Focusing on Parenting Education
By: Harry Johnson
Parenting education has focused on techniques from a certain tradition, either behavioral or humanistic, that could be applied to any problem of parenting or child behavior change.Mainly highlights the complexity of our society and times by exploring the problems faced by diverse types of parents, children, and parenting situations. Moreover, the sensitive issues of parenting in unique populations are handled in a caring, straight-forward way with an emphasis on research-based parent education programs along with tips and strategies for everyday use.The need to engage in cooperative planning, coordination of service delivery, and infrastructure development across programs, communities, and states is becoming acute. In some locales, voluntary networks of parent education and family support programs are developing, fostering linkages that promote coordination and access.A stagnant economy routinely demands family employment in two or three jobs, leaving little time for effective parenting. Job insecurity often fuels family discontinuity and fragmentation. Unemployment, once the condition of the unskilled, has affected pink and white collar workers, causing more and more parents regularly to face complexities that make nurturing children difficult. Finally, the rise in the number of single parents, many of them teenage or never married, places heavy burdens on families and on society.Changes in nomenclature represent one of several current issues in parent education. Terminology used – besides parent education – includes parent empowerment, family education, family life education, parent support, and family support. Some other issues include: The equity issue: Parent education is alive and well in the marketplace, with affluent consumers exercising choice and purchasing information. Low-income parents have far more limited access to formal parenting programs and less discretionary income with which to purchase information. If parent education is left to market forces alone, the wealthy will become more information rich, while the poor will become comparatively and actually more information poor. Parent education programs are growing in number and becoming increasingly diverse on virtually every dimension imaginable: sponsorship, funding mechanisms, audience, intensity, staffing patterns, and evaluation strategy. Contrary to the approach used in the days when parent education had a didactic, if not somewhat elitist, orientation, today's approach is more universally adapted. While programs differ in how they carry out activities, they tend to embrace a common set of principles: • focus on prevention and optimization rather than treatment• recognition of the need to work with the entire family and community• commitment to regarding the family as an active participant in the planning and execution of the program rather than as a "passive client" waiting to receive services• commitment to nourishing cultural diversity• focus on strength-based needs analyses, programming, and evaluationMany parents know they have a troubled teen on there hands, as this changing face of parenting education will help. If you have any suggestions for how to improve this site or any questions pertaining to this site, feel free to go: http://www.abundantlifeacademy.ushttp://www.abundantlifeacademy.infohttp://www.troubledteens4jesus.comIt offers a wide variety of information pertaining to parenting teens in today's society. They hope that the information presented on this site will be of some use to parents everywhere.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
About Author: Harry Johnson For listings please visit www.abundantlifeacademy.us/ Distance Learning Schools. You can also visit www.abundantlifeacademy.info/ for Parenting Troubled Teens. and www.troubledteens4jesus.com/ for Troubled Teen Camps
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Italy Replaces Military Intelligence Chief
The Italian government Monday replaced the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, who is under investigation in the alleged CIA abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003, according to government officials.
SISMI director Nicolo Pollari was replaced after a special Cabinet meeting, along with the heads of the civilian intelligence agency and the agency that coordinates the country's intelligence services.
The government said the replacements were part of a broader overhaul of the intelligence services. The heads of the two non-military services are not under investigation in the alleged abduction.
''After a few years these positions of delicate responsibility must find their natural rotation,'' Premier Romano Prodi was quoted as saying by news agency Apcom.
Pollari had long resisted widespread calls for his resignation - which intensified after he became the highest-ranking Italian official named in the investigation.
Pollari faced questioning in July by prosecutors in Milan, who recently renewed their request for Italy to ask Washington to extradite 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, in the alleged abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric also known as Abu Omar.
Nasr was allegedly abducted as part of a CIA ''extraordinary rendition'' program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.
The cleric was allegedly flown out of northern Italy from a military base in Aviano, and, according to the prosecutors, taken to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Prosecutors allege that Pollari and other top officials of SISMI collaborated with the Americans to abduct the cleric.
Two of Pollari's top aides, Gustavo Pignero and Marco Mancini, were arrested this summer and other SISMI officials placed under investigation as part of the case. Pignero has since died of natural causes, while Mancini is said by his lawyers to be collaborating with prosecutors in implicating his boss.
Pollari has insisted in questioning before parliamentary committees that Italian intelligence had no role in Nasr's disappearance from Milan, where the cleric lived and worked.
Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi, who was in power at the time of the alleged abduction, has staunchly defended Pollari, maintaining that his government and SISMI were not informed of the alleged operation and had not taken part in it.
Prodi's center-left government has refrained from backing the allegations against Pollari, but has been more lukewarm in its defense of the spy chief and has maintained that the question of whether America told Italy of the supposed plan to kidnap Nasr is a state secret.
Pollari, 63, took the helm of SISMI in 2001 after holding key posts with Italy's financial police and CESIS.
Even before being drawn into the Nasr investigation, he faced difficult times at SISMI.
In 2005, he dealt with the fallout over the death in Iraq of top officer Nicola Calipari, who was killed by U.S. gunfire as he headed by car to Baghdad airport with a recently released Italian hostage.
The incident strained relations between Italy and the United States, and the two countries issued separate reports on the shooting after failing to agree on a shared version of events.
That year, Pollari also faced calls for resignation after several news reports in leftist daily La Repubblica alleged that he had knowingly passed forged documents to the United States suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa - information that was used to bolster the case for the invasion Iraq.
Pollari denied that SISMI had any hand in disseminating the fake dossier, which detailed a fictitious Iraqi deal to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger.
The Cabinet meeting Monday was called ahead of Prodi's departure later for Egypt on a long-scheduled visit to the country.
Replacing Pollari is Admiral Bruno Branciforte, a fleet commander and former head of navy intelligence. The 59-year-old officer's experience also includes stints as navy attache in Washington, D.C., and as Italian representative at U.S. Central Command in Tampa during the war in Afghanistan.
Gen. Mario Mori, an officer from Carabinieri paramilitary police, was replaced at the helm of the civilian intelligence agency, SISDE, by Franco Gabrielli, a top anti-terrorism police official. Gen. Giuseppe Cucchi, a retired army officer with experience in local and international military politics, replaced government official Emilio Del Mese at the cordinating body CESIS.
Intellpuke: You can read this Associated Press article, filed from Rome, Italy, in context here: www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-Secret-Services.html?hp&ex=1164085200&en=9db363053999e12c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
SISMI director Nicolo Pollari was replaced after a special Cabinet meeting, along with the heads of the civilian intelligence agency and the agency that coordinates the country's intelligence services.
The government said the replacements were part of a broader overhaul of the intelligence services. The heads of the two non-military services are not under investigation in the alleged abduction.
''After a few years these positions of delicate responsibility must find their natural rotation,'' Premier Romano Prodi was quoted as saying by news agency Apcom.
Pollari had long resisted widespread calls for his resignation - which intensified after he became the highest-ranking Italian official named in the investigation.
Pollari faced questioning in July by prosecutors in Milan, who recently renewed their request for Italy to ask Washington to extradite 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, in the alleged abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric also known as Abu Omar.
Nasr was allegedly abducted as part of a CIA ''extraordinary rendition'' program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.
The cleric was allegedly flown out of northern Italy from a military base in Aviano, and, according to the prosecutors, taken to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Prosecutors allege that Pollari and other top officials of SISMI collaborated with the Americans to abduct the cleric.
Two of Pollari's top aides, Gustavo Pignero and Marco Mancini, were arrested this summer and other SISMI officials placed under investigation as part of the case. Pignero has since died of natural causes, while Mancini is said by his lawyers to be collaborating with prosecutors in implicating his boss.
Pollari has insisted in questioning before parliamentary committees that Italian intelligence had no role in Nasr's disappearance from Milan, where the cleric lived and worked.
Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi, who was in power at the time of the alleged abduction, has staunchly defended Pollari, maintaining that his government and SISMI were not informed of the alleged operation and had not taken part in it.
Prodi's center-left government has refrained from backing the allegations against Pollari, but has been more lukewarm in its defense of the spy chief and has maintained that the question of whether America told Italy of the supposed plan to kidnap Nasr is a state secret.
Pollari, 63, took the helm of SISMI in 2001 after holding key posts with Italy's financial police and CESIS.
Even before being drawn into the Nasr investigation, he faced difficult times at SISMI.
In 2005, he dealt with the fallout over the death in Iraq of top officer Nicola Calipari, who was killed by U.S. gunfire as he headed by car to Baghdad airport with a recently released Italian hostage.
