Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said the company's recently announced online content policy was meant to be a transparent way to handle government requests for the removal of certain content and did not mean it is actively monitoring tweets, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Twitter had said last week it would begin restricting tweets in specific countries, renewing questions about how the social media platform will handle issues of free speech as it rapidly expands its global user base.
"There's been no change in our stance ... in respect to content on Twitter," Costolo said at the "Dive Into Media" conference hosted by the website All Things D, which is owned by News Corp, the Journal reported.
Costolo said Twitter would only block tweets locally at a government's request and would leave the tweet up for the rest of the world. In place of the pulled tweet would be a message that the content was removed at the request of the local government, the Journal said.
Costolo said the policy is not meant as a means for the company to get into countries where it currently does not operate, such as China or Iran.
"I don't think the current environment in China is one in which we can operate," he added.
No one at Twitter could immediately be reached for comment.
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney's lead over rival Newt Gingrich edged up to 12 percentage points in Florida, according to Reuters/Ipsos online poll results on Sunday, as Romney's front-runner status stabilized and Gingrich continued to slip.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive, was supported by 42 percent of likely Florida voters surveyed in the online three-day tracking poll, just down from 43 percent in the same poll on Saturday. Romney was at 41 percent on Friday.
But with just two days before the state's primary on Tuesday, Gingrich's support was at 30 percent, down from 32 percent in Saturday's results and 33 percent on Friday.
The gap between the two was 11 percent when poll respondents were asked about a hypothetical head-to-head race between the rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination to oppose President Barack Obama in the general election in November.
If the race were between Romney and Gingrich only, Romney would be at 55 percent to Gingrich's 44 percent, according to the Sunday's results. On Saturday the gap between the two was eight percentage points and on Friday it was just two, when respondents were asked the same question.
"Newt Gingrich's position in the primary race is really starting to lose support," said Chris Jackson, research director for Ipsos Public Affairs.
The poll results, similar to those of several other surveys, illustrated Romney's remarkable turnaround since South Carolina's primary on January 21, which Gingrich won in a surprise upset.
"Gingrich got a big boost out of South Carolina, but he's losing that," said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.
"It's clear that Romney's run a much more focused and effective campaign in Florida than Newt," he said. "Newt's playing defense every single day in every way and doesn't seem to be able to make Romney play defense."
Romney had two strong debate performances this week and has jumped to a solid lead over Gingrich, whom he had trailed in earlier opinion polls in Florida. He has taken steady aim at Gingrich on the debate stage and in attack ads as a politician who left government under an ethics cloud and has remained a Washington insider ever since.
GINGRICH FACES TOUGH FEBRUARY
Romney has a solid advantage in money and organization over Gingrich in Florida, and the month ahead does not look much better for the former speaker as the state-by-state race for the Republican nomination continues.
Four states with February contests - Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota - use caucus systems, which can require greater organization to rally voter turnout. That could help Romney take advantage of his superior financial and staff resources.
On February 28, Michigan and Arizona hold primaries. Romney was raised in Michigan, where his father was a governor and car executive.
"February does not look like a good month for Newt," Mackowiak said.
But his failure to gain more support among likely voters in Florida's primary, which is limited only to registered Republicans, shows that Romney is still not electrifying the party faithful. "He's not the guy that everyone loves and rallies behind," Jackson said. "He's not getting that huge rally of support."
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum trailed well behind with 16 percent support, the same as Saturday's level. Santorum seemed to be gaining momentum as an "alternate" to Romney. Thirty-eight percent of likely voters said he would be their second choice if their first choice left the race, up from 33 percent on Saturday and 30 percent on Friday.
But it is probably too close to the January 31 vote to make a difference, Jackson said.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who is not campaigning in Florida, was at 6 percent.
Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online surveys, but this poll of 726 likely voters in the Florida primary has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points for registered voters.
Sunday's Reuters/Ipsos survey is the third of four daily tracking polls being released ahead of Tuesday's Florida primary.
(Reporting By Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sandra Maler)
When we drive somewhere new, we navigate by referring to a two-dimensional map that accounts for distances only on a horizontal plane. According to research published online in August in Nature Neuroscience, the mammalian brain seems to do the same, collapsing the world into a flat plane even as the animal skitters up trees and slips deep into burrows.
?Our subjective sense that our map is three-dimensional is illusory,? says Kathryn Jeffery, a behavioral neuroscientist at University College London who led the research. Jeffery studies a collection of neurons in and around the rat hippo?campus that build an internal representation of space. As the animal travels, these neurons, called grid cells and place cells, respond uniquely to distance, turning on and off in a way that measures how far the animal has moved in a particular direction.
Past research has focused on how these cartographic cells encode two-dimensional space. Jeffery and her col?leagues decided to look at how they respond to changes in altitude. To do this, they enticed rats to climb up a spiral staircase while the scientists collected electrical recordings from single cells. The firing pattern encoded very little in?formation about height.
