Biggest Soap Opera Wedding, 1981

Biggest Soap Opera Wedding, 1981

The TV Watch

While British Hew to Tradition, Americans Want to Feel the Love

Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

British coverage of the royal wedding emphasized tradition but American broadcasters focused more on the relationship between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Above, a British tourist watches the wedding in Times Square. More Photos »

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: April 29, 2011

The kiss was really not much more than a peck.

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Complete Coverage of the Royal Wedding

• To Fanfare, Prince William and Kate Middleton Marry (April 30, 2011)

• The Lede Blog: The Royal Wedding Coverage (April 28, 2011)

• Media Decoder Blog: Video: Big Appetite for the Royals’ Big Day (April 28, 2011)

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Prince William’s balcony clinch with his bride, Kate Middleton, was so quick and perfunctory that the CBS anchor Katie Couric missed it and asked for an instant replay. And another. “I hate to be ungrateful,” Ms. Couric said Friday morning. “But is that it?”

The “Today” show on NBC, which had rather crassly plastered a kiss countdown clock on the screen, was just as let down and replayed the royal smooch in gauzy slow motion. CNN’s Piers Morgan, who had predicted that the kiss would “go down in history as one of the great kisses,” had to eat crow when the disappointed crowds outside Buckingham Palace demanded a do-over. Mr. Morgan had to eat crow again after he assured his co-hosts, Anderson Cooper and the reality show host Cat Deeley, that Prince William would do no such thing. “You don’t understand the royals,” he said loftily, moments before the royal groom bent down for a second, but still far from ardent try. The BBC, on the other hand, was perfectly satisfied and had no complaints.

And more than anything else, those clashing kiss expectations are what separated British and American coverage of the royal wedding. On BBC America, which carried the live BBC feed, the anchor Huw Edwards emphasized tradition and continuity. American television craves change.

The embrace on the balcony was supposed to be passionate and juicy, a video confirmation of the narrative built into almost all the American coverage, namely that this royal union is a do-over for the one between Prince Charles and Diana Spencer in 1981 that was presented as a gossamer fairy tale and turned out to be a horror story.

This time, according to almost every anchor and commentator, it’s a real love match and this new couple are a much more amorous pair. Their first public embrace, which looked, as the Tudor historian David Starkey put it on CBS, like “an old married couple’s kiss” didn’t fit the scenario, however. For one thing, it wasn’t any more smoldering than the brief kiss Prince Charles gave his bride 30 years ago.

Barbara Walters on ABC supplied a better spin. “But you know they talk to each other, they laugh together, you feel the emotion between them,” she said. “And looking back at Princess Diana and Prince Charles, you did not feel that.”

ABC’s coverage evoked other royal memories as well. The network put Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters side by side in what looked like an anchor-booth version of the old Princess Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles standoff. The two ABC stars co-anchored the event with the flinty smiles and clashing sensibilities of two women sharing the same man, or in this case rival super anchors sharing the same stage at what is sure to be one of the most highly rated ceremonies in television history.

The British public has softened on Ms. Parker-Bowles, Prince Charles’s former mistress, who is now the Duchess of Cornwall and his second wife. On ABC, the body language seemed stiffer.

“It is so great to spend this morning with you,” Ms. Sawyer gushed to Ms. Walters. “Glad we’re doing it together,” Ms. Walters said, more brusquely, before shifting to a solo. “This is the third royal wedding that I have covered, but I think this is the happiest.”

The BBC didn’t presume to look into the hearts of the royal couple. Mostly, Mr. Edwards and his colleagues provided historical background in the soft, deferential tone of commentators at a golf tournament. They didn’t get very excited about the bridal gown or the hats, though the eminent historian Simon Schama did have some thoughts about the wedding décor.

“Those trees in the abbey are of course an echo of gothic vaulting,” Mr. Schama said, noting that they brought to the majesty of Westminster Abbey “a fresh note of dazzling springtime.” (Hiring Mr. Schama as a wedding commentator is a bit like having William F. Buckley cover the red carpet on Oscar night.)

Americans tended to look past the pageantry, tradition and protocol for signs of the newlyweds’ true love — and other differences between this wedding and the other one.

On Fox News, Joan Lunden said she was struck by “watching William come in with his brother, casually walking over to the crowd and kissing people, saying hello.” Ms. Lunden, who covered Princess Diana’s wedding for ABC News, added, “You had none of that in 1981 with Charles as he came in. It was much more formal.”

And a lot of the commentary was less formal, as well, even after the royals began entering Westminster Abbey. When the Middletons walked in and greeted Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, Ms. Couric cracked that the moment was “something out of ‘Meet the Fockers.’ ”

Insouciance can go too far, however. Ms. Couric, speaking off the cuff, reported that the stout, bald man walking into the abbey with a cane was Mohamed al-Fayed, noting that it was “pretty shocking” that Mr. Fayed, the father of Dodi, Princess Diana’s lover who died at her side in the 1997 car accident, was invited. And it would have been, because Mr. Fayed has long accused the royal family of plotting to assassinate his son and Princess Diana. Actually, it was someone else, who looked like Mr. Fayed. CBS corrected the mistake later in the broadcast.

