YouTube Refuses to Yank Israeli Kill Video as Hamas Attacks Jerusalem

YouTube is rejecting calls to take down a video showing the assassination of Hamas’ military leader, despite the video-sharing service’s apparent ban on “graphic or gratuitous violence.”

Israel launched its “Operation Pillars of Defense” on Wednesday by blowing up Ahmed al-Jabari as he was driving his car down the street in Gaza. Hours later, aerial footage of the kill shot was posted to YouTube — and instantly went viral, racking up nearly two million views.

The video not only kicked of a fierce battle of opinion on social media that’s roughly paralleling the rockets-and-airstrikes conflict. It also appeared to violate YouTube’s community guidelines, which tells users: “if your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.”

But a YouTube employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the guidelines are just that — guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. Users can flag a video as potentially objectionable, but the decision to take a clip down ultimately rests with YouTube’s global team of reviewers. The calculations get complicated, especially for warzone footage.

“We look at videos on a case-by-case videos when they’re flagged,” the employee tells Danger Room. “And we look at the context, the intent with which something is posted.”

A snuff film, posted just for the sick thrill of it, won’t last long. But a similarly graphic clip, posted in “documentary fashion” or for political effect, “will be judged differently,” the employee adds.

Hamas and its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, are trying to provoke sympathy and outrage over the caught-on-video slaying of Jabari, and over the civilian deaths that have come from Israel’s air attacks on Gaza. But any good will may have just evaporated. Hamas — which claims to be an Islamic movement — is now firing rockets at Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest city, and bragging about it on Twitter. (Remember, these are unguided projectiles that could land on a school or a mosque as easily a military checkpoint.) That’s in addition to shooting off hundreds of missiles and rockets at the civilian centers like Ashdod, Tel Aviv, and Beersheba. In the last year, more than 700 rockets, mortars, and missiles have been launched from Gaza.

The Israeli missile defense system known as Iron Dome has been remarkably capable, stopping 184 rockets in recent days, the AFP reports. But it has not been perfect. Three Israeli civilians were slain on Thursday in the southern town of Kiryat Malakhi.

This is the second time in recent months that YouTube’s guidelines have become an international political issue. Back in September, the White House asked Google, YouTube’s corporate parent, to double-check if the incendiary anti-Islam video “The Innocence of Muslims” violated YouTube’s guidelines. The video-sharing service declined to do so — although YouTube did block it in several Muslim countries. President Obama later spoke up in favor of the free flow of information. (Separately, a California judge rebuffed an “Innocence” actress’ request to pull the video on copyright grounds.)

YouTube has become one of the primary windows into the world’s far-flung conflicts — especially ones like the Syrian civil war, which has only a handful of outside journalists reporting from the battlefields. But the video-sharers deny that they’re setting any kind of precedent by leaving the disturbers video of Jabari’s death on YouTube. That’s just not how YouTube works, apparently. “This is not about who you are but what you post,” the employee says. “Everything’s done a-fresh.”

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Film defrocks church hierarchy over handling of sex abuse

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four deaf Wisconsin men were some of the first to seek justice after suffering childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and a new documentary about the Catholic Church‘s poor handling of such cases stemming from the Vatican seeks to make their voices heard.

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” explores the impact of the Roman Catholic Church’s protocol as dictated from the Vatican for dealing with pedophile priests. It opens in U.S. cinemas on November 16, and will air on cable channel HBO in February.

Though American media coverage about child sex abuse by clergy has been extensive since a slew of cases came to light in Boston in 2002, Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney wanted to connect individual stories with what he sees as systemic failures stemming from the top of the church.

“A lot of individual stories had been done about clerical sex abuse, but I hadn’t seen one that really connected the individual stories with the larger cover-up by the Vatican, so that was important,” Gibney told Reuters in an interview.

The film centers on the group of deaf men and their experiences as young boys attending St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

In a letter to the Vatican in 1998, the late Rev. Father Lawrence Murphy admitted abusing some 200 deaf boys over two decades beginning in the 1950s.

Murphy claimed he had repented, and asked to live out his last years as a priest, and was never defrocked or punished by civil authorities. He died in 1998.

