Ugandan president draws fire for copyrighting rap - Radio Stations

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A row has broken out in Uganda over an attempt by President Yoweri Museveni to copyright a "rap" he performed that has become a smash hit on the African country's radio stations and in its nightclubs.
The ageing leader took to the stage at two party rallies over the last few months and performed two children's folk chants from his birthplace in Western Uganda - Naatema akati (I cut a stick) and Mp'enkoni (Give me the stick).
Record producers then began mixing the performance with hip-hop beats and audio of Museveni telling the crowd that young people had told him about rap music.
The song was named, "You want another rap?" after a question Museveni shouted at the rallies and it quickly began appearing for sale in capital Kampala.
The east African country is due to hold elections in February, seen as a test of democracy for the country. Museveni, a former cattle herder and student activist in power since 1986, could face his stiffest challenge yet if the opposition coalition holds together.
An application lodged by Museveni's lawyers for exclusive rights to the song has drawn fierce criticism from the president's opponents, some of whom say he is trying to cash-in on the huge number of Ugandans using it as a ringtone.
"Nobody, not the President, not me has the right to copyright folk chants," Mwambustya Ndebesa, a history lecturer at Kampala's Makerere University, told Reuters.
"They should belong to everybody, not be used for political capital."

� Continued...
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The giggles started when the seventh journalist in a row said that his question was for Egypt’s water and irrigation minister, Mohamed Nasreddin Allam.� Blog�
It has debt levels to die for and huge amounts of oil, but economically it’s lagging and political concerns remain. Speakers at a Libyan trade and investment forum this week saw the North African country as a mixed bag.� Blog�
If Guinea can pull off free and fair elections this weekend, it will lay the foundations for what could be one of Africa’s most unexpected and significant good news stories.� Blog�
Africa is providing a lot of fine material for the London theatre these days.� Blog�
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Protests, fraud charges roil Haiti elections - Radio Stations

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's elections ended in confusion on Sunday as 12 of the 18 presidential candidates denounced "massive fraud" and demanded the polls be annulled and street protests erupted over voting delays and problems.
The repudiation of the elections by so many of the presidential candidates dealt a blow to the credibility of the U.N.-supported poll. The international community was hoping the vote could produce a stable, legitimate government in the poor earthquake-ravaged Caribbean country.
Voters' frustration at not being able to cast their ballots due to organizational problems at many polling stations in the capital Port-au-Prince boiled over into street protests. At least one polling station was trashed by one angry group.
"We denounce a massive fraud that is occurring across the country. ... We demand the cancellation pure and simple of these skewed elections," the 12 presidential candidates said in a statement read to reporters at a Port-au-Prince hotel.
Still, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) said the elections went "well" at most of the more than 11,000 polling stations across the nation. "The CEP is comfortable with the vote," council president Gaillot Dorsainvil said.
Counting began after polls closed at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT).
After a day of confusion at many polling centers in the capital, some Haitians expressed anger at what they viewed as a wasteful, flawed exercise.
"Look what our government spends its money on," said Abellar Sony, brandishing a fistful of unused ballot papers at a polling station near the Cite Soleil slum. Children played with unmarked ballot papers, scattering them in the air.
The CEP acknowledged "some problems" and said it was trying to resolve them after the turbulent presidential and legislative elections went ahead amid a raging cholera epidemic and political tensions.
The 12 candidates denouncing the poll included all main opposition candidates. They accused outgoing President Rene Preval's Inite (Unity) coalition and its candidate, Jules Celestin, of trying to steal the elections.
Among them were prominent front-runners like former First Lady Mirlande Manigat, popular musician and entertainer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, and lawyer Jean-Henry Ceant.
The U.N. mission in Haiti and the Organization of American States/Caribbean Community elections observer mission said they were still gathering information on how the vote went.
Demonstrations flared in several parts of the sprawling capital, which still bears the scars of Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Local radio also reported protests against the electoral process in Gonaives and Les Cayes.
A protest of several thousand people in the capital's Petionville district was led by Martelly, joined by Haitian-American hip-hop star Wyclef Jean, who was barred from standing as a candidate by electoral officials in August.
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Police say no specific attack threat in Germany - Radio Stations

