The French state will reimburse 100 percent of the cost of abortions beginning 1 April, while girls aged between 15 and 18 will be offered access to free and anonymous birth control.
The change comes as a law approved in late 2012 comes into force.
Until now, French women over 18 could only receive up to 80 percent of the cost of the procedure, which can run up to 450 euros.
There are around 12,000 such procedures a year in France — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Within the next two months gay marriage will be legal in New Zealand.
It’s safe to make that prediction because a bill sponsored by Labour MP Louisa Wall is one step away from becoming law with only a third reading needed to enact it.
There have been three votes on the bill, putting it through its first reading, second reading and committee stage – 80-40, 77-44 and 77-43.
It’s unthinkable, and would be unprecedented, for a majority that strong to be overturned between a committee stage and a third reading.
The bill is in its final form, no further attempts can be made to amend it.
There were attempts, during its committee stage on Wednesday night, and they were all defeated by at least 80 votes — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Suspecting that their strongly branded Atheist
products may be treated differently by more religiously-oriented postal regions, Kickstarter success Atheist Shoes conducted an experiment. They sent 178 packages to 89 people in different parts of the US, each person receiving one package prominently branded as Atheist
merchandise, and one not. The results: packages with the atheist label were nearly 10 times more likely to be lost
, and took on average 3 days longer to show up when they did. Control experiments were also done in Europe and Germany — it’s definitely a USPS problem — via Slashdot
Consumer advocacy group Choice has called on Australians to circumvent the technology that allows major software companies like Microsoft and Apple to charge higher prices for their products.
Three giant IT companies — Microsoft, Apple and Adobe — gave evidence to a Senate inquiry yesterday as to why their goods are more expensive in Australia compared to other markets.
Choice spokesman Matt Levey says the consumer group has published guidelines to help consumers circumvent geo-blocking, which prevents people from buying the cheaper, identical products available in other countries.
There’s one particular creative suite product from Adobe which currently has a $1,200 price difference between the US price and the Australian price,
he said.
Similarly with Microsoft, there was one infamous product where you could actually pay someone… to fly to the US and back twice, buy the product when they’re there, and still come out ahead
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Federal librarians and archivists who set foot in classrooms, attend conferences or speak up at public meetings on their own time are engaging in high risk
activities, according to the new code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada.
Given the dangers, the code says the department’s staff must clear such personal
activities with their managers in advance to ensure there are no conflicts or other risks to LAC
.
The code, which stresses federal employees’ duty of loyalty
to the duly elected government
, also spells out how offenders can be reported.
It includes both a muzzle and a snitch line,
says James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents more than 68,000 teachers, librarians, researchers and academics across the country.
He and others say the code is evidence the Harper government is silencing and undermining its professional staff — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Bloggers could face high fines for libel under the new Leveson deal with exemplary damages imposed if they don’t sign up to the new regulator, it was claimed on Tuesday.
Under clause 29 introduced to the crime and courts bill in the Commons on Monday night, the definition of relevant
bloggers or websites includes any that generate news material where there is an editorial structure giving someone control over publication.
Bloggers would not be at risk of exemplary damages for comments posted by readers. There is also a schedule that excludes certain publishers such as scientific journals, student publications and not-for-profit community newspapers. Websites are guaranteed exclusion from exemplary damages if they can get on this list.
Kirsty Hughes, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, which campaigns for press freedom around the world, said it was a sad day
for British democracy. This will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on everyday people’s web use,
she said.
She said she feared thousands of websites could fall under the definition of a relevant publisher
in clause 29 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
While Congress is working on legislation to re-legalise cellphone unlocking, let’s acknowledge the real issue: The copyright laws that made unlocking illegal in the first place. Who owns our stuff? The answer used to be obvious. Now, with electronics integrated into just about everything we buy, the answer has changed.
We live in a digital age, and even the physical goods we buy are complex. Copyright is impacting more people than ever before because the line between hardware and software, physical and digital has blurred.
