Kate leaves hospital after morning sickness

LONDON (Reuters) – Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate left the King Edward VII hospital in central London on Thursday where she had spent four days being treated for acute morning sickness.

Accompanied by her husband, Kate, 30, appeared at the steps of the hospital smiling and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers. Neither she nor William spoke to waiting reporters before being driven way.

Kate, who married the second-in-line to the throne in April last year, has been suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an acute morning sickness which causes severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients.

There has been no announcement about when the baby is due, although the prince’s spokesman has said Kate is less than 12 weeks pregnant.

Kate, known formally as the Duchess of Cambridge, will now recuperate at Kensington Palace, a royal residence in west London, her husband’s office said.

“She is feeling better but now requires a period of rest,” a royal spokeswoman said. “Their royal highnesses would like to thank the staff at the hospital for the care and treatment the duchess has received,” the spokeswoman added.

The onset of the severe sickness and the need for Kate to go to hospital brought forward the announcement of her pregnancy, sparking a frenzy in the British media and even taking by surprise her grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, according to reports.

Bookmakers have been quick off the mark to lay odds on a name for the unborn baby, who will be third in line to the British throne after William and his father Charles.

The government is passing legislation in time for the birth to change historic rules of succession so that males no longer have precedence over a female sibling.

There has even been speculation that Kate could be carrying twins, as the acute sickness she is suffering is slightly more common in twin pregnancies.

World leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama were swift to follow British Prime Minister David Cameron in sending their congratulations.

(Reporting by Tim Castle and Stephen Addison, editing by Paul Casciato)

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U.S. and Russia to meet on Syria amid chemical weapons fears

DUBLIN (AP) — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats will hold a surprise meeting Thursday with the United Nations' peace envoy for Syria, signaling fresh hopes of an international breakthrough to end the Arab country's 21-month civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will gather in Dublin on the sidelines of a human rights conference, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. She provided few details about the unscheduled get-together.

Ahead of the three-way meeting, Clinton and Lavrov met separately Thursday for about 25 minutes. They agreed to hear Brahimi out on a path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The two also discussed issues ranging from Egypt to North Korea, as well as new congressional action aimed at Russian officials accused of complicity in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The former Cold War foes have fought bitterly over how to address Syria's conflict, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow of shielding its Arab ally. The Russians respond by accusing the U.S. of meddling by demanding the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime and ultimately seeking an armed intervention such as the one last year against the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

But the gathering of the three key international figures suggests possible compromise in the offing. At the least, it confirms what officials describe as an easing of some of the acrimony that has raged between Moscow and Washington over the future of an ethnically diverse nation whose stability is seen as critical given its geographic position in between powder kegs Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

The threat of Syria's government using some of its vast stockpiles of chemical weapons is also adding urgency to diplomatic efforts. Western governments have cited the rising danger of such a scenario this week, and officials say Russia, too, shares great concern on this point.

On Thursday, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused the United States and Europe of using the issue of chemical weapons to justify a future military intervention against Syria. He warned that any such intervention would be "catastrophic."

In Ireland's capital, one idea that Brahimi could seek to resuscitate with U.S. and Russian support would be the political agreement strategy both countries agreed on in Geneva in June.

That plan demanded several steps by the Assad regime to de-escalate tensions and end the violence that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011. It would then have required Syria's opposition and the regime to put forward candidates for a transitional government, with each side having the right to veto nominees proposed by the other.

If employed, the strategy would surely mean the end of more than four decades of an Assad family member at Syria's helm. The opposition has demanded Assad's departure and has rejected any talk of him staying in power. Yet it also would grant regime representatives the opportunity to block Sunni extremists and others in the opposition that they reject.

The transition plan never got off the ground this summer, partly because no pressure was applied to see it succeed by a deeply divided international community. Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who drafted the plan, then resigned his post in frustration.

The United States blamed the collapse on Russia for vetoing a third resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would have applied world sanctions against Assad's government for failing to live by the deal's provisions.

Russia insisted that the Americans unfairly sought Assad's departure as a precondition and worried about opening the door to military action, even as Washington offered to include language in any U.N. resolution that would have expressly forbade outside armed intervention.

Should a plan similar to that one be proposed, the Obama administration is likely to insist anew that it be internationally enforceable — a step Moscow may still be reluctant to commit to.

