In Britain, spate of prosecutions for Twitter and Facebook tirades spark free-speech debate

LONDON – One teenager made offensive comments about a murdered child on Twitter. Another young man wrote on Facebook that British soldiers should “go to hell.” A third posted a picture of a burning paper poppy, symbol of remembrance of war dead.

All were arrested, two convicted, and one jailed — and they’re not the only ones. In Britain, hundreds of people are prosecuted each year for posts, tweets, texts and emails deemed menacing, indecent, offensive or obscene, and the number is growing as our online lives expand.

Lawyers say the mounting tally shows the problems of a legal system trying to regulate 21st century communications with 20th century laws. Civil libertarians say it is a threat to free speech in an age when the Internet gives everyone the power to be heard around the world.

“Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people,” said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship. “Now someone posts a picture of a burning poppy on Facebook and potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it.

“People take it upon themselves to report this offensive material to police, and suddenly you’ve got the criminalization of offensive speech.”

Figures obtained by The Associated Press through a freedom of information request show a steadily rising tally of prosecutions in Britain for electronic communications — phone calls, emails and social media posts — that are “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character — from 1,263 in 2009 to 1,843 in 2011. The number of convictions grew from 873 in 2009 to 1,286 last year.

Behind the figures are people — mostly young, many teenagers — who find that a glib online remark can have life-altering consequences.

No one knows this better than Paul Chambers, who in January 2010, worried that snow would stop him catching a flight to visit his girlfriend, tweeted: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your (expletive) together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.”

A week later, anti-terrorist police showed up at the office where he worked as a financial supervisor.

Chambers was arrested, questioned for eight hours, charged, tried, convicted and fined. He lost his job, amassed thousands of pounds (dollars) in legal costs and was, he says, “essentially unemployable” because of his criminal record.

But Chambers, now 28, was lucky. His case garnered attention online, generating its own hashtag — (hash)twitterjoketrial — and bringing high-profile Twitter users, including actor and comedian Stephen Fry, to his defence.

In July, two and half years after Chambers’ arrest, the High Court overturned his conviction. Justice Igor Judge said in his judgment that the law should not prevent “satirical or iconoclastic or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.”

But the cases are coming thick and fast. Last month, 19-year-old Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail for making offensive tweets about a missing 5-year-old girl, April Jones.

The same month Azhar Ahmed, 20, was sentenced to 240 hours of community service for writing on Facebook that soldiers “should die and go to hell” after six British troops were killed in Afghanistan. Ahmed had quickly deleted the post, which he said was written in anger, but was convicted anyway.

On Sunday — Remembrance Day — a 19-year-old man was arrested in southern England after police received a complaint about a photo on Facebook showing the burning of a paper poppy. He was held for 24 hours before being released on bail and could face charges.

For civil libertarians, this was the most painfully ironic arrest of all. Poppies are traditionally worn to commemorate the sacrifice of those who died for Britain and its freedoms.

“What was the point of winning either World War if, in 2012, someone can be casually arrested by Kent Police for burning a poppy?” tweeted David Allen Green, a lawyer with London firm Preiskel who worked on the Paul Chambers case.

Critics of the existing laws say they are both inadequate and inconsistent.

Many of the charges come under a section of the 2003 Electronic Communications Act, an update of a 1930s statute intended to protect telephone operators from harassment. The law was drafted before Facebook and Twitter were born, and some lawyers say is not suited to policing social media, where users often have little control over who reads their words.

It and related laws were intended to deal with hate mail or menacing phone calls to individuals, but they are being used to prosecute in cases where there seems to be no individual victim — and often no direct threat.

And the Internet is so vast that policing it — even if desirable — is a hit-and-miss affair. For every offensive remark that draws attention, hundreds are ignored. Conversely, comments that people thought were made only to their Facebook friends or Twitter followers can flash around the world.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that First Amendment protections of freedom of speech apply to the Internet, restrictions on online expression in other Western democracies vary widely.

In Germany, where it is an offence to deny the Holocaust, a neo-Nazi group has had its Twitter account blocked. Twitter has said it also could agree to block content in other countries at the request of their authorities.