The finding adds evidence for the hypothesis that the brain keeps track of our location on a flat plane, which is defined by the way the body is oriented. If a squirrel, say, is running along the ground, then scampers straight up a tree, its internal two-dimensional map simply shifts from the horizontal plane to the vertical. Astronauts are some of the few humans to de?scribe this experience: when they move in space to ?stand? on a ceiling, they report a moment of disorientation before their mental map flips so they feel right side up again.
Researchers do not know yet whether other areas of the brain encode altitude or whether mammals simply do not need that information to survive. ?Maybe an animal has a mosaic of maps, each fragment of which is flat but which can be oriented in the way that?s appropriate,? Jeffery speculates. Or maybe in our head, the world is simply flat.
A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.
LOS ANGELES ? A 911 recording revealed frantic efforts by friends of Demi Moore to get help for the actress who was convulsing as they gathered around her and tried to comfort her.
Moore was "semi-conscious, barely," according to a female caller on the recording released Friday by Los Angeles fire officials.
The woman tells emergency operators that Moore, 49, had smoked something before she was rushed to the hospital on Monday night and that she had been "having issues lately."
"Is she breathing normal?" the operator asks.
"No, not so normal. More kind of shaking, convulsing, burning up," the friend says as she hurries to Moore's side, on the edge of panic.
Another woman is next to Moore as the dispatcher asks if she's responsive.
"Demi, can you hear me?" she asks. "Yes, she's squeezing hands. ... She can't speak."
When the operator asks what Moore ingested or smoked, the friend replies, but the answer was redacted.
Asked if Moore took the substance intentionally or not, the woman says Moore ingested it on purpose but the reaction was accidental.
"Whatever she took, make sure you have it out for the paramedics," the operator says.
The operator asks the friend if this has happened before.
"I don't know," she says. "There's been some stuff recently that we're all just finding out."
Moore's publicist, Carrie Gordon, said previously that the actress sought professional help to treat her exhaustion and improve her health. She would not comment further on the emergency call or provide details about the nature or location of Moore's treatment.
The past few months have been rocky for Moore.
She released a statement in November announcing she had decided to end her marriage to fellow actor Ashton Kutcher, 33, following news of alleged infidelity. The two were known to publicly share their affection for one another via Twitter.
Moore still has a Twitter account under the name mrskutcher but has not posted any messages since Jan. 7.
Meanwhile, Millennium Films announced Friday that Sarah Jessica Parker will replace Moore in the role of feminist Gloria Steinem in its production of "Lovelace," a biopic about the late porn star Linda Lovelace. A statement gave no reason for the change. The production, starring Amanda Seyfried, has been shooting in Los Angeles since Dec. 20.
During the call, the woman caller says the group of friends had turned Moore's head to the side and was holding her down. The dispatcher tells her not to hold her down but to wipe her mouth and nose and watch her closely until paramedics arrive.
"Make sure that we keep an airway open," the dispatcher says. "Even if she passes out completely, that's OK. Stay right with her."
The phone is passed around by four people, including a woman who gives directions to the gate and another who recounts details about what Moore smoked or ingested. Finally, the phone is given to a man named James, so one of the women can hold Moore's head.
There was some confusion at the beginning of the call. The emergency response was delayed by nearly two minutes as Los Angeles and Beverly Hills dispatchers sorted out which city had jurisdiction over the street where Moore lives.
As the call is transferred to Beverly Hills, the frantic woman at Moore's house raises her voice and said, "Why is an ambulance not on its way right now?"
"Ma'am, instead of arguing with me why an ambulance is not on the way, can you spell (the street name) for me?" the Beverly Hills dispatcher says.
Although the estate is located in the 90210 ZIP code above Benedict Canyon, the response was eventually handled by the Los Angeles Fire Department.
By the end of the call, Moore has improved.
"She seems to have calmed down now. She's speaking," the male caller told the operator.
Moore and Kutcher were wed in September 2005.
Kutcher became a stepfather to Moore's three daughters ? Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle ? from her 13-year marriage to actor Bruce Willis. Moore and Willis divorced in 2000 but remained friendly.
Moore can be seen on screen in the recent films "Margin Call" and "Another Happy Day." Kutcher replaced Charlie Sheen on TV's "Two and a Half Men" and is part of the ensemble film "New Year's Eve."
AURORA, Colorado (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama pitched a plan on Thursday to boost U.S. use of natural gas and open more land for drilling during a campaign-style tour aimed at bolstering confidence in his economic stewardship in an election year.
At a Colorado air force base hangar, Obama called the United States "the Saudi Arabia of natural gas" and said developing its reserves would create U.S. jobs and provide cleaner, cheaper energy to American consumers.
Obama also said investing in renewable energy like wind and solar power - instead of subsidizing the oil sector - would help reduce America's dependence on exports to fuel its cars, trucks and factories.
