DXPG

Total Pageviews

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Participate in The Times’s Same-Sex Marriage Decision Coverage

Demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court in March, as the justices heard arguments on California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative.Win Mcnamee/Getty Images Demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court in March, as the justices heard arguments on California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative.

As we prepare to cover the news later this month of the Supreme Court’s decisions in two cases about same-sex marriage, The Times wants to hear from readers with a personal stake in the rulings. When the justices decide on California’s ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, and on the Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks federal benefits to gay spouses, Times video journalists will be in California to speak with same-sex couples about the potential impact the decisions will have on their lives.

If you are part of a same-sex couple living in California and are willing to be interviewed on camera with your significant other, please fill out the form below. We are interested in talking to gay people from all walks of life, with a range of viewpoints on the issue of same-sex marriage. Your comments and contact information will not be published. We will follow up with you shortly if we select you as a potential interview participant.



Detained Opposition Leader’s Name Echoes at Rallies on Eve of Iran Vote

In the last hours of the brief, tightly controlled presidential election campaign in Iran, the first since the disputed outcome in 2009, the name of the detained opposition leader who claimed to have won the last contest, Mir Hussein Moussavi, was once again chanted at public rallies.

As the blogger Arash Karami noted on Twitter, the chant “Oh, Hussein, Mir Hussein!” echoed in a brief video clip said to have been recorded during an opposition rally on Wednesday in the city of Kerman.

Iranian reformists chanting in support of the detained opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi in video said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the city of Kerman.

Arash Azizzada, a producer for Voice of America’s Persian News Network in Washington, drew attention to the same chant in another clip, said to have been recorded in Mashhad, a northeastern city where there was a large rally for the only reformist candidate on the ballot this year, Hassan Rowhani.

Chants in support of Iran’s detained opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the city of Mashhad.

Video said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the Iranian city of Mashhad during a rally by supporters of the reformist presidential candidate Hassan Rowhani.

In another clip Mr. Karami drew attention to on Thursday, the crowd at a Rowhani campaign rally this week in the western city of Urmia cheered loudly when the names of the former presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami were mentioned â€" both men have recently endorsed Mr. Rowhani â€" and then broke into chants in honor of Mr. Moussavi, who remains under house arrest in Tehran.

Video of a campaign rally by Iranian reformists said to have been recorded on Monday in the city of Urmia.

As campaigning ceased at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning ahead of Friday’s election, Mr. Rowhani’s supporters claimed to detect a late surge in support and shared photographs and video of rallies in Tehran and other cities that seemed to evoke some of the enthusiasm that swept the nation in the last days of the 2009 race.

Along with Mehdi Karroubi, another reformist who ran for president in 2009 and also contested the result, Mr. Moussavi has been held under house arrest for more than two years. Citing sources close to the families of both men, Reuters reported this week that they currently live “an intensely lonely existence with virtually no contact with the outside world and all their activities controlled by security forces.”

Despite having been charged with no crime, Mr. Moussavi, 71, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, 67, are prisoners in their own home near central Tehran’s Pasteur Street. “Two of the doors are welded shut and authorities keep constant watch over the third door,” the unnamed sources close to their daughters told Reuters. “Cameras were installed all around the house, as well as floodlights and surveillance devices. All door handles inside have been removed so doors will not fully close, denying the couple privacy.”

Mr. Karroubi, 75, has been moved to a safe house in Tehran. According to his son, the former speaker of Iran’s Parliament is now confined to one floor of a three-story home under the control of the country’s intelligence ministry.



Detained Opposition Leader’s Name Echoes at Rallies on Eve of Iran Vote

In the last hours of the brief, tightly controlled presidential election campaign in Iran, the first since the disputed outcome in 2009, the name of the detained opposition leader who claimed to have won the last contest, Mir Hussein Moussavi, was once again chanted at public rallies.

As the blogger Arash Karami noted on Twitter, the chant “Oh, Hussein, Mir Hussein!” echoed in a brief video clip said to have been recorded during an opposition rally on Wednesday in the city of Kerman.

Iranian reformists chanting in support of the detained opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi in video said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the city of Kerman.

Arash Azizzada, a producer for Voice of America’s Persian News Network in Washington, drew attention to the same chant in another clip, said to have been recorded in Mashhad, a northeastern city where there was a large rally for the only reformist candidate on the ballot this year, Hassan Rowhani.