Most anchors adhered tightly to a script that called for royal harmony and a happier-ever-after-ending.

On ABC, Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast and Newsweek, who wrote a biography of Princess Diana, couldn’t stop praising the bride’s poise and aptitude for her new job, using the word “queenly” to describe the newly named Duchess of Cambridge.

“She’s got the Windsor polish, it’s all there,” Ms. Brown said. “She’s as regal as you can get and she’s new to this whole way of life.”

Royal Wedding Makes 6th Biggest Event in Internet History

The top event remains a World Cup soccer match and the longest Wimbledon tennis match which happened at the same time.

Newlyweds Prince William and Kate Middleton

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CNN

8:58 a.m. PDT, April 29, 2011

(CNN) -- A record number of people may have watched live video of the royal wedding online. But the Friday wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton failed to make the top five Web news events of all time -- being topped by various sporting events and the 2010 U.S. midterm elections.

Global Internet traffic on news-focused websites peaked at 5.3 million page views per minute at about 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday, according to Akamai, an Internet service provider and traffic monitor.

That makes the wedding the sixth biggest event in Internet history.

The top event remains a World Cup soccer match and the longest Wimbledon tennis match, which happened at the same time in June 2010. More than 10.3 million people per minute clicked on news stories about those sporting events.

Will and Kate did beat out President Obama's election in November 2008, which got 4.3 million page views per minute, Akamai says.

Of course, fewer people in general went to the Internet for news two years ago than do now, which makes these kinds of comparisons a bit tricky, said Jeff Young, a spokesman for Akamai.

"Technology has come a long way since then," Young said.

The royals did better when it comes to live video.

The company Livestream, which provides live video services to the Associated Press, Entertainment Tonight, CBS and others, tells CNN partner site Mashable that it broke its all-time record for simultaneous live streams.

Some 300,000 people were watching the company's live video feed at 6 a.m. ET, Mashable says.

Akamai says it's difficult to compare live streaming events to each other, but that preliminary data suggests more people watched online video of the royal wedding simultaneously than any other event the company has provided live video services for.

The wedding slightly topped the World Cup in terms of live video. That sporting event saw a peak of 1.6 million people watch Akamai's streams concurrently.

"Each year we are seeing more people consume video online at events of this nature, but it's very hard obviously to do that apples to apples comparison," Young said. How widely an event is syndicated greatly affects how many people will end up seeing it on the Internet, he said.

The interest in the royal wedding online does show how the Internet is changing the way people look for and consume information, he said.

"This is an example of just how important the Internet and connected devices have become to how people experience something like this," he said. "It wasn't the fact that people were at the office in front of their computers -- and yet still a huge number of folks have gone online to experience this event.

"That shows where we've moved as a society."

Big news events also have a way of testing the Internet's overall strength. Michael Jackson's death, for example, took down Twitter and Google News briefly.

Most websites appeared to perform well during the royal nuptials, but there were a few mishaps. The BBC's online video feed of the wedding reportedly crashed "at the moment that Kate Middleton arrived at Westminster Abbey," according to the news site The Drum.

The BBC's press office attributed the crash to Internet traffic increases.

"We are experiencing some technical issues with BBC Online due to the sheer weight of traffic which may cause the site to be slower than normal in some cases," the company said in an online statement.

Twitter, which has had trouble surviving big news events in the past, appeared to be working normally on Friday morning. So did Google News.

Katy Perry's Royal Nails!

PlayStation®Network Service Outage

PlayStation®Network Service Outage

Answer ID: 2185

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

1. Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services
2. Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened
3. Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:

• U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.
  
• We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S. credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.
  
  • Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
  • Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
  • TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790
    
• You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.

Click here for FAQs regarding the PSN/Qriocity outage.

Cantwell, Murray right to put pressure on oil speculation

Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell are right to pressure the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to come with regulations for oil speculation.

Read all 126 comments > Post a comment >

DRIVERS emptying their wallets to fill up the tank should know that skyrocketing gas prices are due in part to out-of-control betting by big investors.

Washington drivers, now paying an average of $3.93 per gallon, could soon breathe a collective sigh of relief. U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington have called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC, to immediately impose regulations on oil speculation.

The senators and President Obama acknowledged last week that speculators are driving gas prices far beyond supply and demand. Limits on speculation would keep big investors, with no underlying commercial interest in crude oil, from holding too large a share of the market.

While uprisings in the Middle East and the disaster in Japan played a role in escalating gas prices, the market has already adjusted to these events, according to CFTC Commissioner Burt Chilton. Meanwhile, prices at gas stations go up.

Indeed, oil speculation — meaning the amount of barrels held by speculators — has increased dramatically since June 2008, the last time gas was this expensive. Excessive speculation is estimated to be adding several dollars to the cost of filling up.

Speculators are making bets at the expense of consumers. Extra dollars spent at the pump make a big difference to families already balancing tight budgets.

The Wall Street Reform Act, passed by Congress last July, required the CFTC to create regulations preventing excessive speculation within 180 days — a deadline it failed to meet three months ago.

Regulations on oil speculation could bring prices down within days.

The CTFC must not waste more time. Rising gas prices could put the brakes on economic growth — erasing recent signs of recovery.