The incident strained relations between Italy and the United States, and the two countries issued separate reports on the shooting after failing to agree on a shared version of events.
That year, Pollari also faced calls for resignation after several news reports in leftist daily La Repubblica alleged that he had knowingly passed forged documents to the United States suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa - information that was used to bolster the case for the invasion Iraq.
Pollari denied that SISMI had any hand in disseminating the fake dossier, which detailed a fictitious Iraqi deal to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger.
The Cabinet meeting Monday was called ahead of Prodi's departure later for Egypt on a long-scheduled visit to the country.
Replacing Pollari is Admiral Bruno Branciforte, a fleet commander and former head of navy intelligence. The 59-year-old officer's experience also includes stints as navy attache in Washington, D.C., and as Italian representative at U.S. Central Command in Tampa during the war in Afghanistan.
Gen. Mario Mori, an officer from Carabinieri paramilitary police, was replaced at the helm of the civilian intelligence agency, SISDE, by Franco Gabrielli, a top anti-terrorism police official. Gen. Giuseppe Cucchi, a retired army officer with experience in local and international military politics, replaced government official Emilio Del Mese at the cordinating body CESIS.
Intellpuke: You can read this Associated Press article, filed from Rome, Italy, in context here: www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-Secret-Services.html?hp&ex=1164085200&en=9db363053999e12c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
Iran Urges Summit With Iraq And Syria
Iran has invited the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to Tehran for a weekend summit with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to hash out ways to cooperate in curbing the runaway violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war and threatens to spread through the region, four key lawmakers told the Associated Press on Monday.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has accepted the invitation and will fly to the Iranian capital Saturday, said a close parliamentary associate.
The Iranian diplomatic gambit appeared designed to upstage expected moves from Washington to include Syria and Iran in a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq, where more civilians have been killed in the first 20 days of November than in any other month since the AP began tallying the figures in April 2005.
The Iranian move was also a display of its increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it already has established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.
``All three countries intend to hold a three-way summit among Iraq, Iran and Syria to discuss the security situation and the repercussions for stability of the region,'' said Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party and a close aide to the prime minister.
Both Iran and Syria are seen as key players in Iraq. Syria is widely believed to have done little to stop foreign fighters and al-Qaida in Iraq recruits from crossing its border to join Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It also has provided refuge for many top members of Saddam Hussein's former leadership and political corps, which is thought to have organized arms and funding for the insurgents. The Sunni insurgency, since it sprang to life in late summer 2003, has been responsible for most of the U.S. deaths in Iraq.
Iran is deeply involved in training, funding and arming the two major Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran has deep historic ties to the current Shiite political leadership. Many Iraqi Shiites spent years in Iranian exile during Saddam's decades in power in Baghdad. One militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guard.
Earlier today, assassins killed a popular TV comedian and a college professor but failed in attempts to kill two Iraqi government officials as the country's leader met with Syria's foreign minister about improving security and reopening diplomatic relations.
In all, 21 Iraqis were killed in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and near the Syrian border, and the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured were found on the streets of the capital; in Dujail, north of Baghdad; and in the Tigris River in southern Iraq, said police.
The attacks raised the November death total to at least 1,370, well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which was the deadliest month in Iraq since the Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005.
The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried according to Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted.
Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, said a roadside bomb hit his convoy at about 9:30 a.m. Monday in eastern Baghdad, wounding two of his bodyguards.
``I was returning from an official visit to Amarah when our convoy was attacked,'' he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. ``Thank God the two guards were only slightly injured.''
Amarah is a mostly Shiite city 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Hakim al-Zamily, a Shiite deputy health minister, also escaped unhurt when gunmen fired at his convoy in downtown Baghdad at noon on Monday, killing two of his guards, said the minister.
On Sunday suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents kidnapped another deputy health minister, Shiite Ammar al-Saffar, from his home in northern Baghdad, reported the Iraqi army and police. They said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct al-Saffar, believed to be the senior-most government official kidnapped in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Al-Saffar was snatched nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.
The civilian victims of Monday's widespread attacks in Iraq included Walid Hassan, a famous comedian on al-Sharqiya TV who was shot while driving in western Baghdad. He had performed in a comedy series called ``Caricature,'' which mocked coalition forces and the Iraqi governments since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Assailants also shot to death Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University in the province south of Baghdad, as he was driving home from the school at midday, said police.