There’s no doubt many people in Britain have genuinely felt offended or even threatened by online messages. The Sun tabloid has launched a campaign calling for tougher penalties for online “trolls” who bully people on the Web. But others in a country with a cherished image as a bastion of free speech are sensitive to signs of a clampdown.

In September Britain’s chief prosecutor, Keir Starmer, announced plans to draw up new guidelines for social media prosecutions. Starmer said he recognized that too many prosecutions “will have a chilling effect on free speech.”

“I think the threshold for prosecution has to be high,” he told the BBC.

Starmer is due to publish the new guidelines in the next few weeks. But Chambers — reluctant poster boy of online free speech — is worried nothing will change.

“For a couple of weeks after the appeal, we got word of judges actually quoting the case in similar instances and the charges being dropped,” said Chambers, who today works for his brother’s warehouse company. “We thought, ‘Fantastic! That’s exactly what we fought for.’ But since then we’ve had cases in the opposite direction. So I don’t know if lessons have been learned, really.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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Michael Jackson’s assistant files class-action lawsuit against “This Is It” tour promoter

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Michael Jackson has been dead for more than three years now – but apparently he lives on in the halls of America’s legal system.

Jackson’s former assistant, Michael Amir Williams, filed a class-action lawsuit against concert promoters AEG Live in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, claiming he and others hired to attend to the “Beat It” singer during his would-be “This Is It” tour at London’s O2 Arena were deprived of at least $ 7.5 million dollars in pay.

According to the suit, AEG was responsible for the financial loss because it hired Dr. Conrad Murray — who was found guilty of causing the singer’s death – to care for Jackson.

The suit claims that Jackson “bargained for the addition of Class to help Michael Jackson give the ‘first class performance’ as required by Contract. The express terms of the Contract allowed for class to be paid by AEG up to $ 7.5 million and any amount over $ 7.5 million to be paid for by Michael Jackson.”

Unfortunately, AEG also hired Murray, who administered a fatal dose of Propofol to Jackson in June 2009, before the concerts could take place. (Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Jackson’s death in November 2011.)

AEG’s lawyer, Marvin Putnam of O’Melveny & Myers, calls the lawsuit “frivolous” and “truly unfortunate.”

“This lawsuit is clearly frivolous; it is literally barred by at least four different legal doctrines,” Putnam said in a statement provided to TheWrap. “The easiest is that Mr. Williams was a personal employee of Michael Jackson’s, and was never a beneficiary of Mr. Jackson’s contract with AEG Live. As such he has no legal standing to sue on that contract. Nor can he legally bring a claim for Mr. Jackson’s wrongful death. The idea that Mr. Williams purports to sue on behalf of the many persons who did enter into relationships with AEG Live and Jackson in connection with the This Is It Tour, and with whom AEG Live parted ways with the utmost friendship and respect, is disgraceful. It is truly unfortunate that so many see Mr. Jackson’s demise as an opportunity to grab as much for themselves as possible. This is just the latest wrongful death lawsuit with someone hoping to profit from Michael Jackson’s tragic death in the same way they profited from his life.”

Williams’ suit alleges breach of express terms of contract; breach of implied terms of contract; and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The complaint seeks unspecified damages, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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Dutch hospital to lead organ trafficking probe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch academic hospital is taking the lead in a major international investigation into the illegal trafficking in human organs for transplants.

The Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam announced Thursday it is heading a three-year probe to “map out this relatively new form of serious crime.”

Organizations in Romania, Sweden, Bulgaria and Spain are also involved in the new project along with the European police organization Europol, the United Nations and European transplant organizations.

The hospital says little is known about the scale of organ trafficking.

In one recent case, a European Union prosecutor in Kosovo indicted a Turkish and an Israeli national in June for involvement in an international ring that duped poor people into donating kidneys that were transplanted into wealthy buyers. The suspects are still at large.

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World stocks fall as talks on US budget deal stall

AMSTERDAM (AP) — World stocks slid Thursday as the eurozone fell into recession and hopes faded for a quick agreement among U.S. leaders not to hike taxes and cut government spending — a potential double whammy which could derail the world’s biggest economy.

President Barack Obama has said he is willing to extend current tax cuts for all but the richest 2 percent, but Congress opposes that. Unless they reach a compromise, across-the-board tax increases and spending reductions will take effect automatically in 2013 at a cost of about $ 800 billion. Economists say that could knock the U.S. economy back into recession.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s statistics agency confirmed that the eurozone countries are in recession, with GDP contracting 0.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous three-month period.

