Yahoo confirms departure of media chief Mickie Rosen

Mickie Rosen, head of global media at Yahoo, who was responsible for properties including Yahoo News, Sports and Finance, is leaving the company effective Sept. 1, Yahoo revealed Monday in a regulatory filing.

The change was announced just hours after Yahoo disclosed the resignation of three board members: Daniel Loeb, Harry Wilson and Michael Wolf, effective July 31, bringing the size of the company's board down to seven. "The remaining directors are committed to revisiting the board's size and composition," Yahoo said in a statement. However, the two events are believed to be unrelated.

The board members' resignations were disclosed alongside Yahoo's announcement of its repurchase of 40 million shares of Yahoo common stock owned by hedge fund Third Point, at a purchase price of US$29.11 per share. Loeb is CEO at Third Point; the hedge fund had nominated Wilson and Wolf as Yahoo board members.

In a separate filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said that Rosen, who had served as senior vice president, global media and commerce since 2011, would receive severance benefits specified in her existing agreement with the company. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment further on Rosen's departure or provide information about a replacement.

Yahoo's media division includes multiple site properties that are critical to the company's business, such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Video, which provides original, premium and third-party content that is distributed across Yahoo's network.

Since October, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has attracted more attention for a slew of small mobile acquisitions than for revamping Yahoo's media offerings. But video in particular is one of four key revenue opportunities the company expects to focus on in the immediate future, Mayer said last week during the company's second-quarter earnings call.

During the call, Mayer called video a primary area of investment over the next year, along with new products geared toward improving the company's display advertising revenue, which fell by 11 percent in the quarter.

Yahoo faces enormous pressure to reinvent itself and demonstrate its relevance to users who have flocked to rival Internet companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Some industry analysts have characterized the company as a sinking ship, but the departures of board members Loeb, Wolf and Wilson and media chief Rosen are not connected, said Erik Gordon, associate director at the University of Michigan's Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.

"Loeb dumped two-thirds of his stock, and his guys left the board, because he thinks the chances of the stock price going up are too slim to justify the risk of having so much money in the company," Gordon said.

But Rosen left for her own reasons, including the fact that Yahoo's media team "are losing their independence," he said, adding that Mayer wants more direct control over the media business.

Yahoo's stock has risen more than 70 percent over the past year, though Mayer's tech-celebrity status and the company's stake in the profitable Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have been key factors in its ascension, experts have said.

O2 extends 4G backhaul with Virgin Media Business

Virgin Media Business has signed a deal with O2 to provide extra capacity to the mobile operator's network in preparation for its roll-out of 4G services.

O2 is due to enter the 4G race later in 2013 but it needs to grow its backhaul for greater speed.

O2 will link its basestations to Virgin Media Business’s superfast fibre network through high-speed Ethernet, which promises 1Gbps connections between the cell sites and the mobile network.

The deal has been signed for 10 years between Virgin and O2’s parent company Telefonica, although the figures of how much it is costing the operator have not been revealed.

"Over the past five years we’ve seen huge growth in demand for mobile data as the number of consumers using smartphones and tablets has increased,” said Adrian Di Meo, chief technology officer at Telefonica UK.

“With our 4G network launching this summer, data growth will only continue to rise and this new fibre agreement with Virgin Media Business will give us the rock solid foundation we need and help us deliver a great network experience for our customers.”

Virgin claimed it has now secured contracts with all the UK’s mobile networks to help with their backhaul needs.

“By working closely in partnership with mobile operators we’ve been able to develop and deploy innovative and unique technologies that enable Sync–E as standard,” said George Wareing, director of mobile and broadcast at Virgin Media Business.

“This approach means we’re able to arm their networks with the extra capacity needed to make sure that customers don’t experience slow speeds because of data bottlenecks, and that they’re prepared for the future of 4G services and beyond.”

“It’s a sign that the backhaul market is moving extremely quickly and, thanks to the speed and resilience of our fibre network, we’ve been able to make the most of that opportunity.”

EE is currently the only operator to provide 4G services in the UK, although its rivals are all set for launch in 2013.

However, a report released yesterday by YouGov showed 33% of consumers "can't see the point" of 4G, while 31% have no idea of the benefits it offers.

Screen Media Picks Up Todd Sklar Comedy 'Awfully Nice'

Screen Media Films has acquired the U.S. rights to Todd Sklar’s comedy Awfully Nice, which had its world premiere at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. The distributor will release the film next spring in conjunction with a VOD release, preceded by a nationwide college tour of event screenings and interactive parties via Sklar's Range Life outfit, Screen Media president Suzanne Blech announced Tuesday.

The film centers on estranged brothers, played by James Pumphrey and Alex Rennie (who also cowrote the film), who are forced to travel to Branson together to renovate and flip the lake house they've inherited from their just-deceased father.

SXSW 2013: News, Reviews, Photos, Full Coverage

It was written, directed and produced by Sklar, executive produced by Jason Krigsfeld and Joseph Krigsfeld of Brothers K Productions, and also produced by Michael Forstein, Adam Paulsen, Sklar, Maury Steinman and Brock Williams. It also stars Christopher Meloni, Brett Gelman and Keely Hazell and is based on Sklar’s award-winning short film ’92 Skybox Alonso Mourning Rookie Card, which also starred Rennie and Pumphrey. All three are repped by CAA and Principato Young.

