Social media spreads and splinters Brazil protests

Social media

Caroline Stauffer Reuters

6 hours ago

UESLEI MARCELINO / REUTERS

A demonstrator holds a sign next to street structures set on fire during a protest against the Confederations Cup and President Dilma Rousseff's government, in front of the National Congress in Brasilia June 20, 2013.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's biggest protests in decades are a confusing, conflicting mix of people and messages. Blame Facebook.

Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter enabled mass protests of the sort that have not happened in Latin America's biggest country in more than two decades.

As a result of the speed, efficiency and anonymity of online activism, though, an amorphous, unwieldy movement has emerged that is beyond the control of any of those who first began pushing for change.

"Social media has helped us organize without having leaders," said Victor Damaso, 22, demonstrating on Sao Paulo's main Paulista Avenue on Thursday night. "Our ideas, our demands are discussed on Facebook. There are no meetings, no rules."

The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, but as more than a million Brazilians took to the streets on Thursday, vandals and looters cast a violent pall over some of the protests. Police and security forces have responded with teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray.

Facebook pages set up for logistical coordination and Twitter hash tags have cropped up for protests in hundreds of cities across Brazil. Rival groups appear to be vying for control of one of the most-viewed organizing pages on Facebook and an associated Twitter feed.

"Any movement risks attracting unaffiliated groups and individuals," said Angela Alonso, a sociologist at the University of Sao Paulo. "It's a price of growth. In this case there is no centralized leadership, administration is more difficult and it is even becoming uncontrollable."

The Free Fare movement, a group of 40 activists who marched for - and got - lower transportation rates, said on Friday it was suspending any further marches for now because of mounting tension and violence.

Sparked by Free Fare's protests, the nationwide call for reform quickly evolved into what is now known online as Anonymous Brazil.

The group appears to use encrypted Web browsers that make it difficult to identify page administrators and has adopted the Guy Fawkes mask, the symbol for the global cyber group of hackers known as Anonymous, as its mascot, although it is not clear if the two have a formal link.

While that opens the door to all sorts of fringe groups, the people at the core of the protests generally share a commitment to better public services. Their rallying cries, found on Twitter and Facebook and on traditional signs at the protests, range from ending political corruption to lambasting more than $12 billion being poured into soccer stadiums and other preparations for the 2014 World Cup.

The demonstrators, mostly educated, middle class and under age 30, want nothing to do with established groups that were behind the causes of their parents' generation.

Online organizing
Unlike Brazil's movement for redemocratization in the 1970s and 1980s and protests for the impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello in the early 1990s, today's demonstrations have no clear leadership or political affinity.

"The recent protests are not partisan, and they do not have centralized leadership," said Alonso, the sociologist. "This has to do with new technologies that allow for organization without centralization, and also with the fact that the activists are from a new generation that is no longer guided by ideals like socialism, and doesn't want state power."

Indeed, Brazil's protests do not target any specific leader or political party. That makes them different from the Arab Spring, a series of uprisings against autocratic leaders in the past few years, or even this year's demonstrations in Turkey against the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

While some of the Arab governments blocked access to the Internet to disrupt the planning of protests, Brazil's intelligence agency, Abin, has beefed up efforts to monitor calls for demonstrations online and on popular smart phone chat tool WhatsApp.

President Dilma Rousseff, a leftist guerrilla in the 1970s, has praised the protests as democratic.

Anonymous Brazil's Facebook page, which has nearly 1 million followers, briefly disappeared from the Web on Friday. The group later said via Facebook that its Twitter account had been "robbed" by one of its own members, generating conflicts on its linked Facebook platform.

The group says competing Twitter accounts like @AnonymousBr4sil and #AnonymousFuel are run by "usurpers."

Of the 53.5 million Brazilians online, almost a third of the population, 86 percent use some kind of micro blog or social media tool, according to polling firm Ibope.