BERLIN (Reuters) - Police on Saturday said there were no signs of an imminent attack by militants in Germany, after a news magazine reported that a plot existed to attack the Reichstag parliament building.
The comments played down the report by weekly Der Spiegel, which said Germany's decision to step up security measures this week had been prompted by the discovery of militant plans to break into the Reichstag parliament building and shoot hostages.
"We have concrete details of suspects, but no concrete details that an attack will be carried out at a specific time and place," the head of Germany's BKA Federal Crime Office, Joerg Ziercke, told Reuters.
Der Spiegel, citing security officials, said a jihadist living abroad had informed them in recent telephone calls of a plan for armed militants to enter the 19th century building in central Berlin and open fire. It said police considered the information credible.
The information, the magazine said, had prompted officials to announce on Wednesday they were raising security, especially at public places including airports and train stations.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Thursday authorities were on guard against threats of an armed attack of the kind that killed 166 in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008.
The Reichstag building has strong symbolic importance in Germany. An arson attack there in 1933 highlighted Nazi moves to assume complete control over Germany. The image of a Soviet soldier planting the red flag atop its ruin in 1945 marked the end of World War Two for many.
It was formally restored as the country's legislature soon after the 1990 reunification of Germany and is visited daily by hundreds who walk around its glass dome looking down on debates.
Late on Saturday more than 100 tourists were lined up outside the building and no police were in sight.
The jihadist, Der Spiegel reported, said the group of attackers was to be made up of six people. Two had already arrived in Berlin and another four, including a German, a Turk and a North African, were under way.
Germany has troops in Afghanistan and has been the target of threats on Jihadist websites.
The timing of the reported parliament plot, for February or March, differed however from de Maiziere's warnings that attacks were planned sometime before the end of November.
FALSE ALARMS
At a news conference on Wednesday, de Maiziere said intelligence services had received concrete indications attacks were planned in the next two weeks.
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German police arrest 22 in neo-Nazi internet raid - Radio Stations

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police said on Wednesday they had arrested 22 people suspected of spreading neo-Nazi ideology in a major swoop against far-right internet radio station Widerstand-Radio (Resistance Radio).
In an operation involving some 270 officers, police raided 22 premises across 10 of Germany's 16 states, confiscating numerous computers and telephones, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said in a statement.
The station could be heard worldwide around the clock, and operated from a server based in the United States, the BKA said. Listeners to the site would register via a false name and address in the western German city of Dortmund, it added.
"(The) investigations are a strong hint to people running other extreme-right internet radio stations that dissemination of songs with extreme-right wing and xenophobic lyrics, even on the internet, will be pursued," said BKA head Joerg Ziercke.
A further person, who was not arrested on Wednesday, brought the number of suspects to 23, a BKA spokeswoman said. Aged between 20 and 37, the suspects were all German, she added.
State prosecutors in the western city of Koblenz are investigating the 23 on suspicion of forming a criminal organization, inciting racial hatred and other crimes, the BKA said.
The website of the radio station had apparently had around 135,000 hits since last year, Ziercke said.
In October, the BKA said the number of people in Germany with the potential to carry out far-right violence had almost doubled since the 1990s to around 9,000 in 2009.
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Web startup Bln.kr helps artists, fans interact - Radio Stations