European stocks fell in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.3 percent to 5,704.60 while Germany’s DAX fell 0.5 percent to 7,063.42. France’s CAC-40 shed 0.3 percent to 3,389.17.

After sharp falls Wednesday, U.S. stock futures rose fractionally ahead of the release of several manufacturing surveys that some analysts said could show a modest improvement in activity in November. Dow Jones industrial futures rose 0.2 percent to 12,563 and S&P 500 futures added 0.3 percent to 1,357.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB said in a market commentary that a “cautious tone” is likely to permeate trading, given the uncertainty over the situation in the U.S. Obama is expected to meet the top leaders of both political parties at the White House on Friday for discussions.

Asian indexes tumbled, though Japanese stocks rose thanks to a drop in the value of the yen, which helps the country’s exporters.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled 1.6 percent to 21,108.93. South Korea’s Kospi shed 1.2 percent to 1,870.72. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.9 percent to 4,349.20. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand also fell.

In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.2 percent to 2,030.29, the lowest close in more than a month. The Shenzhen Composite Index lost 1.6 percent to 805.91.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 index rallied 1.9 percent to close at 8,829.72 due to the impact of a weaker yen, which fell after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda reportedly pledged to dissolve the parliament by Friday if the opposition agreed to key reforms. Parliamentary elections could be set for Dec. 16.

Investors “hope that there may be some more stimulatory policies as a result of that,” said Peter Elston, strategist at Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore.

Overall, many investors remain uneasy with the persistent weakness in the world’s biggest economies and a lack of confidence, which discourages companies and households from spending despite stimulus programs by central banks.

“The concern that I have is that when economies were weak three years ago, governments were able to come to the rescue,” Elston said. “They are not as able to provide support now because their balance sheets are a lot weaker than they were.”

Benchmark oil for December delivery was down 9 cents to $ 86.23 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after a sharp rise Wednesday after Israel bombed targets in the Gaza Strip.

In currencies, the euro rose to $ 1.2765 from $ 1.2745 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar jumped to 81.21 yen from 80.17 yen, its second rise of more than one percent in two days.

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Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this story.

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Beating tax cheats key to Italy’s recovery plan

ROME (AP) — Good plumbers may be worth their weight in gold, but when one was spotted zipping around in a bright red Ferrari, Italian tax police were fast on his trail.

Stamping out entrenched tax evasion is crucial to Premier Mario Monti‘s quest to keep Italy from succumbing to the European debt crisis, and it is critical to fellow eurozone members in more dire straits, such as Greece and Spain — which are also notorious for making cheating the taxman a way of life.

Indeed, Greece’s international rescue creditors have been pressing Greece for two years to reform its ailing tax system, citing poor collection as a key factor keeping the country mired in crisis. In Spain, where tax fraud is rampant, as much as €90 billion ($ 150 billion) is lost each year to tax fraud — the equivalent of the country’s national debt, according to Spain’s main tax inspectors union.

To succeed in Italy, authorities will have to catch the legions of self-employed and small business owners who brazenly lie about their earnings, like the plumber in the eastern town of Pescara, who socked away undeclared income in 30 bank accounts, or a successful pastry shop owner in Calabria, who on his tax return claimed he was earning next to crumbs.

And those are the less sophisticated schemers.

Tax police officials say that wealthy Italians, their companies and foreigners who make their money in Italy are increasingly trying to avoid taxes by using such strategies as falsely declaring that their base of operations or residence is abroad.

Another daunting challenge is the so-called “submerged” economy, a term embracing Italians who declare only a fraction or nothing at all of their earnings — and dentists, lawyers, doctors and other big-earning professionals are frequently among the worst offenders.

Tax evasion of all types in Italy totals about euros 240 billion ($ 300 billion), or 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product of €1.6 trillion ($ 2 trillion), tax police estimate. Winning the war on tax cheats could therefore more than wipe out the country’s budget deficit, which is expected to increase to euros 42 billion ($ 53 billion), or 2.6 percent of GDP this year. That would start knocking away at the nation’s colossal public debt of €2 trillion ($ 2.5 trillion), or 125 percent of GDP.