The deal was negotiated by Blech and Seth Needle, manager of acquisitions and marketing, on behalf of Screen Media with CAA on behalf of the filmmakers.

SF Plane Crash: Social Media Is Key First Responder

The Asiana Airlines flight that crash-landed at SFO airport
In the aftermath of the Asiana Airlines flight that crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday at 11:36 a.m., the drama unfolded on social media as witnesses relayed the initial reactions that were then amplified by cable news.

Passenger David Eun, a Samsung exec who was formerly president of AOL Media and Studios, posted his first tweets at 12:13 p.m., within minutes of the crash-landing and fire. According to the Associated Press, at least two people have died and 182 were taken to area hospitals.

Eun, a Harvard Law graduate who also has worked at NBC, calmly posted short but clear bulletins on the crash and the condition of the passengers. (His first cool-under-pressure tweet, which even included the airport's Twitter handle (@flySFO), was retweeted nearly 30,000 times. His Twitter followers grew from 2,000 to nearly 19,000 in hours.

STORY: Cable News Breaks in to Cover Boeing 777 Crash

Prospective Asiana passenger Sheryl Sandberg’s postings on Facebook also were widely quoted in traditional media. “Taking a minute to be thankful and explain what happened,” wrote the Facebook COO. “My family, colleagues Debbie Frost, Charlton Gholson and Kelly Hoffman and I were originally going to take the Asiana flight that just crash-landed. We switched to United so we could use miles for my family's tickets. Our flight was scheduled to come in at the same time, but we were early and landed about 20 minutes before the crash. Our friend David Eun was on the Asiana flight and he is fine.”

Meanwhile, a young woman (@EuniceBirdRah) whose father was on board asked her followers to pray for his safety. "He is on the 777," she wrote as she headed to the airport. Awhile later she sent out another tweet -- tagged for CNN -- with a photo of the burning plane that her father (who had escaped unhurt) had sent to her via text message.

She followed up a few minutes later: "About to go on CNN.. My heart is aching for the passenger, crew, family." Then finally: "God is real."

The story’s development was the latest chapter in what has become an emerging story for the traditional news media, which has found itself ever more reliant on social media bulletins and photos for its most immediate and, often, eye-witness coverage of significant breaking news events.

Saturday, the lesson implicit in that story was dramatically reinforced when traditional news outlets with no reporters immediately on the scene were forced to rely on passengers’ Twitter postings, as well as dozens of photos posted to the Internet by passengers and those waiting inside the airport terminals.

Within a relatively short time, there were videos of the evacuation and fire up on YouTube, which were picked up by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. By then, FNC's Claudia Cowan was on the ground reporting in SF, MSNBC aired a special report with Lester Holt and CNN's international anchor Richard Quest called in to discuss the incident.

Eun's cool-headed series of tweets made him the dominant initial observer of the crash-landing.

Among his Tweets:

"Fire and rescue people all over the place. They're evacuating the injured. Haven't felt this way since 9/11. Trying to help people stay calm. Deep breaths…"

"Lots of activity here. Friends, pls don't call right now. I'm fine."

