Kindle lending community site has its API access revoked by Amazon The new ebook lending community site Lendle , set up last month to take advantage of Amazon’s free Kindle ebook loan facility , has gone off-line after having its API access revoked by Amazon. The site’s homepage now warns users the service is “unavailable indefinitely”. Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft, who launched the site six weeks ago, expressed “pure surprise” at the development, saying in an online statement: “The letter we received from Amazon states that the reason our API and Amazon Associates accounts have been revoked is that Lendle does not ‘serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site’. We take issue with this, as Lendle was built from the ground up to ensure that it would be beneficial to authors, publishers and Amazon.” Lendle, like other ebook lending sites, makes it possible for Kindle ebook readers in the US to lend out their ebooks to another member of the site – on a single occasion and for a limited time period of 14 days – and be permitted to borrow someone else’s ebook for free in exchange. Some authors have expressed concern that the sites open up an ebook free-for-all. Crime writer David Hewson this month cited such loan sites as one of the factors, alongside piracy on torrent sites, that are currently “chipping away” at authors’ slender incomes . Croft speculated that “skittish” publishers anxious about the site’s effect on sales might have put pressure on Amazon, but admitted that “really, we don’t know”. He maintained the site does not discourage book buying, saying: “Our site requires that you be willing to lend books before you can borrow them. Our philosophy is: you can’t borrow if you don’t lend, and you can’t lend if you don’t buy. The entire system we built is centered around the idea of encouraging people to buy books.” The site had engaged with a “passionate, loyal and vocal community many, many thousands of book-lovers strong,” he added. Lendle members voiced anger at Amazon on Twitter today, with this comment from @CleaveLands a typical one. “Good job @amazon,” he complained. “Way to kill @lendleapp when they were driving sales of ebooks for your site.” On Twitter, @lendleapp said the owners of other community lending sites had indicated that they too had had API addresses revoked by Amazon. “Lendle has not been singled out,” the site tweeted. However, a second ebook loan site, Book Lending , said it was carrying on with “business as usual” today. Amazon has not responded to requests for comment. Ebooks Kindle Amazon.com E-readers Benedicte Page guardian.co.uk
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Defendant known only as Detlef S fathered eight children with stepdaughter, and abused daughter and stepson A German court has convicted a man who fathered eight children with his stepdaughter of 162 counts of sexual abuse and sentenced him to 14 and half years in prison. The court found the 48-year-old defendant, identified only as Detlef S, guilty of sexually abusing his children and forcing his daughter and stepdaughter into prostitution between 1987 and 2010. He confessed to the charges. Detlef S, whose last name was withheld because of German privacy laws, first began molesting his daughter when she was nine, and after her 12th birthday party he regularly sexually assaulted her, the DAPD news agency reported. Detlef S had already been abusing his twin stepchildren, who are now 28. He started in 1987 when they were only four years old, and continued until 2010. DNA samples confirmed Detlef S, a truck driver who lived in Fluterschen, near Bonn, fathered seven of his stepdaughter’s children. An eighth child died before DNA tests could be done, but he later admitted to fathering all eight children. Shortly before the court announced the verdict, stepson Bjoern B, a co-plaintiff in the trial, told reporters: “Today is the day of truth, the day of justice”. “We have waited 13 years for this day,” Bjoern B said of himself and his siblings who were abused by the defendant. Germany’s Bild newspaper has called the suspect the “German Fritzl” – a reference to Europe’s most infamous case of incest. Austrian man Josef Fritzl was found guilty in 2009 of locking his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and fathering seven children with her. He is serving a life sentence. Germany guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …On the Spanish island of Minorca up to 5 million years ago, the rabbit was king. Researchers there have discovered fossils belonging to the biggest-ever member of the bunny family, LiveScience reports. Nuralagus rex some 26 pounds—about six times the size of modern rabbits—had largely lost the ability…