"Even if we tapped every drop of domestic oil, we've only got 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. We've got to have an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy, develop every available source of American energy," he told a military crowd in Aurora, where the Air Force is installing a 1-megawatt solar power system.
On the second day of his five-state, three-day tour, the Democratic president sought to counter Republican criticism of his energy policies and said his proposed tax incentives for natural gas trucks would bolster demand for the fuel.
Republicans were deeply upset by Obama's decision to block the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, which they say would have created jobs and reduced U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East.
NATURAL GAS BOOM
Obama's trip to Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan - all pivotal for the November 6 vote - follows his Tuesday night State of the Union address in which he took a combative tone toward congressional Republicans and spoke of the need to reduce income inequality.
He also used that speech to raise attention to the booming natural gas sector, which has grown dramatically in recent years as advances in technology have unlocked vast new reserves.
Earlier on Thursday, at a UPS facility in Las Vegas, Obama said natural gas could support more than 600,000 American jobs by the end of the decade - a key concern for the president who needs to convince voters he is making headway on employment.
Obama's overall approval ratings had been sagging amid voter concern over the lackluster economy, but his popularity has inched higher and in some recent surveys has climbed above the important 50 percent threshold.
Increasing domestic natural gas consumption would benefit drillers, as U.S. natural gas prices have fallen sharply because of the growing glut and the relatively warm winter.
Using domestic natural gas as a cleaner alternative to importing foreign oil has been heavily promoted by Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens and has attracted support from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
Obama's natural gas truck proposal, which would need congressional approval, still could face an uphill battle. Republicans campaigning on promises to cut government spending would likely resist costly new energy subsidies.
Similar measures aimed at expanding tax breaks for natural gas vehicles have failed to break through partisan gridlock, and conservative groups have opposed such legislation on the grounds that government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in the energy sector.
Some oil and gas industry backers have also complained that the Obama administration has hindered drilling through slow permitting and a raft of new rules implemented since the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
LOS ANGELES ? When Facebook makes its long-expected debut as a public company this spring, the social-networking company will likely vault into the ranks of the largest public companies in the world, alongside McDonald's, Amazon.com and Bank of America.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Facebook is preparing to file initial paperwork for an offering that could raise as much as $10 billion and value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission could come as early as Wednesday, with an initial public offering of stock in three or four months.
The targeted amount would slot it among the world's 25 largest IPOs, although as recently as November 2010, General Motors raised $15.8 billion when it shed majority control by the U.S. government.
The IPOs of 14 companies would rank higher than Facebook's, according to investment adviser Renaissance Capital. Among them were Visa Inc.'s $17.9 billion IPO in March 2008, the largest for a U.S. company, and world-topper Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., which raised $19.3 billion in July 2010, not including extra shares issued to meet demand.
Facebook spokesman Larry Wu said the company will not comment on IPO-related speculation. The Journal had cited unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The Journal also said that Facebook was close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter, which would be a setback for rival Goldman Sachs. Both declined comment to The Associated Press.
The buzz surrounding an outsized haul for Facebook's founders, employees and early investors remains a hopeful sign for capital markets following a deep recession. At the reported price, Facebook's IPO would be the biggest for a U.S. Internet company ever ? topping the debut of one of its main rivals, Google Inc.
"We are expecting 2012 to be a year of recovery for the IPO market led by the Facebook IPO," said Kathy Smith, Renaissance Capital's principal.
The event will follow a string of tepid debuts by technology startups including social game maker Zynga and discount advertiser Groupon. The stocks of both companies are just pennies above their offering prices in December and November respectively. Zynga's stock fell 5 percent below the IPO price on its first day of trading.
Facebook's will be the most anticipated tech IPO since Google went public in August 2004. Not including shares sold by early investors, the Internet search giant raised $1.2 billion and grabbed a market value of $23 billion, the biggest so far for a U.S. Internet company. The IPO raised $1.9 billion, including shares sold by early investors and extra stock issued to meet the heavy demand. It's not known whether Facebook's $10 billion target includes shares owned by early investors.
Facebook's reported valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion compares with about $100 billion for McDonald's Corp., $90 billion for Citigroup Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. and $75 billion for Bank of America Corp. It would exceed the market cap of $55 billion for Hewlett-Packard Co., one of the world's largest technology companies by revenue.
Both Facebook and Google earn most of their money from advertising and are now competing to gain as much information as possible about their users to help advertisers target niche audiences.
According to eMarketer, Facebook is expected to grow its share of the U.S. display ad market to about 20 percent this year from 16 percent in 2011, above second-ranked Yahoo's expected share of about 13 percent. For overall online ad revenue, Facebook is seen grabbing just 8 percent of the market this year, compared with 45 percent for Google.
EMarketer estimates that Facebook's ad revenue will grow 52 percent to $5.78 billion this year and will reach $7 billion in 2013.