(Additional reporting by Silvio Cascione; Editing by Paulo Prada and Mohammad Zargham)

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2da7054c/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Csocial0Emedia0Espreads0Esplinters0Ebrazil0Eprotests0E6C10A4180A84/story01.htm

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John Kerry to Doha for Syria Talks (Voice Of America)

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G-rated films are a tough sell in superhero era

Movies

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper NBC News

June 21, 2013 at 12:53 PM ET

Two family-aimed films are hitting theaters in the next two weeks. "Monsters University" is an animated 3-D movie about zany, friendly monsters -- one with just one eyeball -- and how they interact with humans. (Spoiler: They scare them.) "Despicable Me 2" is also an animated 3-D movie about zany, friendly monsters -- some with just one eyeball -- and how they interact with humans. (Spoiler: They work for them.)

Disney, Universal

That's Mike from "Monsters University" on the left, and a minion from "Despicable Me 2" on the right. Can you tell which movie is rated G and which PG?

From that description, is it immediately clear which film is rated G, for General Audiences, and which one PG, meaning Parental Guidance suggested?

If it's not clear to you ("Monsters University" gets the G), you're not alone.

"I do think there is less of a clear line between G and PG than there is between PG-13 and R," said Vincent Bruzzese, chief executive officer of the Worldwide Motion Picture Group, a consultancy serving the entertainment industry. "It's very clear what makes something an R. If you say the F-word X number of times, it's an R. But why are 'Cars 2' and 'Rio' G, and yet 'Madagascar' or 'The Lorax' PG? What is the difference there? I'm not sure."

The Motion Picture Association of America, which determines movie ratings, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Bruzzese's company's research shows that not only do many parents not understand what makes a movie a G, to some of them, that family-friendly rating might even be a deterrent, especially if they have older children.

"We actually see that parents have no problem taking (5- or 6-year-olds) to a PG movie," Bruzzese said. "But they'll have trouble getting their 10- or 12-year-old to go to a G movie."

And if parents do want to seek out a G movie, good luck. Many movies that sound like they should be rated G tend to get the older rating. May's animated "Epic," about a girl who's shrunk to the size of a bug and helps a race known as the Leaf Men, was rated PG for "mild action, some scary images and brief rude language." July release "Turbo," about a garden snail who dreams of winning the Indy 500, is rated PG. (Does the snail swear?) August sequel "The Smurfs 2" isn't yet rated, but it'll almost certainly be PG like the 2011 original.

"The G rating has all but disappeared from theatrical releases other than one or two animated films each year," said Nell Minow, who advises parents about movies as The Movie Mom. "It's all about money. School-age kids think that G-rated movies are 'babyish,' so only Disney can get away with it."

With so much movie information available online, today's parents today don't need to rely only on the MPAA ratings. "(Parents) do their own investigation of films," Bruzzese said. "They're able to go online and look up -- whether it's user comments or more about the plot, more scenes -- they're able to find enough information to give them that (knowledge)."

Ben Boychuk of Rialto, Calif., is one of those parents. "I don't have a hard-and-fast rule about MPAA ratings," said Boychuk, who has an 11-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. "I'll make a judgment based on whether I've seen the movie or barring that, by researching reviews and audience comments. IMDb is an invaluable resource -- what the Internet was meant for."

Wondering what has shifted since the days when kids saw only G-rated films? Experts point to many changes, including the addition of the PG-13 rating in 1984, the availability of movies of all ratings on home video and cable television, and the emergence of a generation of parents who grew up with such kid-tempting action films as 1977's "Star Wars." But a web-slinging, wall-crawling hero in tights might have something to do with it too.

"The family audience clearly has evolved in that it really, really started way back with the original 'Spider-Man' with Tobey Maguire," said Bruzzese. The 2002 PG-13-rated blockbuster "brought in a family audience to what would traditionally have been an older-skewing movie," he said.

Now, he said, "Today's 10-year-old is seeing what a 15-year-old would have seen 10 or 15 years ago."

Boychuk's family is a perfect example. Son Benjamin saw Maguire's "Spider-Man" on DVD at age 4 or 5. "He watched it at least a dozen times," Boychuk said. "The Green Goblin frightened him at first, but he wanted to see the movie again as soon as it was over."

But Boychuk notes that parents need to know their own children, who may be ready for different films at different ages. "My son was always great in movie theaters," he said. "My daughter (Isabella) is a different story. She can't handle most scary stuff, though she loves the classic Disney movies. ... I tend to be more vigilant with what we let her watch."