Sling Media Slingbox Pro & Family

Two TV buzz terms you might hear these days are ?time shifting? and ?place shifting.? Time shifting is what a TiVo does, recording something in the 8 pm slot that you watch later on. Place shifting is what a Slingbox does, giving you access to video stored up in one location—be it on DVD or recorded on a TiVo?s hard drive—from another place using an Internet-connected PC or mobile device.
Until now, Slingbox couldn?t get at the growing mass of high-definition programming available from cable or satellite providers. That was a problem in my house, since we record most primetime shows in HD using a cable company-rented Scientific Atlanta DVR set-top box. The new Slingbox Pro can stream any standard or HD show stored on my cable box, at a reduced quality, wherever I happen to be. Last Friday afternoon, I was racing out the door for the weekend, juggling bags of groceries, bags of clothes and two cats, each in its own carrier. At 4:11 pm I realized I had forgotten to setup the Slingbox Pro, so we could watch our home TV while out of town. Determined to set a record for Slingbox setup, I pulled out the quick-start guide and rolled up my sleeves. I connected wires for video, networking and power in a particular order. Then I powered everything on and popped the software disc into a PC laptop. (Alas, Slingbox doesn't work for Macs at the moment.) The software found the Slingbox, tested its video, then found my network router and automatically configured it to stream video over the open Internet, not just on my home network. There?s a ?do it yourself? mode, but take my advice, nerds, and let Sling?s software take the first crack ? it was very fast, and saved me from having to log into my router, let alone recalling frighteningly geeky concepts such as ?port forwarding.? On the screen flashed a message that everything was good to go. It was 4:23 pm. The following evening, my wife and I were telling our friends about Tina Fey?s hilarious new NBC sitcom, 30 Rock, but found we couldn?t do it justice. I suddenly realized that I could simply stream the pilot episode, via laptop, from my cable box at home. We gathered around the dining room table, and I launched the SlingPlayer, which produced a virtual remote control identical to the one sitting on my coffee table back home. Within seconds we were watching a show I had originally recorded in high-def. It may not have looked as good—the already scaled down signal degrades a bit over the internet—but it was just as funny. If you?re not yet into HDTV this may not sound like a big deal. In fact, aside from HBO and the networks, most of what I record airs only in standard definition: Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Food Network and a great chunk of the Discovery Channel?s best shows. But there?s a profound psychological difference between having access to most of my shows and all of my shows. Best of all, the Slingbox connects directly to an HD cable box as easily as it connects to any other video source. It doesn?t require anything as elusive as a CableCard, an over-promised, under-delivered digital card offered (in low volume) by cable companies for use in specially built TVs and other devices. The Slingbox Pro is the new flagship in the Slingbox family, which also includes the Slingbox AV, which handles basic cable and any non-HD video from set-top boxes and other video sources, and the Slingbox Tuner, which doesn?t work with a set-top box, but rather connects directly to the cable sticking out of the wall for less mess, but also less flexibility. Both the Tuner and the Pro have pass-through capability so, in most cases, you can leave it connected to your setup without disrupting your at-home viewing. You must connect the Slingbox AV to a secondary video output, or in place of your TV when you?re heading out of town. The downside to the Pro is that to do the HD thing, you have to pay an extra $50 for the HD Connect cable—and you still might have to go to RadioShack for an extra cable or two. You may be wondering if place shifting can be anything more than a novelty; I?ve often wondered the same thing. But think about this: If you own or rent a vacation home and want to be connected to television to check news or a game, but not to watch all the time, you can skip the cable or satellite subscription altogether and use a Slingbox. Of course, if you want your place-shifted video to look good, your get-away-from-it-all home will need a broadband connection to the Internet.
As the Earth's population booms and cities grow ever larger, the spotlight on energy innovation becomes greater. TIME looks into the new energy sources powering our world and sustaining our future.


Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

China media warns Philippines of 'counterstrike' in South China Sea

New recruits of the Chinese Navy march with their guns during the parade marking the end of their first training session in Qingdao, Shandong province, March 4, 2013.
BEIJING - China's state media warned on Saturday that a "counterstrike" against the Philippines was inevitable if it continues to provoke Beijing in the South China Sea, potentially Asia's biggest military troublespot.
The warning comes as ministers from both countries attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Brunei, starting Saturday, which hopes to reach a legally binding code of conduct to manage maritime conduct in disputed areas.
At stake are potentially massive offshore oil reserves. The seas also lie on shipping lanes and fishing grounds.
Both China and the Philippines have been locked in a decades-old territorial squabble over the South China Sea, with tensions flaring after the Philippines moved new soldiers and supplies last week to a disputed coral reef, prompting Beijing to condemn Manila's "illegal occupation".
The overseas edition of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, said in a front-page commentary that the Philippines had committed "seven sins" in the South China Sea.
These include the "illegal occupation" of the Spratly Islands, inviting foreign capital to engage in oil and gas development in the disputed waters and promoting the "internationalization" of the waters, said the commentary.
The Philippines has called on the United States to act as a "patron", while ASEAN has become an "accomplice," said the commentary, which does not amount to official policy but can reflect the government's thinking.
"The Philippines, knowing that it's weak, believes that 'a crying child will have milk to drink'," the People's Daily said, accusing Manila of resorting to many "unscrupulous" tricks in the disputed waters.
Beijing's assertion of sovereignty over a vast stretch of the South China Sea has set it directly against Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also lay claim to other parts of the sea.
The 10-member ASEAN hopes to reach a legally binding Code of Conduct to manage maritime conduct in disputed areas. For now a watered-down "Declaration of Conduct" is in place.
On Thursday, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that countries with territorial claims in the South China Sea that look for help from third parties will find their efforts "futile", adding that the path of confrontation would be "doomed".
Last week, China vowed to protect its sovereignty over the Second Thomas Shoal, known in China as the Ren'ai reef. The Philippines is accusing China of encroachment after three Chinese ships, including a naval frigate, converged just five nautical miles (nine km) from an old transport ship that Manila ran aground on a reef in 1999 to mark its territory.
Last year, China and the Philippines were locked in a tense two-month standoff at the Scarborough Shoal, which is only about 124 nautical miles off the Philippine coast. Chinese ships now control the shoal, often chasing away Filipino fishermen.

Daughter says Mandela 'still there', raps media 'vultures'

PRETORIA - Former South African President Nelson Mandela is still clinging to life, his eldest daughter Makaziwe said on Thursday, but she criticized foreign media "vultures" for violating his privacy as he lay critically ill in hospital.

Makaziwe's outburst came as anxiety increased over the faltering health of the frail 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero, admired across the world as a symbol of resistance against injustice and of racial reconciliation.

Late on Wednesday, President Jacob Zuma's government reported a downturn in Mandela's condition after nearly three weeks of treatment in a Pretoria hospital for a lung infection.

This forced Zuma to cancel his participation in a regional summit in neighboring Mozambique on Thursday.

But Zuma paid a second visit in 24 hours to Mandela on Thursday and was told by his doctors he had improved overnight.