Despite presumably topping Google's public launch, Facebook spent more time growing behind the veil of private ownership than its rival.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates in 2004 and is debuting on stock markets in its eighth year. Google's IPO came six years after being founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When Google turned eight in August 2006, its market cap was roughly $116 billion. Today, the company is worth nearly $190 billion ? down from a peak of about $235 billion in November 2007.
Investors may be asked to bet heavily on the belief that Facebook will continue to revolutionize the way people communicate around the globe. Even with Facebook's heady growth rate, Google had ad revenue last year of more than five times what Facebook is expected to get in 2013. Yet it is Google that is mimicking Facebook in building a rival social network called Plus.
"There's the general feeling that Facebook might be the future of the way the Internet works," said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson.
Zuckerberg, 27, is already worth $17.5 billion, based on the latest estimates from Forbes magazine. Most of that wealth is drawn from the value of Facebook shares that have traded among a small universe of well-heeled investors that buy stakes in companies before they go public.
As the company gauges public demand for its stock, the number of shares offered and the price asked could change significantly. Groupon had to refile its securities paperwork repeatedly as regulators questioned some of its accounting methods. Even Google took in less than it hoped as people shunned an unorthodox auction-based offering.
John Fitzgibbon Jr., publisher of IPOScoop.com, said it's too early to get excited.
"Until they actually put the ink on the paper and push it across the desk of the SEC, it's all speculation," he said.
The possible filing next week isn't all that surprising.
Federal rules require companies with at least $10 million in assets and more than 500 shareholders to disclose its quarterly financial results and other details. The reporting requirement kicks in 120 days after the fiscal year in which a company exceeds the shareholder threshold for the first time.
Facebook's fiscal year ends Dec. 31, so it has until late April 2012 to comply with this requirement, having hit the 500-shareholder threshold last year. Because it typically takes three or four months after filing paperwork to issue the IPO, a Wednesday filing would allow it to meet the deadline. If it happens in May, it could become a lucrative birthday gift for Zuckerberg, who will turn 28 that month.
DAVOS, Switzerland ? Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Barak says tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran's oil and banks so that "we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program."
Iran insists its atomic program is only aimed at producing energy and research, but has repeatedly refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium.
Barak told reporters Friday in Davos, Switzerland that the situation is "urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them."
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged a resumption of dialogue between Western powers and Iran on their nuclear dispute Friday, and said Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear development program is not directed to making arms.
"The onus is on Iran," said Ban, speaking here at a press conference during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
"They have to prove themselves that their nuclear development program is genuinely for peaceful purposes, which they have not done yet." he said.
Ban expressed concern at the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency that strongly suggested that Iran nuclear program, which it long has claimed is for development of power generation, has a military intent.
In spite of his tough words to Iran, Ban said that dialogue with the "three-plus-three" ? Germany, France and Britain plus Russia, China and the United States ? is the path forward.
"There is no other alternative for addressing this crisis than peaceful ... resolution through dialogue," said Ban.
Ban noted that there have been a total of five Security Council resolutions so far on the Iranian nuclear program, four calling for sanctions.
As tensions have been on the rise recently, some political leaders in Israel and the United States have been speaking increasingly of the possibility of a military strike to eliminate, or at least slow down, what they allege is a determined effort by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Last week, long-time Browns beat writer Tony Grossi of the Cleveland Plain Dealer inadvertently posted an unflattering message about Browns owner Randy Lerner on Twitter.
?He is a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world,? Grossi said.? The tweet was later deleted.
As it turns out, Lerner may remain sufficiently relevant to influence the work assignments at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.? According to CleveScene.com, Grossi has been removed from the beat.
Last week, the newspaper addressed the issue at its website, Cleveland.com:? ?Last night, Plain Dealer Browns beat reporter Tony Grossi made an inadvertent, inappropriate post to Twitter concerning Browns owner Randy Lerner.? Grossi has reached out to Lerner to apologize.? The Plain Dealer also apologizes.?
Grossi also addressed the situation in a video podcast:? ?Last night there was a comment attributed to me on my Twitter account.? It was inadvertent, it was inappropriate, and I do apologize for it.? I?ve reached out to Randy Lerner to apologize to him for it and we?ll just leave it at that. It was inappropriate and not meant to be tweeted, but it was inappropriate nonetheless.?
Though no one has explained specifically how it happened that the tweet was posted on Grossi?s page, it appears this is the latest example of someone not understanding how to properly use the ?direct message? function.? Grossi apparently intended to express his opinion privately to one of his Twitter followers, but he accidentally posted it onto his primary Twitter profile, which can be viewed publicly.
And while we know nothing about any other issues or circumstances between Grossi and his bosses, the reaction seems more than a little harsh.? Though the not-intended-for-publication message raises potential questions about Grossi?s objectivity when it comes to Lerner, it?s not as if Lerner is actively involved in the management of the team.? In many respects, Lerner is an absentee landlord, with little or no interest in doing the things that so many other NFL owners love to do.
