Group items tagged

Personal details about the life of the next head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, have been removed from social networking site Facebook amid security concerns. The Mail on Sunday said his wife put details about their children and the location of their flat on the site. The details were removed after the paper contacted the Foreign Office.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: "Are you leading the news with that? The fact that there's a picture that the head of the MI6 goes swimming - wow, that really is exciting. "It is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks, for goodness sake let's grow up.

Sir John is due to replace Sir John Scarlett as head of the overseas Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He has been the UK's Permanent Representative to the UN since 2007. Before that he was political director at the Foreign Office, an envoy in Baghdad and a foreign affairs adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was in that post from 1999 to 2001 and was involved in the Kosovo conflict and Northern Ireland peace process. Elsewhere overseas he worked in the British embassy in Washington, as an ambassador in Cairo and to South Africa from 1988 and 1991 when apartheid was ending. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version Print Sponsor BBC.adverts.write("storyprintsponsorship"); BBC.adverts.show("storyprintsponsorship"); bbc_adsense_slot = "adsense_middle";"pt" == "us" ? bbc_adsense_country = "pt" : bbc_adsense_country = "rest"; google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by GoogleZON TVCABOAdira já ao 3Play ZON TVCABO e veja os seus canais preferidos!www.ZON.pt/Pacotes_ZON3Spanish Lessons For YouStep-By-Step Audio Lessons. Get Them Now! Learn Fast.www.How-To-Speak.com/SpanishUK Embassy Visa ServicesFast track your visa application. Appoint Migration Expert today.migrationexpert.com/UK BBC.adverts.show("adsense_middle"); BBC.adverts.write("mpu");Advertisementhttp://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/bbccom.live.site.news/news_uk_content;sectn=news;ctype=content;news=uk;adsense_middle=adsense_middle;adsense_mpu=adsense_mpu;rsi=J08781_10008;rsi=J08781_10

Facebook users have voted to back changes which give them control over data and content they post on the site. Early results suggest 75% of those who voted support the proposals.

The vote was triggered by changes Facebook made to its terms and conditions in February. The move drew fire because it appeared to hand the social network site ownership of images, videos and data that users posted on profile pages. Low turnout In response to the criticism, Facebook withdrew the changed terms, wrote a new set and invited its 200 million members to make their views known.

In total about 600,000 people took part in the week-long vote. Initially, Facebook said it would only adopt those new terms if 30% of its members voted in support of them.

Access to Facebook is back in Iran after being blocked late last week. Facebook was cut off Saturday, leading to accusations that authorities were trying to muzzle one of the main campaign tools of reformists opposing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 12 elections. The main pro-reform candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is seeking a strong turnout from young voters and has used Facebook to try to mobilize support.

The Iranian government has blocked access to the social networking site Facebook amid political jockeying for the June 12 presidential elections, according to the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency.

Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi -- a former prime minister considered a threat to current hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- created a Facebook page for his campaign that has more than 5,000 supporters on the site. Those attempting to visit Facebook received a message in Farsi saying, "Access to this site is not possible," according to CNN personnel in Tehran.

Iran's population -- estimated at more than 66 million by July 2009, according to the CIA World Factbook -- has a median age of 27. The Financial Times, which put the country's population at 70 million, said 47 million Iranians have cell phones and 21 million have Internet access.

JPost.com » Israel » Article Apr 24, 2009 0:14&nbsp;|&nbsp;Updated Apr 24, 2009 13:54 'World leaders must drop their slogans' By DAVID HOROVITZ AND AMIR MIZROCH PrintSubscribe articleTitle = ' \'World leaders must drop their slogans\' '; showOdiogoReadNowButton ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566',articleTitle,'0', 290, 55); E-mailToolbar + Recommend: What's this? showInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566', '0', 290, 0); Talkbacks for this article: 117 &nbsp; | &nbsp;Avg. rating 4.61 out of 5</s

The international community has to "stop speaking in slogans" if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict and help bring stability to the Middle East, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, in his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since taking the job.

"Over the last two weeks I've had many conversations with my colleagues around the world," he said. "Just today, I saw the political adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Chinese foreign minister and the Czech prime minister. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you're in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers..." Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as "land for peace" and "two-state solution," were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said.