The issue goes beyond cellphone unlocking, because once we buy an object — any object — we should own it. We should be able to lift the hood, unlock it, modify it, repair it … without asking for permission from the manufacturer.
But we really don’t own our stuff any more (at least not fully); the manufacturers do. Because modifying modern objects requires access to information: code, service manuals, error codes, and diagnostic tools. Modern cars are part horsepower, part high-powered computer. Microwave ovens are a combination of plastic and microcode. Silicon permeates and powers almost everything we own.
This is a property rights issue, and current copyright law gets it backwards, turning regular people — like students, researchers, and small business owners — into criminals. Fortune 500 telecom manufacturer Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That’s right: typing in a password is considered reproducing copyrighted material
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Cyprus’ parliament has rejected a controversial levy on bank deposits, proposed as part of an EU-IMF 10bn-euro (£8.7bn; $13bn) bailout package.
No MPs voted for the bill, with 36 voting against and 19 abstaining.
The finance ministry had modified the package, proposing an exemption for savers with smaller deposits, but opposition had remained fierce.
Thousands of protesters who had filled the streets outside parliament reacted with joy to the news of the vote.
EU finance ministers have warned that Cyprus’ two biggest banks will collapse if the deal does not go through in some form.
However, there has been widespread outrage on the island at the prospect of ordinary savers being forced to pay a levy of 6.75%
The plan was changed to exempt savers with less than 20,000 euros (£17,000), with those over 100,000 euros charged at 9.9%, but this was not enough to placate critics — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Two months ago, perennial optimists were telling us that the worst of the Eurozone crisis was probably over. Then came the Italian election. Now the great Cypriot bank heist.
By Sunday morning it was dawning on tens of millions of people what had happened, as the news spread from the specialist financial commentary to front pages and top television news across the continent.
At one stroke, the Troika of the Eurozone finance ministers, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had, with the new right-wing Cypriot government, stolen between 6.7 and 9.9 percent of the money of all depositors in Cyprus’s ailing banks. All in the name of a bank rescue.
When the leading capitalist states moved in 2008 to rescue the banks it was through taking on debt themselves and guaranteeing small and medium deposits in order to prevent a run on the banking system following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The public, of course, was then to be squeezed in the name of reducing the debt that was now on the public books. Now, nearly five years on, rescue
means direct robbery of the depositor.
It’s as if as the crisis has continued and deepened the capitalist system has become auto-cannibalisitic. What was meant to be sacred — private property and the essential private contractual relationship — has become profaned; not at the hands of some North Korean communist terror
, but by the partisans of re-turbocharging the neoliberal model, which is what the austerity is all about — via redwolf.newsvine.com
When you buy an Apple gadget from Apple itself (and, indeed, from many of its resellers), AppleCare is pushed pretty heavily to extend your warranty beyond a year, even though strictly speaking most of Apple’s products should be warrantied for longer than that. It appears that Apple may be changing its policy, with reports that it’s extending that coverage out to two years, gratis.
MacTalk reported on the change over the weekend, noting that Apple has apparently advised its store staff that
Any iPhone, iPad or Mac brought to a Genius bar that is between 13 and 24 months old and has not been subject to abuse or accidental damage, will automatically be flagged as eligible for repair or replacement via the iRepair or MobileGenius software
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
I’m going to start with three data points.
One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the US government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks.
Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practised good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.
And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous email service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels — and hers was the common name.
The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him;105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A federal court judge has ruled that National Security Letters (NSLs) — the controversial, ultra-clandestine surveillance tools used by the FBI to gather information on individuals — are unconstitutional and must be halted.
In a ruling issued on Thursday, Judge Susan Illston of the US District Court in San Francisco found that the “gag order” provision of the NSL law violates the First Amendment protections on freedom of speech.
Under the law, recipients of NSLs are forbidden from disclosing the contents of the letters to anyone. Even discussing the mere fact that the letters exist is verboten.
Furthermore, Judge Illston said, the clauses in the law that limit court oversight of NSLs violate the principle of separation of powers, which holds that each branch of the US government is granted specific powers designed to act as checks against the powers of the other branches.