In any case, the U.S. insists the tide of the war is turning definitively against Assad.

On Wednesday, the administration said several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

The comments came a day after the United States and its 27 NATO allies agreed to send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria. The deployment, expected within weeks, is meant solely as a defensive measure against the cross-border mortar rounds from Syria that have killed five Turks, but still bring the alliance to the brink of involvement in the civil war.

The United States is also preparing to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida, as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, officials said Wednesday.

Word of the move came as the State Department announced Clinton will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week for high-level meetings on the situation in Syria and broader counter-terrorism issues. She is likely then to recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, according to officials.

The political endorsement is designed to help unite the country against Assad and spur greater nonlethal and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the rebels.

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Sri Lanka see backlash from Aussie ‘wounded soldiers’

(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team to be wary of a backlash from Australia in their three-test series after the hosts were stung by their series defeat to South Africa earlier this week.

Australia’s hopes of snatching the Proteas’ top test ranking ended in a crushing 309-run defeat in the third and final test in Perth on Monday, but Jayawardene took little comfort from the home side’s disappointment.

“I see them as wounded soldiers – they could come back stronger against us,” Jayawardene told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday, on the eve of a three-day tour match against a Chairman’s XI side.

“So we just need to make sure we are ready for that and start well.

“We can’t be complacent – we need to make sure we know from ball one we give them a good go at it.”

Sri Lanka have their own problems coming into the first test at Hobart next week, losing their last test at home to New Zealand by 167 runs to level a two-match series 1-1, with key batsmen out of form.

Kumar Sangakkara scored five, nought and 16 in his three innings against New Zealand, but Jayawardene backed the veteran to bounce back in Sri Lanka’s bid to win their first test Down Under.

“I am happy that he went through a lean phase because he’ll be really hungry for runs – that’s Kumar for you,” Jayawardene said of the 35-year-old stalwart.

Jayawardene also said he would weigh up his future as captain after the series, which includes tests in Melbourne and Sydney, after taking on the role for a second time in the wake of Tillakaratne Dilshan’s sudden resignation in January.

“After this, we get a well-deserved four weeks off, after about three years, so it gives me a bit of time to think (about) what I need to do,” said Jayawardene, who captained the team for more than three years in his first stint from 2006.

“We need to groom another leader as well. It’s very important to have that changeover done smoothly while the senior players are still in the side.”

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Habla el hombre que definió qué significa ser un hacker

“Soy un hacker.” La frase la pronuncia, sin titubeos, Pekka Himanen, un finlandés de 39 años que publicó, en 2001, La ética del hacker y el espíritu de la era de la información , un libro fundacional en su análisis de lo que significa la tecnología moderna en nuestra sociedad, y la influencia que tendrán los hackers en la sociedad futura.

La entrevista está por comenzar. El punto de encuentro es un hotel céntrico de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, pero en lugar de recibirnos en el salón exclusivo reservado con este fin, el filósofo Himanen (recibido en la universidad de Helsinki a los 20 años) prefiere reunirse en el café del hotel, rodeado de gente y atento a su entorno.

Este hombre, que hoy es profesor en la Universidad de Arte y Diseño de Helsinki, y profesor visitante de la Universidad de Oxford y el Instituto IN3 de Barcelona, y miembro del Instituto Helsinki para la Tecnología de la Información (HIIT) es autor, también, de El Estado del bienestar y la sociedad de la información: el modelo finlandés , que realizó junto con el sociólogo español Manuel Castells.

Himanen llegó a nuestro país invitado por la Universidad Nacional de San Martín, la Universidad Diego Portales y por la Fundación OSDE, pero además de esta convocatoria también lo trajo una de sus grandes pasiones: la investigación. “Estamos estudiando, junto con Manuel Castells, qué tipo de modelo de desarrollo nuevo se necesita después de la crisis mundial. Me refiero a un modelo de desarrollo económico combinado con desarrollo humano. Creo que es fundamental combinar una economía sustentable con el bienestar sustentable”, sostiene al comenzar la entrevista. Según cuenta el filósofo, Argentina es parte de un gran estudio que está llevando a cabo en distintos países de América latina, Asia, África, Estados Unidos y Europa.

¿Usted se considera un hacker?

