Time for Friday's all-new episode of NewsBusted, and this one is a great one, if we may say so. Check below the break to find out why early Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts ran into legal trouble, and why scientists wasted millions researching the cause of obesity. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel ! Topics in today's show: — Debt ceiling debate — 70% say gas prices are hurting them — Mayor Emanuel wants a casino in Chicago — Border patrol agents stop two trucks carrying 513 illegals — UCLA study: men like housewives — 7-year-old caught with heroin — Playboy archives to go digital — Scientists find the key to obesity Starring: Jodi Miller Production: Dialog New Media
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When you’ve got an OS in the final throes of life , your choices for stimulating interest are a little limited. Having exhausted the usual avenues of introducing pink and gold-plated versions of its older phones, Nokia is now resorting to the mobile industry’s standby marketing crutch: poking fun at Apple. Its latest ad campaign in India features the tagline iDoalotmore, which takes a rather overt shot at Apple’s iPhone and general tendency to preface its wares with an “i.” Sadly, there are no spec-for-spec smackdowns over on the accompanying promo site, but you can learn all about Symbian’s excellent features and radically new rounded icons . Or are they iCons now? Continue reading Nokia: iDoalotmore talking about Symbian than a zombie OS deserves Nokia: iDoalotmore talking about Symbian than a zombie OS deserves originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 08:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Hard Sun [ Eddie Vedder - Indio Cover ] Maybeshewill – I Was Here For a Moment Then I Was Gone REVIEW Ben Harper Feat. Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) – Under Pressure (live @ Rockin’ Park Nijmegen 27-06-2010) starla986 says: oooh! and.. and.. eddie vedder 's album and dvd come out tuesday! AHHHH!!! and then it'll be june. and then july. EV and glen hansard!!!
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Labour leader and partner Justine Thornton keep media at bay for low-key union attended by immediate friends and family Obviously something is happening at Langar Hall – there is a small huddle of hacks and cameras on the pavement at the entrance. Ah, the Labour leader and his partner are finally tying the knot. Ed Miliband and his bride, Justine Thornton, certainly didn’t make it easy for Fleet Street to stake out Friday’s wedding. Langar is a very small village south-east of Nottingham where locals admit, not a lot happens. It’s a long drive for the wedding party and they have put up screens to keep long lenses at bay. The Milibands have stressed how much this is a private, family event so no celebs have been driving past, political or otherwise. Well, only brother David Miliband – he’s still family despite everything – who arrived with wife, Louise, and their kids an hour before the bash. Gordon Brown and David Cameron have sent their best wishes. About 50 guests are inside and the sun has been shining – until a few minutes ago. Ed Miliband’s press officer has been down to tell the press pack – we also got coffee – a few details. The bride’s dress is by Alice Temperley – she also makes stuff for Coleen Rooney, another reporter tells me. In the morning the groom took time out from preparing to walk up the aisle to send a message on Twitter to followers who had wished him well for the day. “Thanks for all the good wishes,” wrote Miliband. “Really looking forward to the day. Feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be marrying Justine.” As the first leader of a major political party to live with his family out of wedlock, Miliband had faced criticism about his unmarried status but insisted he would not be forced into it. “We’ll get married because we want to get married and love each other very much, no other reason,” he told one interviewer. But a wedding’s also an excuse for a rather nice meal: Friday’s was due to consist of asparagus, followed by lamb and pavlova. And bride and groom were both due to make speeches. Then they will take five days off – without the kids – for a honeymoon in Europe. No, they’re not telling us where, but they may pop down the lane for pics if it doesn’t rain. Ed Miliband Labour Weddings Michael White guardian.co.uk
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Planners have approved a new abattoir close to Sir Reginald Sheffield’s stately home in North Yorkshire Planners have approved a new abattoir close to the stately home of the prime minister’s father-in-law. Sir Reginald Sheffield’s protests against the possible effects of smell and noise on his Sutton Park estate near York were overwhelmingly backed at a village meeting, but have now been rejected by the local Conservative-controlled council. Butcher Chris Hodgson will not only be allowed to convert a former pig-rearing unit at Sutton Court farm, but has been offered longer working hours than he requested. Hambleton district council’s planning committee, meeting in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, said that there were no reasons to reject council officers’ recommendation that the project go ahead. The abattoir will slaughter and process around 9,500 animals a year, reducing travel times for farmers who have generally given the proposal strong backing. Opposition has been equally intense in the village of Sutton-on-the-Forest, where the Sheffields bought the local Georgian mansion in 1963 and have subsequently turned it into a minor tourist attraction. In a letter also signed by the estate’s trustees and his second wife Lady Victoria Sheffield, Sir Reginald said that the plan would set back 40 years