In the film, the men communicate their frustrating attempts to bring their experiences to the attention of religious and civil authorities with effusive sign language and facial expressions, paired with voiceovers by actors such as Ethan Hawke.

The film also traces a convoluted bureaucracy – right up to the cardinal who is now Pope Benedict – to reveal a set of policies that the film portrays as often seeming more interested in preserving the Church’s image.

STRUGGLING TO BE HEARD

“These were deaf men whose voices literally couldn’t be heard, so there was a silence from them, and there was also this silence coming from the church, a refusal to confront this obvious crime, in part because they were covering it up,” said Gibney.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the Murphy case and in 2010 issued a statement condemning his abuse. It has criticized media reports about the Church’s handling of the cases as anti-Catholic.

Contrasting that, the film shows interviews with former church officials who talk openly of church policies to handle cases by “rehabilitating” abusive clergymen and snuffing out scandal.

Gibney said that all of the Vatican officials he contacted declined his interview requests.

Raised Catholic himself, Gibney no longer practices organized religion, but empathizes with Catholics who feel a sense of loyalty to the religion’s institutions and acknowledges that criticism of the church can feel like a personal attack.

“Mea Maxima Culpa,” a Latin phrase meaning “my most grievous fault” focuses on the failures of the Catholic Church‘s hierarchy. But Gibney – who won an Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side” – said the film’s theme transcends religion and is also relevant for secular institutions.

“This is obviously about the church, but it’s also a crime film,” he said. “It’s about abuse of power and it’s about how institutions instead of reckoning with problems try to cover them up. It’s always the cover-up that creates the problem.”

He cited the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal that rocked Penn State University recently, and the BBC’s poor handling of abuse allegations against the late British TV personality Jimmy Savile as examples of secular institutions brought low by similar issues.

“The thing about predators is that they tend to hide in plain sight,” Gibney said. “You’re seeing it now with Sandusky, you’re seeing it now with Jimmy Savile in Great Britain, and you saw it with Father Murphy in the film.”

Gibney thinks that the public’s stubbornly rosy perceptions of charismatic authority figures, including priests, is a major factor in such scandals.

“They’re often involved in charity or good works,” he said of high-profile abusers. “That seems to give you license to do unbelievable things because people cut you all sorts of slack that they wouldn’t normally do for other people.”

(Editing by Christine Kearney and Richard Chang)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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I Was Misinformed: The Time She Tried Viagra

I have noticed, in the bragging-rights department, that “he doesn’t need Viagra” has become the female equivalent of the male “and, I swear, she’s a real blonde.” Personally, I do not care a bit. To me, anything that keeps you happy and in the game is a good thing.

But then, I am proud to say, I was among the early, and from what I gather, rare female users.

It happened when the drug was introduced around 1998. I was 50, but after chemotherapy for breast cancer — and later, advanced ovarian cancer — I was, hormonally speaking, pretty much running on fumes. Whether this had diminished my sex drive I did not yet know. One may have Zorba-esque impulses when a cancer diagnosis first comes in; but a treatment that leaves you bald, moon-faced and exhausted knocks that out of your system pretty fast.

But by 1998, the cancer was gone, my hair was back and I was ready to get back in the game. I was talking to an endocrinologist when I brought up Viagra. This was not to deal with the age-related physical changes I knew it would not address, it was more along the feminist lines of equal pay for equal work: if men have this new sex drug, I want this new sex drug.

“I know it’s supposed to work by increasing blood flow,” I told the doctor, “But if that’s true for men, shouldn’t it be true for women, too?”

“You’re the third woman who asked me that this week,” he said.

He wrote me a prescription. I was not seeing anyone, so I understood that I would have to do both parts myself, but that was fine. I have a low drug threshold and figured it might be best the first time to fly solo. My memory of the directions are hazy: I think there was a warning that one might have a facial flush or headaches or drop dead of a heart attack; that you were to take a pill at least an hour before you planned to get lucky, and, as zero hour approached, you were supposed to help things along by thinking beautiful thoughts, kind of like Peter Pan teaching Wendy and the boys how to fly.

But you know how it is: It’s hard to think beautiful thoughts when you’re wondering, “Is it happening? Do I feel anything? Woof, woof? Hello, sailor? Naaah.”