Sí, claro que sí. Para mí un hacker es alguien creativamente apasionado por lo que hace y quiere hacerlo con otros. No necesariamente tiene que tener que ver con las computadoras, se puede ser hacker del conocimiento o de cualquier otro campo. Es importante decir que utilizo el término hacker en el sentido original del término, que no quiere decir delincuente informático.

¿Y usted es hacker en qué área o con qué especialización?

Yo diría en la filosofía, investigación y quizás en la vida.

¿Cómo es eso?

La etica del hacker es un libro que también habla sobre la filosofía de vida, es decir, uno tiene que preguntarse a sí mismo: ¿cuál es mi pasión creativa? ¿Qué es lo que le da significado a mi vida? Esas son grandes preguntas que todos deberíamos considerar.

Popularmente el término hacker tiene una mala connotación pero según usted explica, es un error. En su libro menciona otro término: cracker ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre ambos?

Hacker quiere decir que la persona es creativamente apasionada por lo que hace, y lo quiere realizar con lo que yo denomino “interacción enriquecedora”, es decir con otras personas. Cracker, en cambio, es el delincuente informático, la persona que ingresa en los sistemas informáticos y esparce virus, entre otros delitos.

¿Por qué, entonces, los hackers son considerados delincuentes?

Todo comenzó en los medios de comunicación, en los inicios del software. Por aquel entonces los medios tomaron la palabra hacker y comenzaron a utilizarla como sinónimo de delincuente informático para hacerlo más atractivo y dar impacto en sus noticias, pero la palabra hacker no tiene nada que ver con la delincuencia informática.

Según su libro los hackers informáticos ponen a disposición gratuita de los demás su creación para que la utilicen, pongan a prueba y la desarrollen. ¿Cómo un hacker se transforma en Bill Gates? En otras palabras, ¿cómo se transforma un hacker en un hombre de negocios?

La ética hacker es una ética de trabajo creativa en la era informática que reemplaza lo que Max Weber describió como “ética de trabajo industrial” pero después depende de cuán abierto es uno en el desarrollo de otras cosas. No necesita ser cerrado para ser un éxito, por ejemplo Linus Torvalds está a favor de la apertura total y también ha tenido mucho éxito. Internet corre en Linux, tres de cada cuatro smartphones en el mundo corren en Linux, porque Android está basado en Linux. Pero más allá de eso no hay contradicciones, porque uno puede tener pasión creativa como empresario. Lo importante es dar suficiente nivel de apertura.

¿Cómo ayudan a la sociedad los hackers y las redes sociales en situaciones de conflicto, injusticia social o cuando no hay libertad de expresión?

En situaciones como la guerra de Kosovo o en la Primavera Árabe -levantamientos populares de países árabes realizados entre 2010 y 2012- la difusión de lo que estaba pasando fue a través de las redes sociales. Y es muy importante tener en cuenta que las redes sociales tienen un impacto en la vida real. Si pensamos en la Primavera Árabe, por ejemplo, algunos de los peores dictadores que nosotros pensamos que nunca dejarían el poder, colapsaron. Y las redes sociales colaboraron mucho en la caída de estos dictadores porque la Primavera Árabe estuvo organizada a través de Internet. También en Europa se produjeron hechos similares. Las redes sociales tuvieron gran protagonismo en el movimiento de “Los Indignados”, que produjeron cambios políticos en España y en Grecia.

¿Le parece que lo que escribió hace más de una década sigue vigente?

Sí. El libro es más actual ahora. Si uno toma, por ejemplo, el capítulo de open source o de código abierto, su utilización ha crecido exponencialmente si tenemos en cuenta que Internet corre en software en código abierto y se diseminan en varios equipos como teléfono, grabadores digitales y televisores. Probablemente uno no se de cuenta que está utilizando código abierto, pero todos lo estamos utilizando. En cuanto al trabajo empresarial, la nueva ética de pasión creativa enriquecedora está impulsando al Silicon Valley.

¿Cómo ve a la sociedad futura?

Creo que la gran pregunta es lo que hoy estamos investigando en el proyecto que estoy realizando, donde nos damos cuenta que el viejo modelo de desarrollo ha llegado a su fin y ahora tenemos que replantear las prácticas grandes en la economía, la sustentabilidad ecológica. Creo que vamos a necesitar del potencial completo de la cultura de la creatividad y hemos de desarrollar esa nueva forma de bienestar sustentable, especialmente la sustentabilidad ecológica. Debemos tener en cuenta que el planeta no tiene problema en cuanto al cambio climático, puede continuar sin nosotros, pero nosotros no podemos continuar sin el planeta.