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Christopher Grady drove car into freezing river Avon, killing five-year-old daughter Gabrielle A father who murdered his five-year-old daughter and attempted to kill his six-year-old son by driving them into a freezing river has been jailed for life. Christopher Grady, 43, plunged his car into the river Avon at Evesham, Worcestershire, on 11 February last year. Gabrielle Grady spent two hours trapped in the submerged vehicle and was pronounced dead three days later. Grady and his son Ryan survived after police and firefighters pulled them from the water. Grady was convicted last Friday after a three-week trial at Birmingham crown court. Today Mr Justice Lindblom handed Grady a life sentence for the murder of Gabrielle and told him he would serve a minimum term of 15 years. He was sentenced to 10 years for the attempted murder of Ryan, to run concurrently. The judge said: “What you did on 11 February 2010 would horrify anyone who is, or has been, the parent of a young child. It would horrify any right-thinking person. You took the life of your daughter, Gabby, who was five years old. You tried to take the life of your son, Ryan, who was six. Those crimes were born of anger and self-pity.” The judge added that Grady had put his “defenceless” children, who were screaming and crying, “in terror” and had betrayed their trust in him. He said: “In all of this, Ryan and Gabby were innocent. They were your children. They loved you. They looked to you for protection and support.” During the trial, jurors heard that Grady had warned the children’s mother, Kim Smith, she had 10 seconds to say goodbye to them before he drove into the water at Hampton Ferry. Smith, 37, said he arrived at her house in Evesham at around 9.15am, telling her to say goodbye, before driving away shouting the word “river”. She said his face was “contorted” and “vile” with anger. The jury of seven women and five men took five hours to find Grady guilty of both counts. He had denied the charges, telling the court the incident had been “an accident”. After Grady was led away from the court, the judge offered his condolences to Smith. He said: “I turn to the family, and in particular Miss Smith and Ryan (who was not in court). I offer them my own sympathy in their loss, and I hope that the pain of that loss may now be easier to bear.” Crime Children Child protection Social care guardian.co.uk
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Documents show operator failed to carry out mandatory checks at Fukushima Daiichi and allowed fuel rods to pile up The power plant at the centre of the biggest civilian nuclear crisis in Japan’s history contained far more spent fuel rods than it was designed to store, while its technicians repeatedly failed to carry out mandatory safety checks, according to documents from the reactor’s operator. The risk that used fuel rods present to efforts to avert disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was underlined on Tuesday when nuclear safety officials said the No 2 reactor’s storage pool had heated to around boiling point , raising the risk of a leakage of radioactive steam. “We cannot leave this alone and we must take care of it as quickly as possible,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, of the nuclear and industrial safety agency, said. According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company repeatedly missed safety checks over a 10-year period up to two weeks before the 11 March disaster, and allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility. When the plant was struck by a huge earthquake and tsunami, its reactors, designed by US scientists 50 years ago , contained the equivalent of almost six years of highly radioactive uranium fuel produced by the facility, according to a presentation Tepco gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency and later posted on the company’s website. The revelations will add to pressure on Tepco to explain why, under its cost-cutting chief executive Masataka Shimizu, it opted to save money by storing the spent fuel on site rather than invest in safer storage options. The firm already faces scrutiny over why it waited so long to pump seawater into the stricken reactors and, according to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper last week, turned down US offers of help to cool the reactors shortly after the disaster. Critics of Japan’s nuclear power programme say the industry’s patchy safety record and close ties to regulating authorities will have to change if it is to regain public trust. “I’ve long thought the whole system is a mess,” Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic party MP, told Reuters. “We have to go through our whole nuclear strategy after this. “Now, no one is going to accept nuclear waste in their backyards. You can have an earthquake and have radioactive material under your house. We’re going to have a real debate on this.” Kono wants to see the government lead a fundamental reform of the industry’s structure, which he says has encouraged collusion between plant operators and the people who are supposed to regulate them. Reports said safety lapses at the plant continued up to two weeks before the tsunami disabled cooling systems in its reactors and sparked the biggest nuclear power emergency the world has seen since Chernobyl in 1986. One month before the tsunami, government regulators approved a Tepco request to prolong the life of one of its six reactors by another decade, despite warnings that its backup power generator contained stress cracks, making them more vulnerable to water damage. Weeks later, Tepco admitted it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment inside the