"He is much better today than he was when I saw him last night. The medical team continues to do a sterling job," Zuma said in a statement released by his office. The presidency said Mandela remains "critical but is now stable".

"I won't lie, it doesn't look good," Mandela's daughter Makaziwe told state broadcaster SABC after visiting her father.

"But as I say, if we speak to him, he responds and tries to open his eyes. He's still there".

Accompanied by a group of grandchildren, she angrily criticized the "bad taste" of foreign media she said were intruding on the privacy of her father and his family.

"There's sort of a racist element with many of the foreign media, where they just cross boundaries," she said, after running the gauntlet of the pack of camera crews and reporters gathered outside the hospital.

"It's truly like vultures waiting when the lion has devoured the buffalo, waiting there for the last of the carcass. That's the image we have as a family," Makaziwe added.

Her criticism followed several sharp rebukes from Zuma's spokesman against some foreign media reports that have given alarming details of Mandela's deteriorating condition.

Spokesman Mac Maharaj declined to comment on the latest report by a major U.S. TV news network that South Africa's first black president was on life support. He said this was part of Mandela's confidential relationship with his doctors.

Daughter Makaziwe said: "If people say they really care about Nelson Mandela, then they should respect that. They should respect that there is a part of him that has to be respected."

She compared the massive media attention on Mandela, who has been in and out of hospital in the last few months with a recurring lung infection, with the coverage of the death in April of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

"We don't mind the interest but I just feel it has gone overboard. When Margaret Thatcher was sick in hospital, I didn't see this kind of media frenzy around Margaret Thatcher," she said. "It is only God who knows when the time to go is."

OBAMA SAYS MANDELA "PERSONAL HERO"

Mandela's fourth hospitalization in six months has forced a growing realization among South Africans that the man regarded as the father of their post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation" will not be among them forever.

"Mandela is very old and at that age, life is not good. I just pray that God takes him this time. He must go. He must rest," said Ida Mashego, a 60-year-old office cleaner in Johannesburg's Sandton financial district.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who is due to visit South Africa this weekend, said his thoughts and prayers were with the Mandela family and South Africans.

Speaking in Senegal, his first stop on a three-nation African tour, Obama said Mandela was a "personal hero" of his.

"Even if he passes on, his legacy will linger on," Obama said. He confirmed he still planned to travel to South Africa in the coming days, in response to speculation he might re-schedule his trip because of Mandela's deteriorating health.

Mandela is revered for his lifetime of opposition to the system of race-based apartheid rule imposed by the white minority government that sentenced him to 27 years in jail, more than half of them on the notorious Robben Island.

He is also respected for the way he preached reconciliation after the 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy following three centuries of white domination.

Well-wishers' messages, bouquets and stuffed animals have piled up outside Mandela's Johannesburg home and the wall of the hospital compound where he is being treated in the capital.

South Africans seemed resigned to the prospect of losing their hero, but expressed gratitude for what he had done.

"That great man who is in God's hands now fought so a black woman like me could move into this whites-only area in 1991," teacher Nthabi Chauke, 54, said outside the hospital. "Now I know what freedom feels like. I came here to say thank you."

Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one five-year term in office. Since then he has played little role in public life, dividing his time in retirement between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton and Qunu, the village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province where he was born.

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Thanks, But No: Social Media Refuses To Share With Turkey

An anti-government protester wearing a gas mask uses a cellphone to read the news on social media as demonstrators gather at midnight in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park on June 13.

Turkey's battle with the Internet took a new twist on Wednesday.

A Turkish government minister said Twitter has refused to cooperate with the government, but that Facebook had responded "positively" and was "in cooperation with the state."

Turkish Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister Binali Yilderim, quoted in Turkish media, did not elaborate on what this cooperation entails. But Turkish officials have complained that social media outlets aren't sharing user access information with prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.

The story took an additional turn later in the day, when Facebook issued a statement denying that it was cooperating with the government:

"Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received."

Turkey has stepped back from earlier calls to ban social media, which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called "a menace." A few years back, Turkey did ban YouTube after videos considered insulting to modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were posted, but the ban was largely ineffectual and was eventually lifted.

Still, the recent protests have the government searching for new restrictions. An official from Erdogan's AK Party recently said, "A false tweet is more dangerous than a bomb. Social media regulation is a must."

Turkey isn't the first country to try to rein in social media sites, which have figured in various protests and civil disobedience around the world. During the 2011 riots in Britain, lawmakers called for social networking sites to be shut down during time of unrest, and China blocked Facebook during 2009 riots.

Facebook was also blocked after Iran's elections that same year, and Egypt briefly closed it during the Arab Spring demonstrations in Cairo.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have forced Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerrys, to comply with local regulations regarding its encrypted content that had left authorities unable to monitor communications.

And as our colleague Deborah Amos reported earlier today on Morning Edition,
the Jordanian government has blocked hundreds of news websites across the kingdom amid rising dissent.
What Turkey intends to do next remains something of a mystery.

Ozgur Uckan, a new-media expert at Istanbul's Bilgi University, tells NPR that censoring social media sites presents a technical challenge, and that may be why officials are talking about criminalizing certain content, in an effort to intimidate users and encourage self-censorship.

