NewstalkCleveland - WERE 1490 Cleveland's Home for Honest News » News Talk 216

Gayle King: Oprah Is Not Blue Ivy’s Godmother

News Talk 216 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:25:09 +0000

Despite all of the rumors swirling around Beyonce and Jay-Z‘s godparents pick, the couple actually have not made any announcements regarding their selections. Oprah Winfrey‘s best bud, Gayle King, went on CBS to drive the point home that the media maven is not Blue Ivy Carter‘s godmother.

The Oprah-godmother rumor began as soon as Blue Ivy entered the world. Whispers about who the godmother would be for the royal baby of hip-hop were nonstop and fingers kept pointing at Oprah. King dispelled the untruths when she appeared on the CBS Morning Show on Friday to finally quell the media circus about how Oprah had been deemed godmother by the regal pair of performers.

Tongues also wagged about all of the lavish gifts that Oprah supposedly showered upon baby Carter, such as a treasure trove of books galore that were reported to be just the first in a series of countless other presents.

It’s absolutely not true that she’s the godmother, King said. She’s friends with them, of course, and likes them both very much. She’s working on sending them a baby gift. She hasn’t even had time to send a baby gift because she’s been away.

There was also talk that Jay-Z’s best friend, Tyran “Ty Ty” Sith, had actually been selected as the baby’s godfather, which is also not true.

Meanwhile, Blue Ivy just happens to be the envy of all newborns. Despite the reported decadence with regards to clothing and infant gear, Blue Ivy became the youngest person ever credited with gracing a Billboard chart. Jay-Z’s newly-recorded studio cut “Glory,” which has been officially billed as “featuring B.I.C.,” an abbreviation of “Blue Ivy Carter,” began on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at No. 74 with 1.7-million audience impressions on 54 radio stations, according to Nielsen BDS.

British CEO Waves $1.5M Bonus

LeBron Posterizes Bulls Player En Route To Win [VIDEO]

News Talk 216 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:38:47 +0000

In what was most likely a preview of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron James and the Miami Heat looked to send a message to the Chicago Bulls. On the way to a 97 to 93 win at American Airlines Arena LeBron made a step ladder out of an unsuspecting John Lucas, III.

The 5’11 guard was victimized in the first quarter when LeBron caught an alley-oop pass from D-Wade and the “King” leapt OVER him on his way to the basket. It was two of 35 points James scored on the night. Watch the embarrassment below.

Meet The Next Basketball Wife: LeBron James’ Fiance Savannah [PHOTOS]

Lebron James Knocks Over Kid After Dunking On Him [VIDEO]

Police Called To Kim Kardashian’s House

News Talk 216 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:20:52 +0000

Last night an unknown man went to Kim Kardashian‘s house in Beverly Hills with luggage intending to stay with her, and police were called. He was not able to gain access to Kim’s home because of the gate, but told security he was there to work on her reality show.

Security asked him to leave but he wouldn’t, and security then contacted the police. More details are available at TMZ.

Did Bow Wow Sleep With Kim Kardashian? [VIDEO]

Wake Tech In Raleigh NC On Lockdown After Gunman Is Spotted

News Talk 216 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:34:27 +0000

via WTVD Wake Tech's main campus was put on lockdown Tuesday morning after a gunman was allegedly spotted near the community college in south Raleigh. Wake County Sheriff's Public Information Officer Phyllis Stephens said authorities received a call about a person on campus with a gun just before 9 a.m. Students, faculty and staff at the Fayetteville Road locati... Read more..

Tennessee Tea Party Groups Demand Textbooks Overlook US Founders’ Slave-Owning History

News Talk 216 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:31:06 +0000

via huffingtonpost.com

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country’s founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

And that further teaching would also include that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”

The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Read Full Story

Article courtesy huffingtonpost.com

Brandy: “Nobody Could Play Whitney Houston Like Me” [VIDEO]

News Talk 216 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:38:10 +0000

Brandy recently talked about portraying Whitney Houston in a movie, and let other actresses know that she would be the best person to play Whitney. The two co-starred in the 1997 remake of Cinderella.