But while Lerner takes a hands-off approach to the Browns, he has shown a willingness to respond to indignities with aggressive action.? In 2008, the Browns ended a preseason partnership with WOIO-TV after the station broadcast a portion of a 911 call made by Lerner?s sister when her daughter drowned.
?The recent coverage of the Lerner family tragedy is but the latest, albeit the most shocking and insensitive example of this destructive behavior,? Browns vice president Michael Keenan wrote in a letter to WOIO terminating the contract for ?irresponsible journalism.?
It?s currently unknown whether Lerner or the Browns requested, suggested, or demanded that Grossi be reassigned.? Regardless of how this all came to be, Grossi?s only wrongdoing, in our view, was his failure to properly navigate the Twitter application on his smartphone.
Besides, the substance of Grossi?s comments don?t come off to us as objectively offensive or inappropriate.? He referred to Lerner as ?pathetic? and called Lerner an ?irrelevant billionaire.?? (I?ve been called much worse than an ?irrelevant billionaire,? and I aspire to be much less.)
If it turns out that Lerner indeed pushed the Plain Dealer to dump Grossi from the beat for his accidental expression of a private opinion he?s entitled to have, it definitely will be evidence, in our opinion, of a pathetic act by the billionaire owner of a largely irrelevant team.
I have updated my Legal Research and Writing website with a new page on resources for teaching legal research and writing.
Included on the page are links to:
I suspect my page may not be complete, so if I have missed something, I welcome comments and suggestions for other resources.
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Available online today are four new chapters of the publication Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report, which explores the socio-demographic and economic circumstances of Canadian women in general.
The bill amends the Constitution Act, 1867 by readjusting the number of members and the representation of the provinces in the House of Commons.
Blueseed plans to buy a ship and turn it into a floating incubator anchored in international waters off the coast of California.
Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the flow of information out of Ottawa has slowed to a trickle.
"?the IPC has exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether a record is in the custody or control of a university in the context of an access request?"
John J.L. Hunter, Q.C. of Vancouver has been elected President for 2011-2012
Detailed results from 321 members.
These summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. More information.
Administrative Law -?Judicial review - General - Scope or standard of review
Ten individuals complained to the Information and Privacy Commissioner that the Alberta Teachers? Association (ATA) disclosed, in contravention of the Personal Information Protection Act, their personal information between October 13 and December 2, ...
Civil Rights -?Property - Search and seizure - Search - What constitutes
The accused was charged with possession of child pornography and making available child pornography. The accused brought an application, alleging several violations of his rights under the Charter.
The Saskatchewan Court of Queen?s ...
Constitutional Law -?Extent of powers conferred - Double aspect doctrine - General
In provincial references, both the Alberta Court of Appeal (510?A.R. 200; 527?W.A.C. 200) and the Quebec Court of Appeal (2011 QCCA 591), concluded that the proposed Canadian Securities Act (CSA) was unconstitutional. A ...
Criminal Law -?Procedure - Charge or directions - Jury or judge alone - Directions regarding evidence generally
The accused was charged with breach of trust by a public official contrary to s. 122 of the Criminal Code. The trial judge acquitted the accused. ...
Civil Rights -?Trials - Due process, fundamental justice and fair hearings - Criminal and quasi-criminal proceedings - Delay (Charter, s. 7)
MacIntosh was charged on three informations with a total of 43 counts of sexual offences against nine complainants in the 1970s. The first information ...
Real Property Tax -?Valuation - Business property - Considerations
Two breweries? respective properties were assessed as special properties under the Assessment Act, 2006. They appealed their respective municipal tax assessments to the Review Commissioner. The Commissioner dismissed the appeals. The breweries each appealed. The appeals ...
Barristers and Solicitors -Duty to court - General principles - Duty of integrity
The applicant (Girao) and Allstate Insurance Co. disputed entitlements to accident benefits. The respondent law firm represented Allstate. Girao complained to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (PCC) against Allstate for disclosing her ...
Criminal Law -?Sentencing - Sentencing procedure and rights of the accused - Plea bargain or joint submission - Effect of
The accused was sentenced to two years? imprisonment for three breaches of a recognizance under s. 810.2 of the Criminal Code. He appealed and applied ...
Practice -?Persons who can sue and be sued - Individuals and corporations - Status or standing - Class actions - Members of class - General
The plaintiffs were Inuit or M?tis persons who were forced to attend certain residential schools in Labrador and Newfoundland. They ...
This is a listing of a few upcoming events in Canada of interest to lawyers, law students, legal librarians, and others involved in the practice of law.
Clicking on any event in the list below will give you access to more information and to links allowing you to see the full entry and to add the event to your own calendar.
Click this link for a fuller version of the TalkLaw/ParLoi calendar of events and for instructions as to how to add events and calendars to your own calendar.
A U.S. official says the Navy SEAL team that rescued two hostages in Somalia was the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden.
SEAL Team Six parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness Wednesday and rescued an American woman and a Danish man from an outdoor camp where they were being held by Somali pirates, the official said.