A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday night and a U.S. Marine died during combat in Anbar province on Sunday, the military said, raising to at least 2,865 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the war. This month in Iraq, 47 American service members have been killed or died.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met privately with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem on Monday during the second and final day of Moallem's visit to Iraq.
Afterward, government spokesman Ali Al-Dabagh told reporters the meeting was successful.
``There is a very strong Syrian desire to develop relations between the two countries. Stability and security in Iraq means stability and security in Syria and other countries in the region,'' said Al-Dabagh.
``There are tremendous fields of cooperation between the two countries, and they will be started once all security issues and other problems are solved.''
When Moallem arrived on his groundbreaking diplomatic mission Sunday, the highest Syrian official to visit Iraq since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, he called for a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces to help end Iraq's sectarian bloodbath.
Syria and Iraq share a long and porous desert border, and both Baghdad and Washington have accused Damascus of not doing enough to stop the flow of foreign Arab fighters.
Coalition forces again raided Baghdad's Sadr City, the stronghold of a Shiite militia suspected of having carried out the mass kidnaping at the Ministry of Higher Education.
Iraqi forces searched and damaged a mosque during the operation, but made no arrests, the U.S. military said. The Iraqi forces, acting with the assistance of U.S. military advisers, also destroyed a vehicle near the mosque that was posing a threat to the ground forces, said the coalition.
Iraqi and U.S. forces suffered no casualties.
In Sadr City, witnesses and an official at the main office of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told the A.P. that in addition to the mosque, coalition forces searched several homes, arrested three Iraqis and briefly clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen. Speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for their own security,al said the raid began at about 3 a.m.
Meanwhile, British and Iraqi forces raided homes in southern Iraq on Monday and arrested four suspects in the kidnapping of four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker, said an official said.
The raid, which began late Sunday and ended early Monday morning, took place in Zubair, a mostly Sunni-Arab enclave about 20 miles south of Basra, Capt. Tane Dunlop, the British military spokesman, told The Associated Press. Most of Britain's 7,200 soldiers in Iraq are based in the city.
On Sunday, Iraqi police showed the media 200 suspected insurgents they had arrested the night before while raiding several areas north of Basra, which is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Both raids failed to find any of the hostages in southern Iraq, a mostly Shiite region.
Intellpuke: Sincere condolences the familes, loved ones and friends of those who were killed. Requiescat en page.
You can read this article by Associated Press correspondents Steven R. Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, in context here: www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6228313,00.html
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has accepted the invitation and will fly to the Iranian capital Saturday, said a close parliamentary associate.
The Iranian diplomatic gambit appeared designed to upstage expected moves from Washington to include Syria and Iran in a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq, where more civilians have been killed in the first 20 days of November than in any other month since the AP began tallying the figures in April 2005.
The Iranian move was also a display of its increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it already has established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.
``All three countries intend to hold a three-way summit among Iraq, Iran and Syria to discuss the security situation and the repercussions for stability of the region,'' said Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party and a close aide to the prime minister.
Both Iran and Syria are seen as key players in Iraq. Syria is widely believed to have done little to stop foreign fighters and al-Qaida in Iraq recruits from crossing its border to join Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It also has provided refuge for many top members of Saddam Hussein's former leadership and political corps, which is thought to have organized arms and funding for the insurgents. The Sunni insurgency, since it sprang to life in late summer 2003, has been responsible for most of the U.S. deaths in Iraq.
Iran is deeply involved in training, funding and arming the two major Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran has deep historic ties to the current Shiite political leadership. Many Iraqi Shiites spent years in Iranian exile during Saddam's decades in power in Baghdad. One militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guard.
Earlier today, assassins killed a popular TV comedian and a college professor but failed in attempts to kill two Iraqi government officials as the country's leader met with Syria's foreign minister about improving security and reopening diplomatic relations.
In all, 21 Iraqis were killed in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and near the Syrian border, and the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured were found on the streets of the capital; in Dujail, north of Baghdad; and in the Tigris River in southern Iraq, said police.
The attacks raised the November death total to at least 1,370, well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which was the deadliest month in Iraq since the Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005.
The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried according to Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted.
Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, said a roadside bomb hit his convoy at about 9:30 a.m. Monday in eastern Baghdad, wounding two of his bodyguards.
``I was returning from an official visit to Amarah when our convoy was attacked,'' he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. ``Thank God the two guards were only slightly injured.''