But “big international frauds are up,” lamented Lt. Col. Gianluca Campana, in charge of the income tax unit revenue protection office at the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police corps which reports to the Economy Ministry.

The entrenched practice by many cafes, eateries, hair dressers and similar small business of neglecting to give customers mandatory cash register receipts commonly grabs the attention in crackdowns on tax evasion in Italy.

But, cautioned Campana, “one false (big business) invoice can equal no cash register receipts for coffees for two months.”

Over all of 2011, the total of non-declared income discovered by tax police amounted to some €50 billion ($ 65 billion), of which some 20 percent was due to international tax evasion, he said. By comparison, in the first nine months of this year, tax police discovered some €40 billion in undeclared income, with 30 percent of that blamed on international tax evasion, Campana said.

With the economic crisis shrinking bottom lines, and Italy increasingly on the hunt for big-time evasion, especially by big businesses, “there is a tendency to move capital abroad, using maneuvers apparently legal but which really are not,” Campana said. A classic technique consists of declaring one’s formal residence abroad in tax havens like Monte Carlo. Also common are companies that clearly have their business base in Italy but claim it is abroad in countries with far lower tax brackets.

Campana is armed with three degrees, including a masters in tax law from Milan’s Bocconi University, the prestigious economics institute formerly headed by Monti. He brings skills to this specialized police corps that are as finely tuned as sharp-shooting.

“We are going after the big cases (of evasion) in order to rake in more money,” Campana said.

The Ferrari-driving plumber hid some €2 million ($ 2.6 million) of his income over several years by giving his customers invoices — for jobs ranging from fixing leaks to installing new bathrooms — for the actual cost of his work, but kept a second, false registry of much lower figures for tax purposes, said Pescara tax police Col. Mauro Odorisio.

Armed with a 2008 law, authorities confiscated assets belonging to the plumber equivalent to the approximately €1 million ($ 1.3 million) they contend he owed in taxes, Odorisio said.

With Ferraris in red or yellow, and snazzy Porsches parked inside, Guardia di Finanza garages practically resemble luxury car dealerships.

The cars get sold to help recoup unpaid taxes and interest.

Overall, tax revenues in Italy were up by 4.1 percent, says the Economy Ministry, when comparing figures from the first eight months of 2012 with the same period in 2011, but much of that was due to new taxes, and not necessarily a revolution in citizens’ consciences about tax obligations.

Monti’s recipe relies heavily on taxes that are nearly impossible to avoid, such as sales tax. He also revived a property tax that his populist predecessor, Premier Silvio Berlusconi, had abolished in a promise to voters.

The ministry’s report last month noted that the property tax figured prominently in the “tendency toward growth” in tax revenues. But sales tax revenue dropped slightly despite higher sales tax rates, indicating that consumers were feeling the pinch of the stagnant economy.

The heavier fiscal burden seems to have driven some honest citizens to rebel against the engrained culture of tax evasion.

The number of phone calls from the public to the tax police’s hotline to report stores, restaurants and other businesses that didn’t give customers sales receipts has almost doubled in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2011.

It’s apparently dawning on Italians that shirking taxes in the end only costs them, in terms of ever-higher levies and cutbacks in public services.

Citizens now increasingly understand that “the lack of revenue over time caused by tax evaders forced the government to stiffen the tax burden on categories where you can’t evade taxes,” Campana said, referring to workers whose taxes are deducted from paychecks. Another area where evasion is close to impossible is real estate ownership.

Odorisio noted the crackdown included extending the statute of limitations on tax evasion from six to eight years and establishing prison as a penalty for big-time evasion.

Other weapons include a measure promoted by the Monti government that limits cash payments to no more than €1,000. Paying by credit card or personal check is a relatively new habit for Italians, who are used to carrying wads of cash in their pockets, even for big-ticket items like home renovations or vacations.

Past governments in Italy sometimes resorted to tax amnesties to try to boost revenues. But critics, contending some Italians counted on such a possibility, described that strategy as only perpetuating the tax cheat culture.

Spain hasn’t had much success with its own tax amnesty introduced by the conservative government in March. That measure, expiring soon, allows undeclared assets or those hidden in tax havens to be repatriated by paying a 10 percent tax without criminal penalty. The amnesty is estimated to recuperate far less than the expected €2.5 billion ($ 3.25 billion).