plant’s cooling systems, including water pumps, according to the nuclear safety agency’s website. Regulators have been accused of uncritically backing industry moves to prolong the life of ageing nuclear power plants such as Fukushima Daiichi amid mounting local opposition to the construction of new facilities. A regulatory committee reviewing the reactor’s stay of execution said maintenance management was “inadequate”, and the quality of inspection “insufficient,” according to reports. When disaster struck earlier this month, the plant contained almost 4,000 uranium fuel assemblies kept in pools of circulating water – the equivalent of more than three times the amount of radioactive material usually kept in the active cores of the plant’s reactors. The drop-in water levels in some of those pools after the tsunami has caused fuel rods to overheat, raising the risk of a full meltdown and the release of dangerous levels of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Tepco workers, troops and firefighters have been working around the clock to keep the storage pools replenished by dumping water from helicopters and via high-pressure hoses from the ground. The No 4 reactor, which suffered two explosions last week, contained 548 fuel assemblies cooling in a water pool on its upper floor. Japanese plans to store radioactive nuclear fuel after it has been used have made little headway. A medium-term storage site in Mutsu, northern Japan, is not due to open until next year, and the construction of an enrichment and reprocessing plant in Rokkasho has been hit by technical glitches and other delays. Japan Japan disaster Nuclear power Energy Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A New Hampshire sportswriter whose pay was slashed decided to try his hand at moonlighting. But cops say he should have stuck to baseball games instead setting up a prostitution business. Former New Hampshire Union Leader reporter Kevin Porvencher, 52, has been sentenced to more that two years in prison…
Continue reading …Sarah Palin aborted a trip to Bethlehem at the last minute yesterday, according to the Telegraph , which suggests some not-so-wise men among her advisers could be to blame. The city of Christ’s birth was meant to be her first stop of the day, according to a leaked copy of her…
Continue reading …Coalition forces pounded targets in Libya for a third night yesterday, but the general leading US forces says the pace of air attacks is likely to slow soon. The campaign to destroy Moammar Gadhafi’s air defenses and establish a no-fly zone is almost complete, and American officials are seeking to…
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Programming Barrie, Coward or Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the past A couple of years back, in a passionate post on this blog about regional theatre, the Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom observed that “Regional artistic directors used to behave as if they were on Countdown: ‘I’ll have a Coward, please, a Shakespeare, a new play in the studio, and another Coward, please, Carol.’ These days, I can only imagine producing Noël Coward if an artist has a personal connection to the material and a burning desire to give it fresh theatrical life.” Two years is a long time in theatre. Since Sansom’s post on the vibrancy of programming in regional theatres, we’ve had an election, the formation of a coalition government that has no understanding of the crucial role theatre can play in its community both economically and socially, and the prospect of funding cuts. But it is clear that, long before the axes have fallen, many theatre programmes have taken on the look of a nervy Countdown selection. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising: just as hemlines go down in a recession, maybe artistic directors are inclined to look backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a reminder how much confidence and psychology plays a part in creating the conditions necessary for a theatre to take risks, then reap the rewards. Back in 2001, the fact that there was money on the way (in the form of the £25 million that was injected into theatre after the Boyden report ) created a sea-change in British regional theatre that was apparent long before theatres saw a penny of the cash. In the circumstances, then, perhaps it is no surprise that the seasons currently gracing our stages – in many cases programmed more than a year ago – reflect a certain nervousness about audience attendance, and suggest a headlong retreat into pre-Look Back in Anger drama. That impression may be somewhat skewed by the Rattigan centenary, not that I begrudge him his moment in the sun: Thea Sharrock’s timely (and award-winning) After the Dance at the National made as good a case for Rattigan’s rehabilitation as the Almeida’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993. But, even if you take Rattigan out of the equation, we’re still seeing a rash of Cowards and Priestleys , even the odd Du Maurier and W Somerset Maugham. Or how about Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton? Restoration comedy seems to be making a come-back too. I can’t recall so much interest in The Rivals since the 1980s. Of course there’s