After about an hour, however, I was aware of a dramatic change. I had developed a red flush on my face; I was a hot tomato, though not the kind I had planned. I had also developed a horrible headache. The sex pill had turned into a bad joke: Not now, honey, I have a headache.

I put a cold cloth on my head and went to sleep. But here’s where it got good: When I slept, I dreamed; one of those extraordinary, sensual, swimming in silk sort of things. I woke up dazed and glowing with just one thought: I gotta get this baby out on the highway and see what it can do.

A few months later I am fixed up with a guy, and after a time he is, under the Seinfeldian definition of human relations (Saturday night date assumed) my official boyfriend. He is middle aged, in good health. How to describe our romantic life with the delicacy a family publication requires? Perhaps a line from “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronica, Spring Is Here”), a song popularized by the German group the Comedian Harmonists: “Veronika, der Spargel Wächst” (“Veronica, the asparagus are blooming”). On the other hand, sometimes not. And so, one day, I put it out there in the manner of sport:

“Want to drop some Viagra?” I say.

Here we go again, falling into what I am beginning to think is an inevitable pattern: lying there like a lox, or two loxes, waiting for the train to pull into the station. (Yes, I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but at least I didn’t bring in the asparagus.) So there we are, waiting. And then, suddenly, spring comes to Suffolk County. It’s such a presence. I’m wondering if I should ask it if it hit traffic on the L.I.E. We sit there staring.

My reaction is less impressive. I don’t get a headache this time. And romantically, things are more so, but not so much that I feel compelled to try the little blue pills again.

Onward roll the years. I have a new man in my life, who is 63. He does have health problems, for which his doctor prescribes an E.D. drug. I no longer have any interest in them. My curiosity has been satisfied. Plus I am deeply in love, an aphrodisiac yet to be encapsulated in pharmaceuticals.

We take a vacation in mountain Mexico. We pop into a drugstore to pick up sunscreen and spot the whole gang, Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, on a shelf at the checkout counter. No prescription needed in Mexico, the clerk says. We buy all three drugs and return to the hotel. I try some, he tries some. In retrospect, given the altitude and his health, we are lucky we did not kill him. I came across an old photo the other day. He is on the bed, the drugs in their boxes lined up a in a semi-circle around him. He looks a bit dazed and his nose is red.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if he had a cold.

Then I remember: the flush, the damn flush. If I had kids, I suppose I would have to lie about it.

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BP guilty of criminal misconduct, negligence in gulf oil spill

Oil company BP has agreed to plead guilty to misconduct and negligence charges and pay a record $4.5-billion fine in connection with the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters.

In an announcement Thursday morning from its London headquarters, BP confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, the subsequent oil spill and the response.

As part of the agreement, BP said it has agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect in connection with the 11 people who died in the explosion. In all, the company agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges including one count of obstruction of Congress.

The agreement is subject to U.S. federal court approval. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder will hold a news conference in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon to announce matters concerning “a major environmental case,” according to the DOJ announcement.

PHOTOS: Deepwater Horizon disaster in hi-res

“All of us at BP deeply regret the tragic loss of life caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident as well as the impact of the spill on the Gulf Coast region,” Bob Dudley, BP’s group chief executive, said in a statement. “From the outset, we stepped up by responding to the spill, paying legitimate claims and funding restoration efforts in the gulf. We apologize for our role in the accident, and as today’s resolution with the U.S. government further reflects, we have accepted responsibility for our actions.”

According to the company, the agreement means that no further federal criminal charges can be filed in connection with the incident, enabling the  company to concentrate on defending itself against future civil claims. Under pressure from the government, BP established a $20-billion fund to cover claims and has been paying out billions of dollars since the accidents.

The tragedy began with a fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010. At the time, the rig was drilling into the company’s Macondo well, about 50 miles off of the coast of Louisiana and about a mile below the water’s surface.

Once the rig sank, the well ruptured and poured more than 200 million gallons of crude into the waters before it was plugged on July 15. For some 85 days, the nation watched live online video from underwater cameras showing oil gushing into the ocean.

The crude washed ashore on the beaches of five states, imperiling the environment, shutting down commercial fishing for months and dealing a blow to the key tourism industry in Gulf Coast states. 