DENVER (Billboard) - Artists these days no longer wonder whether they should be using the social Web to interact with their fans. It's now a matter of how.
Using Facebook or Twitter or MySpace as a one-way megaphone is no longer enough. The power of online social networks is in establishing a two-way conversation. But when there are thousands of voices on the other end of that discussion, staying engaged can be a daunting task.
Thankfully, a host of new companies are emerging to help make sense of it all, offering services like digital content distribution, feedback aggregation and traffic reports. One of the more recent startups catching the industry's eye is Chicago-based Bln.kr.
The company launched in May 2009 as a link-shortening service for Twitter similar to Bit.ly, but for music files. Since then, the service has reoriented its focus toward helping artists, particularly amateur and emerging acts, to harness the value of fan feedback.
Participating artists who establish a Bln.kr account can connect it to such online profiles as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and YouTube, and manage them all from one place. That enables them to upload a track through Bln.kr to embed the song into all of their other social network profiles.
Bln.kr then aggregates the feedback and comments about that track into a real-time stream it calls "the loop," which displays the total streams, downloads, retweets and other data the track generates. Today, the loop feature is limited to Twitter, but by the end of October, Bln.kr will expand it to include Facebook, YouTube, RSS feeds and other sources, aggregating user ratings, "likes," sharing activity and comments.
Bln.kr also offers artists the ability to deliver dynamic prompts to fans to solicit specific feedback, such as "How do the lyrics make you feel?" or "What one thing should be changed?"
All of these services are free, but a Pro account for $5 per month adds other capabilities, such as automatically creating a YouTube video using artists' album art and other visual assets, holding remix contests and generating unique QR bar codes that artists can place on flyers for fans to scan with their mobile phones to launch a website or stream a track. Additional Pro features will be rolled out in late October, such as Foursquare badge-like "buttons" that reward artists for achievements like reaching 100 plays or having the most popular track on Twitter for a given day.
Bln.kr was one of four startups pitching attendees of Billboard's Mobile Entertainment Live: The Music App Summit during the "Innovators Showcase" panel, emerging as the clear favorite. Panelist Tim Chang, a principal at Norwest Venture Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., said he was impressed with the service.
"I would potentially fund this," Chang told Bln.kr CEO Justin DeLay at the event. "I think you've tapped into the key notion of what I've been gunning for all along, which is that the Internet has fragmented the audience all to hell. What we're all fighting for is attention."
So far, some 12,000 artists have opened Bln.kr accounts. About half are purely amateurs or hobbyists, with the other half split between journeyman professional artists and more established acts like the Streets, Band of Skulls and DJ Teenwolf. More than 32,000 tracks have been uploaded to date, generating an average of 10 shares and six plays per minute across the site.
About 1% of participating artists have Pro accounts. But Bln.kr plans to add other revenue streams in the near future, such as adding coupons from advertisers for users who achieve "buttons" milestones.
It's also working on licensing its music to Internet radio stations and other digital outlets. Looking further ahead, Bln.kr may offer any combination of these services to music labels as a white-label solution for promotional campaigns.
The startup is now seeking additional funding. Currently, Bln.kr consists of only co-founders DeLay, COO Andrew Cronk and chief technology officer Mike Yagley -- all in their mid- to late 20s and amateur musicians themselves.
DeLay quit his job in product marketing at Kraft Foods to launch the company, and has gone back to school to study human-computer interaction. DeLay and Yagley are also songwriters and guitarists for a band called Almost Gone, whose album "Autonomy" is available on iTunes. This mix of technological know-how, business savvy and passion for music is typical of today's digital media entrepreneur, one that blends the perceived roles of "music people" and "tech people" that are too often at odds.
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SPECIAL REPORT - Tea Party candidates only a Democrat could love - Radio Stations

DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. (Reuters) - Jim Schneller is not the type of congressional candidate a political progressive or liberal Democrat would ordinarily support.
A self-avowed Tea Party activist, he opposes abortion even in the cases of rape and incest. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve, labeling it "unconstitutional." He vows to "guarantee constitutional rights for home-schooling." And he is still calling for President Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate or face deportation.
Yet Schneller quite possibly might never have become a candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania's seventh congressional district were it not for a helping hand from his opponents. As it happens, a dozen Delaware County Democratic Party activists obtained nearly all of the necessary signatures for him to qualify for the ballot, records of the Pennsylvania Secretary of State show.
Some of these activists work or have worked in one capacity or another for the campaign of Schneller's opponent, Bryan Lentz, a two-term Democratic state legislator. At least five of the people associated with Lentz's campaign who gathered signatures for him also did so for Schneller, according to records and interviews.
Last spring, the Lentz loyalists signed up potential voters by citing his long experience in government and underscoring his pro-choice record. Then this summer, they went door to door extolling the virtues of Jim Schneller by saying that he was a regular guy who had absolutely no previous involvement with politics or government and would be uncompromising in his opposition to abortion.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Even by the standards of the testiest and most tempestuous U.S. midterm elections in memory, such machinations stand out -- and they are by no means limited to Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Elsewhere, Democratic congressional candidates and party activists and operatives have worked behind the scenes to support Tea Party activists to run as third party candidates. The calculation is simple: by siphoning off just enough votes from their Republican opponents, they hope to swing the outcome of a tight election in their favor.
In Nevada, for example, advertisements on conservative radio stations attack the Republican nominee Sharron Angle, the actual Tea Party candidate, for not being conservative enough. Those spots were paid for by casinos and unions backing Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.
And in the race for New Jersey's third congressional district, the Camden Courier Post has reported, Democrats recruited a third party candidate, Peter DeStefano, who is running as a Tea Party candidate. It was a bid to help re-elect Democratic congressman John Adler, say supporters of Adler's Republican opponent, John Runyan.
Adler has denied that anyone in his campaign played a role in recruiting or encouraging DeStefano's candidacy. In the meantime, the race is considered too close to call, suggesting that DeStefano might indeed prove to be a spoiler.
Then there is Michigan. Two Oakland County Democratic officials recently resigned their positions after it was disclosed that they had helped run candidates for several states offices, including two highly competitive congressional seats on a Tea Party ballot line. The effort failed after election officials threw out the ballot line.
Similar scenes are also playing out in California, Florida, Texas and other parts of the country, according to records, interviews with party activists and press accounts.
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Analysis: Crackdown on dissent risks stoking Thai crisis - Radio Stations

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Months after the Thai army forced an end to weeks of anti-government protests, the government says widespread restrictions on dissent are still essential for peace. But the risk is that they end up sparking more unrest.
From high-profile arrests to the shutting down and censoring of thousands of websites, the measures used by authorities to keep a lid on simmering tensions are threatening to worsen the conflict, alienate rivals and discredit the administration of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
"Thailand is in uncharted territory and the government's response to dissent could lead to a bolder display of resistance," Jacob Ramsay, senior Southeast Asia analyst at Control Risks, a strategic consulting firm based in Britain.
"Once authorities start to react to that it has no choice but to do so with more force. It's a vicious cycle."
The tough line on dissent is also a public relations gamble for Abhisit, the seemingly progressive Oxford-educated premier who has to call an election by the end of 2011.
While the curbs will please his backers, they make it harder to convince voters he is serious about national reconciliation and close a social and political divide at the heart of five years of mass anti-government protests and civil unrest.
In the latest case, a director of prominent online newspaper Prachatai was arrested in September after arriving on an overseas flight at Bangkok's main airport over a comment posted two years ago deemed a breach of lese majeste and computer crime laws.
Lese majeste, or insults to the monarchy, are punishable by up to 15 years in prison in largely Buddhist Thailand where many regard King Bhumibol Adulyadej as almost divine. Critics say the military-backed government is using the law to silence opponents.
"It isn't clear where the line is. The law does not guarantee freedom of speech or give us protection," Chiranuch Premchaiporn, the director of the Prachatai website, told Reuters after she was released on bail.
Since a spasm of political violence killed 91 people in April and May, Bangkok and six province remain under emergency rule, which bans political gatherings and gives the government power to impose curfews, censor media and detain suspects without charge.
At least 185 protesters remain in detention and thousands of web-pages have been shut since April on top of over 100,000 blocked since 2007. Dozens of community radio stations and a cable television channel run by the "red shirt" movement were forced off air.
'DEMOCRATIC FACADE'
Recent action against dissidents also raised questions over who is calling the shots -- Abhisit, who has voiced concerns about the use of anti-crown law, for political purposes or the army and its establishment allies.
Political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak said the recent arrest "exposes Thailand's solidifying soft civil-military authoritarianism."
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Modern voting, 19th century campaigns in Venezuela - Radio Stations