Amarah is a mostly Shiite city 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Hakim al-Zamily, a Shiite deputy health minister, also escaped unhurt when gunmen fired at his convoy in downtown Baghdad at noon on Monday, killing two of his guards, said the minister.
On Sunday suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents kidnapped another deputy health minister, Shiite Ammar al-Saffar, from his home in northern Baghdad, reported the Iraqi army and police. They said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct al-Saffar, believed to be the senior-most government official kidnapped in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Al-Saffar was snatched nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.
The civilian victims of Monday's widespread attacks in Iraq included Walid Hassan, a famous comedian on al-Sharqiya TV who was shot while driving in western Baghdad. He had performed in a comedy series called ``Caricature,'' which mocked coalition forces and the Iraqi governments since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Assailants also shot to death Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University in the province south of Baghdad, as he was driving home from the school at midday, said police.
A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday night and a U.S. Marine died during combat in Anbar province on Sunday, the military said, raising to at least 2,865 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the war. This month in Iraq, 47 American service members have been killed or died.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met privately with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem on Monday during the second and final day of Moallem's visit to Iraq.
Afterward, government spokesman Ali Al-Dabagh told reporters the meeting was successful.
``There is a very strong Syrian desire to develop relations between the two countries. Stability and security in Iraq means stability and security in Syria and other countries in the region,'' said Al-Dabagh.
``There are tremendous fields of cooperation between the two countries, and they will be started once all security issues and other problems are solved.''
When Moallem arrived on his groundbreaking diplomatic mission Sunday, the highest Syrian official to visit Iraq since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, he called for a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces to help end Iraq's sectarian bloodbath.
Syria and Iraq share a long and porous desert border, and both Baghdad and Washington have accused Damascus of not doing enough to stop the flow of foreign Arab fighters.
Coalition forces again raided Baghdad's Sadr City, the stronghold of a Shiite militia suspected of having carried out the mass kidnaping at the Ministry of Higher Education.
Iraqi forces searched and damaged a mosque during the operation, but made no arrests, the U.S. military said. The Iraqi forces, acting with the assistance of U.S. military advisers, also destroyed a vehicle near the mosque that was posing a threat to the ground forces, said the coalition.
Iraqi and U.S. forces suffered no casualties.
In Sadr City, witnesses and an official at the main office of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told the A.P. that in addition to the mosque, coalition forces searched several homes, arrested three Iraqis and briefly clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen. Speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for their own security,al said the raid began at about 3 a.m.
Meanwhile, British and Iraqi forces raided homes in southern Iraq on Monday and arrested four suspects in the kidnapping of four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker, said an official said.
The raid, which began late Sunday and ended early Monday morning, took place in Zubair, a mostly Sunni-Arab enclave about 20 miles south of Basra, Capt. Tane Dunlop, the British military spokesman, told The Associated Press. Most of Britain's 7,200 soldiers in Iraq are based in the city.
On Sunday, Iraqi police showed the media 200 suspected insurgents they had arrested the night before while raiding several areas north of Basra, which is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Both raids failed to find any of the hostages in southern Iraq, a mostly Shiite region.
Intellpuke: Sincere condolences the familes, loved ones and friends of those who were killed. Requiescat en page.
You can read this article by Associated Press correspondents Steven R. Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, in context here: www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6228313,00.html
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
California Supreme Court Says Bloggers Can't Be Sued
The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that bloggers and participants in Internet bulletin board groups cannot be sued for posting defamatory statements made by others.
In deciding a case closely watched by free speech groups, the court said a federal law gives immunity from libel suits not only to Internet service providers, like AOL, but also to bloggers and other users of their services.
"Subjecting Internet service providers and users to defamation liability would tend to chill online speech," said today's unanimous ruling.
The decision is a victory for Internet free speech advocates, who warned that a contrary outcome could have affected users of newsgroups, blogs, listservs, and bulletin boards who enter those forums to discuss the views of others. A loss could even have jeopardized websites run by students to evaluate their professors, said the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in friend of court briefs. (Editor: You can read the California Supreme Court decision, in PDF format, here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S122953.PDF )
The case involved a lawsuit against Ilena Rosenthal, a women's health activist, who created an e-mail list and a newsgroup (alt.support.breast-implant) to discuss issues related to breast implants. Six years ago, she posted a letter written by a man who was highly critical of the efforts of a doctor to discredit advocates of alternative health treatments.