Excessive oil speculation is hurting businesses and families who keep the economy afloat. Cantwell and Murray should keep turning up the heat until the right regulations are enacted.

Republicans turn up heat on Obama over oil prices

Stocks

BP PLC

BP.L

466.00p

+1.80+0.39%

11:35am EDT

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON | Wed Apr 27, 2011 12:59pm EDT

(Reuters) - With Americans upset about rising gasoline prices, Republicans in Congress aim to fix the blame on one person when they return next week from recess: President Barack Obama.

Congress wrapped up its last work session on April 15 with Democrats and Republicans in a blistering debate about budget deficits and the size of the federal government.

Now, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives aim to pivot to another hot-button issue: high gasoline prices that are hitting consumers who are already struggling to recover from a prolonged economic downturn.

"Running on empty: Obama administration does nothing to address skyrocketing gas prices," screamed a press release on Tuesday from House Speaker John Boehner's office.

Obama has entered the energy fray, too, urging oil-producing countries to increase output amid rising prices.

He also asked Congress to end billions of dollars worth of oil industry tax breaks -- money that could be used for deficit-reduction or investing in cleaner alternative energy.

Democrats have long argued that with the major oil companies enjoying healthy profits amid high prices, they no longer need the tax breaks.

For example, even with setbacks related to last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP on Wednesday reported profits of $5.5 billion in the first quarter.

The Republicans' focus on energy comes as the national retail price for regular gasoline has hit $3.88 a gallon, an increase of more than $1 a gallon compared to a year ago.

Gas pump sticker shock could get worse as the looming U.S. summer driving season hikes demand for gasoline and political unrest continues in Middle East oil-producing countries.

All this has U.S. motorists worried that gasoline prices could approach the record-high $4.11 per gallon of July 2008.

Boehner's move to put a bull's eye on gasoline prices also comes as public opinion polls show opposition to Republican initiatives that would further cut taxes for the rich while making senior citizens pay more for health insurance.

A CBS News/New York Times poll, for example, found that 61 percent of people think Medicare coverage for the elderly is worth the costs. Meanwhile, 45 percent said military spending should be cut while only 21 percent favored Medicare cuts.

When Congress resumes next week, the Republican-led House will bring to a vote at least one bill aimed at bolstering domestic energy production.

"As gasoline prices close in on $4 a gallon, that is going to be part of the conversation," said Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for the House Natural Resources Committee.

Doc Hastings, chairman of that committee, is leading Republican efforts to expand U.S. offshore oil drilling and speed up the government's approval process for new projects -- moves that are expected to be blocked by Obama and his fellow Democrats in the Senate.

'LOST OIL'

The Republicans believe Obama wrongfully stood in the way of offshore oil drilling because of safety concerns following the Gulf of Mexico disaster last April.

Gulf of Mexico oil output will decline by 190,000 barrels per day in 2011, according to Energy Department forecasts.

"That's lost oil on the world market," leading to higher prices, Pederson said. That quantity, however, is only a speck of the estimated 1.52 million barrel per day increase in global demand this year.

The 2012 presidential and congressional elections are 18 months away but they already dominate the Washington dynamic.

In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Boehner predicted Obama would not win a second term if gasoline prices were to rise to $5 or $6 a gallon.

While the White House would quarrel with that assessment, Democrats are worried rising energy prices could undermine the U.S. economic recovery and hurt Obama's re-election chances.

In an interview with a Virginia radio station on Tuesday, Obama said his administration was "talking to oil producers around the world and letting them know it's in their interest to make sure that high oil prices don't end up hurting the world economy."

Senator Charles Schumer, one of the top-ranking Democrats, backed up Obama's call for ending oil company tax breaks, saying: "These subsidies are a relic of a time when oil was $17 per barrel and oil companies needed incentives to drill. That time has long since ended."

Oil prices are now around $112 per barrel.

Obama's request to Congress came after Boehner said that "we should be looking at" the multibillion-dollar subsidies for oil companies and that those companies "ought to be paying their fair share" in taxes.

But by Tuesday, it was less clear whether Boehner really wanted to switch Republican gears and consider pulling the oil company subsidies.

"We'll look at any reasonable policy that lowers gas prices. Unfortunately, what the president has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

(Editing by Bill Trott)

April 27, 2011

Florida Legislature Nears Medicaid Overhaul Vote

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

DAVIE, Fla. — A crucial experiment in the future of Medicaid is playing out in Florida, where both houses of the Legislature are vying to find ways to drastically cut costs, manage care and reduce waste and fraud.

The cuts and changes being sought by the Republican-led Legislature and encouraged by the new Republican governor, Rick Scott, a wealthy former hospital company executive, are deeper than those in many other states.

In the past 11 years, the cost of Medicaid in Florida has grown to $21 billion from $9 billion, which amounts to a third of the state budget. The federal government pays more than half the tab.

“There is a consensus that the Medicaid system is irretrievably broken,” said State Senator Joe Negron, a Republican who took the lead in writing the Senate bill, which is expected to come to a vote before the legislative session ends on May 6. The House approved its bill this month. The changes could go into effect as early as next year. “I’ve never seen something where we are spending $21 billion and nobody is happy. We were not going to kick the can down the road another year.”