of improvements and access to Sutton Park. The house takes guided tours on Sundays and Wednesdays between April and September when the gardens are also open daily. Hambleton’s decision allows the abattoir to operate from 6am to 6pm rather than starting at 8am as requested in the application. Hodgson says that eight jobs will be created at the plant, in an area where work in agriculture has been hit by mechanisation and merging of farms into larger units. Approval has still to be confirmed by the full council, but the process is unlikely to be spun out long enough to await the government’s localism measures. These are not clear in detail, pending parliamentary discussion and civil servants’ work on specific provisions, but they are likely to include more emphasis on neighbourhood opinion. The Sutton case highlights the dilemma involved of ‘how local is local’, with opposition in the village balanced by support elsewhere in Hambleton. Some protesters appealed for backing to David Cameron, whose wife Samantha grew up on the Sheffields’ main estates in Lincolnshire but often visited Sutton. But he kept well out of things. David Cameron Samantha Cameron Rural affairs Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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New admissions code to outlaw town halls’ ‘luck of the draw’ entry and bring an end to 30-pupil limit on class sizes Town halls are to be banned from using lotteries to allocate school places, ministers have said. Lotteries – used in up to a third of councils in England – will be abolished under a new admissions code for the country’s 22,000 state schools. The code, which was published in draft form on Friday and is subject to consultation, also permits class sizes to rise above the 30-pupil limit in certain circumstances. Schools must give priority to children whose parents are in the armed forces and ensure twins and triplets are in the same class. The new code will also allow popular schools to expand – at the likely detriment of weaker schools. It will also give free schools and academies the right to reserve places for children entitled to free meals under the new code. Academies and free schools – but not other state schools – will have the right to opt to take children whose families’ annual income is £16,190 or below, rather than those from better-off families. Michael Gove, the education secretary, said the changes were designed to be fair to those families who cannot afford to move into a neighbourhood where there is a popular school. “The school system has rationed good schools,” he said. “Some families can go private or move house. Many families cannot afford to do either. Good schools should be able to grow and we need more of them.” Lotteries have been seen by some educationalists as a way of reducing deep-seated class divisions in the school system. The highest-performing schools tend to cluster in the wealthiest neighbourhoods; if places are allocated according to how near a family lives to a school – rather than by a lottery – children from the poorest areas miss out. But researchers have found lotteries alone fail to give poor children a higher chance of attending a top school, and marginally narrow the likelihood they will win a place at a high-performing school. Other critics say lotteries force children to travel long distances to class. Individual schools will still be permitted to select through a lottery. The current code, devised under Labour, forbids all state schools from choosing pupils based on their family income. Academies and free schools stand to gain financially over other schools. The coalition last year introduced the pupil premium, which entitles schools to £430 for each pupil on free school meals. But the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) warned that “tinkering with the admissions code was not the way to improve social mobility”. Brian Lightman, the general secretary of ASCL, said: “Allowing ‘popular’ schools to expand will do nothing to improve social mobility. “It will create sink schools in many areas of deprivation and hit hardest those children whose parents do not or cannot take an interest in their education. “Those schools left with the most challenging pupils, who need the most intensive support, will suffer a slow spiral of decline and their pupils will lose out on life chances. The effect will be another generation of haves and have-nots.” He said allowing free schools to prioritise pupils on free school meals was an “arbitrary measure” and unlikely to have an impact on the majority of low-income families. “Sadly these tend to be the parents who are least likely to engage with their child’s education,” he added. “In most cases, a pupil premium of £430 will hardly be enough of an incentive or a supplement for schools to provide the additional support that these pupils so often need.” Education policy School admissions Schools Free schools Academies Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says any peace deal in Afghanistan will not succeed unless Pakistan is part of the process. Clinton made the remarks Friday after meeting with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. (May 27)
