election of a successor, allowing the cardinals to meet earlier than the usual 15-day transition between pontificates.

On Thursday, soon after Benedict left the Vatican on his final day as pope, Monsignor Carlo Maria Celli, a papal communications officer, hinted that the date could be March 11. That could not be immediately confirmed.

The date of the conclave's start is important because Holy Week begins March 24, with Easter Sunday March 31. In order to have a new pope in place for the church's most solemn liturgical period, he would need to be installed by Sunday, March 17

"What we talk about ... will be certainly the governance of the church and in that context there may be questions to people who did the report," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George. "I think we will find out a lot from a lot of sources to figure out what is necessary now to govern the church well here in Rome itself."

Read More..

Sequester Set to Trigger Billions in Cuts

Nobody likes the sequester.

Even the word is enough to send shivers of fiscal panic, or sheer political malaise, down the spines of seasoned politicians and news reporters. And today, the sequester will almost certainly happen, a year and a half after its inception amid the stalemate of the debt-limit crisis in 2011.

Automatic budget cuts will be triggered across federal agencies, as President Obama will be required to order sequestration into effect before midnight Friday night. The federal bureaucracy will implement its various plans to save the money it's required to save.

Read more: How Automatic Cuts Could Hurt at the Local Level

Now that the sequester will probably happen, here are some questions and answers about it:

1. HOW BIG IS IT?

The cuts were originally slated for $109 billion this year, but after the fiscal-cliff deal postponed the sequester for two months by finding alternate savings, the sequester will amount to $85 billion over the next 10 months. In 2013, nondefense programs will be cut by nine percent, and defense programs will be cut by 13 percent.

If carried out over 10 years (as designed), the sequester will amount to $1.2 trillion in total.

2. WHAT WILL BE CUT, SPARED?

Most government programs will be cut, with the cuts distributed evenly (by dollar amount) between defense and nondefense programs.

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

Sequestration: Democrats, Republicans Play Blame Game Watch Video

Some vital domestic entitlements, however, will be spared. Social Security checks won't shrink; nor will Veterans Administration programs. Medicare benefits won't get cut, but payments to providers will shrink by two percent. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps, Pell grants, and Medicaid will all be shielded from the sequester.

But lots of things will get cut. The Obama administration has warned that a host of calamities will befall vulnerable segments of the population.

Read more: Sequester May Revive 'Amtrak' Joe Biden

3. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO BAD?

Questions persist over whether or not it really does.

The sequester will mean such awful things because it forces agencies to cut indiscriminately, instead of simply stripping money from their overall budgets.

But some Republicans, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, have suggested that federal agencies have plenty of flexibility to implement these cuts while avoiding the worst of the purported consequences. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama of trying to "distort" the severity of the sequester. The federal government will still spend more money than it did last year, GOP critics of sequester alarmism have pointed out.

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

The White House tells a different story.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the sequestration law forces agency heads to cut the same percentage from each program. If that program is for TSA agents at airports, the sequester law doesn't care, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano can't do anything about it.

Agency heads do have some authority to "reprogram" funds, rearranging their money to circumvent the bad effects. An OMB official told ABC News that "these flexibilities are limited and do not provide significant relief due to the rigid nature of the way in which sequestration is required by law to be implemented."

4. WHEN WILL THE WORST OF IT START?

Not until April -- but some of the cuts could be felt before then.

Read More..

US pledges US$60m for Syria opposition

ROME: The United States on Thursday pledged US$60 million in "non-lethal" assistance for the Syrian political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad as well as the first direct US aid to rebel fighters in the form of food and medical assistance.

"The US will be providing an additional US$60 million in non-lethal assistance to support the efforts of the Syrian opposition coalition over the coming months," US Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks between the 11-nation Friends of Syria and the opposition in Rome.

"We will be sending medical supplies and food to the (rebel) Supreme Military Council, so there will be direct assistance," he added.

"All Syrians... must know that they can have a future," Kerry said.

A State Department official said the US$60 million (49 million euros) in aid would be used to help local councils and communities in liberated areas in Syria, to provide basic goods and services and "fulfil administrative functions including security, sanitation and education services."

The official said the new money was in addition to US$50 million in non-lethal support Washington has already provided to help Syrian opposition activists, including communications equipment.

That aid was provided through Turkey, while the United States has also contributed some US$380 million dollars in humanitarian aid through UN agencies and aid groups.

Asked about congressional approval of the funding, Kerry told journalists he was "very confident for rapid delivery".

He said the goal was to give a boost to the opposition and show Assad that he could not use violence to resolve the conflict.

"This is the beginning of the process that will change (Assad's) calculation."

The announcement of aid came as news broke of a car bomb explosion in a suburb of the flashpoint city of Homs that left "dead and wounded", according to state news agency SANA, which blamed "terrorists" for the blast.

Kerry had earlier met for about an hour with opposition leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib at the 16th-century Villa Madama on a hilltop above Rome.

The Rome talks come two days before an important meeting of the main opposition National Coalition on Saturday in Istanbul, where the umbrella group is to elect a prime minister and government to run parts of Syria seized from Assad's control.

A watchdog reported, meanwhile, that rebels had seized control of the Umayyad Mosque in the second city of Aleppo after days of fierce clashes that damaged the historic building.

Regime troops were forced to withdraw at dawn, taking up positions in buildings around the landmark structure, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part in the Rome talks, as well as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The Syrian opposition -- which initially vowed a boycott -- had been lured back to the meeting after the US and Britain promised specific offers of help.

In Paris on Wednesday, Kerry said he wanted to hear from Khatib about how best to end the violence in Syria, where the United Nations says at least 70,000 have died and hundreds of thousands have been uprooted since the conflict broke out in March 2011.

US media including The New York Times and Washington Post have reported that the "non-lethal" aid to be provided to the opposition could include equipment such as vehicles, communications gear and night-vision goggles.

The New York Times also reported that a US mission training rebels at a base in the region was already under way.

Russia, Assad's most powerful supporter, has kept up pressure for the two sides in the Syrian conflict to sit down for negotiations.

In Moscow, French President Francois Hollande said ahead of a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that a political solution to the Syrian crisis was possible within weeks.

"I think that in the next few weeks we will manage to find a political solution that will stop the conflict from escalating," Hollande told Echo of Moscow radio station in comments translated into Russian.

Hollande stressed Russia's key role as a member of the UN Security Council, where it has vetoed resolutions that would have put pressure on Assad to end hostilities.

"We must finally start the process of political dialogue that has not yet started on the territory of Syria."

"President Putin and I both understand all the seriousness of the situation. And even though our positions at the moment differ, we want to find the best solution for Syria."

- AFP/xq

Read More..