Mindy McCready's Ex 'Not Shocked' by Her Suicide















02/18/2013 at 08:20 AM EST



Mindy McCready's ex-boyfriend and the father of her 6-year-old son said Monday morning that he wasn't surprised when he heard that the troubled country singer had apparently taken her own life.

"As sad as it is, it didn't come as a major shock," Billy McKnight told the Today show. "She's just been battling demons for so long."

He added, "I was around her when she attempted suicide twice, so I knew it was in her."

Cleburne County, Arkansas, sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunshots Sunday at 3:31 p.m. and discovered McCready's body on the front porch of her Heber Springs house. Neighbors reportedly had heard two shots, and the deputies found dead at the scene McCready's dog and the singer herself.

"The demons that she hasn't beaten were there," McKnight said of McCready, 37, who had battled substance abuse.

Following last month's death of her fiancé David Wilson, which is currently under investigation as either a suicide or a murder, the courts ordered McCready to be institutionalized.

Asked on Today if she might have been released too early, McKnight said he knew McCready could talk her way out of anything.

"I feel for her mother and her family and especially my son," said McKnight, whose boy, Zander, was the subject of a bitter and prolonged custody battle with McCready.

After the death of Wilson, Zander and his 10-month-old half-brother, Zayne, whose father was Wilson, were placed in foster care, where they remain. McKnight said that he wants his son returned to him: "He needs to come home."

As for the other child, "I don't know what is going to happen to Zayne," he said.

Mindy McCready's Ex 'Not Shocked' by Her Suicide| Death, Mindy Mccready

Zander and Billy McKnight, summer 2011

Courtesy Billy McKnight

Read More..

Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior


SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.


The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.


"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.


The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.


The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.


Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.


At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.


By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.


"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.


The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.


Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.


Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.


"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.


Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.


During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.


Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.


"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.


____


Online:


Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org


___


Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship


Read More..

Florida hit by "tsunami" of tax identity fraud


MIAMI (Reuters) - Bruce Parton was only a few weeks from retirement after 30 years as a mail carrier in sunny Florida.


He never lived to fulfill his retirement plan of moving back to a quiet life in the Catskill mountains of New York, not far from where he grew up on Long Island.


Instead, he was gunned down on his daily mail route in December 2010 by members of an identity theft ring who stole his master key as part of a scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds.


Using stolen names and Social Security numbers, criminals are filing phony electronic tax forms to claim refunds, exploiting a slow-moving federal bureaucracy to collect the money before victims, or the Internal Revenue Service, discover the fraud.


Parton was a victim of what officials say has ballooned into a massive, and dangerous, illegal industry that could cost the nation $21 billion over the next five years, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.


While that is a relatively small sum compared to the $1.1 trillion collected from individual tax payers in the last fiscal year, the crime has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last three years.


"We are on the top of a national trend that is causing a hemorrhage of tax dollars," said Wifredo Ferrer, United States Attorney for south Florida. "It's a tsunami of fraud."


While the IRS says it has detected cases in every state except North Dakota and West Virginia, the fraud's epicenter is Florida, and it is mostly concentrated in Miami and Tampa.


Miami has 46 times the per-capita rate of false tax refund claims than the rest of the country, and 70 times the national average in dollar terms, Ferrer told Reuters.


"For whatever reason, we always tend to lead the nation when it comes to fraud," he said, noting that his office has been battling massive Medicare fraud in recent years that has since spread to other parts of the country.


Florida's high proportion of older residents, who can be more vulnerable to fraud, may be one reason for the high levels of fraud in the state.


Nationwide, the number of cases of tax identity theft detected by authorities sky-rocketed to more than 1.2 million cases in 2012 from only 48,000 in 2008, according to the Treasury Department.


The real number of phony tax filings is likely much higher as the fraud is hard to track, according to a November General Accountability Office report.


GANG LINKS


The tax ID theft problem is particularly troubling as, unlike Medicare fraud, it is associated with violent crime and armed gangs.


Tampa police first detected it in 2010 when officers discovered wanted street criminals engaged in tax fraud. "They were holed up in hotels with laptops churning out tax claims," said congresswoman Kathy Castor, who represents the area and is pressing the IRS to get tougher on the fraud.


When agents raided a Howard Johnson in East Tampa in late 2010, they found suspects smoking marijuana and four laptop computers being used to file fraudulent tax returns on Turbo Tax, the tax preparation software, according to police records.


