Facebook Removes Beheading Video, Says It Will Tighten Rules

Outrage over the posting of a video showing the decapitation of a woman has led Facebook to say it is going to "combat the glorification of violence ... [by] strengthening the enforcement of our policies." It has also removed the video.

This story began Monday when the BBC reported that:

"Facebook is allowing videos showing people being decapitated to be posted and shared on its site once again. The social network had introduced a temporary ban in May following complaints that the clips could cause long-term psychological damage. The U.S. firm confirmed it now believed its users should be free to watch and condemn such videos. It added it was, however, considering adding warnings."

The news network added that this week it was "alerted to Facebook's change in policy by a reader who said the firm was refusing to remove a page showing a clip of a masked man killing a woman, which is believed to have been filmed in Mexico."

British Prime Minister David Cameron was among those to condemn Facebook's decision. "It's irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents," he tweeted Tuesday.

Later Tuesday, Facebook posted something of a u-turn in policy:

"People turn to Facebook to share their experiences and to raise awareness about issues important to them. Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve graphic content that is of public interest or concern, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism, and other violence. When people share this type of graphic content, it is often to condemn it. If it is being shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate violence, Facebook removes it.

"As part of our effort to combat the glorification of violence on Facebook, we are strengthening the enforcement of our policies.

"First, when we review content that is reported to us, we will take a more holistic look at the context surrounding a violent image or video, and will remove content that celebrates violence.

"Second, we will consider whether the person posting the content is sharing it responsibly, such as accompanying the video or image with a warning and sharing it with an age-appropriate audience.

"Based on these enhanced standards, we have re-examined recent reports of graphic content and have concluded that this content improperly and irresponsibly glorifies violence. For this reason, we have removed it.

"Going forward, we ask that people who share graphic content for the purpose of condemning it do so in a responsible manner, carefully selecting their audience and warning them about the nature of the content so they can make an informed choice about it."

Cameron tweeted Wednesday that he is "pleased Facebook has changed its approach on beheading videos. The test is now to ensure their policy is robust in protecting children."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/23/240190936/facebook-removes-beheading-video-says-it-will-tighten-rules?ft=1&f=1001
Category: national coffee day   emmys   Namaste   Low Winter Sun   loretta lynn  

Wacha sharp, Cards-Bosox scoreless through 3

St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Michael Wacha throws during the first inning of Game 2 of baseball's World Series against the Boston Red Sox Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Jared Wickerham, Pool)

St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Michael Wacha throws during the first inning of Game 2 of baseball's World Series against the Boston Red Sox Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Jared Wickerham, Pool)

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher John Lackey throws during the first inning of Game 2 of baseball's World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Jared Wickerham, Pool)

Boston Red Sox's Jacoby Ellsbury breaks his bat hitting a single in front of St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina during the third inning of Game 2 of baseball's World Series Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

St. Louis Cardinals' Carlos Beltran runs after hitting a single off Boston Red Sox starting pitcher John Lackey during the first inning of Game 2 of baseball's World Series Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

James Taylor sings the national anthem before Game 2 of baseball's World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

BOSTON (AP) — Rookie Michael Wacha kept pitching like a postseason ace and John Lackey matched him, leaving the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox scoreless through three innings Thursday night in Game 2 of the World Series.

A day after the Red Sox romped past the sloppy Cardinals 8-1, this one was tight at the start as Boston tried for its 10th straight Series win and a commanding lead.

At 22, Wacha came as advertised. He pitched well beyond his years — and in October, of all things.

The right-hander flashed a 95 mph fastball and a diving changeup while holding Boston hitless until Jacoby Ellsbury's broken-bat bloop single with two outs in the third.

No one in the Boston lineup had ever hit against Wacha and it showed, as the Red Sox struck out four times and took a lot of weak, awkward swings.

The Cardinals had seen this already from Wacha, even though he made only nine regular-season starts. He began the night with a 3-0 record in three postseason starts, allowing just eight hits while striking out 22.

Wacha had his own cheering section at chilly Fenway Park, too. His mom, dad and younger sister bundled up in the stands after arriving from Texarkana, Texas.

Lackey worked around a pair of singles in blanking the Cardinals. He pitched a day after turning 35 — it was his first Series start since 2002 when, as a rookie for the Angels, he beat Barry Bonds and San Francisco in Game 7.

Carlos Beltran started for the Cardinals in right field, returning from an injury that forced him out of the opener. Beltran exited in the third inning and went to a hospital, shortly after bruising his ribs when he rammed into the short bullpen wall while taking away a grand slam from David Ortiz.

