General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend
















PERTH, Australia (AP) — In a new twist to the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal, the Pentagon said Tuesday that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under investigation for alleged “inappropriate communications” with a woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.


Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.













Panetta said that he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.


A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen’s communications were with Jill Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.


Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Broadwell, who is Petraeus’ biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.


Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.


Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.


The senior official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen’s problematic communications.


The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen’s communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.


“Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter,” the official said. He said Allen currently is in Washington.


Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.


The FBI’s decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta’s decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.


Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.


In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen’s nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined.” He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.


Panetta said President Barack Obama was consulted and agreed that Allen’s nomination should be put on hold. Allen was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.


NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen’s appointment.


“We have seen Secretary Panetta‘s statement,” NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. “It is a U.S. investigation.”


Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama’s nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford’s hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.


___


Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.


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Who's who in the Petraeus scandal

What started out as a leisurely stroll through the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Nov. 11 with his girlfriend, quickly turned into quite a surreal experience for Max Galuppo, 20, of Bloomsbury, N.J. Galuppo, a Temple University student, found his doppelganger in a 16th century...
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FTC chief: Kids’ Internet privacy rules done by year’s end
















WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Regulators will likely finish a long-awaited update to rules protecting children’s online privacy by the end of the year, the head of the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday.


The original rules were developed when most computers were large beige boxes sitting under office desks instead of smartphones slung into backpacks and permeating most aspects of daily life.













FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the agency was moving forward on two issues: self-regulatory “do not track” guidance, and regulations to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.


The law requires that website and online service operators obtain verifiable consent from parents before collecting information about children.


Leibowitz, who is thought keen to leave the agency within months, said he was more confident of finishing an update of COPPA’s rules, which were written following the 1998 legislation.


Under revised rules, the FTC would make websites, mobile apps and data brokers all responsible for getting parental consent before collecting data about children aged 12 and younger. Currently it is unclear who has the responsibility.


Data brokers buy and sell consumer data.


Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Conference in Washington, Leibowitz said the process would most likely be done by the end of the year.


“We are looking at all the comments that came in and weighing how to tweak the regulation,” he said.


Leibowitz was slightly less optimistic about the fate of “do not track,” an effort to allow Internet users to tell companies they did not want to be tracked online.


Some large technology companies, like Microsoft and Google, have agreed to let consumers opt out of being tracked, but advertisers have pushed back hard.


“We’re still making forward progress,” Leibowitz said when asked if the efforts would be done by the end of the year. “We continue to be optimistic. It’s not a certainty though.”


(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Ros Krasny and Kenneth Barry)


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Man who accused Elmo puppeteer of teen sex recants
















NEW YORK (AP) — A man who accused Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of having sex with him when he was a teenage boy has recanted his story.


In a quick turnabout, the man on Tuesday described his sexual relationship with Clash as adult and consensual.













Clash responded with a statement of his own, saying he is “relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest.” He had no further comment.


The man, who has not identified himself, released his statement through the Harrisburg, Pa., law firm Andreozzi & Associates.


Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street” in New York, soon followed by saying, “We are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode.”


The whirlwind episode began Monday morning, when Sesame Workshop startled the world by announcing that Clash had taken a leave of absence from “Sesame Street” in the wake of allegations that he had had a relationship with a 16-year-old.


Clash, a 52-year-old divorced father of a grown daughter, swiftly denied the charges of his accuser, who is in his early 20s. In that statement Clash acknowledged that he is gay but said the relationship had been between two consenting adults.


Though it remained unclear where the relationship took place, sex with a person under 17 is a felony in New York if the perpetrator is at least 21.


Sesame Workshop, which said it was first contacted by the accuser in June, had launched an investigation that included meeting with the accuser twice and meeting with Clash. Its investigation found the charge of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated.


Clash said on Monday he would take a break from Sesame Workshop “to deal with this false and defamatory allegation.”


Neither Clash nor Sesame Workshop indicated on Tuesday when he might return to the show, on which he has performed as Elmo since 1984.


Elmo had previously been a marginal character, but Clash, supplying the fuzzy red puppet with a high-pitched voice and a carefree, child-like personality, launched the character into major stardom. Elmo soon rivaled Big Bird as the face of “Sesame Street.”


Though usually behind the scenes, Clash meanwhile achieved his own measure of fame. In 2006, he published an autobiography, “My Life as a Furry Red Monster,” and he was the subject of the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey.”


He has won 23 daytime Emmy awards and one prime-time Emmy.


___


Online:


http://www.sesamestreet.org


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Black patients fare worse with kidney cancer: study
















NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – White patients with the most common form of kidney cancer, called renal cell carcinoma, are slightly more likely to survive the disease than black patients, according to a large new study.


The researchers looked at nearly 40,000 cases and found that black patients tend to start out with more favorable types of renal carcinomas, but “despite that, we still see poorer survival among African Americans,” said Wong-Ho Chow, the lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.













It’s been known that blacks have higher rates of renal cancer than whites, and smaller studies have also pointed to racial disparities in how patients make out after their diagnosis. But experts have disagreed on the reasons.