The same team executed the mission last May in which al-Qaida leader bin Laden was killed.
The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the top secret operation.
We rarely meddle with stock news around these parts, but this was a pretty significant piece of meat to chew on. After Research in Motion introduced Thorsten Heins as the new CEO last night and again in a conference call this morning, the company's stock price tumbled a whopping 8.47 percent. When it comes to what kind of difference the transition will make for the struggling company, we haven't had a high amount of confidence; while we hope for the best and want to see RIM turn things around, the falling stock appears to indicate that we're not alone in expressing concerns about this morning's events. Here's some food for thought: when rumors that Samsung was interested in purchasing RIM flooded the internet, the latter company's stocks spiked by nearly ten percent.
Quitting smoking is never easy. However, when you're poor and uneducated, kicking the habit for good is doubly hard, according to a new study by a tobacco dependence researcher at The City College of New York (CCNY).
Christine Sheffer, associate medical professor at CCNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, tracked smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.
Whether rich or poor, participants managed to quit at about the same rate upon completing a program of cognitive behavioral therapy, either with or without nicotine patches. But as time went on, a disparity between the groups appeared and widened.
Those with the fewest social and financial resources had the hardest time staving off cravings over the long run. "The poorer they are, the worse it gets," said Professor Sheffer, who directed the program and was an assistant professor with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at the time.
She found that smokers on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder were 55 percent more likely than those at the upper end to start smoking again three months after treatment. By six months post-quitting, the probability of their going back to cigarettes jumped to two-and-a-half times that of the more affluent smokers. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health and will appear ahead-of-print online under the journal's "First Look" section.
In their study, Professor Sheffer and her colleagues noted that overall, Americans with household incomes of $15,000 or less smoke at nearly three times the rate of those with incomes of $50,000 or greater. The consequences are bleak. "Smoking is still the greatest cause of preventable death and disease in the United States today," noted Professor Sheffer. "And it's a growing problem in developing countries."
Harder to Stay Away
Professor Sheffer suggested reasons it may be harder for some to give up tobacco forever.
Smoking relieves stress for those fighting nicotine addiction, so it is life's difficulties that often make them reach for the cigarette pack again. Unfortunately, those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale suffer more hardships than those at the top ? in the form of financial difficulties, discrimination, and job insecurity, to name a few. And for those smokers who started as teenagers, they may have never learned other ways to manage stress, said Professor Sheffer.
For people with lower socioeconomic status (SES), it can be tougher to avoid temptation as well. "Lower SES groups, with lower paying jobs, aren't as protected by smoke-free laws," said Sheffer, so individuals who have quit can find themselves back at work and surrounded by smokers. Also fewer of them have no-smoking policies in their homes.
These factors are rarely addressed in standard treatment programs. "The evidence-based treatments that are around have been developed for middle-class patients," Professor Sheffer pointed out. "So (in therapy) we talk about middle-class problems."
Further research would help determine how the standard six sessions of therapy might be altered or augmented to help. "Our next plan is to take the results of this and other studies and apply what we learned to revise the approach, in order to better meet the needs of poor folks," she said. "Maybe there is a better arrangement, like giving 'booster sessions'. Not everybody can predict in six weeks all the stresses they will have later on down the road."
"Some people say [quitting] is the most difficult thing in their life to do," said Sheffer. "If we better prepare people with more limited resources to manage the types of stress they have in their lives, we'd get better results. "
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City College of New York: http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu
Thanks to City College of New York for this article.
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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Newt Gingrich is feeling it. Having slugged his way to the lead for the second time, the former House speaker spies victory in South Carolina, a win he has said repeatedly will "make history" and, ultimately, hand him the Republican nomination for president.
The former boast seemed as fanciful as Gingrich's Mars program a week ago. Today, it's conventional wisdom.
In Orangeburg on Friday, speaking to a two-room overflow crowd in a shopping mall, Gingrich held up and knocked down the gallery of elitist thugs he holds responsible for the wayward course of America: "anti-religious judges," "academic journalists," bureaucrats, Hollywood and, of course, "Obama" -- Gingrich never calls him "President Obama."
And Juan Williams. Gingrich paused to take time to toy with Williams, the FOX commentator who last Monday -- in the pivotal moment of the campaign here -- had questioned whether Gingrich was seeking to ?belittle people? by talking about the "food stamp president" and by suggesting that urban youths do janitorial work in schools.
Gingrich's sneering, "Well ... Juan," reply in that debate brought the crowd to its feet and launched him toward the lead. A much more sophisticated southern strategy than the one employed by his party in the 1970s, it nevertheless imparted a simple message, that Gingrich is the candidate who can articulately and passionately channel your rage.
"The man is a figher," South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell told a crowd of supporters in a hangar of the USS Yorktown Friday. "He doesn't back down and that's what we need in Washington."