In the letter, the doctor, Terry Polevoy, was accused of trying to get an alternative medicine radio program canceled by using "scare tactics, stalking, and intimidation techniques" against the program's producer. Polevy, who maintained a website himself to expose what he called "health fraud and quackery" sued Rosenthal for libel.
She argued that because she did not write the letter herself and instead posted the work of another to her newsgroup, she was immune from suit under a section of the federal Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1966. It protects both Internet service providers and their users from lawsuits.
In today's ruling, the California Supreme court said that granting such broad immunity for posting defamatory statements "has some troubling consequences."
Nevertheless, the court said, "Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."
Intellpuke: This is a very good ruling by the California Supreme Court as it protect freedom of speech on the Internet. Hopefully, the U.S. Congress will do something unusual and actually back the Constitution on freedom of speech on this issue. You can read this article by NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams in context here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15817955/from/RS.1/
source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
In deciding a case closely watched by free speech groups, the court said a federal law gives immunity from libel suits not only to Internet service providers, like AOL, but also to bloggers and other users of their services.
"Subjecting Internet service providers and users to defamation liability would tend to chill online speech," said today's unanimous ruling.
The decision is a victory for Internet free speech advocates, who warned that a contrary outcome could have affected users of newsgroups, blogs, listservs, and bulletin boards who enter those forums to discuss the views of others. A loss could even have jeopardized websites run by students to evaluate their professors, said the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in friend of court briefs. (Editor: You can read the California Supreme Court decision, in PDF format, here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S122953.PDF )
The case involved a lawsuit against Ilena Rosenthal, a women's health activist, who created an e-mail list and a newsgroup (alt.support.breast-implant) to discuss issues related to breast implants. Six years ago, she posted a letter written by a man who was highly critical of the efforts of a doctor to discredit advocates of alternative health treatments.
In the letter, the doctor, Terry Polevoy, was accused of trying to get an alternative medicine radio program canceled by using "scare tactics, stalking, and intimidation techniques" against the program's producer. Polevy, who maintained a website himself to expose what he called "health fraud and quackery" sued Rosenthal for libel.
She argued that because she did not write the letter herself and instead posted the work of another to her newsgroup, she was immune from suit under a section of the federal Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1966. It protects both Internet service providers and their users from lawsuits.
In today's ruling, the California Supreme court said that granting such broad immunity for posting defamatory statements "has some troubling consequences."
Nevertheless, the court said, "Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."
Intellpuke: This is a very good ruling by the California Supreme Court as it protect freedom of speech on the Internet. Hopefully, the U.S. Congress will do something unusual and actually back the Constitution on freedom of speech on this issue. You can read this article by NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams in context here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15817955/from/RS.1/
source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
Astronomers: Black Holes Exhibit Spin Control
X-ray vision has brought astronomers closer than ever to completely characterizing a black hole, a place where strange things happen.
Astronomers measured the spinning speed of three black holes, finding that one rotates at a breakneck 950 times per second, nearing its theoretical rotation limit of 1,150 spins a second. The black hole lies within the constellation Aquila, about 35,000 light-years from Earth.
The finding represents an important step toward understanding these invisible objects.
When any mass, such as a star, becomes more compact than a certain limit, its own gravity becomes so strong that the object collapses to a singular point, a black hole.The spin of a star is thought to translate into spin of a black hole that forms from the star's collapse. With its mass much more compact, the spin rate ought to be phenomenal, much like a skater pulls in his arms to increase speed when performing a pirouette.
While astronomers have calculated the masses of more than a dozen black holes, spin-speed measurements have remained elusive. Until now, the spin rate of only one other black hole has been accurately measured, according to the researchers.
"Ever since the community figured out many years ago how to measure black hole mass, measuring spin has been the holy grail in this field," said Jeffrey McClintock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
A black hole's gravity, at a distance, behaves like that of a star of the same mass. If the sun were suddenly to become a black hole, for example, its gravitational effect on Earth would not change.
“When you take a black hole and you try putting an object into orbit around it, you have no trouble if you’re doing it at a large distance,†said Ramesh Narayan of the Center for Astrophysics.
But as swirling matter gets closer to a black hole, it starts orbiting faster and faster until it reaches the jaws of the dark behemoth. Just before the gas and dust get devoured, the matter heats up to millions of degrees, unleashing jets of X-rays.
