Friday, December 23, 2011

Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

2003-europe-temperature-anomalyHEAT WAVE: Extreme weather, like the deadly heat wave in Europe in 2003, will create some of the public health impacts expected from climate change. Image: Courtesy of NASA

DURBAN, South Africa?Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis?a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes?caused by the bite of a sandfly.

As the team leader for climate change and health at WHO and an environmental epidemiologist, Campbell-Lendrum is also in a position to worry more about how global warming is going to affect such so-called vector-borne diseases. "Is climate change going to bring malaria back to the U.S. and Europe? It's not," he asserts. "Climate change is eroding the environmental determinants of health: water, food, increasing disease," he says. Already WHO research suggests that current warming of global average temperatures of just under one degree Celsius is responsible for an additional 150,000 deaths per year, largely due to agricultural failures and diarrheal disease in developing countries. "All the inputs are on the conservative side," says Campbell-Lendrum, who helped come up with the number.

As a result, WHO?and a consortium of other public health organizations?declared climate change to be among the most pressing emerging health issues in the world at the recent climate negotiations here in South Africa. Consider some of the changes that are already taking place: extreme heat waves, such as the one in Europe in 2003 that killed 46,000 people; changes in bacterial diseases due to water contamination and a quickening of bacterial growth rates in warmer temperatures; worsening levels of ground-level ozone, otherwise known as smog, which is responsible for worsening asthma and heart attacks (among other health effects); changes in pollen making allergies worse; changes in vector-borne diseases; as well as droughts, floods and other forms of extreme weather such as the 12 natural disasters in the U.S. this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.

"Those things are with us now," says Dr. Hugh Montgomery of the U.K. Climate and Health Council, one of the groups calling for action to combat climate change?and to consider public health when doing so. "If we continue this script, we are writing a death certificate for humanity on our planet."

Taking public health into account would help in more ways than one. Climate change?fighting measures such as extending modern electricity to those who now burn wood, coal or dung indoors (thereby shortening their lives as well as contributing to global warming) would likely save as much money or more in public health costs as the price of implementing the new technologies. The alternative is to potentially see a reversal in the dramatic gains in the past century of public health of in some parts of the world. "Just as the HIV epidemic caused us to have a reversal in recent gains in public health in this country," notes Dr. Rajen Naidoo of the Nelson Mandela Medical School in Durban, "so too does climate change now."

In fact, something as simple as adding a solar hot-water heater to the roof of a village school can cut down on diarrheal disease in a country like South Africa. The hot water allows better hand-washing and thus better hygiene. Outfitting health clinics to cope with the various increased risks caused by climate change would also help, as would investments in climate-resilient infrastructure, such as better water-treatment facilities.

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Iraq pullout was "signature failure" for Obama: Romney (reuters)

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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

CTIA And ESRB Debut App Rating System, No Buy-In From Google Or Apple

angryesrbThe CTIA and ESRB pulled back the curtains on their new mobile app rating system today, and it looks like with the help of their six founding partners, app ratings could soon grace a smartphone near you. The new app rating system will be implemented first by AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon Wireless, and other storefronts are said to have expressed interest. If that list appears to be missing a bit of star power, you're right: Apple and Google aren't participating in the program as they both already provide age and maturity level suggestions for each app listed in their app stores.

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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Facebook makes privacy pledge in FTC settlement

FILE - This Oct. 11, 2010 file photo, shows the logo of the online network Facebook, recorded in Munich with a magnifying glass of a computer screen of a laptop. Facebook said Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, it is settling with the Federal Trade Commission over charges it deceived consumers. The FTC had charged that the social network told people they could keep the information they share private and then allowed for it to be made public. The charges go back to 2009.(AP Photo/dapd, Joerg Koch)

FILE - This Oct. 11, 2010 file photo, shows the logo of the online network Facebook, recorded in Munich with a magnifying glass of a computer screen of a laptop. Facebook said Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, it is settling with the Federal Trade Commission over charges it deceived consumers. The FTC had charged that the social network told people they could keep the information they share private and then allowed for it to be made public. The charges go back to 2009.(AP Photo/dapd, Joerg Koch)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Government regulators are sharing some alarming information about Facebook: They believe the online social network has often misled its more than 800 million users about the sanctity of their personal information.