Harrell had previously been a Rick Perry backer, he told the crowd. But after the Texas governor dropped out, he switched to Gingrich, rallied by his fierce debate performances.
As if constructing a metaphor for his own campaign, Gingrich's day began with a cancellation due to lack of public interest, veered into a bizarre and extended visit to a hospital's emergency department, and ended with a packed and energetic rally.
The mood couldn't have been different for Mitt Romney, who'd hoped to come out of South Carolina with his third straight victory, but may improbably wind up instead with a record of 1-2, now that final vote tallies show he actually lost Iowa to Rick Santorum (who is still running, for what it's worth).
"When I was in Iowa I joked that the corn counted as an amber wave of grain," he told a crowd of about 300 people, after he quoted "America the Beautiful" on Friday morning. "That may account for my slim, uh, defeat there. I used to say that accounted for an eight-point win, but I had to change my rhetoric in the last couple of days."
He dropped the joke from a speech in North Charleston in the afternoon. There's little to laugh about for the former Massachusetts governor, unless he's chuckling awkwardly after saying he'd "maybe" release more than one year of tax returns next April.
South Carolinians say their state picks presidents. Mitt Romney used to say so too.
In South Carolina, six of the seven most recent surveys conducted this week now show Gingrich running slightly ahead of Romney, evidence of a collapse for the record books. The just-released Clemson University Palmetto Poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights, shows Gingrich leading Romney by a 32 percent to 26 percent margin, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum running far behind (at 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively).
The HuffPost Pollster chart, based on all available public polls, shows a 13 percentage point jump for Gingrich in the last week. He now runs ahead of Romney by nearly five points (33.9 to 29.0 percent), followed by Paul running a distant third (at 13.9 percent).
The chart also shows support for Santorum plummeting about as much as support for Gingrich has increased, from a high of more than 22 percent just after the Iowa caucuses to just 8.4 percent now.
The latest Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey found, for example, that Santorum supporters choose Gingrich more often than Romney as their second choice (40 to 24 percent).
On Friday, Romney began to seriously dial back expectations. He said he had an "uphill battle" in South Carolina anyway, because Gingrich is from the neighboring state, and that it's more important to win delegates, who will make the eventual choice at the Republican National Convention in August should the race still be undecided.
"I want as many delegates as I can get -- I want the most delegates coming out of South Carolina," he told reporters in Gilbert. "But I don?t know what the numbers will be."
Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a chief Romney surrogate, made the same effort on Friday, telling reporters he expects a "long slog."
That long slog could drag all the way to Tampa, where Republicans hold their political convention in late summer. As long as Ron Paul continues pulling significant support, and a conservative alternative remains viable -- which, in the age of Citizens United, means having just one deep-pocked casino mogul, for instance -- it'll be difficult for any one candidate to lock up a majority of delegates.
That could mean a "brokered convention," where a candidate is chose by party elites behind closed doors. It could be anybody. "I've been talking quietly to the most powerful, I think, conservative movers-and-shakers in Washington over the past couple weeks, trying to get their read," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, said Friday. "Every single one I've spoken to is trying to figure out a way to get to a brokered convention." (Of course, movers and shakers would enjoy a brokered convention because they'd be the ones doing the brokering.)
Whatever the outcome Saturday evening, it's clear that it won't be the knock-out blow Romney had hoped to deliver before turning his attention to President Obama. Instead, he'll limp to Florida, where he and his super PAC have been plastering television sets with ads long before other candidates had been able to get up and running.
Florida's primary, the Tuesday after next, will be followed Feb. 4 with a caucus in Nevada. A month later is Super Tuesday.
If Romney loses Saturday, it'll also be a stinging rebuke to the state's Tea Party-backed governor Nikki Haley. Campaigning with Romney Friday, she was off her game. "This current president wants to weaken our military and President Obama wants to strengthen our military and will never apologize for it," Haley said, according to a Patch report
"Oh, no. McCain did that two weeks ago, and, I just turned 40 today," she said.
A big leap toward lowering the power consumption of microprocessorsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer oppenheimer@austin.utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
Computer scientists conduct the first systematic power profiles of microprocessors
AUSTIN, Texas The first systematic power profiles of microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of both small cell phones and giant data centers, report computer science professors from The University of Texas at Austin and the Australian National University.
Their results may point the way to how companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Microsoft can make software and hardware that will lower the energy costs of very small and very large devices.
"The less power cell phones draw, the longer the battery will last," says Kathryn McKinley, professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. "For companies like Google and Microsoft, which run these enormous data centers, there is a big incentive to find ways to be more power efficient. More and more of the money they're spending isn't going toward buying the hardware, but toward the power the datacenters draw."
McKinley says that without detailed power profiles of how microprocessors function with different software and different chip architectures, companies are limited in terms of how well they can optimize for energy usage.
The study she conducted with Stephen M. Blackburn of The Australian National University and their graduate students is the first to systematically measure and analyze application power, performance, and energy on a wide variety of hardware.