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's voting system is world class, but campaign excesses by President Hugo Chavez, government and opposition officials are reminiscent of elections in the 19th century, a top electoral official said.
Venezuelans choose a new parliament on Sunday after a tight race that will return the opposition to the National Assembly after they boycotted the last elections in 2005, and could even give them a majority of votes, if not seats.
Vicente Diaz, the most critical voice among the leadership of the National Electoral Council, said participation by all political parties showed a growing confidence among politicians and voters in the reliability of the system on election day.
But he said Chavez had repeatedly crossed the line during the campaign by appearing alongside candidates at presidential events and using speeches broadcast on all television and radio stations to attack opponents.
Some Venezuelans fear delays or confusion over tallying the results from Sunday's elections, given a complicated two-sheet ballot paper and the fact that some candidates will be elected directly while others will be chosen by parties.
But most observers say the final results will be reliable.
"We have an electoral system, from the point of view of procedure, technology, guarantees and audits that is worthy of the 21st century, and we have the campaign control of the 19th century," Diaz told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday.
"In the 19th century, candidates competed against the state," Diaz said, sitting below a portrait of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar riding through a stormy night.
During nearly 12 years in office, Chavez has amassed far-reaching powers, and most branches of the state are openly politicized and appear to work in favor of the president.
Diaz said Chavez had also overused a law under which he can force all broadcasters to transmit his speeches, which are often several hours long. He uses the tool, known as a "cadena," extensively during campaigns.
"The cadenas promote government works and impede the opposition from transmitting its message," Diaz said in his office, where two flatscreen TVs showed the main government and main opposition news channels.
Diaz said he had made six requests for investigations into the president's campaign behavior, and that all of them had been rejected by his peers in the council.
NO THREAT OF BOYCOTT
By ignoring the abuses, Diaz said, the council effectively allowed public figures from both ends of the political spectrum to mix campaigning and official events.
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Why Everything Wireless Is 2.4 GHz - Radio Stations

By John Herman
You live your life at 2.4 GHz. Your router, your cordless phone, your Bluetooth earpiece, your baby monitor and your garage opener all love and live on this radio frequency, and no others. Why? The answer is in your kitchen.
Before we charge too far ahead here, let’s run over the basics. Your house or apartment, or the coffee shop you’re sitting in now, is saturated with radio waves. Inconceivable numbers of them, in fact, vibrating forth from radio stations, TV stations, cellular towers, and the universe itself, into the space you inhabit. You’re being bombarded, constantly, with electromagnetic waves of all kind of frequencies, many of which have been encoded with specific information, whether it be a voice, a tone, or digital data. Hell, maybe even these very words.
On top of that, you’re surrounded by waves of your own creation. Inside your home are a dozen tiny little radio stations: your router, your cordless phone, your garage door opener. Anything you own that’s wireless, more or less. Friggin’ radio waves: they’re everywhere.

Really, it’s odd that your cordless phone even has that 2.4-GHz sticker. To your average, not-so-technically-inclined shopper, it’s a number that means A) nothing, or B) something, but the wrong thing. (“2.4 GHz? That’s faster than my computer!”)
What that number actually signifies is broadcast frequency, or the frequency of the waves that the phone’s base station sends to its handset. That’s it. In fact, the hertz itself just just a unit for frequency in any context: it’s the number of times that something happens over the course of a second. In wireless communications, it refers to wave oscillation. In computers, it refers to processor clock rates. For TVs, the rate at which the screen refreshes; for me, clapping in front of my computer right now, it’s the rate at which I’m doing so. One hertz, slow clap.
The question, then, is why so many of your gadgets operate at 2.4 GHz, instead of the ~2,399,999,999 whole number frequencies below it, or any number above it. It seems almost controlled, or guided. It seems, maybe, a bit arbitrary. It seems, well, regulated.
A glance at FCC regulations confirms any suspicions. A band of frequencies clustered around 2.4 GHz has been designated, along with a handful of others, as the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands. “A lot of the unlicensed stuff — for example, Wi-Fi — is on the 2.4-GHz or the 900-Mhz frequencies, the ISM bands. You don’t need a license to operate on them.” That’s Ira Kelpz, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, explaining precisely why these ISM bands are attractive to gadget makers: They’re free to use. If routers and cordless phones and whatever else are relegated to a small band 2.4 GHz, then their radio waves won’t interfere with, say, cellphones operating at 1.9 GHz, or AM radio, which broadcasts between 535 kHz and 1.7 MHz. The ISM is, in effect, a ghetto for unlicensed wireless transmission, recommended first by a quiet little agency in a Swiss office of the UN, called the ITU, then formalized, modified and codified for practical use by the governments of the world, including, of course, our own FCC.
The current ISM standards were established in 1985, and just in time. Our phones were one the cusp of losing their cords, and in the near future, broadband internet connections would come into existence and become magically wireless. All these gadgets needed frequencies that didn’t require licenses, but which were nestled between the ones that did. Frequencies that weren’t so high that they sacrificed broadcast penetration (through walls, for example), but weren’t so low that they required foot-long antennae. In short, they needed the ISM bands. So they took them.

