Group items tagged

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.

Rebiya Kadeer, an elfin grandmother with gray-tinged pigtails who was released from a Chinese prison in March 2005 and immediately whisked into exile. A former millionaire once praised by Beijing as a model businesswoman, Kadeer now lives near Washington, D.C. She is recognized as the leader of the Uighur exile community and heads the Uyghur American Association and the World Uyghur Congress; both groups receive grants from the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy funded by the U.S. Congress

my family has been a target of Chinese government persecution. Whenever something happens, authorities go after my family. My two sons are in prison. Even my grandchildren have been kicked out of school.

You mentioned your two sons in prison. What were they charged with and what are their prison terms?In 2006 one was sentenced to seven years and the other to nine years, on charges of tax evasion and separatism, respectively.

The Obama administration plans to create a new military command to focus on Pentagon computer networks and offensive capabilities in cyberwarfare, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing current and former officials familiar with the plans.

Pentagon officials were quoted as saying the new command will be unveiled within the next few weeks. The cyber command will likely to be led by a military official of four-star rank and initially would be part of the Pentagon's Strategic Command, the newspaper said, citing officials familiar with the proposal.

The initiative will reshape the military's efforts to protect its networks from attacks by hackers, especially those from countries such as China and Russia, the newspaper said.

Two ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers have altered a photo of Israel's new cabinet, removing two female ministers.

Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo. But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.

"Like you, I believe the correct path is reforms that return to (Islamic) principles but refine them," Mousavi said Tuesday in a message to Khatami

"Mousavi is seeking to win the support of both reformers and moderate conservatives," said Tehran-based political analyst Hedayat Aghaei.

He clashed with Khamenei — then Iran's president — over political authority and powers. The prime minister post was eliminated after Mousavi's term.

An investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college.

"This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."

Manekin described how soldiers had reported their units being specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.

A newspaper editor seen as close to Iran's top authority said on Saturday defeated election candidate Mirhossein Mousavi and a former pro-reform president had committed "terrible crimes" which should be tried in court. In a commentary published in his hardline Kayhan daily, editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari suggested Mousavi and his supporters in last month's disputed election had acted on the instructions of the United States.

"An open court, in front of the people's eyes, must deal with all the terrible crimes and clear betrayal committed by the main elements behind the recent unrest, including Mousavi and Khatami," he wrote, referring to former President Mohammad Khatami, a leading reformist who backed Mousavi in the election. Another hardline newspaper, Javan, said 100 members of parliament had signed a letter to the judiciary calling for the leaders of "post-election riots" to face trial, pointing to Mousavi and fellow defeated moderate Mehdi Karoubi.

"All they did and said was in line with the instructions announced by American officials in the past," Shariatmadari, who is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote.

Former parliament speaker Medhi Karroubi said on Tuesday that the government emerging from the disputed June 12 election was not "legitimate" after Ahmadinejad's victory was certified by the nation's top electoral body.

"Last night, after Karroubi's statement was released, representatives of the Tehran prosecutor and the culture ministry prevented the publication of Etemad Melli newspaper," his Etemad Melli party said on its website."They wanted the statement censored and not published -- so the newspaper will not be published today," it said.

Silvio Berlusconi has attempted to fend off allegations that preparations for the G8 summit have been so chaotic that Italy's membership of the group was being called into question.The Italian prime minister said a report in the Guardian, citing senior western officials as saying the US had taken the lead in managing the agenda for the summit, was "a colossal blunder by a small newspaper".

"I hope that the Guardian is expelled from the great newspapers of the world," said the foreign minister, Franco Frattini. "What the Guardian says is a joke – nonsense."The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, suggested a boycott of the paper because of the report.

Israel will not withdraw from the entire Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top policy adviser said in an interview published Friday, rejecting Syria's key demand for an agreement with Israel.

The two countries could split the territory, suggested Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's national security adviser and the aide widely seen as closest to Netanyahu. But in the comments in the daily Haaretz newspaper, he said Israel must remain on the Golan Heights to a depth of several miles and cannot withdraw in full even in return for a peace agreement.

The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery, and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents. About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.

A Russian newspaper is reporting that Russia has a contract to provide Syria with powerful MiG fighter jets but has not begun delivering the planes. Kommersant cited the head of Russia's state-run United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fyodorov, as saying a 2007 contract to sell MiG-31E interceptor fighters to Syria has not entered into force. The paper said Russian arms sales officials have denied such a contract exists.

Kommersant cited Fyodorov as saying a contract to provide Syria with Mig-29M fighters is being implemented.

State arms sales company Rosoboronexport declined to comment on the report.

For more than a year now, Warsaw public prosecutor Robert Majewski has been investigating former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller's government on allegations of abuse of office. At issue is whether sovereignty over Polish territory was relinquished, and whether former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his left-leaning Social Democratic government gave the CIA free reign over sections of the Stare Kiejkuty military base for the agency's extraterritorial torture interrogations.

"No European country is so sincerely and vigorously investigating former members of the government as is currently the case in Poland," says Wolfgang Kaleck from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, which supports the investigations.

The public prosecutor's office has also launched a probe to determine whether the Polish intelligence agency made 20 of its agents available to the CIA, as was recently reported by the conservative Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita. A former CIA official confirmed this information to SPIEGEL. There was reportedly a document issued by the intelligence agency that mentioned both the 20 Polish agents and the transfer of the military base to the Americans. Two members of a parliamentary investigative committee in Warsaw had an opportunity to view this document in late 2005, but it has since disappeared.

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.