Greece saw demands for tax system reform from international rescue creditors added on to conditions for future rescue loan payments, as Greek authorities acknowledged that a high-profile campaign to crack down on major tax cheats has produced disappointing results.

The cash-strapped government over the last 10 months recovered just €19 million ($ 25 million) of the €13 billion ($ 17 billion) of arrears on the list. A prominent Greek magazine publisher recently tapped anger over rich tax evaders by publishing a list of people allegedly holding Swiss bank accounts. He was acquitted this month of breaching privacy laws.

Meanwhile, Italian tax police are chasing after cheats who have shown some of the most chutzpah about not paying their fair share of taxes, like the Padua woman who advertised on the Internet that she had a couple of “cash-only” bed and breakfast rooms to let.

Tax police discovered the lodgings are part of an apartment in public housing she was given after falsely declaring she was indigent on her annual tax forms.

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AP reporters Derek Gatopoulos in Athens and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.

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Software pioneer McAfee says framed for murder in Belize

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) – Computer security industry pioneer John McAfee says he has gone into hiding in Belize because he believes authorities there are trying to frame him for the murder of a neighbor, a crime he says he did not commit, according to Wired magazine.

Belize police are searching for McAfee as “a person of interest” in a murder investigation.

“You can say I’m paranoid about it, but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me,” Wired quoted McAfee as saying on its website. “I am not well liked by the prime minister. I am just a thorn in everybody’s side.”

The magazine reported that McAfee, 67, contacted one of its reporters by telephone after his neighbor Gregory Faull, was found dead on Sunday in a pool of blood. The 52-year-old American was apparently shot in the head in his home on the island of Ambergris Caye.

Police say McAfee had a history of conflict with Faull, whose post-mortem was expected to be conducted on Tuesday.

McAfee, who amassed a fortune by building the anti-virus company that bears his name, has homes and businesses in the Central American country where police say he has lived for at least two years.

It was not the first time McAfee, who has tattoos, a goatee beard and mustache, and a penchant for guns, has drawn police attention in Belize.

His premises were raided earlier this year after he was accused of holding firearms, though most were found to be licensed. The final outcome of the case is pending.

He was also suspected of running a lab to make the synthetic drug crystal meth.

“He was suspected (of making crystal meth) but he was not convicted nor was he charged. He was only suspected,” said Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez.

McAfee also owns a security company in Belize as well as several properties, an ecological enterprise and a water taxi and ferry business.

Reuters could not reach McAfee, who police want to question.

“It would be quite nice for him to come in and answer some of the questions that could lead to the closure of this case,” Martinez said. “He is not wanted for murder, but he is wanted for questioning as a person of interest.”

One man in Belize who knows McAfee well told Reuters he believed the American’s troubles began when he turned down requests for donations to the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) to help fund its successful re-election bid in March.

“He rejected them because he doesn’t believe in participating in politics,” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, calling McAfee an “honorable person.”

McAfee said earlier this year he had refused to donate to the UDP, which could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Belize police department has reached out to counterparts in neighboring Mexico and Guatemala, asking them to detain McAfee if he leaves Belize overland.

McAfee was one of Silicon Valley’s first entrepreneurs to amass a fortune by building a business off the Internet.

The former Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in 1989, initially distributing anti-virus software as “shareware” on Internet bulletin boards.

He took the company public in 1992 and left two years later following accusations that he had hyped the arrival of a virus known as Michelangelo, which turned out to be a dud, to scare computer users into buying his company’s products.

McAfee currently has no relationship with the software company, which has since been sold to Intel Corp.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, Jose Sanchez in Belize City, Simon Gardner and Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Kieran Murray and Eric Walsh)

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Accuser recants sex claims against Elmo puppeteer: report

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The man who claimed he had underage sex with the puppeteer behind “Sesame Street” character Elmo recanted his claims on Tuesday, U.S. media reported.

The unnamed man, now 23, had claimed that Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash had a sexual relationship with him when the accuser was 16 years old, potentially engulfing one of the biggest childhood brands in an underage sex scandal.

“He wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship,” the law firm Andreozzi and Associates, who represent the man, told U.S. media outlets in a statement.