The unflattering portrait of Facebook's privacy practices emerged Tuesday in a Federal Trade Commission complaint alleging that Facebook exposed details about users' lives without getting legally required consent. In some cases, the FTC charged, Facebook allowed potentially sensitive details to be passed along to advertisers and software developers prowling for customers.

To avoid further legal wrangling, Facebook agreed to submit to government audits of its privacy practices every other year for the next two decades. The company committed to getting explicit approval from its users ? a process known as "opting in" ? before changing their privacy controls.

The FTC's truce with Facebook, along with previous settlements with Google and Twitter, is helping to establish more ground rules for online privacy expectations even as Internet companies regularly vacuum up insights about their audiences in an effort to sell more advertising.

Although Facebook didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing in the legal papers it signed with the FTC, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was more contrite in a blog post Tuesday.

"I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes," Zuckerberg wrote. "In particular, I think that a small number of high-profile mistakes ... have often overshadowed much of the good work we've done."

Facebook has overcome its missteps in the past to emerge as the world's largest social network and one of the Internet's most influential companies since Zuckerberg created the website in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004.

No website has been as successful as Facebook at getting people to voluntarily share intimate details about themselves. Zuckerberg has emerged as the Internet's chief evangelist for sharing, partly because he believes it can help make the world a better place by making it easier for people to stay connected with the things and people that they care about.

Facebook also is trying to make money by mining the personal information that it collects to help customize ads and aim the messages at people most likely to buy the products and services being promoted.

That strategy has been working well as Facebook prepares to sell its stock in an initial public offering that's expected next year.

The company's revenue this year is expected to approach $4.3 billion, according to research firm eMarketer, up from $777 million in 2009. The rapid growth is expected to make Facebook the biggest Internet IPO in history, topping Google's stock market debut in 2004.

The FTC's 19-page complaint casts a glaring spotlight on how Facebook has approached its users' rights to privacy at a time that it is facing tougher competition from Internet search leader Google Inc., which has attracted more than 40 million users to a social service called Plus just five months after its debut.

Google tried to lure people away from Facebook with a system that made it easier to guard their personal information. Facebook has responded by introducing more granular privacy settings.

The FTC cracked down on Google eight months ago for alleged privacy abuses that occurred last year when the company attempted to plant a social network called Buzz within its widely used Gmail service. Like Facebook, Google agreed to improve its privacy practices and submit to external audits for the next 20 years.

Twitter, the online short-messaging service, also struck a settlement with the FTC in June 2010 to resolve charges that it didn't do enough to protect users' accounts from computer hackers.

Much of the FTC's complaint against Facebook centers on a series of changes that the company made to its privacy controls in late 2009. The revisions automatically shared information and pictures about Facebook users, even if they previously programmed their privacy settings to shield the content. Among other things, people's profile pictures, lists of online friends and political views were suddenly available for the world to see, the FTC alleged.

The complaint also charges that Facebook shared its users' personal information with third-party advertisers from September 2008 through May 2010 despite several public assurances from company officials that it wasn't passing the data along for marketing purposes.

Facebook believes that happened only in limited instances, generally when users clicked on ads that appeared on their personal profile pages. Most of Facebook's users click on ads when they are on their "Wall" ? a section that highlights their friends' posts ? or while visiting someone else's profile page.

The FTC also alleged that Facebook displayed personal photos even after users deleted them from their accounts.

Facebook's agreement with the FTC requires the company to obey privacy laws or face fines of $16,000 per day for each violation.

"Facebook's innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "The FTC action will ensure it will not."

The FTC's commissioners unanimously approved the agreement with Facebook. The FTC is accepting public comments through Dec. 30 before deciding whether to finalize the settlement.

Facebook's stepped-up commitment to privacy wasn't enough to satisfy Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, one of the privacy watchdog groups that prodded the FTC investigation. In a statement, Chester called on Zuckerberg and Facebook's board of directors to resign so that the company could hire more trustworthy replacements.