And the MPAA rating might not be the ultimate determining factor in how frightening a movie really is. In 2011, when TODAY.com asked readers to name the scariest scene in children's films, a scene from G-rated "Toy Story 3" repeatedly popped up. In it, Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the other toys are on what seems like an unstoppable moving ramp pushing them into a giant incinerator, with flames leaping high.

"As I think about it now, Bella was freaked out by the incinerator scene -- and so was I!" Boychuk said. "But Benjamin wasn't bothered too much."

The G rating will almost certainly continue to shift in meaning and usage, Bruzzese believes.

"If you look at the last 10 G-rated movies, half are either concerts or documentaries," he said. "More and more, as that becomes prevalent, the G rating will stand for not just the 'Winnie the Poohs' of the world, but will stand for things like (Disneynature 2012 documentary) 'Chimpanzee' or IMAX or a concert show. The G might start standing for non-traditional movie entertainment that's not offensive to any age group, whereas PG becomes the new G."

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/entertainment/g-rated-films-are-tough-sell-superhero-era-6C10393646

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The Facts & Myths Of Spaying & Neutering Your Pet | Life with ...

When it comes to making a decision about a pet?s health, we naturally all want to make the best decision possible. Unfortunately, there?s a great deal of wrong information out there when it comes to spaying or neutering your pet, and that wrong information can make a complicated decision even more difficult.

Photo courtesy MowT.

So before you make a decision one way or another, take a moment to run through these myths ? and facts ? surrounding spaying and neutering.

First, take a moment to go over the?basics about spaying and neutering. And now, on to the myths, and the truths behind those misconceptions:

Myth: Spaying or neutering a cat can result in undesirable changes, including laziness, obesity, and more.

Fact: Most cats become fat and lazy simply because they are fed too much and don?t get enough exercise.

Reevaluating your cat?s diet and activity level as he grows will help prevent unwanted weight gain and lethargy. Also, taking the time to play with your cat on a regular basis will help him learn to enjoy exercise more often and will help build your bond.

Myth: Neutering a male cat will make him feel less ?manly? ? less of a male.

Fact: While it?s understandable for people to process a neutering this way, the fact is cats don?t have the same sense of sexual identity as we do.

A cat won?t face an identity crisis once he?s neutered. This holds true with females as well.

Myth: Female cats should have at least one litter before spaying.

Fact: This is a dangerous myth, and the opposite is true.

Photo courtesy slworking2.

Medical evidence shows that cats who are spayed before their first heat very rarely develop mammary tumors. This is a dangerous myth because cats? mammary tumors are much more malignant than those seen in dogs, and they have a worse prognosis.

In addition, spaying your female early can help reduce the risk of uterine infections and breast cancer.

Myth: I have to wait until my pet is 6 months old to be sterilized.

Fact: The American Veterinary Medical Association endorses ?Early Age Neutering,? which means an animal can be spayed or neutered at the age of two months ? or the weight of two pounds.

Sterilizing your pet at an early age not only protects their health, as mentioned above, but it also means they can recover more quickly.

Myth: Spay and neuter surgeries are risky.

Fact: If you go to an experienced vet, spays and neuters are some of the safest surgeries they can have, considering those surgeries are done so often. While there are always risks with any surgery, with a sterilization, the risk of complications is very low.

Myth: Spaying or neutering a cat deprives her or him from experiencing the joy of parenthood.

Fact: Again, this is simply an emotion or desire we as humans apply to our pets.

Animals don?t feel a sense of fulfillment by giving birth or being a mother or father; they won?t mourn their inability to reproduce. For them, reproduction is simply nature taking its course. Although mother cats do take care of their kittens for several weeks, it?s only to prepare them for life on their own. Similarly, father cats don?t recognize kittens as their children.

Myth: Breeding a cat will result in kittens that are exactly like the mother.

Fact: Just like with people, you can?t ever duplicate someone.

Even if you breed two purebreds, there?s no guarantee that the kittens will turn out exactly as their parents. This is even more true if mixed breeds are involved. Each cat is special in his own way. It?s important to enjoy your cat for who she is as long as she?s in your life. Grant her kittens the same respect, and appreciate them for their individual personalities and characteristics, too.