This work was recently invited to appear as a Research Highlight in the Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery (CACM). It's also been selected as one of this year's "most significant research papers in computer architecture based on novelty and long-term impact" by the journal IEEE Micro.
"We did some measurements that no one else had done before," says McKinley. "We showed that different software, and different classes of software, have really different power usage."
McKinley says that such an analysis has become necessary as both the culture and the technologies of computing have shifted over the past decade.
Energy efficiency has become a greater priority for consumers, manufacturers and governments because the shrinking of processor technology has stopped yielding exponential gains in power and performance. The result of these shifts is that hardware and software designers have to take into account tradeoffs between performance and power in a way they did not ten years ago.
"Say you want to get an application on your phone that's GPS-based," says McKinley, "In terms of energy, the GPS is one of the most expensive functions on your phone. A bad algorithm might ping your GPS far more than is necessary for the application to function well. If the application writer could analyze the power profile, they would be motivated to write an algorithm that pings it half as often to save energy without compromising functionality."
McKinley believes that the future of software and hardware design is one in which power profiles become a consideration at every stage of the process.
Intel, for instance, has just released a chip with an exposed power meter, so that software developers can access some information about the power profiles of their products when run on that chip. McKinley expects that future generations of chips will expose even more fine-grained information about power usage.
Software developers like Microsoft (where McKinley is spending the next year, while taking a leave from the university) are already using what information they have to inform their designs. And device manufacturers are testing out different architectures for their phones or tablets that optimize for power usage.
McKinley says that even consumers may get information about how much power a given app on their smart phone is going to draw before deciding whether to install it or not.
"In the past, we optimized only for performance," she says. "If you were picking between two software algorithms, or chips, or devices, you picked the faster one. You didn't worry about how much power it was drawing from the wall socket. There are still many situations todayfor example, if you are making software for stock market traderswhere speed is going to be the only consideration. But there are a lot of other areas where you really want to consider the power usage."
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A big leap toward lowering the power consumption of microprocessorsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer oppenheimer@austin.utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
Computer scientists conduct the first systematic power profiles of microprocessors
AUSTIN, Texas The first systematic power profiles of microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of both small cell phones and giant data centers, report computer science professors from The University of Texas at Austin and the Australian National University.
Their results may point the way to how companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Microsoft can make software and hardware that will lower the energy costs of very small and very large devices.
"The less power cell phones draw, the longer the battery will last," says Kathryn McKinley, professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. "For companies like Google and Microsoft, which run these enormous data centers, there is a big incentive to find ways to be more power efficient. More and more of the money they're spending isn't going toward buying the hardware, but toward the power the datacenters draw."
McKinley says that without detailed power profiles of how microprocessors function with different software and different chip architectures, companies are limited in terms of how well they can optimize for energy usage.
The study she conducted with Stephen M. Blackburn of The Australian National University and their graduate students is the first to systematically measure and analyze application power, performance, and energy on a wide variety of hardware.
This work was recently invited to appear as a Research Highlight in the Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery (CACM). It's also been selected as one of this year's "most significant research papers in computer architecture based on novelty and long-term impact" by the journal IEEE Micro.
"We did some measurements that no one else had done before," says McKinley. "We showed that different software, and different classes of software, have really different power usage."
McKinley says that such an analysis has become necessary as both the culture and the technologies of computing have shifted over the past decade.
Energy efficiency has become a greater priority for consumers, manufacturers and governments because the shrinking of processor technology has stopped yielding exponential gains in power and performance. The result of these shifts is that hardware and software designers have to take into account tradeoffs between performance and power in a way they did not ten years ago.
"Say you want to get an application on your phone that's GPS-based," says McKinley, "In terms of energy, the GPS is one of the most expensive functions on your phone. A bad algorithm might ping your GPS far more than is necessary for the application to function well. If the application writer could analyze the power profile, they would be motivated to write an algorithm that pings it half as often to save energy without compromising functionality."
McKinley believes that the future of software and hardware design is one in which power profiles become a consideration at every stage of the process.
Intel, for instance, has just released a chip with an exposed power meter, so that software developers can access some information about the power profiles of their products when run on that chip. McKinley expects that future generations of chips will expose even more fine-grained information about power usage.
Software developers like Microsoft (where McKinley is spending the next year, while taking a leave from the university) are already using what information they have to inform their designs. And device manufacturers are testing out different architectures for their phones or tablets that optimize for power usage.
McKinley says that even consumers may get information about how much power a given app on their smart phone is going to draw before deciding whether to install it or not.
"In the past, we optimized only for performance," she says. "If you were picking between two software algorithms, or chips, or devices, you picked the faster one. You didn't worry about how much power it was drawing from the wall socket. There are still many situations todayfor example, if you are making software for stock market traderswhere speed is going to be the only consideration. But there are a lot of other areas where you really want to consider the power usage."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 20-Jan-2012
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