The world has made great progress against malaria in the last decade, but the fight is stalling for lack of funds, the World Health Organization’s annual report on malaria concluded on Monday. The amount spent on the disease by all countries rose to $1.8 billion last year, compared with $100 million in 2000, and, as a result, about one million children’s lives were probably spared over that time, the report said. But it would take $5 billion a year to get nets, insecticide spraying, diagnostic kits, effective drugs and hospital treatment to everyone needing them, and donor contributions, especially to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have been nearly flat since 2010. Last year, the number of new nets purchased fell sharply, to 66 million from 145 million two years ago. Since nets wear out in three years and children are always being born, large numbers of infants and toddlers will soon be unprotected if more money does not come in, the report warned. The W.H.O. estimated that there were 219 million malaria cases in the world in 2010, with 660,00 deaths.
World Briefing | Science and Health: Lack of Funds Could Weaken Malaria Fight, Report Says
Label: HealthRichard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria
Label: Business
Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria, the news organization said on Tuesday.
The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”
The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But an article on the NBC News Web site quotes Mr. Engel as saying their captors “were talking openly about their loyalty to the government” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be “the world’s most dangerous place for the press.”
NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr. Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared with Mr. Engel on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. A third, Aziz Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey. Mr. Akyavas said in an interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that a technician who traveled with the crew was still missing. NBC did not respond to a request for comment about that report.
Mr. Engel and the crew members covertly entered Syria several times this year to report on the insurgency that is fighting Mr. Assad there. Mr. Engel was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that “the Syrian regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned.”
In order to transmit their report in safety, Mr. Engel and his crew apparently crossed the border into Turkey. Their effort to cross back into the country on Thursday led to their capture.
About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on the “Today” show, “just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes” and “dragged us out of the car.” The kidnappers killed one of the rebels whom the crew had been traveling with, he said.
NBC’s Web site said there was “no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.”
Mr. Engel said on “Today” that the kidnappers had a plan to exchange the crew for several people being held by Syrian rebels. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal movement,” he said.
But the crew members were freed when the captors “ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group,” NBC’s Web site reported. “There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped.” The rebels then helped escort the crew to the border with Turkey.
“We are very happy to be back in Turkey,” Mr. Engel said, speaking in front of cameras at Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added, “The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”
NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of concern that any reporting could worsen the danger for the crew. News outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about a 2008 kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two reporters escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.
In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.
While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries, there was “psychological pressure,” Mr. Akyavas told NTV. He said they were blindfolded, handcuffed, and “every now and then had guns pointed on our heads. It was not pleasant.”
In his comments on “Today” Mr. Engel said: “They made us choose which one of us would be shot first, and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times.”
The crew members were also filmed for a video that showed them being held in a small, nondescript room.
Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread interest from viewers.
Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on earth for NBC News. His reporting, his expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is unparalleled.”
The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. “What I know about Richard Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy,” Mr. Williams said. When Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.
North Korean Satellite Most Likely Dead, Astronomers Say
Label: World
The North Korean satellite launched into space last week is out of control and most likely dead, astronomers reported Monday. The apparent failure will not cause the spacecraft to fall quickly back to earth but represents a major setback in Pyongyang’s bid to portray the launching as a patriotic and technological success.
“It’s tumbling and we haven’t picked up any transmissions,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks global rocket launchings and space activity. “Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point.”
North Korea’s state-run news media said nothing about the satellite’s dysfunction, focusing instead on the somber one-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the longtime leader. As part of the coverage, state television broadcast video footage of his daughter-in-law appeared to confirm that a new member of Pyongyang’s notoriously reclusive Kim dynasty is on its way.
The images showed Ri Sol-ju, the wife of the late Mr. Kim’s son and successor Kim Jong-un, dressed in a dark flowing dress and walking slowly beside her husband inside the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the Pyongyang mausoleum where Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, lie in state. Although she was wearing a high-waisted, loose-fit traditional "hanbok" dress, and there was no official mention of pregnancy, South Korean media detected what they considered a visibly swollen belly. The South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted a government source as saying that birth was "imminent."