Por último, ¿qué trata de decirnos con su libro?

Para mí la clave es que todos debemos preguntarnos: ¿cuál es mi pasión creativa, cuál es mi propósito significativo en esta vida?

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Lady Gaga buys Michael Jackson’s costumes at auction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Lady Gaga purchased 55 items belonging to late singer Michael Jackson in a weekend auction that raised more than $ 5 million, a portion of which will be donated to charity, Julien’s Auctions said.

The auction, held in Beverly Hills, showcased 465 lots of items spanning Jackson’s career through the years, including costumes and props used on tour and in music videos.

Highlights from the sale included the late singer’s “BAD” tour jacket raising $ 240,000, a white glove selling for $ 192,000 and one of the singer’s Pepsi and Awards jacket garnering more than $ 68,000, the auction house said in a statement.

Following Sunday’s auction, Gaga told her 31 million Twitter followers that “the 55 pieces I collected today will be archived & expertly cared for in the spirit & love of Michael Jackson, his bravery, & fans worldwide.”

Jackson died aged 50 in June 2009 in Los Angeles from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol and sedatives.

The collection of outfits, designed by Los Angeles-based collaborators Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush and gifted back to them by the late singer, were taken on a world tour earlier this year, traveling across South America, Europe and Asia.

In September, British hat designer Philip Treacy designed his first London fashion week show in a decade around Jackson’s auction costumes, which were worn by the models down the runway and accessorized with hats inspired by the late singer’s life.

Gaga not only attended Treacy’s show but was on hand to introduce the milliner’s collection.

The auction exceeded pre-sale estimates of $ 1 million to $ 2 million, and a portion of the final amount raised will benefit the Guide Dogs of America and Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn’t help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, “this will be a convincer that they should continue,” said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don’t work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

“Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $ 300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

“For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor,” said that study’s leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Philippines death toll climbs, hundreds still missing after typhoon

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (Reuters) - Blocked roads and severed communications in the southern Philippines frustrated rescuers on Wednesday as teams searched for hundreds of people missing after the strongest typhoon this year killed at least 283 people.

Typhoon Bopha, with central winds of 120 kph (75 mph) and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph), battered beach resorts and dive spots on Palawan island on Wednesday but it was weakening as it moved west.

Hardest hit was the southern island of Mindanao, where Bopha made landfall on Tuesday. It triggered landslides and floods along the coast and in farming and mining towns inland.

Interior Minister Manuel Roxas said 300 people were missing.

"Entire families were washed away," Roxas, who inspected the disaster zone, told reporters.

Most affected areas were cut off by destroyed roads and collapsed bridges and army search-and-rescue teams were being flown in by helicopter.

Power was cut and communications were down.

According to tallies provided by the military and disaster agency officials, 283 people were killed.

Thousands of people were in shelters and officials appealed for food, water and clothing. Dozens of domestic flights were suspended on Wednesday.

The governor of the worst-hit province, Compostela Valley, in Mindanao said waves of water and mud came crashing down mountains and swept through schools, town halls and clinics where huddled residents had sought shelter.

The death toll in the province stood at 160. In nearby Davao Oriental province, where Bopha made landfall, 110 people were killed.

"The waters came so suddenly and unexpectedly, and the winds were so fierce," the Compostela Valley governor, Arthur Uy, told Reuters by telephone.

He said irrigation reservoirs on top of mountains had given way sending large volumes of water down to the valleys. Torrential rain often triggers landslides down slopes stripped of their forest cover.

Damage to agriculture and infrastructure in the province was extensive, Uy said.

STUNNED

Corn farmer Jerry Pampusa, 42, and his pregnant wife were marooned in their hut but survived.

"We were very scared," Pampus said. "We felt we were on an island because there was water everywhere."

Another survivor, Francisco Alduiso, said dozens of women and children who had taken shelter in a village centre, had been swept away.

"We found some of the bodies about 10 km (6 miles) away," Alduisa told Reuters. The only building left standing in his village was the school.

Another survivor, Julius Julian Rebucas, said his mother and brother disappeared in a flash flood.