Clash, 52, who had denied the allegations, said in a statement obtained by Reuters on Tuesday: “I am relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest. I will not discuss it further.”

New York-based Sesame Workshop said on Monday that its own inquiry had concluded that the claims of underage sexual conduct against Clash were unsubstantiated.

“We are pleased that this matter has been brought to a close, and we are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode,” Sesame Workshop said in a statement on Tuesday.

Clash, 52, the voice of Elmo for nearly three decades, had acknowledged a past relationship with his accuser but said on Monday the pair were both consenting adults at the time. He termed the allegations “false and defamatory.”

“I am a gay man. I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it,” Clash said on Monday, saying he was taking a break from the TV show to deal with the situation.

Sesame Workshop said the allegations involving Clash came to its attention in June when the accuser first contacted the company by email. A company executive said it had found “absolutely no evidence that the allegations were true.”

The Elmo character debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1979. While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey and Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Johnston)

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3-D Imaging Improves Breast Cancer Screening

The mammograms most women receive are decidedly two-dimensional. An x-ray machine takes images of the breast from the sides, and radiologists examine the resulting image to see if it offers up any hits of potentially cancerous irregularities. These tests, however, are far from perfect. Normal calcium deposits and fibrous tissue can align to create a composite image that resembles a suspect mass. And small lesions can go undetected if they are hidden among normal tissue. A team of researchers has added a new dimension to screening for better accuracy. This new technique allows traditional x-ray machines to capture images of the breast in three dimensions and provides a new display to let radiologists examine width, length and depth. The multidimensional snapshot may help to avoid false-positives of tissue that is not really cancerous as well as well as missed lesions that can go on to develop into tougher-to-treat cancer. Stereographic digital mammography produces an inner view of the breast in a similar manner to the way our eyes and brain create the three dimensional representation of the world around us. “Our eyes see the world from two slightly different perspectives,” Carl D’Orsi of Emory University School of Medicine, co-author of a paper in the November 13 issue of Radiology, noted in a prepared statement. “In this technique, the x-ray tube functions as the eyeball, with two different images providing slightly different views of the internal structure of the breast.” To create this stereoscopic view, the x-ray technologist shifts the x-ray tube 10 degrees (standard, straight-on x-rays would be at 0 degrees, so the two images are +5 and -5 degrees off center, respectively) to collect two different angles that can be reassembled into a more three-dimensional image of the breast. For the study, 779 women identified to have a high risk of breast cancer (related to family history or other factors, such as a previous history of the disease) volunteered to have two mammograms completed during a single visit–one with traditional 2-D x-rays and another with the 3-D, stereoscopic technique. For the stereoscopic view, the system fuses both images and conveys the depth perspective. The research team created a display system that fed the two different perspectives onto respective display monitors that were connected top-to-bottom, with the top monitor angled in toward the viewer, creating a 110-degree angle. The two displays were cross-polarized. A glass plate covered with reflective coating on the top separated the two screens and reflected the top image to a viewer while letting the bottom image through. The technician wore cross-polarizing glasses. “The radiologist’s visual system then fuses the two images into a single, directly visible in-depth image of the breast,” the researchers described in their paper. Some 12.9 percent of scans done by traditional x-ray indicated that a woman needed a follow-up visit for further testing, but only 9.6 percent of the scans required this with 3-D imaging. The percentage of women who were called for subsequent examinations based on the screening and found to actually have cancer was double that with the 3-D data than with the 2-D approach (although the overall numbers are small, four of 83 and three of 126, respectively), suggesting that the false-positive rate was lower with the new technique. The researchers are not sure if these findings will carry over to the general population, as the women in the study were already at a substantially increased risk for breast cancer. The additional x-ray snapshot required only an extra 90 seconds for scanning. But it is unclear whether the new technique would increase costs (due to additional equipment and training) or reduce them (because of reduction in false positives and unnecessary follow-up procedures). Concern has also been mounting that the radiation exposure during mammograms could slightly increase the risk for breast cancer. And the stereoscopic x-ray technique exposed subjects to twice as much radiation as the traditional, single-perspective scan because “we acquired each of the images comprising the stereo pairs with a full standard x-ray dose,” D’Orsi said. But they are working to reduce these levels. “Now that we know the technique is worthwhile, we’re repeating the study in the general population with a dose comparable to routine screening mammography.”

