UK lawmakers: Rupert Murdoch unfit to lead company

LONDON (AP) ? News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead his global media empire, an influential group of British lawmakers said Tuesday.

In a scathing report, the lawmakers said his company misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking at one of its tabloids.

Parliament's cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said News International, the British newspaper division of Murdoch's News Corp., had deliberately ignored evidence of malpractice, covered up evidence and frustrated efforts to expose wrongdoing.

Murdoch has insisted he was unaware that hacking was widespread at his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, blaming underlings for keeping him in the dark.

The legislators said if that was true, "he turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies."

"We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company," the report by the panel of 11 lawmakers said.

Labour Party panel member Tom Watson said the decision had not been unanimous, and Conservative lawmakers Louise Mensch ? who opposed condemning Murdoch ? said the split had been along party lines.

The judgment on Murdoch implies that News Corp., which he heads, is also not a fit to control British Sky Broadcasting, in which News Corp. holds a controlling stake of 39 percent.

The committee agreed unanimously that three key News International executives misled Parliament by offering false accounts of their knowledge of the extent of phone hacking at the News of The World ? a rare and serious censure which usually demands a personal apology to legislators.

Murdoch closed down the 168-year-old Sunday tabloid last July amid public revulsion at the hacking of voice mail messages of celebrities and victims of crime, including murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Throughout the scandal, News International's approach "was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing," the legislators wrote.

Associated Press

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Pandora vs. Slacker vs. Spotify: iPhone music streaming app shootout!

While iTunes is the undisputed king of digital music, it doesn't offer streaming or subscription services, leaving the field wide open for a wide variety of contenders, including Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify. That's important because not everyone wants to buy their music. Some iPhone users want more variety and a better way to discover new music, or simply re-discover old favorites. That's because music is personal. It has to suit both our general tastes and our mood at the moment. A good streaming music app needs to reflect this. It needs to have music available that we like, when we like, and the better it does that job, the better it is. Pandora, Slacker, and Spotify each have their own unique take on streaming music, but which one does it best?

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How to change the (ridiculous) AT&T e-mail signature

AT&T has a pretty lame e-mail signature. Maybe you've heard.

We could lambaste these signatures and the reason they're there until the next iPhone is released. They're horrible. They cheapen what otherwise is a pretty excellent e-mail experience. But here's a secret the iPhone folks who chuckle at this sort of thing — those would be the same ones who rocked the "sent from my iPhone" signature like it was a badge of individuality or something — don't bother telling you. It takes all of 30 seconds to swap it out.

Yes. You no longer have to have the "Sent from my HTC One™ X, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone" signature. Gone is the particularly horrific "Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S™ II Skyrocket™, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone." (By the way, we're sensing a trend here, in case you didn't notice.")

Got half a minute? We're going to walk you through it after the break.

read more

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Maybe This Is Why Those in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones [Art]

Happen to have an extra 2000 pounds of glass laying around? In need of a saturday afternoon project? Why not shatter all that glass and make it look like silicon oxide is oozing from your windows? More »

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Two-Drug Therapy Helped Kids With Type 2 Diabetes

SUNDAY, April 29 (HealthDay News) -- Children with type 2 diabetes may achieve better blood sugar control with a combination of two drugs, metformin and Avandia, than with metformin alone, a new study suggests.

However, Avandia (rosiglitazone) was recently linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, so it may not be the best drug for these young patients, experts say.

"Many kids with type 2 have a rapidly progressive disease requiring early onset of insulin therapy, and current approaches to oral therapy may be inadequate," said lead researcher Dr. Philip Zeitler, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Zeitler noted that the choice of Avandia as a companion medication was made in 2002, before the cardiac problems with the drug were known.

"Given the problems with rosiglitazone, we are not recommending it at this time," he said. "However, no problems with rosiglitazone have been noted in [the study participants] to date, though the cohort size is too small for a thorough safety analysis."

The report was published online April 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine, to coincide with a planned presentation of the finding at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting in Boston. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases funded the research.