&nbsp; Print &nbsp;|&nbsp;E-Mail &nbsp;|&nbsp;Share &nbsp;|&nbsp;Feedback 05/26/2009 Digg Stumble Upon Reddit Facebook Del.icio.us Fark Yahoo Newsvine Google MySpace &nbsp; Font: CULTURE WARS An Anti-Semite for UNESCO? Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni is a leading candidate to take over UNESCO in the fall. An alliance of intellectuals and Jewish groups from France, Germany and Israel are up in arms over the possibility due to remarks made by him perceived to be anti-Israeli.

Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni is a leading candidate to take over UNESCO in the fall. An alliance of intellectuals and Jewish groups from France, Germany and Israel are up in arms over the possibility due to remarks made by him perceived to be anti-Israeli.

Hosni, an artist by trade, has been Egypt's Culture Minister since 1987. He is known for being a liberal voice in Egyptian politics, opposing the veil for Egyptian women for example. But he has also made anti-Israeli statements in the past. Last year, he said he would "burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries."

A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police.

The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.

on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

“This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’&nbsp;” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

Russia backed Mr. Voronin

At a news briefing, a State Department spokesman, Robert A. Wood, also expressed concern about the violence, but he said policy makers in Washington had not yet assessed whether the elections had been free and fair.

Mihai Moscovici, 25, who provided updates in English all day over Twitter, painted a more nuanced picture. He said the gathering on Monday night drew only several hundred people. The protesters agreed to gather the next morning and began spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, inventing a searchable tag for the stream of comments: #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square. When Internet service was shut down, Mr. Moscovici said, he issued updates with his cellphone.

North Korea said Saturday any sanctions or pressure applied against it following its rocket launch earlier this month will be considered a "declaration of war."

In an announcement on state-run television, the country said it was ready to step up efforts to develop nuclear weapons and poised for a military response to any moves against it.

"The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK are always keeping themselves fully ready to go into action any moment to mercilessly punish anyone who encroaches upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK even a bit," it said.

The online generation thinks: If the news is that important, it will find me. My son who has never subscribed to a print newspaper, gets his news from Facebook, Twitter or from friends. He no longer treats traditional media as a magnet. People now get their messages by relying on other people they trust.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what role, in your opinion, can newspapers still play?

arvis: They certainly no longer want to be in the paper business because that is dying out. The information business might be fine but there is no scarcity of information and news online. They could, however, be very effective in the collection business -- just find the best of the stuff that is out there online. They could also use their strong brands to compete in the business of elegant organization by creating information platforms or venturing into new markets. The New York Times has just started a new local program in New York enlisting my journalism students to collaborate online with them to report on their communities. That is the right approach. News outlets need to think distributed, they must collaborate with bloggers or social networking sites. On my blog, I have links to Google News or Google Maps. Innovative newspapers like the Guardian in Britain are equally open to cooperation. They make all their content available free online, they link to all sorts of sites, and in turn they receive more links in return.

A political party affiliated with Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the former president and key member of the Iranian regime, on Sunday called on Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the opposition leader, to form a “political bloc” that would pursue a long-term campaign to undermine the “illegitimate” government. Hossein Marashi, spokesman for the Kargozaran, stayed clear of directly challenging the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but told the Financial Times in a telephone interview that Mr Moussavi was now the leader of an opposition that was not without options.

“With the lack of legitimacy of the Ahmadi-Nejad government, sooner or later the country’s management will face various crises,” he said. “Mr Moussavi should set up an official political front which can embrace the defenders of the real Islamic republic . . . against those who are distorting it and are represented by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad.”

Adding to the tension, footage on the Facebook networking site showed a young woman supporter of Mr Moussavi being shot in the chest during the Saturday protests. The graphic footage, which was widely viewed, showed the woman dying in front of her father who desperately tried to save her.

Moldova's president Wednesday accused Romania of involvement in a huge anti-communist protest, much of it coordinated on Facebook and Twitter, which saw government buildings ransacked and police arrest scores of demonstrators.

"Romania is involved in everything that has happened," he said, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency. "Patience also has its limits."

Moldova's ties with Romania have become increasingly strained under Voronin, who has steered his country diplomatically closer to Russia since taking power in 2005. The president has repeatedly accused Romania of wanting to absorb his country.