The suspects had lists of personal information containing more than 1,000 names and confidential personal information, multiple re-loadable debit cards, and records of numerous financial transactions. The investigation revealed that the suspects had been camped out in the hotel room for more than a week filing claims.


Tax identity fraudsters are apparently drawn by the ease of the crime, officials say.


"The scheme is very basic, it works virtually the same in almost every case," said Ferrer. "All they need is your name and the tax ID number."


Armed with that information a refund claim can be filed electronically, making up other details on the form, including addresses, employer data, income and deductions.


Criminals obtain the vital numbers using various tactics, often by bribing office workers with access to personnel files inside companies, as well as large public institutions such as hospitals and schools, according to prosecutors.


Last summer a hacker stole 3.8 million unencrypted tax records from the South Carolina Department of Revenue in what is believed to be the largest security breach of a U.S. tax agency. Authorities say they do not know the hacker's motive.


One North Miami man, Rodney Saint Fleur, was charged last year with using the LexisNexis research service account at the law firm where he worked to access names and Social Security numbers of 26,000 people as part of an identity theft scheme, according to court documents.


Victims in Florida have varied from hospital patients, to Holocaust survivors at an elderly Jewish community center, as well as active duty military serving overseas.


In December, a former U.S. Marine from North Miami was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for stealing the identities of more than 40 fellow Marines stationed at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan as part of a plot to claim $54,000 in fraudulent income-tax refunds.


In Parton's case the criminals were after his master key that gives postal workers access to mail drop-off boxes and apartment mailboxes. He was shot twice in the chest by a gunman as part of a plot to steal identities in people's mail for tax refund fraud.


The gunman, Pikerson Mentor, 31, was sentenced last month to life plus 42 years.


More than 600 people turned up for Parton's funeral, including postal workers and people who got to know him on his route. "He had been doing that mail route for 10 years and he always had a smile for everyone," said his daughter, Nina Parton.


The criminals stay under the radar using identities of the elderly or the very young, who are unlikely to be filing for earned income, as well as the deceased. They typically claim small refunds, around $3,000, but use multiple identities, with payments often made to pre-paid debit cards.


FIGHTING BACK


The IRS said last week it is intensifying a crackdown on identify theft, with 3,000 agents devoted to tackling the problem, double the number assigned in 2011.


The number of IRS criminal investigations into identity theft more than tripled in the year to September 2012, and it was on pace to double again this year, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told reporters.


The tax collection agency prevented $20 billion in attempted tax refund fraud in fiscal year 2012, up from $14 billion a year earlier, he said.


"It's one of the biggest challenges that faces the IRS today," Miller said. "We're doing much better on all fronts but we have much more to do."


Despite the increase in investigations, the agency still had a backlog of 300,000 cases of people waiting for legitimate refunds after they were victims of fraud. It takes an average of six months to resolve a case, Miller said.


"The IRS have put a lot of resources on it, but they always seem to be behind the curve," said Keith Fogg, a tax professor at Villanova University School of Law.


Electronic filing, which now accounts for 80 percent of returns and was introduced to speed up delivery of refunds, has made the system more vulnerable to fraud.


The IRS is seeking to speed up the loading of data from W-2 payroll forms issued at the beginning of the tax season, a time lapse which gives fraudsters a window of opportunity to file using false data.


The IRS is also looking for ways to authenticate the identity of tax filers at the time of filing to pre-empt fraud, as well as working with the Social Security Administration to limit access to a registry of social security data of deceased tax payers, the so-called "Death Master File", a frequent target of fraud.


"We will not be prosecuting our way out of this. That's not going to be the answer. We're going to have to make it more and more difficult for criminals to profit from this behavior," said Miller. "If they're not successful they will move onto something else."


(Editing by Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)



Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.

In Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government plans to increase the population from just over five million to a possible high of nearly seven million by 2030, via regulated, legal immigration, and this is provoking opposition.

So much so that on Saturday, about 3,000 people turned out for what some commentators said was one of the biggest demonstrations in the nation’s history. (If the number seems small, it reflects the tight political control exerted over Singapore life by the People’s Action Party, which has run the country for about half a century and discourages public protest.)

What are the contours of the debate in Singapore?

