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AfDB Launches the Open Data for Africa PlatformThe African Development Bank Group (AfDB), in partnership with Knoema, has launched an Open Data for Africa platform aimed at significantly increasing access to quality data necessary for managing and monitoring development results in African countries, including the MDGs. The platform will also serve as a knowledge center for collecting, accessing…View all Introduction

New: World Health Organization (WHO) Releases Database on Nutrition, Obesity and Physical Activity (NOPA) Posted on June 5, 2011 by Gary D. Price From a WHO Announcement: The NOPA database has been created in close collaboration with health ministries and with support from the European Commission. It includes details on more than 300 national and sub-national policies that address nutrition, physical activity or obesity. Most of these policy documents have been developed in the past six years and refer to lifestyle trends such as the increasing consumption of industrially produced foods high in fat and sugar and declining physical activity. Physical inactivity and poor nutrition are considered to be risk factors to many non-communicable diseases, such as heart diseases and stroke, diabetes, cancer, and mental health disorders. The measurable indicators for policy development have been identified and monitored at the national level in accordance with the commitments made through the European Charter on Counteracting Obesity and the WHO European Action Plan for Food and Nutrition Policy 2007–2012. As an example of these commitments, the Nutrition, Obesity and Physical Activity Database shows that 28 Member States have stated that they plan to take action on physical activity in the school setting, 11 plan to address the adequate labeling of food products and 9 plan to deal with appropriate food marketing practices. Direct to NOPA Database

Europe's One-Stop Shop on Public Sector Information (PSI) Re-useWorking to Stimulate PSI Re-use The aim of the ePSIplatform is to strenghthen community, stimulate action, report developments and monitor progress towards a stronger and more transparent environment for the growth of national and European PSI re-use markets. Interactive One-Stop Shop News about European and International PSI re-use Developments Emerging Good Practices Examples of New PSI Re-use Products and Services Information about Legal cases on PSI Re-use Discussion, Communication and Information Sharing across the European PSI community Expert PSI Community Meetings (two meetings per year) Guest Bloggers from the European PSI Community PSI Topic Reports - Analytical Briefings on PSI Re-use (across sectors and issues) PSI Re-use Resources What is PSI re-use? - background information - the European PSI Re-use Directive translated into 27 EU languages and European Commission Communication on Re-use of PSI Directive (language variants) (May 2009) plus other key links and resources.

Sort the signal from the noise Newsbeat tracks the activity of every page you publish in real time, from the top performers to the diamond in the rough. But we don’t just show you everything, we show you what’s important. Our algorithms forecast the expected path of each story and alert you to unusual activity you might otherwise miss, so you always know what to act on, when it matters most.

<< previous blog | recent blogs | next blog >> #bbcsms: BBC processes for verifying social media content Alex Murray | Wednesday 18 May 2011, 10:40 From Tunisia, via Egypt, to Libya and Syria, verifying and acquiring eyewitness/citizen journalist/user-generated content has become increasingly complicated as the material has become more sophisticated. At the UGC (user-generated content) Hub in the BBC Newsroom in London, our process has become much more forensic in nature and includes: - Referencing locations against maps and existing images from, in particular, geo-located ones. - Working with our colleagues in BBC Arabic and BBC Monitoring to ascertain that accents and language are correct for the location. - Searching for the original source of the upload/sequences as an indicator of date. - Examining weather reports and shadows to confirm that the conditions shown fit with the claimed date and time. - Maintaining lists of previously verified material to act as reference for colleagues covering the stories. - Checking weaponry, vehicles and licence plates against those known for the given country. That's not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the most common things we do in BBC News.