Myth: Watching a cat give birth and raise a litter of kittens can be a valuable life experience for you or your children.

Fact: This myth is particularly disturbing. As the ASPCA says, ?The idea that a cat should have a litter so that children can witness the miracle of birth is troubling.? And I agree.

Photo courtesy eaghra.

If you want your child to learn about birth, there are many other resources (books, videos, etc.) that allows them to learn about the topic in a responsible way. Allowing a cat to birth a litter of kittens simply for education or life experience is irresponsible and ignores the very real issue of overpopulation in the world. If anything, it teaches the child that our selfish motives are more important than the cat?s well-being and her offspring?s.

Myth: Spaying or neutering is too expensive.

Fact: Many vet clinics around the U.S. offer low-cost spay and neuter surgeries.?Click here to find a low-cost spay/neuter facility in your area.

If your current vet is very expensive, shop around and speak to other vet clinics in the area to find out their rates. While the cost may initially seem prohibitive, consider how much you?ll actually be saving in the long-run, considering your cat won?t need to visit the vet for other health issues that will arise from not being sterilized ? not to mention the costs that will come up if your cat has a litter of kittens.

Myth: Low-cost spay/neuter programs can?t be trusted.

Fact: Although some people are skeptical about low-cost programs, they must understand that the costs are low simply to encourage people to spay and neuter their pets. These clinics want to make the surgeries affordable to everyone. Many clinics that offer low-cost programs actually spay and neuter hundreds, if not thousands, of pets each year, which makes them experts.

Need a bit more convincing? Check out these?eight reasons to spay or neuter your cat.

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Source: http://lifewithchcats.com/2013/06/21/the-facts-myths-of-spaying-neutering-your-pet/

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Edward Snowden and America's security-clearance vetting problem

The firm that conducted the background check to re-up Snowden's top secret clearance is under investigation for falsifying records, and it's not alone

Whatever you think about NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his outlook on government secrets, it's pretty clear that from a human-resources perspective, he was a terrible hire. Just weeks after starting his new job at Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden took medical leave ? then fled the country with top secret documents he had pilfered while on Booz Allen's dime (and, by extension, the taxpayers').

Lots of questions remain about Snowden's hiring: Like how a relatively low-level IT contractor like Snowden got access to such sensitive information, why Booz Allen put a guy with apparently a high school education in such a position, at $122,000 a year, and whether the other 480,000 government contractors with top-secret clearance pose a similar threat.

SEE ALSO: WATCH: John Oliver skewers Paula Deen's racial sensibilities

If the NSA knows the answer to the first question, it isn't saying so. Reuters has some new insights into the second question: Snowden appears to have padded his r?sum? a bit, according to "a source with detailed knowledge of the matter." He claimed to have taken computer-related courses at Johns Hopkins and a University of Maryland campus in Japan, and "estimated" that he would receive a master's degree in computer security from Britain's University of Liverpool sometime this year, Reuters says. That information "did not check out precisely," according to Reuters' source, but was close enough to get him the job. And obviously, Snowden knows his way around computer networks.

The answer to the question about the rest of the country's government contractors isn't encouraging, if you think America's spy agencies should keep secrets. Roughly 4.9 million people have some level of U.S. security clearance ? classified, secret, or top secret ? and the federal Office of Personnel Management, which oversees 90 percent of the government's security background checks, farms out a lot of that vetting to private companies. The biggest, USIS, re-authorized Snowden's top secret clearance in 2011.

SEE ALSO: Why Men's Wearhouse's George Zimmer is a lot like Steve Jobs

And it may not have done a stellar job. "We do believe that there may be some problems" with Snowden's 2011 background check, OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland told a Senate hearing on Thursday. McFarland declined to elaborate, but it also came out yesterday that USIS has been under criminal investigation since late 2011, for allegedly systematically performing inadequate background checks. (USIS says it was never informed that it is the subject of a criminal investigation.)