Both teams made changes to their lineups.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny benched shortstop Pete Kozma after making two errors in the opener and put Daniel Descalso in his place. Jarrod Saltalamacchia replaced David Ross as Boston's catcher.

The teams are off Friday, and resume with Game 3 at Busch Stadium on Saturday night. Boston starter Jake Peavy makes his Series debut against Joe Kelly.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-24-World%20Series/id-3ff44cce737f47ed8f3d499b6d4a4918
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Time Warner Cable's DVR Ad Doesn't Add Up (Video)

This story first appeared in the Nov. 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

As part of a $50 million ad blitz, a Time Warner Cable TV spot crows that, unlike AT&T U-verse, "With Time Warner Cable you can watch and record more than four shows at the same time." But some customers are calling it "deceptive" and "false advertising" on the company's online message boards.

PHOTOS: What TV Viewers Really Want 

The ad ends by promising "TV, Internet and Phone" for $79.99 a month. What it doesn't explain is that the package doesn't include even a DVR. And Time Warner's DVRs record only two shows at a time, while AT&T units do four.

To record the promised number of shows would require three of the company's DVRs at a cost of more than $160 a month (plus installation). TWC says that in response to customer questions, it edited out the word "record" from the ad.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/news/~3/BWAAgNcdWCk/time-warner-cables-dvr-ad-650393
Category: revenge   Yahoo Fantasy Football   Ariel Castro   Obama Syria   Christopher Lane  

B for Boy: London Review

The Bottom Line

A powerful examination of maternity and family life in Nigeria’s male-dominated culture.

Venue

London Film Festival

Starring

Uche Nwadili, Nonso Odogwu, Ngozi Nwaneto, Frances Okeke

Director

Chika Anadu

First-feature director Chika Anadu delivers an effective, moving drama about a wealthy Nigerian woman who, after a miscarriage leaves her infertile, attempts to illegally buy another woman’s unborn child in order to produce a son in B for Boy. Much more arthouse in spirit than the usual sort of “Nollywood” fare, it represents an eminently exportable property for festivals, especially those wishing to showcase new African cinema. Adventurous distributors in territories with substantial diaspora populations might want to check this out, even if its earnings are unlikely to be anything more than niche. Anadu, meanwhile, makes a mark for herself here with her confident handling of actors and technique.   

Amaka (Uche Nwadili), the formidable protagonist, seems to have it all. Seemingly somewhere in her late thirties, with a high-ranking job in television, a fancy apartment in Lagos, a loving, rich and modern-minded husband (Nonso Odogwu), an adorable daughter young daughter, and another child on the way in a few months’ time, it would seem life couldn’t get much better for this modern Nigerian woman. However, the familial joy, especially from her in-laws, that greets the news that her next child will be a boy suggests that more traditional, intensely patriarchal attitudes are still a powerful force in her life.

STORY: Johnny Depp Makes Surprise Appearance at BFI London Film Fest Awards Ceremony

While her husband Nonso on business is away one week, Amaka suddenly discovers her child has died in utero, and she’s forced to go through physically and emotionally painful process of giving birth to the stillborn infant. Suffering through the experience entirely alone, she tells no one what’s happened. As luck would have it, sometime earlier a friend from the health-service leant Amaka a cloth body suit, complete with swollen fake breasts and a weighted belly bump. Amaka was supposed to give it to Nonso to help him develop empathy for what his wife is going through during pregnancy, but she never did. By strapping the undergarment on like suit of protective armor, and wearing flowing caftan-like dresses, she can disguise the fact that she’s lost the child and buy more time. Adding on pressure, she knows that if she doesn’t produce an heir, her village-reared mother-in-law has a second wife already lined up for Nonso in order to save the family reputation. (A very similar plotline featured in the recent Half of a Yellow Sun, also set in Nigeria/Biafra.)

With the clock ticking down towards the due date, Amaka seeks out a desperate measure. Through a shady go-between, she arranges to buy a newborn from poor pregnant woman named Joy (Frances Okeke) who is due to give birth about the same time Amaka was. At first Amaka treats Joy with imperious coldness, much like she does her own house servants and underlings at work. But when Joy’s partner suddenly does a bunk and leaves her alone and frightened, Amaka shows a more maternal side, caring for the young woman, even becoming friends in a way.