State media has been describing the satellite launching as a triumphal achievement of the young leader, done in the face of worldwide criticism and United Nations sanctions on the North’s ballistic missile program.
The satellite, said to be about the size of a washing machine, reportedly carries an onboard camera to observe the earth. That mission requires the spacecraft’s orbit to be rock-steady.
Dr. McDowell said the tumbling implies that onboard systems meant to control and stabilize the craft had failed.
He added that radio astronomers had picked up no signals from the satellite and that optical astronomers had observed it brightening and dimming as it slowly tumbled end over end.
“It’s clear that the rocket part of this mission worked very well for the North Koreans,” Dr. McDowell said in an interview. “They ended up in the right orbit. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards.”
The possibility that Ms. Ri might be pregnant emerged in August, when South Korean newspapers, which scrutinize every photo of the reclusive Kim family, found out that a small handbag she was carrying was a Christian Dior, a startling display of the luxury enjoyed by the super-elite, even as its people suffer widespread hunger. The papers also noticed what they called a "belly fat" or a "baby bump." When Ms. Ri suddenly dropped from public view in September, it triggered rumors in Seoul that she was expecting. When she re-appeared in late October after a 50-day hiatus, she was wearing a long yellow coat. Her appearance Monday was the first in 40 days.
In keeping with the Kim dynasty’s tradition of reclusiveness, it is not clear how old Kim Jong-un is.
The South Korean spy agency told lawmakers in July that it believed that Mr. Kim was born in 1984 and married Ms. Ri in 2009. The couple already had a child, it said.
Some analysts speculated that Mr. Kim, who studied in Europe as a teenager, was trying to build a new leadership style by showing up with his wife, whose dresses have reportedly begun setting a fashion trend among the young elite women in Pyongyang.
But recent defectors from the North also reported that Mr. Kim has also intensified control on his people as he tried to consolidate his grip on power. In recent months, many military generals have been fired or demoted.
Massachusetts fines Morgan Stanley over Facebook research
Label: TechnologyBOSTON (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc’s initial public offering, will pay a $ 5 million fine to Massachusetts to settle charges that its bankers improperly influenced its research analysts when the Internet company went public.
Massachusetts’ top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged that Morgan Stanley improperly helped Facebook disclose sensitive financial information selectively, perpetuating what he calls “an unlevel playing field” between Wall Street and Main Street.
Morgan Stanley has been under criticism since the social media company went public in May for having revealed revised earnings and revenue forecasts to select clients on conference calls before the media company’s $ 16 billion initial public offering. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Galvin, who has been aggressive in policing how research is distributed on Wall Street ever since investment banks reached a global settlement in 2003, said the bank violated that settlement. He fined Citigroup $ 2 million over similar charges in late October.
Massachusetts says that a senior Morgan Stanley banker helped a Facebook executive release new information and then guided the executive on how to speak with Wall Street analysts about it. The banker, Galvin’s office said, rehearsed with Facebook’s Treasurer and wrote the bulk of the script Facebook’s Treasurer used when calling the research analysts.
The banker “was not allowed to call research analysts himself, so he did everything he could to ensure research analysts received new revenue numbers which they then provided to institutional investors,” Galvin said in a statement.
Retail investors were not given any similar information, Galvin said, saying this case illustrates how institutional investors often have an edge over retail investors.
(Reporting By Svea Herbst-Bayliss with additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York; Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Duke moves to No. 1 in AP poll after Indiana loss
Label: LifestyleDuke is back in a familiar place — No. 1.
The Blue Devils advanced one spot to replace Indiana at the top of The Associated Press' Top 25 on Monday, drawing closer to UCLA's record for most No. 1 rankings.
Indiana (9-1) held the top spot from the preseason poll through the first five weeks of the season. Butler beat the Hoosiers 88-86 in overtime Saturday. The Blue Devils (9-0), who were off last week, received 62 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel.