Concern over booming immigration, often focused on new arrivals from increasingly rich China, has been simmering in the nation, with many feeling that the immigrants do not play by the same rules, that their manners are poor and that they are pushing up prices. That feeling crystallized last year when a wealthy Chinese man driving a Ferrari at high speed killed three people (including himself) in a nighttime accident.

(Similar sentiments are found in Hong Kong, as my colleagues Bettina Wassener and Gerry Mullany wrote.)

Vividly illustrating the resentment, Singaporeans sometimes call the wealthy immigrants “rich Chinese locusts,” according to an article in the Economic Observer’s Worldcrunch.

So the Singapore government’s Population White Paper that passed in Parliament earlier this month, just before Chinese New Year, was bound to stir things up.

The government is presenting the rise in immigration as a target that is needed if Singapore, where immigrants already make up about 40 percent of the population, and which has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world, is to continue to flourish, reports said. Singaporeans just are not having enough children, said the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

“In my view, in 2030, I think six million will not be enough to meet Singaporeans’ needs as our population ages because of this problem of the baby boomers and bulge of aging people,” Mr. Lee said in Parliament, adding that 6.9 million was not a target but a number to be used to help plan for infrastructure.

“Do we really need to increase our population by that much?” wrote a person called Chang Wei Meng in a letter to The Straits Times, according to Reuters. “What happened to achieving the Swiss standard of living?”

Gilbert Goh, a main organizer of the rally Saturday at Singapore’s Speaker’s Corner in a public park, said the protesters had a message: “They want to tell the government, please reconsider this policy. The turnout is a testimony that this policy is flawed and unpopular on the ground,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Goh as saying.

Yet amid the familiar rhetoric about immigrants, heard around the world – they don’t fit in, they’re rude, they’re different – might something more important be going on here?

In a blog post on Singapore News Alternative, Nicole Seah, a politician who has run for Parliament and comments on social issues, wrote: “Along with many other Singaporeans, I oppose the White Paper.”

Why? She is looking for “a society that lives in harmony, rather than tense and overcrowded conditions,” she writes.

“Not the Singapore Inc. that has been aggressively forced down our throats the past few years – a Singapore which is in danger of becoming a transient state where people from all over, come, make their fortunes, and leave.”

Not “a Singapore that has become a playground for the rich and the people who can afford it. A Singapore where the middle class is increasingly drowned out because they do not have the social clout or sufficient representatives in Parliament to voice their concerns.”

Ms. Seah’s statements raise an interesting question: Is this part of a phenomenon that the columnist Chrystia Freeland has written about so ably for this newspaper, the ascendancy of a wealthy, “plutocrat” class and the slipping status of the middle class?

As Ms. Freeland wrote last week: “The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe.” Is it hitting Asia, too, and does Singapore’s protest speak, at least in part, to this? Hong Kong’s dissatisfaction too?

Read More..

Is the Facebook Hack Part of a Bigger Spy Threat?






In the latest admission from a major company that it had been hacked, Facebook announced in a blog post on Friday afternoon that its “systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack” and that “Facebook was not alone,” which immediately raised the cyber-espionage question of the moment: Was China behind this one, too? High-profile disclosures of months-long Chinese malware attacks from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal raised the public stakes late last month, but the FBI, the Obama administration, and private security experts are monitoring what is a much wider espionage campaign against major American organizations — and Facebook, which appears to have been hacked late last month or in early February, could very well be its latest victim.


RELATED: China May (or May Not) Be Behind the Twitter Hack






Facebook does not detail where the malware compromise was initiated in its blog post, and company spokespeople are telling journalists it “won’t comment on hack origins.” But there is an important admission in the official post: “Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well.” That sounds awfully familiar to Twitter’s hacking announcement from another Friday evening this month, which some speculated had to do with China because of Twitter’s nod to the Times and the Journal. In its own blog post, Twitter said, “We do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked.” Facebook said it shared details with other possibly compromised companies—maybe Twitter was one of them? On the technical side, both Facebook and Twitter also mentioned a Java browser plug-in exploit, which may point to a connection between the hacks, even though 250,000 of Twitter’s accounts were affected and none of Facebook’s were.