But some microbloggers have already been targeted: Several arrests in Ankara during the protests there were of young people who had tweeted about the developing protest. In some cases, the tweets simply warned people to avoid certain parts of the city for their own safety.

 

Tina Brown's Must-Reads: On Media, The People, And Strife

Inspired by "Standing Man" Erdem Gunduz, protesters stand silently during an action at Istanbul's Taksim Square on June 23. Among the latest recommended reads from Tina Brown is a Foreign Affairs
article on how Turkey's manipulates media coverage of political unrest.
Sometimes when there's a daily drumbeat of news — war, protest, unrest — it's good to find those moments to pause, dig deeper, and find layers of the story that are easy to miss.

Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast, joins NPR's David Greene to help us do just that, as part of a recurring series Morning Edition
calls Word of Mouth. This month, it's stories of global conflict and the media that — for good and for ill — cover those stories.
Her first pick comes from Foreign Affairs
magazine. It's about Turkey's Prime Minister, Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, and how he's been manipulating news coverage of political unrest in that nation. It's entitled "The Turkish Media's Darkest Hour" — and as Brown notes, the article suggests that press freedom is very much at stake there.
A Cowed Press Hears The People Roar — And Lifts Its Head

"One of the most tangible outcomes of the protests in Turkey," Brown says, is the way they've laid bare "the full extent to which the Erdogan government there has brought the Turkish media to heel."

That regime has long had "a terrible record" on media freedom and free-speech issues, Brown notes. Dozens of journalists have been jailed, according to Reporters Without Borders, and as a result "the press has been absolutely cowed. But what happened in these demonstrations was that social media took over — social media would not be cowed.

"While the mainstream media was absolutely disgracing itself by not covering the riots" — at one point during the heat of things, Brown says scornfully, a Turkish broadcaster was showing nature footage of penguins — "social media ... was just alive with the truth of what was happening.

And what was happening, Brown suggests, might eventually add up to "the seeds of a revolution being sown."

"So, the mainstream media in the end was kind of shamed by social media — and now they, too, are having to think about how they cover all of this. ... Which is a very, very good outcome, frankly, for Turkey."

That's true despite what Brown and Foreign Affairs
point out is a problematic conflict between the business interests of media conglomerates and their duty to cover the news for the public.
"Sheer self-interest," she says. "They want to be in business with the government, and so they don't want to offend everyone. ... They want to get contracts. A lot of these big media people own other things, other than newspapers, and [so] the papers become a kind of mouthpiece of the government so they can flatter the Erdogen regime and thereby get the other deals that they want.

"This has become a huge tipping point for the press in Turkey, and I'd like to feel that — I think all of us would like to feel — that this is a sign of the future, that actually the press will start to protect democracy, instead of become a tool of totalitarianism. ... [The Foreign Affairs
article highlights] how important it is that this free press be allowed to flourish, and how social media has now made mainstream media stiffen its resolve — and grow a pair, frankly."
Are Western Media Romanticizing Syria's Rebels?

Brown's second pick is a New York Times Magazine
article, "The Price of Loyalty in Syria," in which reporter Robert F. Worth looks at the story of that country's roiling politics from the viewpoint of the Alawites, the religious minority affiliated with embattled Syrian President Bashsar Assad. It's a perspective rarely employed by Western media.
"What he really discusses is how the rebels have been overly romanticized, perhaps, by the West," Brown explains. "He interviews some very, very interesting people in the piece, who strongly feel that the Western media has become too captive to the rebels. The whole idea of the Arab Spring — the righteousness of the street rising up against a brutally repressive regime, which it is.

"But the mainstream media ... have really failed to acknowledge ... how radically violent and jihadist the rebels became at a very early point," Brown says. "To demonstrate this, [Worth] interviews this very interesting woman, Aliaa, and he tells the story through the prism of her and her friend, a Sunni who's on the other side and who is anti-Assad."

The young women were the best of friends, Worth's article notes. But when Syria erupted into unrest and then civil war, they were forced apart. Their friendship completely broke down.

Again, social media plays a crucial role.

"Aliaa is tracing her friend's increasing radicalism on Facebook," Brown explains. "The Facebook posts begin to change. She starts [quoting] Islamic slogans. She marries a man in Iraq who posts a photograph of a black al-Qaida banner. And you see these close people were actually estranged by what happens. It's a very moving piece."

The article deftly evokes a certain measure of sympathy for both sides of a deeply complicated conflict, suggesting ultimately that both sides are aggressors and victims.

"As the main woman he interviews says, 'We used to live side by side,'" Brown says. "But now they've been driven apart by Assad. Because recognizing that this was a way to create division, and the way to create loyalty, he has exploited [the conflict]. So it's an Arab Spring that became a poison chalice for these people who just wanted social change, and suddenly find themselves in a hideous, brutal ethnic strife."

A Death, A Scandal, And A Party Chief In The Crosshairs

Brown's last selection is a book with a mouthful of a title: A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China.
It's written by Wenguang Huang, who follows an interesting case from a few years back about a British man, Neil Hayward, who was found dead in a hotel in China.
"At first it was said that he had died from excess alcohol," Brown explains. "But gradually, it emerged that in fact he had been poisoned — it was alleged by the wife of the party chief Bo Xilai."