wrong with directors rummaging around in the theatrical attic and finding plays that glimmer in the dark. There are also horses for courses: Salisbury Playhouse, which recently saw a fine revival of The Constant Wife , may actually be the only theatre in the country where you could still do Somerset Maugham, and there is no one more qualified to do it well than Philip Wilson – who knows how to mine beneath a brittle surface and who, incidentally, has previously has proved himself a superb director of Coward . Sansom was right two years ago and he is still right now, in suggesting that it is a burning desire to give a play new theatrical life that makes it worth doing. The results can be transforming, as we saw in the 1990s with Stephen Daldry with An Inspector Calls, or have seen recently at the Finborough with a rare revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade . And David Grindley’s touring revival of Journey’s End demonstrates that even an old war horse can have real vigour and relevance. So I certainly don’t want to write off the plays of the past, but do want to point out that if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future it can’t play things too safe. It’s risk-taking that keeps theatre alive. Theatre Noel Coward Lyn Gardner guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Programming Barrie, Coward or Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the past A couple of years back, in a passionate post on this blog about regional theatre, the Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom observed that “Regional artistic directors used to behave as if they were on Countdown: ‘I’ll have a Coward, please, a Shakespeare, a new play in the studio, and another Coward, please, Carol.’ These days, I can only imagine producing Noël Coward if an artist has a personal connection to the material and a burning desire to give it fresh theatrical life.” Two years is a long time in theatre. Since Sansom’s post on the vibrancy of programming in regional theatres, we’ve had an election, the formation of a coalition government that has no understanding of the crucial role theatre can play in its community both economically and socially, and the prospect of funding cuts. But it is clear that, long before the axes have fallen, many theatre programmes have taken on the look of a nervy Countdown selection. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising: just as hemlines go down in a recession, maybe artistic directors are inclined to look backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a reminder how much confidence and psychology plays a part in creating the conditions necessary for a theatre to take risks, then reap the rewards. Back in 2001, the fact that there was money on the way (in the form of the £25 million that was injected into theatre after the Boyden report ) created a sea-change in British regional theatre that was apparent long before theatres saw a penny of the cash. In the circumstances, then, perhaps it is no surprise that the seasons currently gracing our stages – in many cases programmed more than a year ago – reflect a certain nervousness about audience attendance, and suggest a headlong retreat into pre-Look Back in Anger drama. That impression may be somewhat skewed by the Rattigan centenary, not that I begrudge him his moment in the sun: Thea Sharrock’s timely (and award-winning) After the Dance at the National made as good a case for Rattigan’s rehabilitation as the Almeida’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993. But, even if you take Rattigan out of the equation, we’re still seeing a rash of Cowards and Priestleys , even the odd Du Maurier and W Somerset Maugham. Or how about Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton? Restoration comedy seems to be making a come-back too. I can’t recall so much interest in The Rivals since the 1980s. Of course there’s wrong with directors rummaging around in the theatrical attic and finding plays that glimmer in the dark. There are also horses for courses: Salisbury Playhouse, which recently saw a fine revival of The Constant Wife , may actually be the only theatre in the country where you could still do Somerset Maugham, and there is no one more qualified to do it well than Philip Wilson – who knows how to mine beneath a brittle surface and who, incidentally, has previously has proved himself a superb director of Coward . Sansom was right two years ago and he is still right now, in suggesting that it is a burning desire to give a play new theatrical life that makes it worth doing. The results can be transforming, as we saw in the 1990s with Stephen Daldry with An Inspector Calls, or have seen recently at the Finborough with a rare revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade . And David Grindley’s touring revival of Journey’s End demonstrates that even an old war horse can have real vigour and relevance. So I certainly don’t want to write off the plays of the past, but do want to point out that if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future it can’t play things too safe. It’s risk-taking that keeps theatre alive. Theatre Noel Coward Lyn Gardner guardian.co.uk
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