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TEXT-Nice Systems gets deal with Delhi police - Radio Stations

(The following was issued by Israel's Nice Systems Ltd
(NICE.O) (NICE.TA)):
Sept 13 - NICE Systems Ltd (NASDAQ: NICE), the worldwide
leader of intent-based solutions that extract insight to impact
business performance, reduce financial risk and ensure safety
and security, today announced that India's HCL Security, NICE's
strategic partner and the project's prime contractor, will be
implementing NICE's integrated security solution at India's
Delhi Police.
NICE will enable Delhi Police with an integrated command,
control, coordination and communication center (C4i) solution to
meet operational requirements for the upcoming October 2010
Commonwealth Games 2010 and beyond.
Delhi Police selected HCL-NICE consortium through
competitive bidding in anticipation of the 2010 Commonwealth
Games to manage and enhance the police response to security
events.
The Commonwealth Games is a multi-sport event with
participants representing the fifty-four independent states that
are members of the Commonwealth of Nations.
The Delhi Police will implement the NICE solutions to fuse
data from multiple systems and sensors, dispersed across 45
sites throughout the city, including sporting venues, metro
stations, markets and police stations.
The pre-integrated NICE solution is based on NICE Situator,
NICE's situation management solution. NICE Situator offers broad
interoperability with many third party solutions for video
analytics, video surveillance systems, Tetra (Terrestrial
Trunked Radio) IP network for public safety, and GIS, among
others.
This approach delivers a single, holistic operational view
and enhances real-time response by automating procedures, as
well as information sharing.
The NICE solution also enables comprehensive debriefing by
full reconstruction of an event and response to it, leveraging
NICE Inform incident information management solution and NICE
screen encoders for screen capture of the command and control
room's inputs during security events.
A senior officer at Delhi Police said, "We are proud that
Delhi is hosting this year's Commonwealth Games. At the same
time, this means that our police force has the great
responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of our
visiting athletes, international and local government officials,
and millions of sport fans.
"To achieve these goals in the most professional and
reliable way we selected HCL-NICE consortium, which was the only
vendor who could provide us with an open solution that enables
situation management that integrates with such a great number of
security systems, providing us with real-time capabilities for
handling security events throughout the entire city, should they
occur."
"We are pleased to have been selected for this project and
help the Delhi Police protect the participants and attendees of
the 2010 Commonwealth Games, as well as the Delhi residents
beyond the games," said Israel Livnat, President, NICE Security
Group.
"The city of Delhi will be responsible for the security of
attendees and participants from all over the world at the
force's command and control center and headquarters, making this
project all the more important for representing the Delhi Police
professionalism and leading edge capabilities.
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Tech Industry Ramps Up FM Chip Opposition - Radio Stations

Putting FM receivers in cellphones and other mobile devices has suddenly become a hot potato on Capitol Hill.
A coalition of six technology industry associations dispatched letters to the chairmen and ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees urging them not to craft legislation that would mandate FM receivers in mobile devices.
The idea for the mandate originated as part of a compromise between the National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America. Those groups are, respectively, the key opponents and proponents of instituting performance royalties on music airplay.
Persuading congress to mandate FM tuners in phones would give both radio stations and music artists access to larger audiences, and provide consumers with another mobile content option.
That said, the technology industry isn't happy about being put in the middle.
“Calls for an FM chip mandate are not about public safety, but are instead about propping up a business which consumers are abandoning as they avail themselves of new, more consumer-friendly options,” the associations wrote. “It is simply wrong for two entrenched industries to resolve their differences by agreeing to burden a third industry -- which has no relationship to or other interest in the performance royalty dispute -- with a costly, ill-considered and unnecessary new mandate.”
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Wyclef song accuses Haiti president of blocking him - Radio Stations

