Am I in trouble? The Associated Press and blogging group to discuss possible standards for quoting AP news stories online

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.

Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.

The meeting comes after AP sent a legal notice last week to Rogers Cadenhead, the author of a blog called the Drudge Retort, a news community site whose name is a parody of the prominent blog the Drudge Report.

The notice called for the blog to remove several postings that AP believed was an improper use of its stories. Other bloggers subsequently lambasted AP for going after a small blogger whom they thought appeared to be engaging in a legally permissible and widely practiced activity protected under “fair use” provisions of copyright law…

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SUV (an XKCD comic)

Iran withdraws $75 billion from European banks to avoid potential EU sanctions

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said.

Western powers are warning the Islamic Republic of more punitive measures if it rejects an incentives offer and presses on with sensitive nuclear work, but the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter is showing no sign of backing down.

“Part of Iran’s assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks,” Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying.

Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment on the report in Shahrvand-e Emrouz, a moderate weekly, which did not specify the time period for the withdrawals which it said were ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“About $75 billion of Iran’s foreign assets which were under threat of being blocked were wired back to Iran based on Ahmadinejad’s order,” the weekly said…

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Lauren Armeni is on YouTube!

Starring Lauren Armeni, Leigh Ann Roe, and Christopher Kanalas

Info: Undergraduate students in a Forensic Chemistry Lab perform some chemical spot tests for Marijuana and Cocaine.

The production of this video was supported through a grant from NSF (0745590), and is freely available for educational purposes. The opinions expressed in this video are those of the students and do not necessarily reflect those of Ohio University or the National Science Foundation.

“The Boss” Bruce Springsteen dedicates Thunder Road last night in Europe to his favorite fan– Tim Russert

The Show Must Go On! Draft Gwen Ifill for new host of Meet the Press

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Biography from PBS.org:

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, most recently the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election.

Ifill joined both “Washington Week” and the NewsHour in 1999, interviewing newsmakers and reporting on issues ranging from foreign affairs to politics.

Before coming to PBS, she spent five years at NBC News as chief congressional and political correspondent, and still appears as an occasional roundtable panelist on “Meet The Press.”

Ifill joined NBC News from The New York Times where she covered the White House and politics. She also covered national and local affairs for The Washington Post, Baltimore Evening Sun, and Boston Herald American.

“I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, and my first love was newspapers,” Ifill said. “But public broadcasting provides the best of both worlds – combining the depth of newspapering with the immediate impact of broadcast television.”

She has received more than a dozen honorary doctorates, and is the recipient of several broadcasting excellence awards, including honors from the National Press Foundation, Ebony Magazine, the Radio Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television.

A native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Ifill serves on the board of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Newseum and the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.