It was, to put it mildly, an embarrassment to China's ruling Communist Party.

"You can't suppress this kind of information anymore," Brown says. "[Even] in a country where the government operates in secrecy and the media serves as a mouthpiece, we now have Weibo, which is the Chinese Twitter, and which is tearing down the walls that block the information flow across the country."

And Weibo, as the book details, was telling the Chinese people that the Neil Hayward story wasn't what the government was saying it was — "that Bo Xilai was a despot ... that there was a power struggle going on in Beijing," as Brown puts it.

"It's a fascinating story that really gives you the atmosphere of a very scary modern China where you can declare somebody corrupt, you can have them thrown into jail, and they just disappear," she says. "And they very often die in custody. So this is the new stick to beat people with — to declare them corrupt. None of these so-called reforms that we're hearing about are, in any sense, what they seem."

 

U.K.'s LoveLive Buys U.S. Music Media Banner Show Cobra

Show Cobra has produced original music featuring Beyonce.

LONDON – U.K.-based music content specialist LoveLive has acquired the U.S. entertainment media business Show Cobra to bolster its ambitions to expand into America.

The acquisition will help LoveLive's goal to become the leading independent player in the region.

Show Cobra’s bicoastal presence and "blue chip client base" will boost LoveLive’s access "to the world’s biggest talent in the world’s largest music market," the British company said.

The acquisition also enables LoveLive to expand their U.K. partnership with Universal Music to the U.S., delivering among many other things, content to Interscope's YouTube channel on behalf of Universal, from the YouTube Space in L.A.

STORY: Mumford & Sons Reschedule Canceled Shows, Extend Tour

Like LoveLive, Show Cobra specializes in numerous areas of music from live events and performances, original television and web series to branded entertainment, documentary films, curation and strategic planning.

Since its inception in 2006, it has specialized in producing original music programming featuring artists such as Beyonce, Eminem, The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend and global brands including Nike, Heineken, Virgin Mobile and Converse, as well working with cable networks, digital platforms such as YouTube, VEVO, Spotify, Pandora and MySpace.

Show Cobra and LoveLive will continue to act as complementary music specialists, delivering projects end to end, or supporting agency efforts to integrate music into their specific endeavors.

Show Cobra was founded by producer Jason Ross.

LoveLive CEO Richard Cohen said: "The creative and business synergies with Show Cobra make it an ideal acquisition for LoveLive. The breadth and depth of the team’s exceptional capabilities to execute projects across formats, production and live streaming will be of huge benefit to our IP creation, ownership and exploitation worldwide."

Ross said: "Show Cobra’s content creation expertise and its sterling track record with artists and clients combined with LoveLive’s unique rights frameworks and distribution capability will position the Group as one of the leading independent music specialists. LoveLive is innovating the music content space as we know it, and I am thrilled to be part of this new chapter."

No financial details were disclosed. LoveLive and Show Cobra are projected to have combined revenues of $15 million in 2013.

 

As Social Media Swirl Around It, Supreme Court Sticks to Its Analog Ways

They will be joined, if Twitter is any guide, by thousands of anxious, curious people across the country eagerly waiting for the court to rule on a remarkable number of major cases with huge implications. With just days remaining in its 2013 schedule, the court has left dangling its considered opinions on same-sex marriage, affirmative action and the nation’s voting rights laws.

 

“We all crave information instantaneously,” said Ms. Blatt, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter who has argued 33 cases before the court, including one that is still pending this year. Last Monday, and again last Thursday, she found herself scouring legal blogs, looking for whatever clues might exist.

 

“I always thought those people were strange, and there I was, doing it,” she said. “People are dying to know something that they can’t.”

 

In a city beset by leaks — a young programmer recently gave a hoard of top-secret documents to newspapers — the high court’s annual rulings remain stubbornly opaque until they are handed out (on paper, first) by the court’s public relations staff. Meanwhile, the nine justices have the luxury of appearing publicly oblivious to the swirl of social media, the angst of Washington’s legal community and the voracious appetite of America’s 24-hour news cycle.

 

Many Washington institutions are making the high-tech transition; even the chairman of the Federal Reserve holds regular news conferences now. But like the Kremlinologists of the cold war, who deduced Communist power struggles by a leader’s presence on the Red Square reviewing stand, modern-day court watchers can do little more than speculate about when and how the court might rule.

 

“You never know when it’s going to come down,” said Mr. Olson, a former solicitor general who would know, if anyone would. A court observer for decades, he has shown up on each of the last three decision days at the court. “I just try to prepare for anything.”

 

Mr. Griffin is a founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization that filed the legal challenge to Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Four times in the last two weeks, the court has issued decisions in other cases but not about that law’s constitutionality. Each time, Mr. Griffin has returned home and unpacked, lest his suits become wrinkled.

 

On Monday, Mr. Griffin will return once again, joined by the four plaintiffs in the case, who plan to stay in Washington until the high court rules, before they return home to California. If the court overturns the ballot initiative, the couples hope to have a wedding ceremony as soon as possible.