It is the 123rd week Duke has been ranked No. 1, 11 weeks behind UCLA. All but 31 weeks of Duke's stay on top have come since the 1991-92 season. The Blue Devils' last time at No. 1 was an 11-week run in 2010-11.
Michigan (11-0), which received the other No. 1 votes, and Syracuse moved up one place each to second and third. They were followed in the top 10 by Arizona, Louisville, Indiana, Ohio State, Florida, Kansas and Illinois.
Butler (8-2), which beat then-No. 9 North Carolina last month in the EA Sports Maui Invitational, moved into the poll at No. 19. This is the Bulldogs' first appearance in the rankings since the first week of 2010-11.
Wichita State (9-1) dropped out from 23rd after losing 69-60 at Tennessee. The Shockers spent two weeks in the rankings.
North Carolina, with 107 weeks, is the only other school ranked No. 1 for at least 100 polls.
Doctor and Patient: Tackling the Problem of Medical Student Debt
Label: HealthThursday’s announcement from the University of California, Los Angeles, of a $100 million medical student scholarship fund should inspire all of us to question the fact that medical education in the United States is paid for largely by student debt.
The new merit-based scholarships, established by entertainment executive David Geffen, will cover all educational, living and even some travel expenses for a fifth of next year’s entering medical school class, some 33 students. Mr. Geffen and school officials hope that eventually the school will be able to pay for all medical students and free them from the obligation to take out student loans.
“The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue,” Mr. Geffen said in a statement. “I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.”
The cost Mr. Geffen refers to has skyrocketed over the last 25 years. The median annual tuition, or yearly cost for attending classes, is now more than $32,000 at public medical schools, and more than $50,000 at private institutions. And medical students must also pay for textbooks, equipment, room, board and travel expenses, adding $20,000 to $30,000 to each year’s expenses and pushing the total four-year cost of attending medical school to more than $200,000 at public institutions and close to $300,000 at private schools.
Some medical students commit to military service or to practice in a medically underserved area to reduce costs. But the vast majority end up borrowing money from federal or private loan programs, or from family if they are fortunate enough. The median debt for medical students upon graduation is more than $160,000, with almost a third of students owing more than $200,000. And those figures do not include interest costs over payback periods of 25 to 30 years.
There are several reasons for the runaway costs. One is that the academic medical centers that house medical schools have become increasingly complex and expensive to run, and administrators have relied on tuition hikes to support research and clinical resources that may have only an indirect impact on medical student education.
An equally important contributor to the problem has been our society’s placid acceptance of educational debt as the norm, a prerequisite to becoming a doctor. Obtaining a medical education is like purchasing a house, a car or any other big-ticket item, the thinking goes; going into debt and then paying over time with interest is just the way the world works. And, say many observers, newly minted doctors will earn big salaries, allowing them easily to reimburse their loans.
While it is true that most doctors can pay off their debt over time, those insouciant observers fail to consider how loan burdens can weigh heavily on a young person’s idealism and career decisions.
For example, financial considerations have been shown to be a major deterrent for undergraduate students considering a career in medicine, particularly for students from diverse backgrounds. And even the most committed students who do make it to med school may eschew research or specialties like geriatrics, family medicine and pediatrics in favor of a more lucrative career in dermatology or ophthalmology.
These choices have enormous social repercussions. Despite the well-studied benefits of a diverse physician workforce, more than half of all medical students currently come from families with household incomes in the top quintile of the nation. Even more worrisome, student concerns about debt are exacerbating the nation’s physician shortage. By the end of this decade, we will be short nearly 50,000 primary care physicians and an additional 50,000 doctors of any kind.
Educators and groups like the Association of American Medical Colleges have been trying to address the problem of medical student debt for more than a decade. Some have suggested simply freezing costs or prorating debt according to the earning potential of a student’s chosen area of specialty.