"I no longer have a family," a stunned Rebucas said.

An army commander said two dozen people had been pulled from the mud in one area and were being treated in hospital.

About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year, often causing death and destruction.

Almost exactly a year ago, Typhoon Washi killed 1,500 people in Mindanao.

(Additional Reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.

Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.

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Student group to go to court over Facebook privacy policy

VIENNA (Reuters) – An Austrian student group plans to go to court in a bid to make Facebook Inc, the world’s biggest social network, do more to protect the privacy of its hundreds of millions of members.

Campaign group europe-v-facebook, which has been lobbying for better data protection by Facebook for over a year, said on Tuesday it planned to go to court to appeal against decisions by the data protection regulator in Ireland, where Facebook has its international headquarters.

The move is one of a number of campaigns against the giants of the internet, which are under pressure from investors to generate more revenue from their huge user bases but which also face criticism for storing and sharing personal information.

Internet search engine Google, for example, has been told by the European Union to make changes to its new privacy policy, which pools data collected on individual users across its services including YouTube, gmail and social network Google+, and from which users cannot opt out.

Europe-v-facebook has won some concessions from Facebook, notably pushing it to switch off its facial recognition feature in Europe.

But the group said on Tuesday the changes did not go far enough and it was disappointed with the response of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), which had carried out an audit after the campaign group filed numerous complaints.

Facebook, due to hold a conference call later on Tuesday to answer customer concerns about its privacy policy, said its data protection policies exceeded European requirements.

“The latest Data Protection report demonstrates not only how Facebook adheres to European data protection law but also how we go beyond it, in achieving best practice,” a Facebook spokesman said in an emailed comment.

“Nonetheless we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the DPC concludes.”

LOSING PATIENCE

Europe-v-facebook founder Max Schrems, who has filed 22 complaints with the Irish regulator, said more than 40,000 Facebook users who had requested a copy of the data Facebook was holding on them had not received anything several months after making a request.

“The Irish obviously have no great political interest in going up against these companies because they’re so dependent on the jobs they create,” Schrems told Reuters.

Gary Davies, Ireland’s deputy data protection commissioner, denied Facebook’s investment in Ireland had influenced regulation of the company.

“We have handled this in a highly professional and focused way and we have brought about huge changes in the way Facebook handles personal data,” he told Reuters.

Schrems also questioned why Facebook had only switched off facial recognition for users in the European Union, even though Ireland is the headquarters for all of Facebook’s users outside the United States and Canada.

Facebook is under pressure to reverse a trend of slowing revenue growth by selling more valuable advertising, which requires better profiling of its users.

Investors are losing patience with the social network, whose shares have dropped 40 percent in value since the company’s record-breaking $ 104 billion initial public offering in May.

Last month, Facebook proposed to combine its user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram, loosen restrictions on emails between its members and share data with other businesses and affiliates that it owns.

Facebook is also facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States, where it is charged with violating privacy rights by publicizing users’ “likes” without giving them a way to opt out.

A U.S. judge late on Monday gave his preliminary approval to a second attempt to settle the case by paying users up to $ 10 each out of a settlement fund of $ 20 million.

Europe-v-facebook said it believed its Irish battle had the potential to become a test case for data protection law and had a good chance of landing up in the European Court of Justice.

Schrems said the case could cost the group around 100,000 euros ($ 130,000), which it hoped to raise via crowd-funding – money provided by a collection of individuals – on the Internet.

(Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Mark Potter)

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“Boardwalk Empire” creator on legalizing drugs and making Nucky likeable again

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – The prohibition drama “Boardwalk Empire” wrapped its spectacular third season Sunday night just weeks after the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana.

To “Boardwalk” creator Terence Winter, who has immersed himself in the history of prohibition to research his gangster epic, the votes feel like a move in the right direction.

“It’s great. I think they should legalize drugs in general,” Winter told TheWrap. “The war on drugs is clearly not working, and I think they should take the profit motive out of being a drug dealer. And maybe kids will go to college and do something else.”

Winter, who reassembled his writers a few weeks ago to begin work on the show’s fourth season, talked to us about whether they ever go out of their way to slow down the action, making Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) likable again, and whether things are worse today than they were in the 1920s.

TheWrap: Is ‘Boardwalk’ making a case for drug legalization?