About 64,000 people will be diagnosed with some type of kidney cancer this year in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute, making the disease the number 12 cause of cancer deaths for Americans.


Chow and her colleagues looked to a large national database to confirm whether African Americans fare worse with renal cell carcinoma and to look for any clues to why that might be the case.


The researchers collected information on 39,350 patients – 4,359 of whom were black and 34,991 white – diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma from 1992 to 2007.


They found that 72.6 percent of white patients survived at least five years out from their diagnosis, while 68 percent of blacks lived for at least five years.


Chow’s group reports in the medical journal Cancer that 66.7 percent of black patients and 61.9 percent of whites were diagnosed with tumors that had not yet spread.


“It wasn’t related to cancers being diagnosed at a later stage,” said Dr. Charles Modlin, the director of the Minority Men’s Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological Institute, who was not involved in the study. “African Americans were more likely to be diagnosed when tumors were smaller, more localized.”


In addition, a greater proportion of black patients had a less dangerous type of renal cell carcinoma than white patients, “and still they didn’t do as well,” Modlin pointed out.


“I’m thinking maybe it has something to do with the type or quality of care that they receive,” he told Reuters Health.


Survival rates were much lower, and equally so, among both black and white patients who did not have surgery to remove their tumors. But whereas 10.5 percent of white patients got no surgery, 14.5 percent of black patients did not have surgery, the study found.


It’s also possible there could be underlying health conditions more common among blacks that predispose them to a worse outcome, researchers said.


“We know African Americans are more prone to hypertension, which, by the way, is a risk factor for renal cell cancer,” said Chow.


But, she added, information on how many people had hypertension was not in this dataset.


“At this point we don’t have the data to explain (the study findings) yet,” Chow said.


Another unknown that could have influenced the outcomes, Chow told Reuters Health, is whether some patients might have made lifestyle changes, such as losing weight or quitting smoking, after their diagnosis, but she wasn’t able to get that information either.


She added that until doctors have a better understanding of what’s driving this disparity, there’s not much advice to offer with regard to treating patients.


Modlin said it’s important to at least be aware of these disparities.


“Because one thing we see is that healthcare providers are not really aware or don’t take into consideration that these health care disparities are real and (are) significant problems,” he said.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZCl7Y4 Cancer, online November 12, 2012.


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Probe shows federal power to access email

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your emails are not nearly as private as you think.


The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus demonstrates how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed. With subpoenas and warrants, the FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other Internet providers.


"The government can't just wander through your emails just because they'd like to know what you're thinking or doing," said Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. "But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people's emails."


Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. To get more recent communications, a warrant from a judge is required. This is a higher standard that requires proof of probable cause that a crime is being committed.


Public interest groups are pressing Congress for the law to be updated because it was written a quarter-century ago when most emails were deleted after a few months because the cost of storing them indefinitely was prohibitive. Now, "cloud computing" services provide huge amounts of inexpensive storage capacity. Other technological advances, such as mobile phones, have dramatically increased the amount of communications that are kept in electronic warehouses and can be reviewed by law enforcement authorities carrying a subpoena.


"Technology has evolved in a way that makes the content of more communications available to law enforcement without judicial authorization, and at a very low level of suspicion," said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology.


The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, has proposed changing the law to require a warrant for all Internet communications regardless of their age. But law enforcement officials have resisted because they said it would undercut their ability to catch criminals.


A subpoena is usually sufficient to require Internet companies to reveal names and any other information that they have that would identify the owner of a particular email account. Google, which operates the widely used Gmail service, complied with more than 90 percent of the nearly 12,300 requests it received in 2011 from the U.S. government for data about its users, according to figures from the company.


Even if a Gmail account is created with a fictitious name, there are other ways to track down the user. Logs of when messages are sent reveal the Internet address the user used to log onto the account. Matching times and dates with locations allow investigators to piece together the chain.


A Gmail account figured prominently in the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' stunning resignation last week as the nation's spy chief. Petraeus, a retired Army general, stepped down after he confessed to an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and his biographer.


The inquiry began earlier this year after Jill Kelley, a Florida woman who was friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, began receiving harassing emails. Kelley is a Tampa socialite. That is where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.


Petraeus served as commander at Central Command from 2008 to 2010.


FBI agents eventually determined that the email trail led to Broadwell, according to two federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sources were not authorized to speak about the matter on the record. As they looked further, the FBI agents came across a private Gmail account that used an alias name. On further investigation, the account turned out to be Petraeus's.


The contents of several of the exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell suggested they were having an affair, according to the officials. Investigators determined that no security breach had occurred, but continued their investigation into whether Petraeus had any role in the harassing emails that Broadwell had sent to Kelley, which was a criminal investigation.


Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic.


One of the law enforcement officials said they did not transmit all of their communications as emails from one's inbox to the other's inbox. Rather, they composed some emails in a Gmail account and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox." Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail which is easier to trace. It's a technique that al-Qaida terrorists began using several years ago and teen-agers in many countries have since adopted.