But the most durable solutions thus far seem to be scholarships made possible by philanthropic donations like Mr. Geffen’s. The University of Central Florida’s new medical school, for example, was able to offer its charter class in 2009, consisting of 40 students, a four-year scholarship that covered tuition and living expenses thanks to several gifts. And the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, established with a $100 million gift from philanthropists Al and Norma Lerner, has been able to educate a small cadre of future physician-scientists while granting all of them scholarships to cover tuition costs.
Mr. Geffen’s fund represents the first sustained scholarship to cover all expenses, not just tuition, for a sizable portion of students at a single medical school. Combined with his unrestricted gift of $200 million that led to naming the medical school in his honor a decade ago, Mr. Geffen’s contributions represent the University of California system’s largest donation ever from a single individual.
But the real importance of Mr. Geffen’s donation for the rest of us lies in not its historic largesse, nor its hopeful vision. Rather, it is in the dramatic impact one individual can make when he makes medical education a priority, and the inevitable question such a gesture raises: Why has our society been so slow to do the same?
Is Google Abusing Its Market Power? Former Legal Allies Disagree
Label: Business
Left: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Right: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Susan Creighton is now in Google's corner while Gary Reback represents several companies that have complained to the government about Google.
In the digital economy, 14 years is an eternity. Fast-shifting technology means that companies, once feared and seemingly invincible, fade, while new powers rise to dominance, raising fresh sets of concerns.
Exhibit A: In the spring of 1998, the federal government and 20 states filed a landmark antitrust suit against Microsoft. A few months later, Google was founded.
Now Google is the subject of major antitrust investigations in the United States and Europe. In the United States, regulators are expected to announce a decision within days to sue or settle, and under what terms. The European decision will come soon as well.
Much has changed over the years, but two lawyers who helped build the case against Microsoft are playing important roles once again. But this time, Gary L. Reback and Susan A. Creighton are on opposite sides.
The two lawyers, and the positions they have taken, point to some striking similarities yet also significant differences between the two high-stakes investigations — and why the pursuit of Google has proved challenging for antitrust officials.
In 1996, Mr. Reback and Ms. Creighton were partners, representing Netscape, the pioneering Web browser company. They wrote a 222-page “white paper,” laying out Microsoft’s campaign to use its dominance of personal computer software to stifle competition from Netscape, the Internet insurgent. After Netscape sent their report to the Justice Department, the head of the antitrust division ordered an investigation.
Mr. Reback is now an attorney at Carr & Ferrell in Silicon Valley, where he represents several companies that have complained to the government about Google. He does not represent Microsoft, though that company is a born-again champion of antitrust action, against its rival Google.
In Google, Mr. Reback sees a familiar pattern — a giant company trying to hinder competition and attack new markets. Google, he says, is unfairly using its dominant search engine to favor the company’s offerings in online shopping, travel and local listings and thus stifle competition from Web sites that rely on Google search for traffic.
“From my perspective, it’s an instant replay of the Microsoft case,” Mr. Reback said in a recent interview, though he would not comment for this article. “It’s the same playbook.”
Not to Ms. Creighton, a partner in the Washington office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, who is in Google’s corner. She has testified before Congress on Google’s behalf and negotiated with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency conducting the antitrust investigation, and where she was a senior official during the Bush administration.
“Google’s conduct is pro-competitive,” Ms. Creighton declared in her Senate testimony last year. “Far from threatening competition, Google has consistently enhanced consumer welfare by increasing the services available to consumers.”
Ms. Creighton hits two main themes in Google’s defense. The first is the consumer benefit of all Google’s free services. The second is that the cost to consumers of switching to Internet alternatives like Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the Expedia travel site or Yelp local listings is “zero,” she said. Or, as Google repeatedly says, competition is “just a click away.”
In the late 1990s, Microsoft had its version of both arguments. Microsoft bundled a free Web browser into its Windows operating system — an added feature at no cost, surely a consumer benefit. In its trial testimony, Microsoft showed that millions of people had downloaded the competing Netscape browser onto Windows — a rival product just a double-click away.