Having determined that there was no way to rewrite either of these sections of the law to bring them in line with legal principles, the judge declared the entire law unconstitutional and ordered the government to cease issuing NSLs — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A southwestern Ohio judge yesterday ordered a halt to a speeding-ticket blitz in a village that installed traffic cameras, saying it’s a scam
against motorists.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman blasted the cameras and the thousands of $105 citations that resulted. He ruled that they violate motorists’ constitutional rights to due process and said the village’s enforcement was stacked against drivers.
Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-Card Monty,
Ruehlman wrote, referring to a card game used by con artists. It is a scam that motorists can’t win
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Here’s a surprise ruling. For many years we’ve written about how troubling it is that Homeland Security agents are able to search the contents of electronic devices, such as computers and phones at the border, without any reason. The 4th Amendment only allows reasonable searches, usually with a warrant. But the general argument has long been that, when you’re at the border, you’re not in the country and the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply. This rule has been stretched at times, including the ability to take your computer and devices into the country and search it there, while still considering it a “border search,” for which the lower standards apply. Just about a month ago, we noted that Homeland Security saw no reason to change this policy. Well, now they might have to. In a somewhat surprising 9th Circuit ruling (en banc, or in front of the entire set of judges), the court ruled that the 4th Amendment does apply at the border, that agents do need to recognize there’s an expectation of privacy, and cannot do a search without reason. Furthermore, they noted that merely encrypting a file with a password is not enough to trigger suspicion — via Slashdot
The default Firefox cookie policy will, beginning with release 22, more closely reflect user privacy preferences. This mini-FAQ addresses some of the questions that I’ve received from Mozillans, web developers, and users — via redwolf.newsvine.com
According to numerous sources, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has instituted a HR plan today to require Yahoo employees who work remotely to relocate to company facilities. The move will apparently impact several hundred employees, who must either comply without exception or presumably quit. It impacts workers such as customer service reps, who perhaps work from home or an office in another city where Yahoo does not have one — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Online shopping giant Amazon fired a German security firm Monday, after a television documentary accused the company of mistreating foreign workers.
Amazon had been facing mounting criticism over the firm’s alleged mistreatment of temporary workers over the holiday season.
A spokeswoman for Amazon in Germany said they had terminated their association with Hensel European Security Services with immediate effect
, according to the Associated Press — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Proof of attacks on Occupy Melbourne Wikipedia page, attempts to change history and evidence in on-going federal court cases. More importantly the edits were made during the last week of MCC’s 2012 elections. A quick tidy up of MCC’s image just before the election. Anyone who didn’t think Melbourne City Council (MCC) was (and still is) opposed to Occupy Melbourne either has their head in the sand, is plainly lying or delusional.
The smoking gun, proof Melbourne City Council is behind the IP address 203.26.235.14 editing Occupy Melbourne Wikipedia page. The timing of this edit is far from coincidental. 21st October, the one year anniversary of the brutal city square eviction and just days before the 2012 Melbourne city council elections, where Robert Doyle sought and gained re-election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Occupy_Melbourne&action=history
Note: The edit time is in UTC (GMT), so local time would have been Sunday 21 October 2012, 4:28 PM. Who is in Melbourne City Council on a computer on a Sunday afternoon?
At about that time two separate protests were occurring in relation to Occupy Melbourne’s treatment by Melbourne City Council.
Editing history the one of the tools of the totalitarian fascist. Has anyone read George Orwell’s 1984?
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers.
Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres.
The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. Many of the workers are afraid,
the programme-makers said.
The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. They tell us they are the police here,
a Spanish woman complained. Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls — via redwolf.newsvine.com
An Australian senator on a fact-finding mission to Malaysia says he has been refused entry because authorities consider him a security risk
.
Nick Xenophon was detained at Kuala Lumpur airport on Saturday morning and will be deported back to Australia, correspondents say.
He was part of an Australian delegation scheduled to meet Malaysian officials to discuss forthcoming elections.
Mr Xenophon has been an outspoken critic of human rights in Malaysia — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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