"They misled consumers and should pay a price beyond a 20-year agreement to conduct their business practices in a more above-board fashion," Chester said.

Facebook sought to downplay the gravity of the FTC's allegations, maintaining that it had already addressed most of the privacy complaints. Zuckerberg said the website has added more than 20 new privacy features in the past 18 months.

To underscore its commitment, Facebook has created two new executive positions ? Michael Richter as chief privacy officer of products and Erin Egan as chief privacy officer of policy.

"This means we're making a clear and formal long-term commitment to do the things we've always tried to do and planned to keep doing ? giving you tools to control who can see your information and then making sure only those people you intend can see it," Zuckerberg wrote in his blog post.

___

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this story.

___

Online:

The FTC's complaint: http://1.usa.gov/uUrr4z

Mark Zuckerberg's blog post: http://on.fb.me/vkTdhV

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-29-Facebook-Settlement/id-44ddeaf758fd4bfbb9ce1fa7d8bd28ef

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Metro signs Full Funding Grant Agreement (Offthekuff)

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Monday, November 28, 2011

Baidu to invest 3 billion yuan to help Chinese SMEs (Reuters)

SHANGHAI (Reuters) ? China's largest search engine Baidu Inc said on Monday it will invest 3 billion yuan ($470.6 million) by the end of 2015 to help 2 million small- and medium-sized enterprises expand their businesses.

As part of the investment, Baidu will groom 100,000 search marketing professionals, help small- and medium-sized enterprises develop their service platforms, provide free marketing about less developed regions and help government departments in their research on business, Baidu said, confirming a Xinhua report issued late on Sunday.

China, with more than 485 million users, is the world's largest Internet market. Yet, with Internet penetration hovering around 36 percent and user sophistication outside the big cities still low, the potential for growth is huge.

In the third quarter, China's online search market grew 77.8 percent to 5.51 billion yuan. Baidu had a 77.7 percent share of the market, while Google had 18.3 percent, according to data from Beijing-based consultancy iResearch.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111128/wr_nm/us_baidu

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Search Engine Optimization and Social Media: Savvy Business ...

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Strategies for search engine optimization and social media marketing to yield large returns; How search and social media will play a key role in success for businesses serious about search.

(LOS ANGELES, CA) As the new year quickly approaches many companies large and small will begin to develop their search engine optimization strategies for next year. Those who have already built their team will likely restructure just to stay competitive, and those who have not yet solved this immensely important marketing challenge will get ready to finally dive in. Regardless of which your company may be, one thing is clear: visibility in search is a must-have in-order to survive and be successful. Now, more than ever, Search simply cannot be ignored.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and now Google+ social networks are growing fast? You can?t read the business or technology sections of your favorite newspaper or news web site without seeing these brands at least once per visit. Google has said it signed up more than?40 million users for Google+?since launching the service in June. Internet IPOs are also reaching what seems like a critical mass. Is the Internet about to see its second boom? Some are calling it ?Internet Bubble 2.0?.

With all of the continued buzz around SEO (Search engine optimization) and SMO (Social media optimization) business executives clearly see how search and social media isn?t going away anytime soon. These social circles are driving America?s largest marketing budgets, and will likely continue to do so far into the next few years.

So how does a company begin to harness the power of search and social media if they have not yet entered this important area of business? How to perfect it for those already involved? ?By strategically investing in the right departments and employees who understand search and social media. Businesses which do not have a search or social media department should be looking to create one, and those without the desire to maintain these departments should outsource. Either way, search and social media should have a place within your businesses marketing budget for 2012?.

A recent report released by WebMarketing123 called the?2011 State of Digital Marketing Report?revealed that although SEO (search engine optimization) is still the leading choice for online marketers, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for SMO (social media optimization) in 2012. Of over 500 marketing professionals polled, 68 percent said they?ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

Reports such as these prove that Search Engine Optimization plays a significant role in the success of your business, especially those using the Internet. Each day, more and more businesses are launching websites and the competition is obviously increasing. It isn?t enough that your business merely exists. You need to either?recruit educated staff?who will have your best interests at heart or hire a knowledgeable?SEO Company?who can use the latest search engine approved techniques to promote your web site in major search engines in-order to maintain top positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo and within social networks.