Relying loosely on a five-year-old pilot program to shift care to H.M.O.’s, Florida lawmakers are poised to scrap the traditional model in which the state pays doctors for each service they perform. Instead, almost all of Florida’s Medicaid recipients would be funneled into state-authorized, for-profit H.M.O.’s or networks run by hospitals or doctors. H.M.O.’s or networks would also manage the long-term care of the elderly, shifting them away from nursing homes and expanding in-home care. Lawmakers who support the bill say the state needs this flexibility in curtailing the exploding cost of Medicaid.

The legislation in Florida is being closely watched by other states as they tackle the rapid growth of enrollment and the cost of care. Because Florida has three million Medicaid patients and a high rate of uninsured people, a swift jump into managed care would be significant. And while many states use managed care for Medicaid users in one form or other, the Florida proposals stand out because they would set possible limits on services, giving the state and H.M.O.’s the right to deny some benefits now offered to patients. This would require federal permission.

“If Florida adopts this method of looking at managed care, other states will definitely look at that, and this is a tool we can use,” said Michael W. Garner, the president of the Florida Association of Health Plans, which lobbies for H.M.O.’s. “The toolbox is pretty empty right now.”

But there is concern across the state that the emerging proposals could not only reduce available health care for millions, but also leave the most vulnerable — the disabled, the elderly and those with serious chronic illness — at risk. An April study of the pilot program by Georgetown University raised doubts about patient services and cost efficiency, saying there was too little data. For some, the proposals hold a fearful prospect.

Vicki Ahern, 40, a single mother in Davie who is her son’s full-time caregiver, spent several years trying to cobble together a network of specialists and physical therapists across several counties to help Keith, 16, grapple with his muscular dystrophy, spinal injuries and debilitating pain.

Then, suddenly, the network crumbled. With 10 days’ notice, Ms. Ahern said, Keith was shuttled into the H.M.O. pilot project, which transferred Medicaid patients in five counties to H.M.O.’s and hospital- or doctor-run networks. The counties are Baker, Clay, Duval and Nassau, in the northeast; and Broward, in the south.

The participating H.M.O.’s in Broward County, where the Aherns live, listed none of Keith’s doctors or therapists; they offered few specialists and fewer services. The one rheumatologist who proved helpful dropped out of the program because of low reimbursement rates and a frustrating bureaucracy.

“I started panicking and considered moving out of state, but we couldn’t,” Ms. Ahern said. “I was very angry because I knew he wasn’t going to get his services. If you have a chronic disability or are medically fragile, then forget it.”

After several months in the pilot program, Ms. Ahern discovered she could opt out — a long bureaucratic process — and she did.

The two bills now in play in Tallahassee — one written in the House, the other in the Senate — are modeled in large part on the pilot program. The pilot program allowed the state to provide a set amount of money for managed-care companies to more efficiently serve each Medicaid patient, which include low-income children and pregnant women, the developmentally disabled and others.

The bills vary: the House version would send the developmentally disabled to managed care; the Senate’s would not. The Senate is pushing block grants, which would restrict financing even further by creating a cap that locks in the Medicaid budget each year; the House version does not.

All of these proposed changes worry health care advocates and Medicaid patients, who say that the for-profit nature of H.M.O.’s makes it difficult to care for the neediest.

The pilot program appears to have been far from successful, according to the Georgetown report: H.M.O.’s fled the program because of low reimbursement rates. Among those leaving was WellCare, which left 55 percent of Duval County’s Medicaid patients in limbo. The company was later accused of cherry-picking Medicaid patients to maximize profits, and five of its former executives were indicted on fraud charges.

Patients were shuffled from H.M.O. to H.M.O., and reported difficulty accessing some services. In other cases, doctors listed in the network stopped accepting Medicaid patients. Supporters of the bills say that the rates would be adjusted to increase H.M.O. participation and that oversight would be bolstered.

Lawmakers are also planning steep budget cuts in the Medicaid program to tackle the state’s yawning deficits. This would make the shift even more burdensome, Democrats say.

“It can’t work,” said Representative Elaine J. Schwartz, a Democrat, who held town-hall-style meetings on the program in Broward County. “It undermines the basic purpose of Medicaid, which is to provide services. If the private sector could have made money on Medicaid, they would have. With this plan, we are basically handing them $20 billion. Two groups of people will suffer: The patients because they are bamboozled and the taxpayer who is not getting their money’s worth.”

Joan Alker, the co-executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown who co-wrote the April report on the pilot program, said that so far there was no solid evidence of how much the pilot program had saved or whether the savings came from denying patients services. Florida pays among the lowest rates in the country for each Medicaid patient, ranking 43rd in the nation, making Medicaid less expensive than private insurance, Ms. Alker said.

Mr. Negron said he envisioned $1 billion in savings from his proposal in its first year and perhaps $4 billion in subsequent years.

“One of my guiding principles,” he said, “is that our friends and neighbors on Medicaid should not receive fewer benefits than their counterparts, but they shouldn’t have a more generous benefit either.”