Chants in support of Iran’s detained opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the city of Mashhad.

Video said to have been recorded on Wednesday in the Iranian city of Mashhad during a rally by supporters of the reformist presidential candidate Hassan Rowhani.

In another clip Mr. Karami drew attention to on Thursday, the crowd at a Rowhani campaign rally this week in the western city of Urmia cheered loudly when the names of the former presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami were mentioned â€" both men have recently endorsed Mr. Rowhani â€" and then broke into chants in honor of Mr. Moussavi, who remains under house arrest in Tehran.

Video of a campaign rally by Iranian reformists said to have been recorded on Monday in the city of Urmia.

As campaigning ceased at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning ahead of Friday’s election, Mr. Rowhani’s supporters claimed to detect a late surge in support and shared photographs and video of rallies in Tehran and other cities that seemed to evoke some of the enthusiasm that swept the nation in the last days of the 2009 race.

Along with Mehdi Karroubi, another reformist who ran for president in 2009 and also contested the result, Mr. Moussavi has been held under house arrest for more than two years. Citing sources close to the families of both men, Reuters reported this week that they currently live “an intensely lonely existence with virtually no contact with the outside world and all their activities controlled by security forces.”

Despite having been charged with no crime, Mr. Moussavi, 71, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, 67, are prisoners in their own home near central Tehran’s Pasteur Street. “Two of the doors are welded shut and authorities keep constant watch over the third door,” the unnamed sources close to their daughters told Reuters. “Cameras were installed all around the house, as well as floodlights and surveillance devices. All door handles inside have been removed so doors will not fully close, denying the couple privacy.”

Mr. Karroubi, 75, has been moved to a safe house in Tehran. According to his son, the former speaker of Iran’s Parliament is now confined to one floor of a three-story home under the control of the country’s intelligence ministry.



Smartphone Makers Pressed to Address Growing Theft Problem

Seeking to curb the nationwide increase in smartphone thefts, New York State’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, and the San Francisco district attorney, George Gascón, on Thursday announced an initiative to try to address the problem.

The Secure Our Smartphones initiative, headed by the two men, includes prosecutors, political officials, law enforcement officials and consumer advocates from more than a dozen states. It will push the smartphone industry to develop technologies that would discourage theft and dry up the market for those who sell stolen devices.

The announcement came just before Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Gascón were scheduled to meet on Thursday afternoon with representatives from Apple, Samsung, Google’s Motorola unit and Microsoft, which together make up about 90 percent of the smartphone market.

“It is totally unacceptable that we have an epidemic of crime that we believe can be eliminated if the technological fixes that we believe are available are put into place,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

The coalition is encouraging manufacturers to equip all smartphones with a “kill switch.” A consumer would be able to tell a provider that a cellphone has been stolen, and the phone â€" like a stolen credit card â€" would be rendered inoperable. “For the thieves who would steal them,” Mr. Schneiderman said, the phones would be “nothing more than a paperweight.”

Lost and stolen cellphones cost consumers over $30 billion in 2012. About 113 smartphones are lost or stolen each minute in the United States and, according to the Federal Communications Commission, cellphone thefts account for 30 to 40 percent of all robberies nationwide. In New York City, the thefts jumped 40 percent last year alone.

But the statistics, Mr. Schneiderman said, “don’t tell the full story.” Attending the announcement were Paul Boken and Annie Palazzolo, the father and sister of Megan Boken, a 23-year-old who was shot and killed in St. Louis in August 2012 during an attempted smartphone robbery.

“The industry has the moral and the social obligation to fix this problem,” Mr. Gascón said. “There are very few things that can be fixed with a technological solution, and this is one of them.”

Apple on Monday said that its next mobile operating system, iOS 7, to be released in the fall, has a new feature called Activation Lock that will help thwart theft.

When asked about Apple’s announcement, Mr. Gascón said that “Apple has been very vague” about the Activation Lock system, but both he and Mr. Schneiderman stressed that they would not judge the new feature until they could see how it actually works. An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment.

Though he was not clear about how far the coalition would go to make manufacturers comply with its demands, Mr. Schneiderman said, “The stakes here are very high and we intend to pursue this with every tool in our toolbox.”