The spill set the stage for one of the nation’s largest cleanups and for months of battles over responsibility. The response to the spill also became a political problem for the Obama administration and prompted an overhaul of federal agencies that regulate offshore oil drilling.

Tony Hayward, the BP president at the time, was forced to step down, in part for commenting that "I'd like my life back" during the frenetic cleanup period when oil was washing ashore in Louisiana and many livelihoods were in ruins.

"We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP’s chairman, stated. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.”

Thirteen of the 14 criminal charges pertain to the accident itself and are based on the negligent misinterpretation of the negative pressure test conducted on board the Deepwater Horizon, the company said.

“BP acknowledged this misinterpretation more than two years ago when it released its internal investigation report,” the company noted. “As part of its resolution of criminal claims with the U.S. government, BP will pay $4 billion, including $1.256 billion in criminal fines, in installments over a period of five years. BP has also agreed to a term of five years’ probation,” the company said.

The total cost of the package will exceed $4.5 billion and includes a civil penalty of $525 million to be paid in three installments to the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged securities violation in connection with oil flow estimates in the early days after the accident. The package also includes an extra $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences to be paid over five years, the company said.

The agreement also provides for the appointment of two monitors, each to serve for four years. One will monitor safety and the other ethics issues, the company said.

Prior to the settlement, the only person facing charges so far in the case was former BP engineer Kurt Mix, who was arrested in Texas in April on obstruction of justice charges.

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michael.muskal@latimes.com

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Finding the Doctors Your Doctor Trusts

When you’re hunting for a general physician or specialist, there are three main databases to scour: an insurer’s website, Yelp, and doctor search engines like ZocDoc. Most insurance and doctor search engines give you information on the doctor’s office location, education, and their medical specialties. Yelp can give you anything from well-reasoned reviews, to write-ups that give a doctor two stars because the receptionist was rude. ZocDoc goes deeper with reviews, but works primarily as a front-end for managing a physician’s practice.

In every case, what’s missing from the information you can find online is whether or not a fellow doctor trusts a particular physician’s work. Who are the doctors my doctor trusts the most? Or conversely, what do other physicians think of my doctor?

One way to measure that is referrals, the number of times one doctor is referred by another. More referrals imply greater expertise, confidence, and trust on the part of people who should know best: fellow doctors. It is the same logic that Google uses with its Page Rank algorithm. The more times something is linked to, the higher quality it is deemed to be and thus appears higher in search results.

After endless digging, and a freedom of information request to get the data, healthcare startup HealthTap is launching a service that maps out physician connections based on 25 million referrals from within the Medicare and Medicaid system. Called DOConnect, it’s the first time a tool like this has been made available to consumers. At the most basic, says HealhTap founder and CEO Ron Gutman, DOConnect is designed to help you find the doctors that other doctors trust. It goes live today.

HealthTap is a network of patients and doctors where patients can find doctors, and ask medical questions of specific physicians (for a fee) or to entire network. HealthTap already rates the doctors in its system based on how often they use the site to answer patient questions, and if other doctors agree with those answers. Now it’s adding information about which doctors get referred to the most so patients can find the most trusted MDs.

Using a map (right), HealthTap lays out all the referrals a particular doctor receives from around their city, state, or the entire U.S. You can see that, say, your general care physician Dr. Smith always refers his patients with heart problems to cardiologist Dr. Jones. You can assume that Dr. Smith trusts Dr. Jones’ work and likely shares a similar approach of caring for a patient. Likewise, if Dr. Jones gets frequent referrals from 10 different doctors, you can trust that she’s a competent practitioner.

Dr. Jeff Livingston, an OBGYN based in Texas who uses HealthTap, contends that the way a patient chooses a doctor is broken. “Often patients read online reviews and make a choice based on the friendliness of the receptionist or availability of parking, not the actual quality of a doctor,” he says. He hopes that going forward, when he gives a patient a referral to two different doctors, they use DOConnect to research each provider and find the one who is right for them. Livingston also sees people using it as filter to find their first, or a new, general care doctor based on how many doctors refer to them.