But in the trial, the evidence taken as a whole portrayed a wide-ranging effort by Microsoft to crush Netscape. It is not an antitrust violation for a powerful company to gain a dominant share of one market and then expand into other markets. The legal issue is the tactics the dominant company employs to expand its empire.
Liberal Democratic Party Returns to Power in Japan
Label: World
Christopher Jue/European Pressphoto Agency
Japanese poll workers counted ballots at a polling station in Tokyo during parliamentary elections on Sunday.
TOKYO — Japan’s voters handed a landslide victory to the Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections on Sunday, giving power back to the conservative party that had governed Japan for decades until a historic defeat three years ago.
In a chaotic election crowded with new parties making sweeping promises, from abolishing nuclear power after the disaster at Fukushima to creating an American-style federal system, the Liberal Democrats prevailed with their less radical vision of reviving the recession-bound economy and standing up to an increasingly assertive China. The win was a dramatic comeback for the party that built postwar Japan, but was ejected from power in 2009 after failing to end two decades of social and economic stagnation.
A victory all but ensures that the Liberal Democratic leader, Shinzo Abe, a former prime minister who is one Japan’s most outspoken nationalists, will be able to form a government with himself as prime minister.
However, many Japanese saw Sunday’s vote not as a weakening of Japan’s desire for change, or a swing to the anti-Chinese right, but as a rebuke of the incumbent Democrats, who had swept aside the Liberal Democrats with bold vows to overhaul Japan’s sclerotic postwar order, only to disappoint voters by failing to deliver. Mr. Abe acknowledged as much, saying that his party had simply ridden a wave of public disgust in the failures of his opponents.
“We recognize that this was not a restoration of confidence in the Liberal Democratic Party, but a rejection of three years of incompetent rule by the Democratic Party,” Mr. Abe told reporters on Sunday.
In the powerful lower house, the Liberal Democrats held a commanding lead, winning 266 of the 400 seats that had been decided. NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, was forecasting that the Liberal Democrats could win more than 300 of the 480 seats up for grabs, which would almost mirror the results in 2009, when the Democrats won 308 seats. The Democrats won only 44 of the seats that had been decided, putting them in a dead heat for a distant second place with the news Japan Restoration Party, which was started by Osaka’s popular mayor. It was a crushing defeat for a party whose victory three years ago was heralded as the start of a vigorous two-party democracy.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda resigned as head of the Democratic Party to take responsibility for the loss, despite holding onto to his own seat in Chiba, outside Tokyo.
“We failed to meet the people’s hopes after the change of government three years and four months ago,” Mr. Noda told reporters.
In a sign of how far the pendulum had swung against the incumbents, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan was fighting to keep his seat from an unknown Liberal Democratic challenger in a contest that remained too close to call. Other prominent members also lost their seats in what was increasingly looking like a rout.
“We tried the Democratic Party for three years, and it was a total disaster,” said Hideyuki Takizawa, a 52-year-old stockbroker at a polling station in the Tokyo suburb of Kawagoe. Mr. Takizawa said he had voted for the Democrats in the last election but had opted for the Liberal Democrats this time. “I have higher hopes now in the Liberal Democratic Party, especially in foreign affairs,” he said.
On declaring victory, Mr. Abe quickly promised to pass a massive spending bill, and said stimulating the faltering economy and ending deflation were his top priorities. He also promised help for the nation’s beleaguered export sector including more aggressive steps to drive down the yen and make Japanese products cheaper abroad.
There had been concerns that the hawkish Mr. Abe might try to fan Japanese anxieties over China’s growing strength, particularly that nation’s increasingly assertive claims to disputed islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in Chinese. But Mr. Abe promised to move quickly to improve ties with China, Japan’s largest trading partner.
Viral Justice: Domestic Abuse Victim Calls Out Attacker on Facebook
Label: TechnologyAmber Taylor had been living in a Missouri motel with her boyfriend, Austin “Wildboi” McCauley, until this week, when he reportedly beat her unconscious with a baseball bat.
Two days later, the 23-year-old took a picture of herself recovering from her injuries and posted it to McCauley’s public Facebook page, calling him out for his abuse and prompting his arrest.