For the study, almost 700 obese children, aged 10 to 17, with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to metformin alone, metformin plus Avandia or metformin along with intensive lifestyle changes in diet and exercise.

Over the course of 46 months, the researchers found that metformin alone did not adequately control blood sugar levels in 51.7 percent of patients. Among those who received metformin and lifestyle changes, 46.6 percent did not have their blood sugar controlled.

However, among those taking metformin and Avandia, blood sugar levels were not well-controlled in only 38.6 percent of patients, the researchers found.

In addition, blood sugar control was harder to achieve in black and Hispanic children, they added.

"Metformin is probably not as effective as we've assumed, and additional treatment approaches are urgently needed in this population of adolescents with a steadily progressive form of diabetes," Zeitler said.

In terms of lifestyle changes, Zeitler isn't sure why they didn't work better. Part of the reason may be tied to children's reluctance to adopt new diet and exercise habits, he said.

Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the clinical diabetes center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said that "type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents is a calamity, because we don't have any good medications."

Type 2 diabetes in children is particularly aggressive and can lead to heart and liver problems at a very young age, he said.

"It is not surprising that combination is better than mono-therapy," Zonszein said. "We want to be aggressive in treating type 2 diabetes in children, but we have to balance the risk and benefits of these drugs. But, we really don't have good data and good medications to treat children."

Another expert, Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, added that "we need a whole new set of studies to see how to treat type 2 diabetes in children."

Dr. David B. Allen, from the department of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, said that "calories consumed in excess of expended is leading to an epidemic of early-life type 2 diabetes, the burden of which is falling disproportionately on disadvantaged youth."

This latest study shows that, once children develop the condition, it is very difficult to prevent deterioration in spite of intensive lifestyle changes or medications, he said.

More information

For more on diabetes, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Catholic League President Slams Dan Savage as the Ultimate Bully

Catholic League President Bill Donohue is not having any of Dan Savage's apology.

On Friday, the gay rights activist delivered the keynote addresses at the National High School Journalism Conference in Seattle, saying - while making a general point about how Christians look past plenty of passages in the Bible, most notably those promoting slavery - that folks should “learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people.”

In response, a handful of students walked out on the speech and Savage has faced criticism from a number of organizations.

Dan Savage on the Bible: Ignore Homosexual BS!

Savage has since clarified certain remarks, specifically saying he regrets referring to the students who left his lecture as making a "pansy-ass move," acknowledging this is a form of bullying.

But is he sorry for the message he was trying to send? No.

“If believers can ignore what the Bible says about slavery, they can ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality," Savage has reiterated as the crux of his point.

But none of that is enough for Donohue. He has released a statement that castigates Savage for a "history of making... vile, disgusting and bigoted remarks" and says:

Ironically, Savage’s bullying of Christian students was done in the name of protesting the bullying of homosexuals. When it comes to bullying, Savage has no peer. We hope the Obama administration, which has welcomed him to the White House, takes note.

What do YOU think, THGers? Does Savage owe Christians more of an apology?

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Huawei partners with Intel to test TD-LTE interoperability in China

In a classic case of east meets west, Huawei and Intel have joined forces to create an interoperability test lab that will focus on China's homegrown time-division LTE (TD-LTE) network. While the technology runs contrary to the more common frequency-division LTE (FD-LTE), the Chinese brand of 4G is situated to take root in the US under Clearwire's banner. Through its partnership with Huawei, Chipzilla -- a newbie in the smartphone arena -- will be able to engage in end-to-end testing of its mobile equipment and verify its readiness for TD-LTE. For Huawei's part, it plans to use the test lab as a means to court other handset and chipset manufacturers, and hence drive the adoption of TD-LTE. Naturally, we're left wondering the obvious: whether this unique collaboration will bring about Huawei smartphones with Intel Inside. Mum's the word on that one... for now.

Huawei partners with Intel to test TD-LTE interoperability in China originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 May 2012 07:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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