At the highest level, Gutman is trying to solve what he views as a transparency problem in medicine. “Patients are flying blind,” he says. “What we are doing is trying to build a trust graph or quality graph, and bring some data to an industry where there is a complete lack of transparency.” The next step is to open up the data to other developers and see what they can do with it, Gutman say.

While “flying blind” may be an overstatement, most patients are at least a good deal fuzzy when it comes to the intricacies of the medical profession. Part of that is our fault, patients need to ask more questions, and become more informed. And that is where tools like DOConnect ought to help. If everyone gets smarter about health care, and how to navigate the medical industry that can only lead to better outcomes. And that of course, is the whole point.

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Springsteen, McCartney, Kanye set for Sandy show

NEW YORK (AP) — Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band and Kanye West will hit the stage at a Superstorm Sandy benefit concert next month at Madison Square Garden.

MSG announced Thursday that Billy Joel, The Who, Alicia Keys and Jon Bon Jovi will also perform at the Dec. 12 show, dubbed “12-12-12.” More performers will be announced at a later date.

Proceeds from the concert will go to the Robin Hood Relief Fund to benefit those affected by Sandy in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Sandy’s assault more than two weeks ago created widespread damage and power outages throughout the area.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Heavy Metal Rocker Now Lifts Spirits as the Yogi Raghunath

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Ray Cappo performing with Youth of Today.

THE packed crowd celebrating the 25th anniversary of Revelation Records at Irving Plaza in Manhattan on an October night was predominately pierced, tattooed and male. The uniform was black T-shirts for hard-core rock bands like Behemoth (“100% Satanic”), Chain of Strength (“True Till Death”) and accessories like a “Sick of It All” baseball cap.

Ray Cappo, 46, one of the label’s founders, took his place on the stage as the singer for the band Youth of Today, and shouted at the mosh pit, “It’s been 20 years but the message is still the same: Tear down the waaaalllll.”

The assembled responded with pumping one-arm salutes and staccato head jerks. Few questioned in the crowd knew that the heavy metal rocker on stage had left the Lower East Side in the late ’80s, spending six years as a celibate monk, changing his name to Raghunath and becoming famous within the yoga world for classes featuring crazy inversions, variation upon variation of headstands, arm stands, handstands: a playbook of anti-gravity poses.

Raghunath left rock in a search for a personal true north, he said in an interview. “The pleasure of fame at a young age was not what it was supposed to be,” he recalled, quickly adding that the band was not Led Zeppelin. “And it was juxtaposed with the sudden death of my father. Any idea of shelter or safety in a material world was getting dismantled.”

He found comfort in studying ancient yogi texts, meditation, chanting and long stints at an ashram in India. “My passion is how to apply ancient philosophy in the modern world,” he said. “I teach a fun class so people come. A strong acrobatic class is the best way to get New York type-A personalities on the mat, and then the class is peppered with song and chanting and philosophy and ancient sacred texts.”

The classes, playfully dubbed Flight School, developed name recognition among yogis — especially fellow teachers — and they can credit or blame Raghunath’s influence with the grade inflation on the mat these days, where open-level classes integrate a crow pose, or what children call frog, transitioning into handstands.

In early October, Raghunath taught a workshop to 40 students at House of Jai, a serene Upper East Side studio. On the surface, it is a stark contrast to the Irving Plaza gig. But in a way, Raghunath’s metamorphosis is not as stark. The Youth of Today was a loud heavy metal band, but one with a message the lead singer characterizes as one of positivity rather than nihilism. The transition to monk guru makes more sense in that context. “We were unique in trying to have a positive attitude,” Raghunath said. “It was a radical message.”

In the class, Raghunath led devotional chanting in a melodic voice, accompanied by the harmonium. Then he began demonstrating poses in slow, controlled motions: in one acrobatic maneuver, he ended up upside down on one arm with legs spread — no wall. By the end of the sequences, he was simply balancing on his head, arms and hands not touching the floor. Assisting students physically, weaving from mat to mat and laughing about the fleeting “sensual pleasure” of hitting the click button on Amazon, he repeated mantras as sweat poured down the students’ faces.