RELATED: 83 Million Facebook Users Are Not Real People


It remains unclear if the Facebook attack has anything to do with the Chinese cyber-espionage campaign against high-profile U.S. companies, publications, websites, and more. There is another key word in Facebook’s admission — “sophisticated” — that makes the hack seem high-level enough. And per Facebook’s spokesperson, the attack “didn’t reach the legal threshold for user notification,” so they did have to even say anything. Neither did the Times or the Journal, both of which mentioned an ensuing FBI investigation in their admissions. Facebook also says it has handed over the case to law enforcement officials, Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher. This week, after President Obama issued an executive order and talked about cyber-security threats in his State of the Union address, major companies started sharing hack-attack information with more federal investigators.


RELATED: Chart: Google+ Hit 10 Million Users 50 Times Faster Than Facebook


Sullivan, the Facebook security boss, goes on to say that the Facebook hack “looked like a new campaign that wasn’t linked to previous Advanced Persistent Threat activities,” referring to the cyber-security term for espionage that targets governments and big companies. So maybe this is isolated and not part of the wave of Chinese cyber threats. Or maybe the “sophisticated” Chinese spying operation just has a fancy new hacking technique to add to its trail of malware malfeasance. But if Facebook’s new trouble is related to the Twitter hack, one would think the pattern would “appear to be related” to something, right? Guess we’ll have to see which big company comes clean next.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Is the Facebook Hack Part of a Bigger Spy Threat?
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/is-the-facebook-hack-part-of-a-bigger-spy-threat/
Link To Post : Is the Facebook Hack Part of a Bigger Spy Threat?
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models: Then and Now





How are Elle, Christie, Kathy and more faring (and looking) since their first shoots? Answer: Pretty darn well!








Credit: Courtesy of Sports Illustrated



Updated: Tuesday Feb 12, 2013 | 09:00 AM EST
By: Kate Hogan




Subscribe Now




Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


Read More..

G20 defuses talk of "currency war", no accord on debt


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no 'currency war' and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets in an indication of concern about the fragile state of the world economy.


Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by financial policymakers from the G20, which groups developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.


After late night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.


A draft communique seen by delegates on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed at price stability and growth.


"The language has been strengthened since our discussions last night," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters. "It's stronger than it was, but it was quite clear last night that everyone around the table wants to avoid any sort of currency disputes."


The communique did not single out Japan for aggressive monetary and fiscal policies that have seen the yen drop 20 percent, a trend that may now continue.


"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."


The statement reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's statement by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.


"We all agreed on the fact that we refuse to enter any currency war," French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici told reporters.


NO FISCAL TARGETS


The text also contained a commitment to credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals.


A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.


European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said he expected concrete debt targets to be agreed at the September meeting.


"We have a common view on the need to have a credible medium-term plans for fiscal consolidation, which is also essential so we have foundation for sustainable growth," he told Reuters.


The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt-cutting goals.


Backing in the communique for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.


QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but creates money, much of which has leaked into emerging markets, threatening to destabilize them.


That was offset in the communique by a commitment to minimize "negative spillovers" of the resulting financial flows that emerging markets fear may pump up asset bubbles and ruin their export competitiveness.


"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.


"Major developed countries' implementation of excessively relaxed currency policy has an influence on the world economy."


Russia, this year's chair of the G20, said the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and also expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other big emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.


Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said a rebalancing of global growth required more than an adjustment of exchange rates.


"Structural reforms in all countries, either with a positive or negative balance of payments, should play a bigger role," he said in an address to Saturday's talks.


The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.


On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".


It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.


(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)



Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: How Much Do You Trust Journalists?

LONDON — Another poll came out this week showing that in the hierarchy of trust, journalists figure near the bottom of the heap.

Some of us take a perverse pride in being down there with the money-changers and the harlots (actually, the latter sometimes rate rather highly in these surveys.)

The comforting theory is that if everybody hates us, we must be doing something right.

The Ipsos MORI poll published on Friday found that among 1,018 British respondents, only one-in-five trusted journalists to tell the truth — on a par with bankers and below real estate agents.

Bizarrely, almost 70 percent trusted television news presenters — ahead of priests and other clergymen.

The only small consolation for the derided scribes was that they came out just ahead of politicians. Only 18 percent of respondents believed politicians could be relied on to tell the truth.

Now, the results may just reflect the current state of British journalism, and indeed of British politics.

In the latest development in a long-running phone-hacking scandal, Scotland Yard on Wednesday arrested six more journalists who previously worked for Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World.

The scandal already led to a months-long inquiry by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, who concluded with an excoriating critique of the press as a whole for displaying “significant and reckless disregard for accuracy.”