Winter: Well, I think history made it for us with prohibition. We’re just reflecting the reality of how it went down. I’m not trying to bend the reality or the truth of what happened. It clearly didn’t work. I don’t think people were more disposed to drink when alcohol was legal.

Actually, it had the opposite effect. Women didn’t start drinking until prohibition was enacted and college students didn’t start drinking until prohibition was enacted. Leaving the mystery aside might have had a better impact on the country – keeping it legal. In my personal opinion I don’t think making drugs legal would make anybody more likely to become a heroin addict, for example.

This is going to sound strange, but I mean it as a compliment. “Boardwalk” has a way of lulling you into looking at the costumes, and listening to the dialogue, and marveling at how pretty everything is. There are times when I almost want to nod off, it’s so comforting – and then suddenly someone gets set on fire. I feel you’re making a conscious effort to use boredom to really shock us at other times. Do you ever put in a scene that’s deliberately slow?

No, we don’t. I would disagree and say – slow or boring – there is dialogue that needs to be attended to and I think you need to pay attention to what’s going on. The pacing can sometimes be slower than certainly an action scene or a scene with incredible violence. Because we have such wide-ranging characters and such wide-ranging circumstances, some things might seem slower by comparison.

Obviously a scene involving a political figure or Margaret’s storyline, as opposed to something Al Capone is doing, is just by the very nature of it going to feel slow. But no, none of it is done by design.

I mean it in a good way. If you think things are slowing down, they’re not. It’s almost a trick.

The audience is so wide-ranging, too. We have people who can’t stand the violence and they’re much more entertained by the family stuff. One person’s slow is another person’s fascinating.

With the final episodes we got to see Nucky become really likable again. He’s always been generous, but at times he seemed a little too caught up in himself to care about the people around him. Was there an effort to make him a good guy again?

One of the points of this season is that he does get caught up in himself. That all comes home to visit in a big way in episode 11. He doesn’t know anything about Eddie Kessler the guy who works really closely with him. He doesn’t know if he has a family. He doesn’t know Chalky White’s phone number. It becomes apparent that he’s spent way too much time concerned with himself and his own affairs.

If you depict any character honestly, and show all of their colors, you’re going to find something relatable or likeable with anybody. And that’s certainly the truth with Al Capone or Luciano or Tony Soprano or any other famous character.

And certainly Steve Buscemi has an inherent likable quality to him. So when you add that to the mix you can’t help but like the guy.

Imagery is so important to the show, and I feel like at one point this season you did something just because it was gorgeous. When Billie changes her hair color to blonde, was there any reason to do that besides how incredible it looked in the explosion?

Well, she was sort of finally coming to terms with who she really was. That was the episode where she dropped the façade of Billie Kent and told Nucky her real name. She was going through a metamorphosis and that sort of illustrated that a little bit. They were sort of not pretending with each other any more.

Is Billie a natural blonde?

That color wasn’t natural. She wasn’t being Billie Kent that night. She was being the real person underneath. … But I agree it did look great in the explosion. Meg Chambers Steedle, who plays Billie Kent, is absolutely one of those people the camera just falls in love with. Unfortunately the context was terrible. But it was extremely cinematic.

Harrow kind of became the hero of the show this season. His scene of taking down the entire house full of gangsters: Wow. We’ve always been fascinated with the character and for me this season I was more interested in seeing who he is as a person and seeing him take that journey and fall in love and really explore that side of him. Given the way the story was, we knew it would end in violence.

But following the trajectory from the end of season 2, we knew this guy was very loyal to Jimmy and Angela and we knew he would stick around and take care of that kid. And of course Gillian being who she is, it wasn’t going to end well.

Is Gillian kaput at this point? The last time we saw her she was in a heroin daze, and she’s kind of lost everything.

She will be back on the show. She’s certainly still alive.

Is there anybody on the show you think you can’t kill?

Nope. Everybody’s up for grabs and that’s from the top on down. Anything can happen.

We hear so much about how much trouble our country is in. Do you think things are worse than they were in the 1920s?

No, and if anything, reading about how bad things were in the 1920s is strangely comforting in terms of how we think about things today. The level of corruption and the whole idea of going to hell in a hand basket is certainly nothing new. You look back and think, this pales in comparison. I think the more things change the more they stay the same.

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