Brandy says she has Whitney Houston’s personality and “isms” down, but doesn’t want to do the singing. Would you want to see Brandy play Whitney Houston onscreen?

Don’t Stop At SOPA

News Talk 216 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:41:18 +0000

SOPA and PIPA are (almost) dead. Now can we talk about the law that already exists?by Mark P McKenna

Opposition to the Protect IP Act (“PIPA”) and Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) reached a fever pitch this week, following a coordinated effort by a number of technology companies and technology-related websites that included a day-long Internet “blackout” in protest of the proposed bills. And the opposition seems to have been remarkably successful, with the White House announcing its opposition to the bills and so many senators and representatives—including many former co-sponsors of the bills—withdrawing their support over the last few days that both the Senate and House have shelved consideration of their respective bills.

Thank goodness. These bills are terrible policy and they have very serious constitutional infirmities. Among other things (and there are many other things), these two bills empower the attorney general to have entire websites taken down based only on application to a court and an ex parte hearing (meaning a hearing at which the defendant is not present), flagrantly violating the Supreme Court’s prior restraint doctrine. They also allow courts to order Internet service providers to stop recognizing sites deemed “dedicated to infringing activities” in these ex parte hearings (of which there is no apparent opportunity for review). This remedial approach presents a clear threat to the Internet’s architecture and, according to the country’s top cybersecurity experts, greatly increases security and privacy risks. These and other problems have been well covered, and I will not belabor them here.

Rather than launch into new discussions of the somewhat-less-bad replacements for PIPA and SOPA that will inevitably be introduced, I’m hoping this week’s backlash will focus future discussion on the many ways in which intellectual property law is already causing the harms that made SOPA and PIPA so terrifying. Because many of the objectionable features of those two laws are already in use. It’s time to talk about that.

Even before SOPA and PIPA, the government began claiming authority to seize domain names and make their content disappear without notice or a hearing. Indeed, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already seized hundreds of domain names without any express statutory authorization, sometimes later commencing actions under civil forfeiture laws, but sometimes simply holding those domain names without filing charges. Many of these domain name seizures, it seems clear, were essentially carried out at the direction of private content owners. Indeed, ICE even announced one set of seizures “on a Burbank soundstage (Walt Disney Studios) flanked by members of the Motion Picture Association of America.”

Supporters of SOPA and PIPA have claimed those bills target only “foreign rogue sites.” That is largely untrue, since neither bill limits the new private remedies to foreign sites. But to the extent it is true that the effect of these bills would be felt primarily by foreign sites, it is only because the government is already seizing domestic domain names (and, in the government’s view, a domestic domain name is any domain name that uses a U.S.-based TLD like .com or .net—even those clearly directed at users in a foreign country). Likewise, even without SOPA or PIPA, private parties have persuaded courts to issue injunctions (again, frequently ex parte) which include orders to non-party registries, registrars, and/or search engines to take precisely the same sorts of technical steps SOPA and PIPA would authorize. (The authority under which a court can order a nonparty to take such steps is a mystery.)

It would be one thing if these seizures or the injunctions entered by courts in cases of private enforcement really were limited to the most egregious cases—those involving only “rogue” sites “dedicated to infringing activities.” But they often have not been. In some cases, ICE has seized domain names, held them for many months without any notice to the owner, and then never filed charges. Why not? Because it turns out the domain name owner had, in fact, done nothing wrong. Oops. Even when it’s not making mistakes—mistakes, by the way, that can be avoided with a little due process—ICE has acted aggressively toward websites that are far from the core of copyright infringement. For example, ICE has seized domain names on the basis that the websites at the seized domain names linked to other sites that contained infringing material. Courts have generally not considered mere linking sufficient to constitute direct copyright infringement even on the civil side. Under certain circumstances, linking could give rise to contributory infringement. But contributory copyright infringement has never been thought to give rise to criminal liability, and criminal conduct is necessary for the proper use of civil forfeiture statutes. ICE has smuggled in a significant expansion of criminal liability under cover of enforcement against the “worst of the worst.”