 

Across California, gay rights organizations have started many early mornings refreshing their Web pages for news and then going back to bed. Staff members at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center have elaborate plans for action after any outcome, and they are preparing to head into the office in the early morning as they anticipate widespread celebration or protest in West Hollywood.

 

And lawyers at the office of California’s attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, have been preparing for weeks with legal memos anticipating a wide range of possible outcomes.

 

The Web is ready, too. On Thursday, after the justices once again did not issue rulings in any of the biggest cases, news organizations blared the “news” to their followers. “BREAKING NEWS: No major decisions from Supreme Court today,” the Yahoo News site announced on its Twitter feed. Another Twitter user wryly observed: “Clearly all Supreme Court judges were unpopular kids in high school and, excited by all the attention now, are gonna drag this out.”

 

A year ago, in the minutes before the court announced its decision on President Obama’s health care law, Twitter users posted more than 13,000 messages a minute about the court. (By comparison, there were 160,000 a minute at the height of the presidential debate in Denver last year.)

 

The court’s term is dwindling fast. The schedule calls for a round of rulings on Monday, and court observers believe the justices may issue decisions on Wednesday and Thursday as well. There has been speculation of a July 1 session, though Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is scheduled to teach a class on the history of the Supreme Court in Prague on July 2.

 

There will be other issues in Washington this week. The Senate is set to take a final vote on an immigration overhaul, perhaps on Thursday. (If the court overturns the federal Defense of Marriage Act first, lawmakers may not need to seek immigration protections for same-sex partners of immigrants, advocates said.)

 

But most of the intellectual guesswork will be about the justices and their rulings.

 

There are ways, if you know them, to offer educated guesses about the timing and authorship (if not the substance) of the court’s coming decisions. The tricks have become de rigueur among the Washington social set, whose members swap Supreme Court theories at cocktail parties the way Angelenos swap movie industry gossip.

 

“Everybody around this time starts to try to predict who has the decision and what it’s going to say,” said Irving L. Gornstein, the executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University. Mr. Gornstein calls himself a “participant” in the court-guessing parlor games. This year, he said, is the worst he can remember.

 

“Here you have four huge cases, which is really extraordinary for a Supreme Court term,” Mr. Gornstein said. “I can’t remember when you’ve had this many cases at the end of a term.”

 

Among the tricks of the court-watching trade is knowing that each of the justices is assigned to write the majority opinion in at least one case during each two-week “sitting,” when cases are heard for oral arguments. On Monday, if there are rulings yet to be announced from a particular sitting, and a justice who has not yet written an opinion from that set of cases, that justice might be a good bet.

 

Knowledgeable observers also keep close watch on the number of boxes of rulings set out by the public information officers at the court. The more boxes, the more rulings.

 

“It is a game that everybody’s playing because it’s so important,” Mr. Olson said. “These decisions are really important to the people involved, and they have consequences for a long time.”

 

 

Adam Liptak contributed reporting from Washington, and Jennifer Medina from Los Angeles.

 

 

Mormon missionaries to use social media, go door-to-door less

SALT LAKE CITY -- Mormon missionaries will soon spend less time knocking on doors and more time chatting online with potential converts.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the strategy shift Sunday night in Provo, Utah, during a two-hour presentation to mission presidents that was broadcast worldwide.
Church apostles said the change reflects the growing importance of social media and people's preference to connect over sites such as Facebook rather than opening their homes to strangers.
Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said missionaries will be using social media, blogs, email, text messages and the church's website in their ministry. It will start in a limited number of locations this year and should be in place worldwide sometime next year, leaders said.
"The church must adapt to a changing world," Perry said.
The move is the latest step in the loosening of traditionally strict rules for missionaries expected to devote all their time and attention to "serving the Lord, leaving behind all other personal affairs."
In April, church officials said they would begin allowing missionaries to send emails to friends, priesthood leaders and new converts. Previously, missionaries could only email immediate family members. They've always been allowed to send written letters to friends and others.
Missionaries must send emails through the church's filtered email service on a designated preparation day each week. Emails also must be sent from public computers at locations such as a library where a fellow missionary can see the screen.
The new embrace of technology comes as the church sends more proselyting missionaries around the globe than at any time in history. There has been an unprecedented surge of missionaries since the church's announced in October it was lowering the minimum age for missionaries from 21 to 19 for women and from 19 to 18 for men.
There are 70,000 young men and women on mission now, and church officials say there will be 85,000 by the end of the year. The previous record total of missionaries at one time was 61,600 in 2002, church figures show.
Missions are considered rites of passage for many Mormons, broadening their perspective on the world, strengthening their faith and helping prepare some for future leadership roles within the church.
Young Mormon men are expected but not required to serve missions while women have faced far less pressure to serve. With women now able to undertake missions two years earlier, they are making up a larger percentage of missionaries.
Men serve two years while women go for 18 months.
LDS officials also announced Sunday night that chapels will open more to encourage people to learn about the faith.

 

IM Global Taps Former Huayi Brothers Media Corp High Flier to Spearhead Beijing Ambitions

IM Global, one of the leading foreign sales, financing and production companies, will open Beijing offices in China at the end of June.