Since its posting online, the photo has accumulated almost 10,000 “Likes” and close to 1,000 comments. Its caption includes the sentence, “I’m not the only girl he’s done this to but I’m not scared anymore I’m going to speak up.”
McCauley has since been arrested and charged with second-degree domestic assault.
MORE: Savannah Dietrich Calls Out Her Attackers, Sees Them Punished
In her interview with news station WDAF, Taylor explained she wanted to expose her boyfriend’s true nature to the people who thought they knew him best. “I just wanted his friends to actually see the true him,” she said.
The young mother reports that she’s not only received support from McCauley’s own friends, but also from people across the country. “I’m actually glad that I have people that are writing me and telling me they care. Because being with him, I didn’t get to have any friends.”
This isn’t the first time social media has provided an outlet for a victim in need of support. Earlier this year, 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich violated a court order when she announced the names of her two underage attackers on her public Twitter account. Though the maneuver had her facing contempt charges, Dietrich and her parents reported it was necessary to bring attention to what they characterized as the unfair nature of her trial.
Though public pressure on the court still didn’t result in the attackers receiving jail time, they were sentenced to harsher punishments than were originally conceived before Dietrich went public with their names. And in the melee, the teenager inadvertently rallied a nation’s support, serving as an example of how self-advocacy can facilitate healing.
That may be the take-away for Hillary Adams as well. The disabled daughter of Texas judge, William Adams, Hillary was the subject of her father’s relentless beatings and secretly videotaped one of those incidents. Seven years later, she posted the video online. Though Adams was already grown up and no longer living with her father, she claimed the posting had more to do with holding him personally accountable, even if the law wouldn’t.
Trauma sufferers often report that keeping abuse a secret is a move that backfires, creating a greater sense of personal shame, no matter how blameless they may be. But social media is an accessible avenue they can use to tell their stories, offering survivors the chance to shed their shame and reclaim their dignity.
Do you think social justice can really be achieved with social media? Would you use it to get justice? Let us know what you think in the Comments.
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• In U.S., a New Definition for Rape
A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer. In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Moments of silence around NFL for shooting victims
Label: LifestyleTwo players who wear No. 26 joined hands with the coaches of the St. Louis Rams and Minnesota Vikings in tribute to the victims of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and New York Giants' players wore decals with the initials of Sandy Hook Elementary School.
There were moments of silence before all NFL games Sunday. The ceremony in St. Louis included Rams coach Jeff Fisher and Vikings coach Leslie Frazier, along with Rams running back Daryl Richardson and Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield.
The players were selected because their number represents the total slain at the elementary school on Friday.
Dozens of children wearing uniform jerseys held hands with players in a circle extending from the 30-yard lines at the Edward Jones Dome, centered on the Rams logo at midfield. Richardson, Winfield and the coaches formed an inner circle.
In Atlanta, Giants' players wore decals with the acronym "SHES" on the backs of their helmets.
Flags were at half-staff at M&T Bank Stadium when the Baltimore Ravens hosted the Denver Broncos in one of the eight early games.
With the Maryland National Guard standing on the opposite end of the field from the flag bearers, the scoreboards went black as the public address announcer asked the crowd to observe "silent reflection" in the wake of Friday's "horrific tragedy."
Players from both team stood stoically on the sideline. The moment of silence was followed by the national anthem.
In New Orleans, the Superdome fell silent for nearly 30 seconds before the Saints hosted Tampa Bay. People around the stadium removed their hats, bowed their heads and remained still until the public address announcer introduced the national anthem singer, "American Idol" contestant Skylar Laine.
In Houston, video screens went black as the moment was observed before the Texas hosted the Indianapolis Colts.
In Chicago, Green Bay wide receiver Donald Driver retweeted the names of the victims.
Buffalo Bills CEO Russ Brandon tweeted that a moment of silence was to be held in Toronto later Sunday before the Bills played the Seattle Seahawks at the downtown Rogers Centre.
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