Grounded in the realities of contemporary Nigerian culture but never hectoring or crudely didactic, B for Boy makes it clear that it’s mostly on Amaka’s side but admirably doesn’t make her too sympathetic. She’s one tough cookie, determined to get what she wants by any means necessary. Uche Nwadili’s outstanding performance as Amaka strikes just the right balance in service of the script. She has an incandescent smile that could light up a house, but a ferocious set brow when angry and intricately expressive eyes, always making her character’s hidden feelings known with the slightest flicker of expression. The rest of the supporting cast also impress, refraining from the overplayed dramatics that makes most Nollywood films strange and inaccessible to Western audiences.

Mostly shot on handheld cameras by AFI-alumni Monika Lenczewska, the visuals have a quietly nervous energy that resonates particularly well with Enis Rotthoff’s brooding, ominous score.

Venue: London Film Festival (First Feature competition)

Production: No Blondes Productions

Cast: Uche Nwadili, Nonso Odogwu, Ngozi Nwaneto, Frances Okeke, Iheoma Opara

Director: Chika Anadu

Screenwriter: Chika Anadu

Producers: Chika Anadu, Arie Esiri

Executive producers: Ijeoma Jatto, Ogheneochuko Esiri, Ifeoma Esiri, Albert Esiri, Didi Esiri, Dele Alakija, Dundun Peterside, Atedo Peterside

Director of photography: Monika Lenczewska

Production designer: Anthony Prince Tomety

Editor: Simon Brasse

Music: Enis Rotthoff

No rating, 114  minutes

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/reviews/film/~3/8WMa-UdmPRs/b-boy-london-review-650573
Category: downton abbey   zac efron   george strait   Shawn Burr   Alfonso Soriano  

Is Eastern State Penitentiary Really Haunted?

A Philadelphia Prison's Grim Past

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  Inmates once were hooded so they would not be recognized by guards or other inmates, allowing for anonymity upon release. Eyeholes were allowed in hoods circa 1890, but prisoners were still not allowed to communicate.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  In the 1890s, Eastern State Penitentiary's seven cellblocks radiated from a room known as "Center." Architect John Haviland wrote that the design would promote "watching, convenience, economy and ventilation."

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  A medical team works on a patient in the prison's infirmary in this undated photo.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Hundreds of inmates lined up every day along the serving windows at "Soup Alley" on the way to the dining hall.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Guards inspect a tunnel that inmate Willie Sutton and 11 others tried to use in a doomed escape in 1945.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  In the 1890s, prison staff used food carts to deliver meals to prisoners through small wooden feeding doors in their cells. Inmates were not allowed to eat together until 1924.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  The facade of the penitentiary as it looked in the 1920s.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Cellblocks 8 and 9 were added to the radial plan in 1877 to accommodate more prisoners; however, guards could not see down those corridors without the use of surveillance mirrors, seen here at left and right.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  The exterior of Eastern State's death row. No executions actually took place at Eastern State. The prisoners were shipped elsewhere.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  In 1905, a free-standing building was constructed between cellblocks. The second floor was used for religious services, movies, concerts and as a gymnasium.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  Courtesy of Eastern State Penitentiary

  
  

With its looming, gloomy high stone walls, crumbling corridors, and stark cells that once housed thousands of hard-core criminals, Eastern State Penitentiary certainly looks haunted. Its 142-year history is full of suicide, madness, disease, murder and torture, making it easy to imagine the spirits of troubled souls left behind to roam its abandoned halls.

The harsh punishments used on prisoners are enough to make you shiver even without seeing a ghost. There was the water bath, in which inmates were dunked then hung out on a wall in winter until ice formed on the skin. The mad chair, which bound an inmate so tightly that circulation was cut off, later necessitating amputations. The iron gag, in which an inmate's hands were tied behind the back and strapped to an iron collar in the mouth, so that any movement caused the tongue to tear and bleed profusely. And "The Hole," a dank underground cell where unfortunate souls had no light, no human contact, no exercise, no toilet and little food and air.

Ben Bookman, a tour guide at Eastern State Penitentiary, uses a diorama to point out the prison's cellblocks.

Emily Bogle/NPR

The prison is considered by several sources to be one of the most haunted places in America. It has been featured on the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures and Most Haunted Live, Syfy's Ghost Hunters and MTV's Fear. Dozens of paranormal researchers visit every year and report that it's a hub otherworldly activity. Perhaps most convincingly, there are the stories of eerie experiences by visitors, staff, guards and inmates that have corroborated each other since the 1940s.

