NYTimes: Abortion in El Salvador – A pro-life country. Another abortion article written by a man. I read recently (can’t find the link) that 70% of the pieces written in the paper were written by men. Is abortion equally a male issue as a female issue?
Redefining Poverty – Article in the Sunday Times discusses how poverty is defined and what the new benchmark will be. Richard Waghorne wrote about this a few months back in Magill.
Sunday Times: Brenda Power comments on the proposed privacy laws. I agree and disagree. She talks about when Haughey was banging Terry Keane (I love being eloquent) and how the media couldn’t report on it or they might have been sued. Defamation/libel laws are for rich people. I agree there. Even when right, if you’re poor you probably can’t afford to defend yourself. Isn’t that right Bernard?
But she then goes on to say that photographing Princess Caroline when she was in public was ok and called her Court victory “peevish”. She also thinks that if Victoria Smurfit doesn’t want to be photographed then daddy should by her a park she can wheel her kid around instead of using a public park. But as Brenda says, rich people can sue, poor people can’t. Rich people can buy a park, poor people cannot. I’m not sure I’d agree with the attitude that you are not entitled to privacy just because you’re loaded but if you are in public office by campaigning aboutyour own perfect morality and you’re being a hypocrite then I’m not so certain that the press pointing this out is wrong. It’s not black and white, there needs to be leeway and in a lot of cases it will be the courts that decide if you have gone too far. I’d like to see privacy laws for all, not just the rich and famous and I’d like to see defamation laws that allow the average joe to defend themselves.
Observer: 7/7 London bombers were not Al-Qaeda trained or linked says (leaked) official report.
Online newspapers making headlines less fun in order to be picked up by Google. Shame really.
eircom twice pressured telecoms regulator on Smart 3G licence before regulator revoked Smart’s licence. Big shock there. I would have expected another Court case like what happened with Orange and Meteor a few years back. Mobile licences are licences to print money afterall. Whatever happens in the currrent Court case, the regulator is going to come out worst again.
Via Dave Winer: Dr Dobbs podcast with Adam Selipsky from Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service).
Via Smart Mobs: Korea considers court interactions via blogs/message boards. I think something might have gotten lost in translation there.
What a helpful roundup. I’d have missed that poverty piece without it.