Media-watchers believe, however, that in an era of rapid technological change, the trust issue goes wider than the morally dubious practices of some of the British red-top press.

As my colleague David Carr wrote at the height of the phone-hacking scandal last year: “Journalism’s ills don’t live exclusively on Fleet Street or stop at British shores.”

“Economic pressures have increased the urgency to make news and drive traffic, even as budgets have been cut and experienced news professionals tossed overboard,” David wrote.

He said part of the reason the public had lost confidence was that the product sometimes did not merit it. “If journalism is losing its way, that’s a story that needs to be told over and over,” he wrote.

An American student journal this week quoted Ron F. Smith, author of Ethics in Journalism, as saying the reputation of journalists was continually being questioned.

“Nearly every public opinion poll shows that people have lost respect for journalists and lost faith in the news media,” according to the introduction to his 2003 ethics manual.

Mariah Young, an aspiring journalist who writes for The Bullet, a student newspaper at Virginia’s University of Mary Washington, used the citation to ask whether journalists had lost a once cherished sense of ethics.

In an era of Twitter and the Internet, it was becoming harder for journalists to break news, papers to publish and people to trust the media, Ms. Young concluded.

There was similar soul-searching last month by John Lloyd, a veteran British commentator and Reuters columnist.

“The trend in a lot of the media is toward more scandal, more controversy and more opining,” he wrote, lamenting that news organizations wedded to objective reporting, investigation and rational analysis were now in a minority, “and a lot of them are finding it hard to make a living.”

He called for greater focus on long-term strategic issues such as global warming, dwindling resources and social change. “We should find some way of making this stuff part of a real global conversation — one that is vivid, comprehensible and more democratic,” he wrote.

In a comment to Mr. Lloyd, one anonymous news editor wrote, “Journalism has always attracted the self-righteous, opinionated and egotistical and with the new Facebook generation now in the workforce that bar is already at an all-time high.”

Has journalism really lost its way? Or does the public always get the press it deserves? And is the impact of citizen journalism a plus or a minus? Tell us what you think.

Read More..

Beyoncé's Life Is But a Dream: What to Serve at Your Viewing Party















02/16/2013 at 08:15 AM EST







Beyoncé in Life Is But a Dream


HBO


The "Countdown" has begun!

Beyoncé's HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, airs Saturday night (9 p.m. ET) – and we can't think of a better time or occasion to throw a "Party."

If you're hosting friends, you're going to need the following: dance moves, Kleenex and something to munch on (doing the "Uh-Oh," after all, works up an appetite).

Though we can't really help you with the first one and tissue is easy to come by, we do have suggestions on what to serve your guests on Beyoncé Night:

You can take the girl out of Texas but you can't take the Texas out of the girl, which is probably why Houston native is a fan of guacamole, a Tex-Mex staple. "I love avocado," she has said. "It's one of my healthy snack favorites." USA Today has her super-easy recipe.

It's no secret that Beyoncé sticks to lean protein like egg whites, turkey and Yellowtail sashimi and healthy snacks like edamame to keep her incredible figure, but we also know she likes to enjoy more indulgent meals. In her PEOPLE cover story as World's Most Beautiful Woman, the superstar revealed her perfect Sunday – and it includes pizza, red wine and watching HBO. Perfect for your party!

When she's on tour, her hospitality rider offers another option: juicy baked chicken legs, wings and breasts, heavily seasoned with fresh garlic, season salt, black and cayenne pepper. She also requests a turkey deli tray with assorted cheeses and veggies with low fat dip to snack on.

As for side dishes, why not make another favorite, her mom's "life-changing" green beans. "It is the most tasty, delicious dish," she says. "And it's green beans, so you don’t feel too guilty about eating them. They taste like steak!"

And if you're not into pizza or cooking on a Saturday night, there's always her favorite fast food: Popeyes chicken and biscuits.

Take your pick when it comes to desserts. Beyonce told Cosmo she loves butter pecan ice cream. She's also posted pictures of cake and other decadent sweets on her Tumblr blog, as well as healthy options like strawberries and watermelon.

Also featured in photos on her site? Booze. In addition to wine, Beyoncé, who was seen sipping champagne at a Grammys bash, apparently likes beer (at basketball games) and margaritas. What Texas girl wouldn't?

Have fun eating, drinking and watching Life Is But a Dream!

Read More..