Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan once told Jeremy Paxman how to access voicemail messages, the Leveson Inquiry heard today. Newsnight anchorman Mr Paxman said he attended a lunch at Mirror headquarters in Canary Wharf in September 2002 where Mr Morgan teased Ulrika Jonsson about her relationship with former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, saying he knew about a conversation they had.Mr Paxman said Mr Morgan explained to him how to access people's phone messages after teasing the Swedish television presenter about the conversation.Mr Paxman told the inquiry: "He turned to me and said 'Have you got a mobile phone?'"I said yes and he asked if there was a security setting on the message bit of it. I didn't know what he was talking about."He ... Continue reading →
WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday questioned Mitt Romney's choice in foreign policy advisers, saying that some are so right-wing that the advice they give deserves "second thought." "I don't know who all of his advisers are, but I've seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought," Powell said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." He gave the example of Romney recently saying that Russia is the "number one geopolitical foe" to the United States. "Come on Mitt, think," Powell said. "That isn't the case." Romney's team of about 40 foreign ... Continue reading →
Rupert MurdochPlayed by Anthony Hopkins With the help of a few Murdoch-esque details—brown contact lenses, glasses, and a squinty smile—Sir Anthony Hopkins could portray a convincing News Corp. founder. Not only are they similar in age (Hopkins is 74; Murdoch is 81) and hairline, but the Welsh Academy Award winner has proven that he can play powerful, scandal-prone real-life figures—notably, in Oliver Stone’s Nixon—and master accents, a skill needed to achieve Murdoch’s Aussie twang. More important, who would you rather see play off Kidman’s talents (aside from Zac Efron) as the newspaper mogul who developed such a close relationship with Brooks that some called her his favorite daughter? If Hopkins is busy, Ian McKellan and Murdoch’s fellow Aussie Geoffrey Rush are worthy understudies. Charles Patrick ... Continue reading →
Over five centuries after the famed explorer's death, historians are taking a fresh look at what motivated Christopher Columbus to make his voyage across the Atlantic -- and how his faith may have played into those motivations. Some scholars, after analyzing Columbus' will and other documents, have devised a new theory about the explorer. They believe he was a Marrano, or a Jew who pretended to be a Catholic to avoid religious persecution. These historians also theorize that Columbus' main goal in life was to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control, and that he decided to take his historic quest to North America in order to find a new homeland for Jews who had been forced out of Spain. During the time of Columbus' voyage, Marranos ... Continue reading →
In support of Johnny Depp’s upcoming portrayal of Tonto in Disney’s Lone Ranger adaptation, the Comanche Nation has officially adopted the actor into its community, raising the question: has Johnny Depp been available for adoption all this time? (And if so, how did we miss the ads?) The traditional ceremony took place last week at the Albuquerque home of the president and founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity, LaDonna Harris, where the actor reportedly offered gifts to the ceremony guests as a sign of thanks and posed for a few photographs. In a press statement, Harris explained why the organization decided to officially bring Depp into the fold: It seemed like a natural fit to officially welcome him into our Comanche family. . . . ... Continue reading →
Posted in Main on May 22nd, 2012 by Pingdom May 22 is the birthday of Ethernet, a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs). It was on this day in 1973 that Robert Metcalfe submitted a memo that detailed how the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he worked, should connect its personal computers to a shared printer. Metcalfe has admitted that he more or less invented the birthday of Ethernet because it was “useful” for marketing purposes, but that doesn’t make the invention of Ethernet any less significant. Chances are that most, if not all of you, whether you know it or not, use Ethernet to read this post. Turning 39 today, Ethernet is a technology that is so fundamental ... Continue reading →
In the early 1970s, the most trusted man in America did a very untrustworthy thing. Unbeknownst to the millions who tuned in religiously to the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am to fly his family to vacation spots around the world. Together with a handful of friends, they roamed from the South Pacific to Haiti, with Cronkite snorkeling, swimming, and drinking, thanks to a friend at the airline. According to Douglas Brinkley’s sweeping and masterful biography Cronkite, the news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but took no action against his star anchor. This was not the Cronkite I grew up admiring from the time I watched his image flickering on ... Continue reading →
REUTERSJohn Travolta LOS ANGELES -- The drama surrounding John Travolta's sexual battery litigation escalated Tuesday after the lawyer who originally represented the "Grease" star's two male accusers sued their new lawyer, Gloria Allred, for allegedly poaching his client -- and she promptly claimed she would countersue him for defamation.Okorie Okorocha filed separate federal lawsuits against Travolta in Los Angeles earlier this month on behalf of two massage therapists, officially known as John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2.However, Okorocha dropped John Doe No. 1 as a client after it emerged that 58-year-old Travolta was in New York at the time his accuser claimed he was groped in Beverly Hills. John Doe No. 1 claimed that he had mixed up his dates and hired ... Continue reading →
Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 800 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the ... Continue reading →