23 April 2011 Last updated at 14:56 ET

Norio Ohga, former Sony president, dies

Norio Ohga conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra a few times a year

The former president and chairman of Sony, Norio Ohga, who was credited with developing the compact disc, has died aged 81, the company has said.

Ohga, who led the company from 1982 to 1995, died of multiple organ failure in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

Sony's chairman, Sir Howard Stringer, said his predecessor's foresight and vision had transformed the company into a global entertainment leader.

Ohga was still a senior adviser to the company at the time of his death.

In 1953, Sony's co-founders recruited Ohga while he was still studying at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and hoping to pursue a career as an opera singer. They sensed his knowledge of sound and electrical engineering would benefit the firm.

“Start Quote

By redefining Sony as a company encompassing both hardware and software, Ohga-san succeeded where other Japanese companies failed”

Sir Howard Stringer Chairman, Sony

He was an executive by his 30s - a rarity in a Japanese company - becoming the president of CBS Sony Records (now Sony Music Entertainment) in 1970s.

From the start, he recognised the potential of the compact disc, and personally drove Sony's initiatives to introduce the format.

During the development of the CD, it was Ohga who pushed for a disc that was 12cm (4.8in) in diameter, because it provided sufficient capacity at 75 minutes to store all of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Sony sold the world's first CD in 1982 and CDs overtook LP record sales in Japan five years later. Ohga's specifications are still used today, and have shaped formats developed since, including MiniDisc and DVD.

In 1989, he oversaw the $3.4bn purchase of Hollywood studios Colombia Pictures, which was criticised as unwise and costly at the time.

Ohga also presided over the launch of Sony's game business, which went on to develop the successful "PlayStation" console.

"By redefining Sony as a company encompassing both hardware and software, Ohga-san succeeded where other Japanese companies failed," said Sony Chairman Howard Stringer, using the Japanese honorific.

"It is no exaggeration to attribute Sony's evolution beyond audio and video products into music, movies and game, and subsequent transformation into a global entertainment leader to Ohga-san's foresight and vision," he added.

Ohga stepped down as Sony's president in 1995 and continued to serve as chairman and representative director until 2000.

He was also the chairman of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

How Copyright Law Makes Sample-Based Music Impossibly Expensive

How Copyright Law Makes Sample-Based Music Impossibly Expensive... If You Want To Do It Legally

from the too-bad dept

We've talked a few times recently about the wonders of sample-based music, along with the fact that the legal issues surrounding copyright on such works means that many works are simply not legal. Kembrew McLeod, who made the excellent film Copyright Criminals, about the legal issues around sampling in hiphop, is also out with a new book, called Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. He's done a fantastic interview over at The Atlantic, where he talks about the ridiculous hoops a musician needs to go through these days to make "legal" sample-based music:

To legally sample a recording you have to negotiate a separate sample clearance fee with two different rights-holders: whoever owns the sound recording (the actual sound that's been fixed to magnetic tape, CD, etc.) and the song publisher (who owns rights to the underlying melody and lyrics). This takes a lot of money and time. For well-known songs, licensing fees can be very expensive—and sometimes rights-holders won't agree to a sample clearance for any price.

But it gets way more complicated when you start sampling songs that contain samples, which is increasingly the case today. If you wanted to sample, say, "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy—well, that song contains 20 samples. You'd have to get permission from Def Jam, which owns the sound recording rights, and then Public Enemy's song publisher. Then you'd have to go to the other 20 song publishers and get permission to use the song—it creates kind of a domino effect. This licensing logjam is only going to get worse and worse and worse as people increasingly sample the recent past, since that recent past is already a collage. It just becomes impossible to do all these clearances.

And that's why the more creative sampled music today just isn't cleared at all, in the hopes that rightsholders won't sue. But that means that the "legal" sampled songs just aren't nearly as creative. There were some really creative albums early on, back before rightholders started demanding the moon to clear a sample, but those days are long gone. McLeod talks about how he and his co-author looked at the classic Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique to calculate how much it would cost to clear today:

We figured out—song by song, sample by sample—how much it would cost to release each record. Sticking with the example of Paul's Boutique: there are about 2.5 million units sold of that record. Incidentally, a lot of the samples on Paul's Boutique actually were cleared—but they were cleared at a time, 1989, when the industry didn't really see the value of sampling yet, so the rates for copyright clearances were much lower. Today, the rates they'd have to pay would make it impossible. Based on the number and type of samples in that record, Peter figured out that Capitol Records would lose 20 million dollars on a record that sold 2.5 million units.

Of course, when we talk about sample-based music, we often have even the staunchest copyright defenders in our comments admit that the law isn't great on this subject, and they're more open to such "creative" infringement. However, what strikes me as more troubling is that many of the comments on the McLeod interview go the other way, saying that sampling is wrong. I get the feeling that, in many of these cases, people are getting their own feelings towards the music itself (i.e., they don't like sample based music, and somehow feel that it's not "real" music) confused with the actual creative issues at play here.

9/11 Responders To Be Warned They Will Be Screened By FBI's Terrorism Watch

9/11 Responders To Be Warned They Will Be Screened By FBI's Terrorism Watch List (EXCLUSIVE)

First Posted: 04/21/11 04:24 PM ET Updated: 04/21/11 09:49 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- A provision in the new 9/11 health bill may be adding insult to injury for people who fell sick after their service in the aftermath of the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks, The Huffington Post has learned.