Raghunath began teaching in Los Angeles in 2002, moving in 2008 to New York, where he had attracted a cultlike following at popular studios like Pure Yoga and Kula Yoga Project. His reputation grew: New York Magazine ran his photo doing a twisted human pretzel pose, and he was one of the select elite teachers christened Lululemon ambassadors by the high-end yoga line.

Over a year ago, Raghunath made another radical move. He and his wife, Bridget, who is known as Brij, decided to leave New York City for an upstate town for the well-being of his four children (ages 15, 13, 7 and 5), he said. Catching a Flight class became a little bit like a unicorn spotting. “Watching the ridiculous asanas that he can do is a humbling experience,” said Mike Patton of New York’s Yoga Vida, where Raghunath has helped train teachers. “There’s no one like him, and then he packed up shop.”

Now that his family is settled, Raghunath is back on the circuit. His yoga career is being helped by YAMA Talent (Yoga Artists Management Agency), which is like the Creative Artists Agency for yoga stars. The concept may be anathema to yoga-world purists, but on deck is an embryonic clothing line starting with T-shirts. Next year, there will be two pilgrimages to India, an upstate retreat and continued training of teachers.

Ava Taylor of the agency explained that it has software to keep track of Raghunath bookings and it has worked on a sorely needed update of his Web site, which made its debut in May. “I’m not the most organized person, so with YAMA it’s like having a personal assistant so I can teach,” Raghunath said.

An online series of live Webcam experiences of Raghunath teaching will be introduced soon, with devotional chanting, lectures on philosophy and nutrition, music tutorials and his calling card, crazy poses.

At the House of Jai workshop, Misa Watanabe, visiting from Tokyo, suggested that the yogi’s appeal is broad. “I cannot believe I took a class with him,” she said, seeming surprised when asked how she knew about him. “YouTube,” she answered. Ms. Watanabe shyly went up to Raghunath and asked for a photo. He flashed a charismatic high-voltage grin, equal parts rock star and guru. Then he dashed to catch his flight to India.

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Three pilots flying to safety meeting die in plane crash

Flames lit up the night sky in Jackson, Miss. Tuesday night, where a small plane crashed into a home.

By Michael Muskal

November 14, 2012, 9:17 a.m.

Federal officials will investigate the crash of a single-engine plane carrying three pilots traveling to a safety conference when the craft slammed into a Jackson, Miss., house, killing the three.

The pilots were heading to a Federal Aviation Administration conference about 30 miles from Jackson’s Hawkins Field Airport. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.

According to the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, the craft took off from the airport about 5:10 p.m. Tuesday, heading for Raymond, Miss., to the FAA conference.

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Moments after leaving the airport, one of the pilots asked for permission to return. Before the plane could land, however, it crashed into a house that was set ablaze.

A deputy fire chief told WJTV-TV that one person escaped the burning home with minor injuries, but it was not immediately clear if anyone else was inside. One patient from the scene was listed in good condition at University of Mississippi Medical Center, according to the Associated Press.

The names of the dead pilots were not  released, pending tests to confirm their identities.

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michael.muskal@latimes.com

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Microsoft Previews Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7

Microsoft has delivered a new preview release of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, bringing the company’s next-gen web browser to its previous-gen operating system.

If you’d like to try out IE 10 on Windows 7, head on over to the IE 10 downloads page and grab a copy for Windows 7 (requires SP1).

This release is still technically a preview, but given that installing it replaces IE 9, clearly Microsoft is a little more confident about its stability and polish than with previous platform previews.

For most users the experience of IE 10 on Windows 7 will be very similar to that of Windows 8′s desktop mode. (Obviously on Windows 7 there is no “Metro” or “Modern” mode for IE 10.) And under the hood you’ll still find the same web standards support, faster JavaScript engine and, of course, the same controversial “Do Not Track” header turned on by default.

While for the most part IE 10 for Windows 7 looks and quacks like IE 10 for Windows 8, there are a couple of differences. The most noticeable is the appearance of IE 10, which uses Windows 8 scrollbars even on Windows 7, making it look out of place alongside other Windows 7 apps.

Web developers should also be aware that a few touch-related DOM events present on Windows 8 are missing on Windows 7. The user agent string is slightly different as well, with the Windows 8 version reporting “Touch” at the end of the string. For full details on the differences for web development, see the Internet Explorer Developer Center docs.