___


Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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Engineers of the Future Design Star Trek-Inspired Tricorder Device
















A group of college and high school students has designed a Star Trek-inspired sensing device that can beam environmental data to a smart phone. The team developed their project during a summer internship program run by the Wright Brothers Institute and the Air Force Research Laboratory. and shared their results at this fall’s World Maker Faire in New York City–a showcase of DIY ingenuity. The Summer at the Edge program gives student teams ten weeks to work on science and engineering projects. The tricorder device is the team’s response to a challenge from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: “Is there an effective way to integrate external sensors with smart phones and can we globalize this information?” Applications could range from data collection for research to educational hands-on activities to disaster-zone assessment. The description reminded the students of a Star Trek gadget. In the sci-fi television series, the tricorder is a hand-held device used to diagnose illness, scout alien planets and more. Several real-life tricorders have been developed or proposed and the 15-member student team decided to take a crack at designing their own. The device itself looks like a clear brick filled with computer parts and batteries. It is built around an open-source computing platform called an Arduino microcontroller and transmits data via Bluetooth. An environmental sensing pod connects to the controller and collects measurements on variables like temperature, wind speed and radiation levels. Users can view data collection in real time via Google maps or an interactive graph and monitor changes and search for patterns. The tricorder’s modular design lets the team swap functionalities while still using the same Arduino controller and software. To demonstrate, the team built an additional pod equipped with an infrared beam and motion detector–a security sensor. Along the way, the team faced some challenges. Getting the sensors and the tablet to talk to each other involved a lot of troubleshooting. “We were having a lot of trouble with the Bluetooth communications,” says Lujack Prater, a junior studying electrical engineering at Ohio State University, who worked on the software design. “It was a few days that we didn’t get it. We were working on it and working on it.” Then a breakthrough: “It was really exciting–I remember the first time we started getting data streaming to the tablet,” says Grace Crumrine, part of the hardware sub-team and a sophomore in electrical engineering at Ohio State University. “But it was completely corrupt and didn’t mean anything.” The team needed to iron out software glitches and calibrate their sensors. Crumrine explains that the wind sensor was just “spitting out analogue values and we didn’t know what they meant.” So they took the sensor for a ride. While her teammate drove, Crumrine stuck the sensor out the car window. They were able to determine which values corresponded to specific speeds by rolling down the road at five, then 10 miles per hour and so on. The EPA was impressed, says Rob Williams, head of the internship program and research director of the Air Force Research Laboratory‘s Discovery Lab. “The tricorder was one of the more ambitious research projects,” he adds. “I think it validated the model that we’ve been an advocate of–bringing together motivated students and giving them the opportunity to have fun learning while doing projects that have potential.” Other notable projects include a tablet-based virtual walkthrough of medical techniques to train physicians and a device that can detect the brain’s electrical signals to give quadriplegics control over robots. What’s the next step for Project Tricorder? Williams would like to find teachers and students around the country who want to use the team’s design. He says middle school students could use the device to see how technology can help protect the environment. The military could use it to download information to virtual command centers and guide decision-making during a search and rescue based on current conditions. The device’s multi-functionality and connection to a smart phone would be key advantage. Sensor pods could even be installed in remote or dangerous locations and still report via Bluetooth.

Lujack Prater and Grace Crumrine with their team's device at the World Maker Faire. Credit: Grace Crumrine

Both Prater and Crumrine say the program is hard work. Prater spent the first two weeks learning how to code and program Android devices. “You get so involved in the project that you forget what you are doing,” says Crumrine. “Then when you present it to people you see their face with all the excitement and astonishment. It is worth it.”












Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.


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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs
















WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.


The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.













Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.


Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.


During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.


Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.


The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.


On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.


(Editing by W Simon)


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Life is beautiful, pope tells fellow elderly
















ROME (Reuters) – Pope Benedict visited a home for the elderly on Monday and told its residents that life can be beautiful at every age.


“I feel younger after being here,” the pope, 85, said as he was leaving a home run by the Roman Catholic Sant’ Egidio Community in a Rome neighborhood near the Vatican.













“In every age we have to know how to discover the presence of the blessings of the Lord and the riches that they contain,” he told the residents.


“You must never lock yourselves in sadness. Living is beautiful even at our age, even though we have some ailments and limitations,” he said.


His audience broke into applause when he told them that the quality of a society and a civilization can be judged by how they treat their elderly.


The Sant’ Egidio community, which has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times, runs homeless shelters, AIDS clinics and homes for the elderly on several continents.


In 1992 it brokered an end to the 15-year civil war in Mozambique, where it now runs programs to stop the passage of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their children.


(Reporting By Philip Pullella)


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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman
















LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.


Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.













“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.


“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”


George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.


The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.


Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.


The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.


But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.


THOMPSON’S LEGACY


Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.


In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.


One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.


“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.


Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.


Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.


“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.


“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”


Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.


Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.


McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.


Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.


INQUIRIES


Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.


Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.


Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.


Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.


He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.


Murdoch himself was watching from afar.


“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.


It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.


Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.


Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.


(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)


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