The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.

Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address.

It’s a requirement that was tacked onto the law during the bitter debates over it last year.

The letter from Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, informs medical providers and administrators that they should begin letting patients know before the new program kicks in this July.

“This is absurd,” said Glen Kline, a former NYPD emergency services officer. “It’s silly. It’s stupid. It’s asinine.”

“It’s comical at best, and I think it’s an insult to everyone who worked on The Pile and is sick and suffering from 9/11,” said John Feal, a former construction worker who lost half a foot at Ground Zero and runs the advocacy group Fealgood Foundation.

The provision was added in an amendment by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) during the heated debate over the bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last May.

Sept. 11 responders in the committee room at the time mostly shook their heads at the move, which Democrats accepted on a voice vote after battling to bar other amendments on abortion and immigration that might have killed the bill.

But suddenly the point is no longer just a strategic concession to get a law passed.

As doctors and administrators begin acting on the federal instructions, participants in the 9/11 treatment and monitoring programs will soon be told that their names, places of birth, addresses, government ID numbers and other personal data will be provided to the FBI to ensure they are not terrorists.

Howard's instructions include a sample letter to responders designed to minimize alarm.

“Although neither we nor [the Centers for Disease Control]/NIOSH anticipate the name of any individual in the current Programs will be on the list, CDC/NIOSH is expressly required by law to implement this particular requirement of the Act,” it says.

“Thank you for your understanding. We look forward to working with you and ensuring that you continue to receive uninterrupted services under the new WTC Health Program,” it concludes.

Feal, who counts hundreds and first responders in his foundation's membership, predicted the letters would not go over well.

“When cops and firefighters get this at home, they’re going to hit the roof,” he said.

Kline, who sits on the Fealgood Foundation’s board, said he personally wasn’t offended, but couldn’t think of a good reason for cops and firefighters to be screened by the FBI in order to keep getting treatment.

“I mean, who are we even talking about -- the undocumented workers who cleaned the office buildings?” wondered Kline Thursday. “We know who all the cops, firefighters and construction workers were. They’re all documented.

“Is the idea that a terrorist stayed to help clean up? And then stayed all these years to try and get benefits?” he asked. “In all the things I’ve seen out of Washington, this probably takes the cake.”

Some are more understanding.

“Do we want terrorists getting money? No,” said Anthony Flammia, a former NYPD Highway Patrol officer and Sept. 11 responder. “How do you know if there were any terrorists there? Were they there as observers, watching? Probably.”

But he noted that his perspective likely would not be shared, especially if people whose names are similar to actual terror suspects get flagged, as happens with air travelers.

“I’ve got nothing to hide, so it’s no big deal for me, but there’s got to be safeguards in place to protect the people who are innocent,” Flammia said. “It’s going to be controversial,” he added. “It’s probably going to create an uproar, but I think it will dissipate. I hope they're ready to answer people's questions.”

Congressman Stearns said in a statement that his intent was to answer exactly the questions raised by Flammia.

“This amendment was adopted in the full Energy and Commerce Committee without opposition and it merely requires that the names of those receiving health benefits be cross-checked with the terrorist watch list to ensure that no terrorists get these benefits,” Stearns said.

“These benefits are not just for our first responders; nearly anyone who was in the vicinity or worked on a cleanup crew afterward is eligible,” he noted.

The prohibition is included in two parts of the bill. One specifically covers responders, while the other deals with all survivors, including office workers, bystanders and residents.

Feal acknowledged that the terrorist screening has to be done because it is the law, and that the letters have to go out.

But he holds Stearns responsible, as well as several other Republicans who were hostile to the 9/11 bill, and tried to tack all manner of amendments onto it.

“I think Congressman Stearns is stabbing at pettiness. He’s a buffoon,” Feal said. “We get sicker and die, and they’re going to disseminate a letter wondering whether we’re terrorists or not. ... I think everybody needs to start showing a little more compassion.”

News Crew Mistaken for Robbers, Surrounded by Cops

Bloomberg news crew mistaken for robbery suspects. (Brittany Joe via Twitter / April 21, 2011)

KTLA News

6:05 p.m. PDT, April 21, 2011

HOLLYWOOD (KTLA) -- A Bloomberg news crew was surrounded by police in Hollywood Thursday after their SUV was mistaken for a vehicle involved in an armed robbery.

The robbery happened in the 8900 block of Shoreham Drive, according to the LAPD.

Two male suspects took an ID, a gold watch and a ring from someone on the street. One of the suspects was carrying a semi-automatic handgun, police said.

About an hour after the robbery, an LAPD air unit started following a vehicle that matched the description of the suspect vehicle -- a dark-colored Yukon.

Police said it turned out to be the wrong car.

Twitter user Brittany Joe took photos of police stopping the vehicle.

The pictures show police with guns and rifles drawn, and the Bloomberg crew laying face down on the pavement.