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At least another 10,000 to be identified in search for victims of decades-long conflict The Colombian government has identified the remains of almost 10,000 people buried in unmarked graves across the country, and at least that many more bodies are still to be identified, an official said. The interior minister, German Vargas, said it was “fundamental for advancing legal human rights proceedings” to identify the remains. Many of the bodies are suspected of being victims of the decades-long conflict between leftist guerrillas, rightwing militias and government security forces. The process of identifying remains found in unmarked graves was carried out over the past five months by comparing fingerprints taken from bodies at morgues with data from the national registry, the agency that issues identity documents. Doing this enabled the identification of 9,969 people: 8,810 men and 1,159 women. Politician Ivan Cepeda said bodies in at least 10,000 more graves could not be identified because they were minors, lacked identity documents or their fingerprints were not taken properly. Identified bodies would be exhumed from the graves and returned to their families, if they were claimed. Each morgue in Colombia would have an attention centre and information would be posted on the website of the Legal Medicine Institute to help families recover the bodies of loved ones, Cepeda said. Colombia Global terrorism guardian.co.uk
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Good news, Asia — the PlayStation Network is finally coming back. Today, Sony announced that it will restore its gaming network across the continent, more than a month after falling prey to a crippling data breach . The company’s PSN services are already up and running across other parts of the world and, beginning tomorrow, will light up once again in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and even Japan, which had been harboring serious reservations about the network’s security. Gamers in South Korea and Hong Kong, meanwhile, will have to wait a little longer before returning to normalcy, though Sony is hoping to completely resolve the issue by the end of the month. The company certainly seems eager to put this saga to bed , and for understandable reasons. The incident has already cost Sony an estimated $171 million in revenue — not to mention the untold numbers of suddenly wary consumers. Sony says PlayStation Network will return to Asia, starting tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 06:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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US anti-terror renewal bill raced through Congress and signed with ‘auto pen’ by Barack Obama from Europe to meet deadline The US Congress, racing the clock and rejecting demands for additional safeguards of civil liberties, passed a bill on Thursday to renew three expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act. Barack Obama, who is in Europe, signed it into law shortly before the provisions were set to expire at midnight. A White House aide said he used an “auto pen”, which replicates his signature. Obama acted shortly after the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-led Senate approved the bill overwhelmingly. It passed the House, 250-153, hours after it cleared the Senate, 72-23. Democrats and some Republicans favoured more protections of civil liberties in the legislation. But congressional leaders, facing the midnight deadline and possibly short on votes, agreed to a four-year, unaltered extension of the provisions to track suspected terrorists. The provisions empower law enforcement officials to get court approval to obtain “roving wiretaps” on suspected foreign agents with multiple modes of communications, track non-US nationals suspected of terrorism, and obtain certain business and even library records. “Although the Patriot Act is not a perfect law, it provides our intelligence and law enforcement communities with crucial tools to keep America safe,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. “The raid that killed Osama bin Laden also yielded an enormous amount of new information that has spurred dozens of investigations yielding new leads every day. “Without the Patriot Act, investigators would not have the tools they need to follow these new leads and disrupt terrorist plots.” The provisions are key parts of the act, which was enacted after the 9/11 attacks. While backers say the provisions bolster US security, critics say they could be abused and violate the rights of US citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has long called for changes to the Patriot Act, said Congress missed an opportunity to amend the measure to include privacy protections. “Congress has once again chosen to rubberstamp the Patriot Act and its overreaching provisions. Since its passage nearly a decade ago, the Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans’ privacy and violate their constitutional rights,” said Laura Murphy, of the ACLU, in a statement. The chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, together with Rand Paul, a Republican senator admired by the conservative tea party movement, offered steps to bolster oversight of the Patriot Act and increase civil-liberty protections. Their proposed changes cleared Leahy’s committee, but neither man was able to bring them up for a full Senate vote. Leahy said: “The extension of the Patriot Act provisions does not include a single improvement or reform, and includes not even a word that recognises the importance of protecting the civil liberties and constitutional privacy rights of Americans.” But the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said: “The invaluable terror-fighting tools under the Patriot Act have kept us safe for nearly a decade, and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue.” The Senate had been tied up in procedural knots over the measure for days. It moved after pressure from the director of FBI, Robert Mueller, and the national intelligence chief, James Clapper, who wrote to congressional leaders, saying that renewal of the provisions was vital to national security. US Congress United States Global terrorism Republicans Democrats US politics Civil liberties – international Obama administration guardian.co.uk
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