Should you decide that you don’t want to use this latest Platform preview, just use the control panel to uninstall IE 10, which also re-installs IE 9.

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Wakeman reworks rock epic Journey to Centre of Earth

LONDON (Reuters) – The story behind the upcoming re-issue of Rick Wakeman‘s 1974 concept album “Journey to the Center of the Earth” sounds almost as unlikely as the Jules Verne tale that inspired it.

Progressive rock veteran Wakeman had presumed the original orchestration to his chart-topping disc was lost for good when his record company MAM, where the manuscripts had been stored in boxes, was brought to its knees in the early 1980s.

Although he could have re-orchestrated the work from the original album, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1974, Wakeman knew it would be far from perfect.

And the original score was 55 minutes long whereas the 1974 version had to be cut to closer to 40 due to the constraints of vinyl recordings at the time.

“In about 1983 or 1984 I had an enquiry to do Journey again in America,” Wakeman recalled in a telephone interview.

“I thought ‘great’. But MAM had gone, and nobody there had any idea what had happened to all the stuff of mine,” the former Yes keyboardist told Reuters.

“Up until recently I would get phone calls to do it and I said ‘no, I can’t', there is no music any more. You just resign yourself to disappointment.”

Everything changed about four years ago when a box of papers arrived at his doorstep – a fairly regular occurrence, he explained, for a man who had been married several times and had “stuff in storage all over the place”.

Sifting through the contents, Wakeman found a pile of music that was not his own, but “something told me to empty the entire box.” At the very bottom was the long-lost conductor’s score of Journey, albeit so damp the pages were stuck together.

To this day Wakeman does not know where the box came from, and is amazed it reappeared nearly 30 years after going missing.

ORIGINAL SONGS

Once the music had been downloaded on to a computer, Wakeman set about reintroducing the songs and other sections he removed for the 1974 recording with the help of notes he had kept.

He decided to make a studio recording of the rock opera, and sought to replicate the sound of the original instruments.

For the narrator’s voice, he could not go back to David Hemmings, who died in 2003, and so invited actor Peter Egan.

The result is a re-mastered version of Journey, complete with 20 minutes of unheard music, which hits shelves on November 20. It comes in the form of a “fanback” comprising the music, a 132-page magazine and a replica of the program to the 1974 show.

For Wakeman it was a labor of love, but one he hopes will prove profitable.

“We did have record companies come forward,” the 63-year-old said. “But I don’t want an A&R (artists and repertoire) man coming in and saying it could do with this and that.

“The only way I can get this done as I believe it should be is to finance it and do it myself which we did. It broke the bank, there’s no doubt about it.”

While the concept of a rock opera based on French author Verne’s 1864 sci-fi classic may not instantly appeal to young listeners today, Wakeman believes there is a market for his latest release.

“Music audiences today don’t put a date on anything, they either like it or they don’t,” he said, adding that the “prog-rock” genre for which he is best known has made something of a comeback in recent years.

PROKOFIEV FAN

The prolific musician who has made around 100 albums and sold millions of records started piano lessons when he was seven, and at about that time the seeds of his career were sown.

“Story telling to music is something I have loved since my father took me to see ‘Peter and the Wolf’ aged eight, and (Sergei) Prokofiev became my hero,” he recalled.

By his late teens he was an established session musician and joined the band Yes in 1971 with whom he recorded the hit album “Fragile” and, the following year, “Close to the Edge”.

In 1973 he released “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” a solo concept album, and in 1974, which his official online biography calls “probably the most significant year in Rick’s career”, he made Journey and toured the world with it.

Another concept album, “The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” followed in 1975, and Wakeman returned to Yes for spells throughout the 1990s.

Next week he plays six dates in South America, including the first concert performance of the new, full Journey and a rendition of The Six Wives.

The new “holy grail” following the rediscovery of Journey is to track down the original music to King Arthur, which was also lost. Wakeman is orchestrating the existing recording for a show next June, but would love to find the full score.

“All of us involved hope very much that it (Journey) makes its money back, because it would then allow me to look for the King Arthur music. We are doing a version next June and it would be lovely to say we’ve done it from the original music.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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