After the ordeal, Bloomberg photographer Jonathan Alarcon, who was part of the group, posted on his Facebook page: "Was just prone on the ground felony stop with about 10 guns pointed at me and a news crew. Felony stop mistaken identity shotguns helicopter. The whole deal."

21 April 2011 Last updated at 19:08 ET

Gym in Spain's Basque region offers naked workouts

By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Madrid

Continue reading the main story

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A gym in Spain's Basque region has come up with an eye-catching way of battling the recession.

It has begun offering naked workouts, for nudists.

Easy Gym in Arrigorriaga is the first of its kind in Spain, pioneering the peculiar practice of stripping while keeping fit.

"With the crisis we noticed there were fewer people using the gym," owner Merche Laseca explained to the BBC.

"I'm not a nudist myself, though I have no problem with it. But this initiative is about the money."

Naked enthusiasm

The gym did its research before opting to chase the nudist euro.

It discovered that two local swimming pools already offered popular monthly sessions for bathing in your birthday suit.

Every year, in nearby Sopelana, there is a mass naked run along the sands.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Doing sport without clothes is natural - and much more comfy”

Merche Laseca Owner of Easy Gym

There are at least 12 naturist beaches in the Basque region, and many more all over the Spanish coast.

"We're always interested in new activities," explains Maite Vicuna, president of the Basque Naturist Association, who attended a trial run of the naked gym last week.

A poll of the group's members showed 90% support for a facility offering the full range of nude workouts.

"Doing sport without clothes is natural - and much more comfy," Ms Vicuna argues.

Sceptics suggest that running full tilt in the buff might not be entirely enjoyable, though. Sports underwear, they point out, was invented for a reason.

But the gym owner denies her concept is impractical.

"Being a naturist doesn't mean being daft. If a woman needs to, she can put a top on!" says Merche Laseca. "But there's cycling, weightlifting and the Stairmaster: there's lots you can easily do naked."

Easy Gym stresses it does provide towels for comfort and "to prevent slippage" on the equipment.

But some sporting types are clearly unconvinced by the concept.

Exercising question

"Each to his own," the owner of another - traditional - gym in Bilbao told the BBC. "But I think it's the most unhygienic thing in the world."

"It's your clothes that catch the sweat when you work out," said Idoya Echevarria. "So where does all the sweat go, if you're naked? Onto the machines? The floor? Or onto the person next to you?"

And after all that research, Ms Laseca was disappointed by the low show at her inaugural session. Only four naturist fitness fanatics turned up.

"But the people who came really enjoyed themselves," she says, apparently undeterred. From May, the gym will operate every Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday - exclusively for the uninhibited.

A teacher has already been in touch to offer naked yoga classes.

Italian Court Orders All ISPs to Block BTjunkie

• 21/04/2011

After similar action against The Pirate Bay, an Italian court has today ordered all ISPs to block subscriber access to another major BitTorrent site, BTjunkie. The public prosecutor described BTJunkie as one of the most prominent havens for pirated media and the authorities further blame the BitTorrent site for the failure of the Italian pay-per-view TV-station Dahlia TV, which shut down due to financial problems last month.

BTjunkie will be “censored” in Italy following an order from the public prosecutor of the Sardinian capital Cagliari. Both the IP addresses of the site and its domain name will soon be made inaccessible by all Italian ISPs, blocking users’ access to the site.

Local authorities claim that BTjunkie was one of the most frequently visited BitTorrent sites in the country, with over half a million visitors from Italy every day. In addition, they claim that aside from downloading music and movies, it was also possible to stream soccer matches of Italy’s top competition – the Serie A – via the site.

The court order follows an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), an Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime, and falls under operation “Poisonous Dahlia.” The name of the operation references Dahlia TV, a pay-per-view television network that shut down in March due to financial problems. Among other things, Dahlia TV was offering live soccer matches of the Serie A soccer competition.

According to the prosecutor BTjunkie is in part responsible for Dahlia TV shutting down, as it allegedly offered streams of the soccer matches that the television network broadcasted. This appears to be a misunderstanding, as BTjunkie is a regular torrent indexer that is not involved in streaming in any way.

TorrentFreak briefly spoke to BTjunkie’s owner who was surprised by the developments in Italy. He’s currently considering how to respond and whether there are ways to circumvent the blockade, but he told us that he does not intend to appeal the court’s decision.

“I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system. We will do our best to fight for Italian peoples right to communicate. At the moment I can suggest to try any of the other popular torrent sites and checking TorrentFreak later for a update on alternative methods for accessing BTjunkie from Italy.”

BTjunkie is not the first BitTorrent site to be rendered inaccessible in Italy. The Pirate Bay was first ‘censored’ in the summer of 2008, when a similar court order led ISPs to block millions of Italians from accessing the world’s largest torrent site.

At the time, The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and it eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily, as the case was appealed once again by the authorities.

The Supreme Court then reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

The above means that even if BTjunkie’s owner wanted to, fighting the ban will be very hard, if not impossible. In response to the Pirate Bay blockade some people setup a proxy site that offered access to The Pirate Bay, but this site was eventually pulled offline by the authorities as well.