?If your customers can?t easily find you, they?re going to find your competitors. Having a well cemented social media presence allows your prospects to connect with you on the social web in a way that is becoming - well, standard.? said Alex R, a local search specialist for Los Angeles SEO Company, who helped contribute to this report.

?Many predict 2012 is going to be an active year for Internet marketing companies and social marketers. Businesses that take the time to develop strategic optimization programs which combine both social media marketing and search engine optimization are likely to see a heavy influx of new customers and business whether they sell products, information or are motivated to build their brands using the Internet? he added.



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Exclusive: Euro zone may drop bondholder losses from ESM bailout (Reuters)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Euro zone states may ditch plans to impose losses on private bondholders should countries need to restructure their debt under a new bailout fund due to launch in mid-2013, four EU officials told Reuters on Friday.

Discussions are taking place against a backdrop of flagging market confidence in the region's debt and as part of wider negotiations over introducing stricter fiscal rules to the EU treaty.

Euro zone powerhouse Germany is insisting on tighter budgets

and private sector involvement (PSI) in bailouts as a precondition for deeper economic integration among euro zone countries.

Commercial banks and insurance companies are still expected to take a hit on their holdings of Greek sovereign bonds as part of the second bailout package being finalized for Athens.

But clauses relating to PSI in the statutes of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) - the permanent facility scheduled to start operating from July 2013 - could be withdrawn, with the majority of euro zone states now opposed to them.

The concern is that forcing the private sector bondholders to take losses if a country restructures its debt is undermining confidence in euro zone sovereign bonds. If those stipulations are removed, most countries in the euro zone argue, market sentiment might improve.

"France, Italy, Spain and all the peripherals" are in favor of removing the clauses, one EU official told Reuters. "Against it are Germany, Finland and the Netherlands." Austria is also opposed, another source said.

A third official said that while German insistence on retaining private sector involvement in the ESM was fading, collective action clauses would only be removed as part of broader negotiations under way over changes to the EU treaty.

Berlin wants all 27 EU countries, or at least the 17 in the euro zone, to provide full backing for alterations to the treaty before it will consider giving ground on other issues member states want it to shift on, officials say.

Germany is under pressure to soften its opposition to the European Central Bank playing a more direct role in combating the crisis, and member states also want Berlin to give its backing to the idea of jointly issued euro zone bonds.

German officials dismiss any suggestion of a 'grand bargain' being put together, but officials in other euro zone capitals, including Brussels, say such a deal is taking shape and suggest Berlin will move when it has the commitments it is seeking, although it's unclear when that will be.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Strasbourg on Thursday that there was no quid pro quo being set up.

"This is not about give and take," she said.

Euro zone finance ministers will discuss the ESM at a meeting in Brussels on November 29-30, including the implications of dropping collective action clauses from its statutes.

COMPLICATIONS

While most euro zone countries just want to forget about enforced private sector involvement, some are adamant that there must be a way to ensure banks and not just taxpayers shoulder some of the costs of bailing countries out.

Austria's opposition Green Party, whose support the government needs to secure backing for the ESM in the Vienna parliament, insists collective action clauses must remain a part of the ESM. It's also far from unclear whether the finance committee of the German lower house Bundestag would agree to such changes being made to the ESM.

Any changes to the mechanism would have to be approved by all member states and ratified by national parliaments before they can take effect, meaning fixed Austrian and German opposition could derail the push for changes.

Germany and some other member states were hoping to bring the ESM, which will have a lending capacity of 500 billion euros, into force as early as July next year, but disagreement over its structure could delay that.

(Reporting by Julien Toyer, John O'Donnell and Luke Baker in Brussels, Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Mike Shields in Vienna; writing by Luke Baker; editing by Rex Merrifield, John Stonestreet)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111125/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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