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian hip-hop star and presidential hopeful Wyclef Jean turned to song on Thursday to accuse outgoing President Rene Preval of engineering his rejection as a candidate for Haiti's November election.
Local radio stations were broadcasting a song by Jean in Creole in which he called for the jailing of electoral officials who last week disqualified him and for the first time directly blamed Preval for being banned from the November 28 vote.
The 40-year-old Haitian-born, U.S.-based musical celebrity, who has an enthusiastic youth following in his poor homeland, is challenging the rejection of his candidacy and has denounced the electoral authorities as corrupt and politically motivated.
The dispute has raised fears of tensions that could disrupt the Caribbean nation's rebuilding after a massive January 12 earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people.
In his Creole composition entitled "Prizon Pou K.E.P.a" (Jail for the Provisional Electoral Council), a somber-voiced Jean sings that Preval "expelled me from the race."
"I know all the cards are in your hands ... I voted for you to be president in 2006, why today did you reject my candidacy?" the song says, addressing Preval, who cannot seek re-election after serving two terms as president.
"It's not Wyclef that you have expelled, it is the youth you have denied ... it's the population you have denied, its the peasants you have denied," Jean sings. He also posted the song on his Twitter page twitter.com/wyclef.
Preval had been informed about the song but did not immediately react, aides said.

� Continued...
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LTE demo will test broadband for oil fields - Radio Stations

LTE is generating excitement in the world of consumer electronics and ever-faster online video viewing, but the 4G (fourth-generation) mobile network technology may have even greater implications for specific industries that lack a good means of connectivity.
Texas Energy Network, a startup in Houston, will focus on the oil and gas industry in an LTE (Long-Term Evolution) test next week. Using equipment from Alcatel-Lucent, TEN hopes to demonstrate that LTE can bring more economical Internet access to drilling and exploration sites in the vast oil fields of the Permian Basin, which spans western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
Most of the oil drilling in this region of about 25 counties takes place far from the populated areas where most cellular networks are concentrated, said TEN Chief Technology Officer Stan Hughey. As a result, oil and gas companies often are on their own when it comes to sending critical real-time data such as flow, pressure and volume from equipment in the field, he said. When mobile exploration teams are out looking for new fields, they need to make audio and video calls and generate large amounts of geological data that needs to be sent back to headquarters.
TEN, led by former Qwest Communications International executive Gregory Casey, wants to be an independent service provider for these companies, setting up and managing its own network. So far, the company is only looking at LTE.
"It appears to us it's becoming a de facto standard," Hughey said. Most mobile operators around the world that plan to deploy 4G networks have chosen LTE, a trend that bodes well for relatively high-volume, low-cost client devices once networks go live. Having a wide selection of clients was an important factor for TEN, Hughey said.
Today, most oil and gas companies rely on narrowband point-to-point wireless links (comparable to dial-up) using unlicensed radio spectrum, according to Hughey. Some lay fiber across their oil fields. For exploration, which requires high bandwidth and mobility, they often use satellite VSATs (very small aperture terminals). These can offer more than 1M bps (bit per second) but at a higher cost and with more delay than LTE, he said. It's also likely that LTE client equipment will be much less expensive than VSATs, Hughey said.
The test will use one base station and last about a week, according to Alcatel-Lucent. The oil industry presents different challenges from consumer mobile data networks, said Mark Madden, Alcatel's regional vice president of energy markets in the Americas. As with utilities setting up smart grids, the main purpose of the network is to send many small streams of data in from the field, he said. "The needs of the entire energy sector are uplink-focused," Madden said.
The other difference is that the geographic reach of a base station is more important than densely packing base stations into an area to cover many simultaneous users. Alcatel is hoping to demonstrate its LTE base station working over a range of 20 miles, Madden said.
Alcatel said players in a number of vertical industries including health care, transportation and public safety have expressed interest in LTE. But this will be the first time Alcatel actually demonstrates LTE for an energy-sector application, Madden said.
Before it can move from tests to deployment, TEN will need radio spectrum licenses across the region. The company is now talking with several spectrum holders, Hughey said. The company plans to use paired spectrum, with one band for upstream and one for downstream traffic. It's not clear yet what spectrum TEN will be able to use, but the company would like to tap into the 700MHz band, the same range that Verizon Wireless plans to use for its LTE network, coming later this year. In general, the 700MHz band offers greater reach per cell site than higher bands.
Alcatel said it could adapt to different bands depending on where TEN gets its licenses. Alcatel wouldn't comment on how much bandwidth its equipment could deliver, saying that depends on how much spectrum TEN has.
If LTE works as expected and the frequencies are available, it will probably take between 12 and 18 months to roll out the network, TEN's Hughey estimated. The service provider hopes later to expand to other parts of the U.S. and potentially other countries.
However, the company remains focused on the oil and gas industries. If it does allow private residents of the Permian Basin to hop on to the LTE network, its service-level agreements with oil companies will have to come first, Hughey said.
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Bomb explodes in Colombian capital - Radio Stations