Microsoft to Open Mini-Stores Inside Best Buy

It isn’t hard to find a place to buy a Windows computer. What’s missing, apparently, is the right kind of place.

To correct that, Microsoft and Best Buy announced a plan on Thursday to create 600 Windows stores within existing Best Buy retail locations in the United States and Canada. The Windows stores, at 1,500 to 2,200 square feet, will be the biggest stores-within-a-store at Best Buy, which has similar dedicated areas for Samsung and Apple products.

The partnership is an effort to give a lift to Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest operating system, which has failed to reverse declines in shipments of personal computers since it came out last fall. Microsoft is investing much more heavily in the retail side of the business, where Apple has a distinct advantage with its stores.

Microsoft currently has almost 70 Microsoft-owned retail stores, about 30 of which are “pop-up stores” in shopping malls and other locations.

Since Windows already runs on the vast majority of personal computers sold in Best Buy stores today, the deal between the companies is really a renovation of the stores’ existing computer departments. Walls will be decorated with Windows logos and spacious new tables will display Windows computers. An additional 1,200 workers will be hired to work exclusively in the Windows departments.

“We’ve learned again and again that dedicated, trained people makes such a difference when helping customers,” said Tami Reller, chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Windows at Microsoft.



Secret Surveillance Court May Reveal Some Secrets

The secret court that adjudicates national security-related information requests lifted the veil on its operations a tiny bit on Wednesday, ruling that portions of one of its earlier opinions could be disclosed to the public.

The ruling came in a case by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. It had pressed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow one of its opinions to be disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request. The government argued that there is good reason to keep the case sealed.

The court said it saw no reason to prohibit disclosing the documents sought under the Freedom of Information request. It left it to a federal court in the District of Columbia to make a ruling on the specific Freedom of Information Act litigation.

In other words, the court said it would not stand in the way of another court, if it ruled in favor of the organization’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“The victory today was a modest one,” E.F.F. wrote in a blog post announcing the decision.

The actions of the court have been the subject of fierce public debate ever since last week’s disclosures, first reported in The Guardian and The Washington Post, of widespread telephone and Internet surveillance efforts authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. On Tuesday, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the Senate calling for the Attorney General to declassify portions of the surveillance court’s opinions, at least its interpretations of the law.

“It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are interpreted, enforced, and adjudicated in complete secrecy,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, one of the co-sponsors of the bill said in a statement.
The chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, earlier this year asked the court to summarize its major opinions, at least explaining its legal reasoning, while excising the classified facts of the case. The court’s chief justice, Reggie B. Walton, wrote back, explaining why that was not feasible. For one thing, the judge said, summaries would miss out on “the more nuanced or technical point of a court’s analysis.” He added, “For FISC opinions specifically, there is also the very real problem of separating the classified facts from the legalanalysis.”



Secret Surveillance Court May Reveal Some Secrets

The secret court that adjudicates national security-related information requests lifted the veil on its operations a tiny bit on Wednesday, ruling that portions of one of its earlier opinions could be disclosed to the public.

The ruling came in a case by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. It had pressed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow one of its opinions to be disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request. The government argued that there is good reason to keep the case sealed.

The court said it saw no reason to prohibit disclosing the documents sought under the Freedom of Information request. It left it to a federal court in the District of Columbia to make a ruling on the specific Freedom of Information Act litigation.

In other words, the court said it would not stand in the way of another court, if it ruled in favor of the organization’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“The victory today was a modest one,” E.F.F. wrote in a blog post announcing the decision.

The actions of the court have been the subject of fierce public debate ever since last week’s disclosures, first reported in The Guardian and The Washington Post, of widespread telephone and Internet surveillance efforts authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. On Tuesday, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the Senate calling for the Attorney General to declassify portions of the surveillance court’s opinions, at least its interpretations of the law.

“It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are interpreted, enforced, and adjudicated in complete secrecy,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, one of the co-sponsors of the bill said in a statement.
The chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, earlier this year asked the court to summarize its major opinions, at least explaining its legal reasoning, while excising the classified facts of the case. The court’s chief justice, Reggie B. Walton, wrote back, explaining why that was not feasible. For one thing, the judge said, summaries would miss out on “the more nuanced or technical point of a court’s analysis.” He added, “For FISC opinions specifically, there is also the very real problem of separating the classified facts from the legalanalysis.”



Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)