The same sort of thing has happened in cases of private enforcement, where courts have ordered search engines or other Internet-related nonparties to block access to a site. Nor is this limited to copyright cases: ICE has seized the domain names of clothing resellers on the grounds that these sites were selling counterfeit products, without any apparent sensitivity to the fact that trademark law actually permits resale of branded goods in most circumstances. Here, too, ICE has worked a significant expansion of the scope of trademark law while pretending only to be enforcing the rules against those easily classified as rogue websites.

Story Compliments Of Slate.com

SOPA And PIPA Bills Postponed In Congress

News Talk 216 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:43:13 +0000

via BBC News

The US Congress has halted debate on two contested anti-online piracy bills.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed a vote on the Protect IP Act (Pipa) scheduled for Tuesday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith then said his panel would not consider the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) until a compromise was reached.

The decisions follow protests by online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and thousands of other websites, which went “dark” in protest for 24 hours earlier this week.

“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT IP Act,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday.

Mr Smith, a Texas Republican in the House of Representatives, said in a statement: “I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy.

“It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Read Full Story

Article courtesy bbc.co.uk

Musician Johnny Otis Dies At 90

News Talk 216 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:29:38 +0000

via BBC News

Johnny Otis, dubbed the “godfather of rhythm and blues”, has died aged 90.

The bandleader, who had been unwell for several years, passed away at his home in Los Angeles, his manager said.

Best known for the track Willie and the Hand Jive, he also wrote Every Beat of My Heart, a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961.

“He is one of the greatest talents of American music and he was a great American,” said music historian Tom Reed, adding “He could do it all.”

Otis, who was born to Greek-American parents, grew up in a predominately black community in Berkeley in California, listening to blues, gospel and swing.

“As a kid, I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black,” said Otis, who changed his birth name from John Veliotes.

Otis worked as a radio DJ and became heavily involved in the civil rights movement, writing about both in his 1968 book Listen to the Lambs.

He continued to tour well into his 70s, while also becoming an ordained minister and organic farmer. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Read Full Story

Article courtesy bbc.co.uk

Dutch Teen Completes Historic, Controversial Solo Sail Around The Globe

News Talk 216 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:33:48 +0000

via CNN

Some 518 days after she first set off alone in her sailboat, 16-year-old Laura Dekker glided into a Caribbean port on Saturday to complete her historic, and controversial, voyage around the globe.

The Dutch citizen arrived in Sint Maarten around 3 p.m. (2 p.m. ET), her spokesman Anton Van de Koppel told CNN. And a picture linked from Dekker’s official website Saturday shows her standing behind a group of children holding a sign, “Congratulations Laura Dekker … Welcome back to St. Maarten.”

While other teens have made similar sea voyages — some of them without stopping, as Dekker did — the Dutch girl unofficially appears to be the youngest to do so sailing alone. In 2010, Australian Jessica Watson finished a non-stop, unassisted solo circumnavigation days before her 17th birthday.

But sailing journalists have said, and her team didn’t dispute, that her route was less than 21,600 orthodromic (or, in the same direction for a great circle) nautical miles, which is the length of the equator and the distance generally used for round-the-world sailing records.

Dekker states on her website that she traversed about 27,000 nautical miles on her own solo voyage aboard her 38-foot yacht, which she has dubbed Guppy. She was 14 when she began August 21, 2010, in Gibraltar and then headed west across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, across the Pacific, through the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and ultimately to her final destination in the Caribbean.

The trip almost didn’t happen — not because of problems at sea, but rather due to a high-profile legal fight by Dutch authorities to prevent the teen from setting sail, for her own safety.

Read Full Story

Article courtesy cnn.com