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
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UK unemployment continues to fall

14 November 2012 Last updated at 06:01 ET

Live: Bank of England inflation report and news conference

The number of people out of work in the UK has fallen to its lowest total for more than a year.

Unemployment fell by 49,000 to 2.51 million in the three months to September, taking the jobless rate to 7.8% from 7.9%.

The Office for National Statistics said that almost all the 49,000 fall was due to a decline in youth unemployment.

But the ONS said that the claimant count rose by 10,100 last month to 1.58 million, the highest since July.

The unemployment total is now 110,000 lower than for the July-September quarter last year, the ONS said. The number of people in work increased by 100,000 in the latest quarter to just under 30 million, a rise of more than half a million over the past year.

However, economists suggested that the figures indicated that the pace of job creation is slowing.

“The data therefore add to recent signs from business surveys that growing uncertainty about the economic outlook is causing increasing numbers of firms to retrench and focus on cost cutting,” said Chris Williamson, economist at economic research firm Markit.

Continue reading the main story

Even if employment in the private sector rises modestly rather than falls, it will likely not be enough to offset job cuts in the public sector as well as cater for an increasing labour force”

End Quote Howard Archer IHS Global Insight

Speaking at a news conference to present the Bank of England’s quarterly economic outlook, governor Sir Mervyn King said the figures showed that the labour market was “pretty strong”.

But he said it was hard to reconcile this with the weak growth in the economy.

Sir Mervyn said the economy had barely grown over the past two years and forecast that the recovery would be “subdued”.

“The road to recovery will be long and winding, but there are good reasons to suggest we are travelling in the right direction,” he said.

Other figures from the ONS showed that long-term unemployment – those out of work for over a year – increased by 12,000 in the quarter to September to 894,000, while 443,000 people have been jobless for more than two years, up by 21,000.

Part-time employment increased by 49,000 to 8.1 million, close to a record high, while there were 51,000 more people in full-time jobs, at 21.4 million. Unemployment among women fell by 10,000 to 1.09 million, and by 39,000 among men to 1.43 million.

Although the latest fall in unemployment was due to a reduction in youth unemployment, the ONS said that the jobless rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was still 963,000. This figure includes 315,000 unemployed young people in full-time education, the ONS said.

‘Challenges’

Nick Palmer from the ONS: “The basic message is that unemployment has continued to fall”

Mark Hoban, the Employment Minister, told the BBC: “This is another good set of figures. We’ve seen the number of people in work increase by 100,000 and youth unemployment is below a million again.”

But he insisted that there was “no room for complacency and that much hard work” remained to be done to get people back to work. “There are still some real challenges out there. We still need to tackle… long-term unemployment.”

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said the figures suggest “signs of some softening in the labour market’s recent impressive resilience”.

He said: “The most obvious sign of softening in the labour market came in a 10,100 rise in the number of claimant count unemployed, which was the largest increase for 13 months and followed a small rise of 800 in September.

“Even if employment in the private sector rises modestly rather than falls, it will likely not be enough to offset job cuts in the public sector as well as cater for an increasing labour force.”

The breakdown showed wide disparities across the UK, with unemployment falling in the North East and North West, but rising in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The ONS also released pay data showing that average earnings increased by 1.8% in the year to August, 0.1% up on the previous month.

BBC News – Business

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General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend

PERTH, Australia (AP) — In a new twist to the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal, the Pentagon said Tuesday that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under investigation for alleged “inappropriate communications” with a woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.

Panetta said that he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.

A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen’s communications were with Jill Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.

Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Broadwell, who is Petraeus’ biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.

Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

The senior official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen’s problematic communications.

The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen’s communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.

“Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter,” the official said. He said Allen currently is in Washington.

Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.

The FBI’s decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta’s decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.

Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.

In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen’s nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined.” He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.

Panetta said President Barack Obama was consulted and agreed that Allen’s nomination should be put on hold. Allen was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.

NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen’s appointment.

“We have seen Secretary Panetta‘s statement,” NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. “It is a U.S. investigation.”

Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama’s nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford’s hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.

___

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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