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A suspected car bomb exploded on Thursday in the north of Colombia's capital Bogota outside a main radio station, slightly injuring six people and blowing out windows in a rare urban attack.
Television images showed a damaged bus abandoned on a main avenue and panicked residents in the streets, but police said there were no deaths in the first major bombing since President Juan Manuel Santos took office at the weekend.
"This is a terrorist attack," Santos told reporters at the site of the blast.
Bombings and attacks on Colombian cities have dropped sharply since former President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. Violence from the country's war ebbed as Uribe's security campaign battered leftist rebels and drug traffickers.
The main anchorman of Caracol, one of the country's major radio stations, has received threats from armed groups before and has in the past left Colombia for his safety.
Windows as high as 30 stories were blasted out in buildings along Bogota's main 7th Avenue and glass was still falling onto the streets after the attack.
"I woke up and my floor and bed were covered in glass," said Mauricio Marentes, 28, a geologist who lives on the fourth floor of a building overlooking the blast site.
Santos pledged to continue Uribe's security campaign and his pro-investment policies that have helped the Andean country overcome the dark days of its conflict when bombings and massacres made daily newspaper headlines.
(Additional reporting by Hugh Bronstein, Luis Jaime Acosta and Nelson Bocanegra; editing by Vicki Allen)
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After deadly clashes, Thai opposition regroups - Radio Stations

SI SA KET Thailand (Reuters) - On a stage in a muddy soccer field in Thailand's rural heartlands, an opposition leader declared to thousands he would bring back toppled premier Thaksin Shinawatra from exile if his party is voted back into power.
That vow by Puea Thai Party's Chalerm Ubumrung signals trouble ahead in a polarising political crisis that turned deadly on the streets of Bangkok in April and May as thousands of "red shirt" supporters of the deposed Thaksin clashed with troops.
Hundreds of red shirts have been detained under emergency rule since the unrest that killed 91 people, mostly protesters, and wounded nearly 2,000. Several opposition websites, radio stations and a TV broadcaster were shut. Red-shirt bank accounts have been frozen. Protest leaders face terrorism charges.
Emergency rule has helped to restore order in Bangkok and many areas. But in the rice-growing farmlands of Si Sa Ket bordering Cambodia and other provinces where the decree has been lifted, Thailand's political opposition is regrouping.
The fiery rhetoric at the recent campaign stop in Si Sa Ket, 600 km (370 miles) northeast of Bangkok, illustrates how issues that exploded into violence in May remain at the heart of Thailand's anti-government movement -- from charges of class warfare to reverence of populist multimillionaire Thaksin.
They also demonstrate how the anti-government movement is shifting from street-protest tactics to election campaigning, while retaining, at least in the heartlands, one of their most controversial goals: the return of the twice-elected Thaksin.
"If you want everyone to be treated the same way under the eye of the law, vote Puea Thai! If you want to see democracy and equality, vote Puea Thai! If you want Thaksin back, vote Puea Thai!," Chalerm told cheering supporters.
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