Canada - Ban on Twitter, Facebook election-night posts draconian

Ban on Twitter, Facebook election-night posts draconian

By Paula Simons, Postmedia News April 20, 2011 Comments (49)

Average Canadians and media outlets who post poll results from the country's East Coast before polls close in B.C. could face fines for "premature transmission" of Elections Canada information.

Photograph by: Peter Macdiarmid, Getty Images

EDMONTON — Imagine living in a country where the government made it a crime to report on election results, where the state actually imposed a nationwide media blackout to prevent people at one end of the country from knowing how, or whether, people at the other end were voting.

Imagine living in a country where it was illegal for ordinary citizens living in Newfoundland or New Brunswick to post comments about election results on their personal Facebook walls before the polls had closed on Vancouver Island.

Imagine living in a country where you could face a maximum $25,000 fine, or up to five years in prison, for "tweeting" about election results in your region on Twitter without government permission.

It shouldn't be hard. You already live there.

Back in 1938, when radio was king, Canada's election law was amended to include a ban on the "premature transmission" of electoral results across time zones. The idea was to prevent radio broadcasts of election results in Eastern Canada from influencing voter behaviour in the West.

The law, frankly, was always patronizing and paternalistic. There has never been any evidence that voting patterns in the West were, or would be, influenced by results from the East. Even if they were, why should the government deny voters in the West the opportunity to cast their ballots in the most informed way possible?

In 1938 and even 1988, the ban was reasonably enforceable. There were only a handful of national TV and radio broadcasters, and they all followed the law. Newspapers, which couldn't even publish their print editions until the next day, followed the law, too, as a matter of course.

This, though, is 2011, a digital universe in which media consumers expect TV channels and newspaper websites to provide them with live, breaking news in real time. It's a social media universe in which ordinary Canadians are now passionately engaged in talking about politics with people across the country via Twitter and Facebook, where online political and social communities transcend geography.

Yet Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act still prohibits transmitting the results of the vote in any electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the polling stations close in that other electoral district.

That means on May 2, it will be illegal for Postmedia News — or the CBC or Radio-Canada or the Globe and Mail or the National Post or any other national media outlet — to maintain a live website with up-to-date results. At least until after the polls close in B.C.

It will also be illegal for a regional newspaper or broadcaster in Atlantic Canada to put up live web results for their local audience — because then we backwoods westerners might have the temerity to sneak a peak.

It will also be illegal for any citizen, journalist or not, to tweet or blog or post something on a Facebook wall about the election results, until all the polls are shut.

Ordinary citizens aren't immune. In 2000, Elections Canada brought charges against a Vancouver blogger and software designer named Paul Bryan after he dared to publish election results from Atlantic Canada on his small-audience blog. Bryan was fined $1,000. He fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, with major media outlets from across the country joining his battle. It did no good. In 2007, by a vote of 5-4, the court upheld Bryan's conviction, and Section 329.

The four minority judges were passionate in their dissent.

Justice Rosalie Abella, writing for her dissenting colleagues, put it this way: "There is only speculative and unpersuasive evidence to support the government's claim that the information imbalance is of sufficient harm to voter behaviour or perceptions of electoral unfairness that it outweighs any damage done to a fundamental and constitutionally protected right."

The law is even more absurd today, when our country is in the middle of an interactive social media revolution, and when more and more readers get their news not from hard copy "newspapers" but from 24-hour live news sites.

You only have to look back to 2008, when we had our last federal election, to grasp how remarkably our media ecosystem has altered in just 2 1/2 years. Section 329 has been rendered obsolete by new forms of mass communication, forms of media that could hardly have been imagined in 1938.

Realistically, Elections Canada cannot possibly enforce a nationwide ban on premature tweeting or blogging or Facebooking of election results. It's the equivalent of King Canute commanding the sea to go back.

Nonetheless, John Enright, who speaks for Elections Canada, says his agency has no choice but to administer the law as written. Citizens are allowed to phone or text friends, or send private e-mails. But posting to a Facebook wall, to a webpage or to Twitter will be considered a violation.

"The legislation is still on the books, so our role as Elections Canada is to administer the legislation that is before us," says Enright. "If there's a breach of the law, Elections Canada is not going to discriminate between the Mothercorp and Joe Smith down the street."

You have to sympathize, at least a bit, with Elections Canada. Staff there have been given an impossible, ridiculous assignment.

The law may be ridiculous, but Elections Canada bureaucrats didn't write it — and the Harper government didn't fix it, after the 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

Ironically, a decade ago, when blogger Paul Bryan was charged with breaching the act, the National Citizens Coalition was firmly on his side.

"These jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control," said the NCC president, one Stephen Harper, at the time. "The government's law is outdated and just plain wrong."

Harper was right then. Now, his own government's law is even more outdated.

Last week, the CBC and CTV went to court to seek a declaration that Section 329 was unconstitutional, but the court declined to hear their arguments before May 2.

We can only hope that this election will finally prove to the courts that such a news blackout is not only a condescending relic of the 1930s that treats voters like sheep, but also an unenforceable law that criminalizes routine social media conversation and denies Canadians the right to the kind of in-depth, interactive, online news reporting they have come to expect, and undoubtedly deserve.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/decision-canada/Twitter+Facebook+election+night+posts+draconian/4647769/story.html#ixzz1KCpTzREu