Cellblock 12 is known for echoing voices and cackling; Cellblock 6 for shadowy figures darting along the walls; Cellblock 4 for visions of ghostly faces. Many people have reported seeing a silhouette of a guard in one of the towers. Footsteps. Wails. Whispers. The same stories, over and over again.

One of the most legendary tales comes from Gary Johnson, who helps maintain the crumbling old locks at the prison. In the early 1990s, he had just opened an old lock in Cellblock 4 when he says a force gripped him so tightly that he was unable to move. He described a negative, horrible energy that exploded out of the cell. He said tormented faces appeared on the cell walls and that one form in particular beckoned to him.

But tour guide Ben Bookman says, "It's a lot harder to find a believer than it is to find a skeptic here. We at Eastern State do not claim that the prison is haunted. We run a haunted attraction."

Bookman says the staff does not like to exploit the prison's darker image. "Most people making TV shows come in looking for ghosts. That's not the story we tell. Inmates were real people. These were people's lives. Seventy-thousand people spent time here. We're not going to glorify it, and we're not going to make fun of it."

Perhaps hauntings are a self-fulfilling prophecy — if you want to have a haunted experience, your imagination just might make sure you do. Certainly there are thousands of visitors who say they've experienced no odd feelings, no sudden chills, no strange sounds, no apparitions. And yet there are plenty who say they have.

What do you want to believe?

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/24/232234570/is-eastern-state-penitentiary-really-haunted?ft=1&f=1001
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Microsoft exec scoffs at talk that Apple's free iWork threatens Office

Microsoft's head of communications took shots today at Apple's decision to give away its iWork productivity software, calling the move "an attempt to catch up."

In a post to the Official Microsoft Blog, Frank Shaw countered what he said was misguided at best, reality-bending at worst, coverage by the media and blogosphere on Apple's giving away iWork to new Mac and iOS device buyers.

[ Also on InfoWorld: The must-have iPad office apps, round 7. | For quick, smart takes on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]

Apple made that announcement Tuesday during an 80-minute event in San Francisco, where executives touted new iPads, lower-priced MacBook Pros, and declared OS X Mavericks and the iWork apps would be free to segments of the Mac installed base.

"Seems like the RDF (Reality Distortion Field) typically generated by an Apple event has extended beyond Cupertino," Shaw wrote. "So let me try to clear some things up."

Shaw took exception to the conclusions by some pundits that the Apple maneuver was a shot at rival Microsoft, and that by throwing in iWork with a new Mac, iPhone, or iPad, Microsoft's Office franchise, the Redmond, Wash., company's business model and its tablet strategy were threatened.

"When I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don't see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch-up," said Shaw.

But Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, saw it as exactly that: A shot. "I don't know any other way to interpret that than to say Apple was going after Microsoft," said Moorhead.

The "that" Moorhead was talking about was the slide shown behind Eddy Cue, Apple's head of Internet software and services, yesterday just before Cue announced that iWork would be free for new device buyers. That slide displayed the logo of Office 365, Microsoft's software subscription service, and cited $99 as the annual price for Home Premium, the consumer SKU.

Shaw has lashed out at the press over reports or at bloggers over their interpretations of news before. In May, he decried negative coverage of Windows 8 in general, and the update then code-named Windows "Blue" in particular. He took special exception to news and news analysis stories that compared Blue's restoration of the Start button to Coca-Cola's "New Coke" disaster of nearly thirty years ago.

Windows Blue was later named Windows 8.1, the free update that launched last week.

More recently, Shaw called out the media over how it handled news of current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's retirement announcement two months ago.

Source: http://podcasts.infoworld.com/d/applications/microsoft-exec-scoffs-talk-apples-free-iwork-threatens-office-229439?source=rss_applications
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Amazon narrows 3Q loss as sales jump 24 pct

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon.com says that its fiscal third-quarter loss narrowed as revenue grew 24 percent.

The Seattle-based online retailer also said Thursday that it expects growth in its fourth-quarter revenue, indicating confidence as it enters the key holiday shopping season.

Amazon posted a loss of $41 million, or 9 cents per share, for the quarter that ended in September. That is compared with a loss of $274 million, or 60 cents per share, in the same quarter last year. The prior year includes a one-time $169 million loss related to its stake in online deals site LivingSocial.

Revenue came to $17.09 billion from $13.81 billion.

Analysts were anticipating a loss of 9 cents per share on $16.76 billion in revenue.

Shares rose nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-24-Earns-Amazon/id-265775ab28b741faa66bf3616b4f302b
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