The bold expansion plans into Far East, announced by IM Global founder and CEO Stuart Ford, aim to harness the region's international sales activity and oversee the releases of IM Global’s movies in mainland China "as the territory becomes an increasingly important piece of the distribution jigsaw puzzle."

The company has hired well-known local executive Leslie Chen, who was most recently head of international sales at Huayi Brothers Media Corporation, to oversee its ambitions.

Chen played a part in launching sales on major Asian titles such as Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon by Tsui Hark; Aftershock by Feng Xiao Gang ; If You are the One II by Feng Xiao Gang; Starry Starry Night by Tom Lin; Love by Doze Niu and Tai Chi Hero by Stephen Fung.

IM Global will also base day-to-day management and operations of its Apsara pan-Asian distribution label out of Beijing after Chen’s arrival.

Said Ford: "We’re excited at the prospect of expanding our sales and distribution activities across Asia in the next few years. Leslie is an outstanding hire for us and I look forward to her playing a prominent role in our pan-Asian distribution and sales business in years to come."

Said Chen, “I am very happy to join IM Global and contribute my knowhow and experience of the Asian market to such a dynamic, fast-growing company. It will be an exciting and challenging new journey for both of us."

The move comes less than month after Ford signed a multiyear contract extension as CEO of the company.

 

Sling Media Slingbox Pro & Family

 

Two TV buzz terms you might hear these days are ?time shifting? and ?place shifting.? Time shifting is what a TiVo does, recording something in the 8 pm slot that you watch later on. Place shifting is what a Slingbox does, giving you access to video stored up in one location—be it on DVD or recorded on a TiVo?s hard drive—from another place using an Internet-connected PC or mobile device.
Until now, Slingbox couldn?t get at the growing mass of high-definition programming available from cable or satellite providers. That was a problem in my house, since we record most primetime shows in HD using a cable company-rented Scientific Atlanta DVR set-top box. The new Slingbox Pro can stream any standard or HD show stored on my cable box, at a reduced quality, wherever I happen to be.

Last Friday afternoon, I was racing out the door for the weekend, juggling bags of groceries, bags of clothes and two cats, each in its own carrier. At 4:11 pm I realized I had forgotten to setup the Slingbox Pro, so we could watch our home TV while out of town. Determined to set a record for Slingbox setup, I pulled out the quick-start guide and rolled up my sleeves. I connected wires for video, networking and power in a particular order. Then I powered everything on and popped the software disc into a PC laptop. (Alas, Slingbox doesn't work for Macs at the moment.) The software found the Slingbox, tested its video, then found my network router and automatically configured it to stream video over the open Internet, not just on my home network. There?s a ?do it yourself? mode, but take my advice, nerds, and let Sling?s software take the first crack ? it was very fast, and saved me from having to log into my router, let alone recalling frighteningly geeky concepts such as ?port forwarding.? On the screen flashed a message that everything was good to go. It was 4:23 pm.

The following evening, my wife and I were telling our friends about Tina Fey?s hilarious new NBC sitcom, 30 Rock, but found we couldn?t do it justice. I suddenly realized that I could simply stream the pilot episode, via laptop, from my cable box at home. We gathered around the dining room table, and I launched the SlingPlayer, which produced a virtual remote control identical to the one sitting on my coffee table back home. Within seconds we were watching a show I had originally recorded in high-def. It may not have looked as good—the already scaled down signal degrades a bit over the internet—but it was just as funny.

If you?re not yet into HDTV this may not sound like a big deal. In fact, aside from HBO and the networks, most of what I record airs only in standard definition: Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Food Network and a great chunk of the Discovery Channel?s best shows. But there?s a profound psychological difference between having access to most of my shows and all of my shows. Best of all, the Slingbox connects directly to an HD cable box as easily as it connects to any other video source. It doesn?t require anything as elusive as a CableCard, an over-promised, under-delivered digital card offered (in low volume) by cable companies for use in specially built TVs and other devices.

The Slingbox Pro is the new flagship in the Slingbox family, which also includes the Slingbox AV, which handles basic cable and any non-HD video from set-top boxes and other video sources, and the Slingbox Tuner, which doesn?t work with a set-top box, but rather connects directly to the cable sticking out of the wall for less mess, but also less flexibility. Both the Tuner and the Pro have pass-through capability so, in most cases, you can leave it connected to your setup without disrupting your at-home viewing. You must connect the Slingbox AV to a secondary video output, or in place of your TV when you?re heading out of town. The downside to the Pro is that to do the HD thing, you have to pay an extra $50 for the HD Connect cable—and you still might have to go to RadioShack for an extra cable or two.

You may be wondering if place shifting can be anything more than a novelty; I?ve often wondered the same thing. But think about this: If you own or rent a vacation home and want to be connected to television to check news or a game, but not to watch all the time, you can skip the cable or satellite subscription altogether and use a Slingbox. Of course, if you want your place-shifted video to look good, your get-away-from-it-all home will need a broadband connection to the Internet.

As the Earth's population booms and cities grow ever larger, the spotlight on energy innovation becomes greater. TIME looks into the new energy sources powering our world and sustaining our future.