USIS isn't alone in its faulty practices. The company ? started by former OPM employees in 1996, sold to private equity firms Carlyle Group and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in 2003, then resold in 2007 to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, which merged it with HireRite and Kroll under the umbrella Altegrity Inc. ? conducts 45 percent of the background checks contracted out by OPM. USIS earned $200 million last year. But the whole process of government vetting is flawed to a dangerous degree, McFarland told the Senate hearing:

"There is an alarmingly insufficient level of oversight of the federal investigative-services program.... A lack of independent verification of the organization that conducts these important background investigations is a clear threat to national security." [Via The Wall Street Journal]

In one example cited by McFarland, an unidentified woman at an unidentified vetting company fabricated 1,600 credit reports. And "in an ironic twist," says Kevin Liptak at CNN, "the background check used to hire her was also found to be false." In all, 18 workers ? seven contractors and 11 federal workers ? have been criminally convicted of falsifying records while conducting background checks since 2007.

SEE ALSO: 7 disturbing things Paula Deen has said

McFarland says there are 36 cases pending, but his office lacks the resources to clear the backlog. "I believe there may be considerably more," he said on Thursday. "I don't believe that we've caught it all by any stretch."

Why did the government start outsourcing its security-clearance vetting? "The idea was to harness the efficiencies of the private sector to get rid of the backlog of security clearances," Dan Gordon, a former top procurement official in the Obama administration, tells Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: The last word: He said he was leaving. She ignored him.

But efficiencies sometimes come at a cost, says Dion Nissenbaum in The Wall Street Journal, and "one concern for lawmakers is the pressure on contractors to quickly complete cases to bring in more money for their firms."

One answer to the sloppy screening that may have missed some red flags with Edward Snowden, then, would be to stop outsourcing America's security-clearance vetting to for-profit companies owned by private equity firms. That said, 11 of the 18 people busted for fabricating records were federal employees. And its not clear any screening criteria would have caught Snowden.

SEE ALSO: How typeface influences the way we read and think

Another idea: The government could keep fewer secrets, lessening the need for so many background checks ? and the $1 billion a year they cost us. Case in point: The widely acknowledged drone program that was an official U.S. secret for so long. And while some of Snowden's leaks very likely have affected national security, others seem relatively benign. On Thursday, for example, The Guardian published documents from Snowden that explain the rules for NSA retention of "incidentally" snagged records of U.S. persons.

"I can't imagine there's great harm to national security from these rules being out," William C. Banks, an expert on national security law at Syracuse University College of Law, tells The New York Times. "If this helps us learn more about what the government's doing, that's probably a good thing."

SEE ALSO: How does NSA hack into emails?

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/edward-snowden-americas-security-clearance-vetting-problem-072000650.html

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Boehner dances between GOP, Dems on immigration (The Arizona Republic)

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Women's facial features can determine length of relationship

June 20, 2013 ? Men in relationships prefer women with more feminine faces for a fling.

This is one of the findings of Anthony Little from the University of Stirling and Benedict Jones from the University of Glasgow that will be published in the British Journal of Psychology today, Friday 21 June 2013.

The study investigated whether considering partners for long-term or short-term relationships would affect men's preference for different women's faces.

One of the experiments was conducted online with 393 heterosexual men. From this group 207 stated they had a current partner. Participants were shown 10 paired images of pictures of women and in each pair of composite images one had been further transformed to possess masculine traits and the other feminine traits.

The men were asked to rate which of each pair they found most attractive indicating the most attractive for short term relationships and long term relationships.

The results showed that men in relationships were more likely to find women with feminine faces most attractive when they were looking for a short-term relationship.

Anthony explained: "It's interesting that these findings are comparable to previous research that indicates women's preference for masculine male faces are higher if they were judging for short-term relationships. Our findings point to a similar preference in men. When they already have a partner, men find more feminine women more attractive for short-term relationships.

"There are several possible explanations; perhaps some men are inclined to take a long-term partner whilst still attempting to cheat with other, more feminine, women. Or maybe once a long-term partner is secured, the potential cost of being discovered may increase a man's choosiness regarding short-term partners relative to unpartnered men."

"In another part of the study we also showed that men who think themselves attractive have stronger preferences for femininity than those who think themselves less attractive. Again, this effect appears similar to an effect seen in women, whereby attractive women are choosier in their preferences for men. Across the two studies attractive men were found to be more discriminating in their preferences for a woman's facial femininity."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/9hIYQ1eI73I/130620214010.htm

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