The scientists, led by McClintock and Narayan, used NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite data to measure this radiation and calculate the area of this disk of radiation (seen in images as a bright-white ring around the black center).
“Before, [the matter] was swirling around, happily, very slowly just spiraling in, and then it reaches this radius, and then bang, it just freefalls into the black hole,†Narayan told Space.com.
Inside this radius, the gas is falling in so quickly it doesn’t send out much radiation.
The faster a black hole spins, the smaller its critical radius. That’s because when a black hole is spinning, it drags space-time around with it. So if surrounding matter is spinning in the same direction as the black hole, it gets tugged along due to this so-called frame-dragging effect. “The space is being pulled, so it’s helping the particle go around, so it’s able to hang on much closer to the black hole,†explained Narayan.
“If a particle is going around a black hole in the same direction as the spin of the black hole, then it turns out that it can be comfortable. It’s able to find a circular orbit even at much smaller radii,†explained Narayan.
They found that two of the black holes spin at less than 50 percent of their maximum rates, while the black hole called GRS1915+105, which has 14 times the mass of the sun, rotates at between 82 and 100 percent of its maximum spin speed.
Each black hole is part of what's called an X-ray binary system, in which two objects orbit each other with gas from one - a normal star like the sun - getting pulled toward the black hole.
The results are published in Monday's issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Intellpuke: Fascinating. You can read this article by Space.com reporter Jeanna Bryner in context here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15816500/
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
Astronomers measured the spinning speed of three black holes, finding that one rotates at a breakneck 950 times per second, nearing its theoretical rotation limit of 1,150 spins a second. The black hole lies within the constellation Aquila, about 35,000 light-years from Earth.
The finding represents an important step toward understanding these invisible objects.
When any mass, such as a star, becomes more compact than a certain limit, its own gravity becomes so strong that the object collapses to a singular point, a black hole.The spin of a star is thought to translate into spin of a black hole that forms from the star's collapse. With its mass much more compact, the spin rate ought to be phenomenal, much like a skater pulls in his arms to increase speed when performing a pirouette.
While astronomers have calculated the masses of more than a dozen black holes, spin-speed measurements have remained elusive. Until now, the spin rate of only one other black hole has been accurately measured, according to the researchers.
"Ever since the community figured out many years ago how to measure black hole mass, measuring spin has been the holy grail in this field," said Jeffrey McClintock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
A black hole's gravity, at a distance, behaves like that of a star of the same mass. If the sun were suddenly to become a black hole, for example, its gravitational effect on Earth would not change.
“When you take a black hole and you try putting an object into orbit around it, you have no trouble if you’re doing it at a large distance,†said Ramesh Narayan of the Center for Astrophysics.
But as swirling matter gets closer to a black hole, it starts orbiting faster and faster until it reaches the jaws of the dark behemoth. Just before the gas and dust get devoured, the matter heats up to millions of degrees, unleashing jets of X-rays.
The scientists, led by McClintock and Narayan, used NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite data to measure this radiation and calculate the area of this disk of radiation (seen in images as a bright-white ring around the black center).
“Before, [the matter] was swirling around, happily, very slowly just spiraling in, and then it reaches this radius, and then bang, it just freefalls into the black hole,†Narayan told Space.com.
Inside this radius, the gas is falling in so quickly it doesn’t send out much radiation.
The faster a black hole spins, the smaller its critical radius. That’s because when a black hole is spinning, it drags space-time around with it. So if surrounding matter is spinning in the same direction as the black hole, it gets tugged along due to this so-called frame-dragging effect. “The space is being pulled, so it’s helping the particle go around, so it’s able to hang on much closer to the black hole,†explained Narayan.
“If a particle is going around a black hole in the same direction as the spin of the black hole, then it turns out that it can be comfortable. It’s able to find a circular orbit even at much smaller radii,†explained Narayan.
They found that two of the black holes spin at less than 50 percent of their maximum rates, while the black hole called GRS1915+105, which has 14 times the mass of the sun, rotates at between 82 and 100 percent of its maximum spin speed.
Each black hole is part of what's called an X-ray binary system, in which two objects orbit each other with gas from one - a normal star like the sun - getting pulled toward the black hole.
The results are published in Monday's issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Intellpuke: Fascinating. You can read this article by Space.com reporter Jeanna Bryner in context here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15816500/
Source : http://FreeInternetPress.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)