2005-2014

Google Online India told to pay service tax by Authority for Advance Rulings. The Authority for Advance Rulings has said that Google Online India Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of US-based Google International LLC, will have to pay service tax for selling advertisement space on its search site to Indian entities. This can set a precedent for search engines with offices in India falling in the...

Reporters Without Borders has published a significant report which documents how the freedom to dissent has become the first casualty of the War Against Terror. The report says that the tone of US coverage of the events of September 11 and their aftermath changed as soon as President Bush announced his War on Terrorism. The norm became patriotic and propagandistic. This was confirmed by Richard...

New Delhi, December 22: "Media is in no way to blame for exposing genuine wrong doing." This was how the Lok Sabha inquiry committee, which went into the cash-for-query scam, has commented on the sting operation exposing corruption among MPs aired by a television news channel last week. The committee, headed by senior Congress MP Pawan Kumar Bansal, endorsed the view taken by the first report of...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Indentured servitude in Saipan. Murder of indigenous people in the Philippines. Abuse of psychiatric patients in Paraguay and around the world. Not your typical holiday movie fare, yet these and other disturbingly true stories have been captured on video as the nonprofit group Witness pursues its goal of using visual media as a positive force for change. And...

The claim by Saddam Hussein that he has been tortured in custody is on the front pages of many Arab newspapers. But it is unclear whether his latest efforts to portray himself as a victim of the Americans is playing that well in the Middle East. There is certainly widespread fascination with his trial. Arabs have the opportunity to follow it in the minutest detail if they wish - it is being...

The Newspaper Guild has hired investment bankers to explore the possibility of putting together what probably would be a long-shot, "worker-friendly" buyout of nine Knight Ridder newspapers, including the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Duluth News Tribune. Knight Ridder, which owns 32 daily newspapers, put itself up for auction in November at the urging of some of its large institutional investors...

The stratospheric increase in the use of online classified advertising – up 80 percent year over year according to a just-released study in the United States (US) – represents a coming of age for the Web, a milestone that will continue to eclipse itself for the foreseeable future, says one of the Internet's most popular classified ad companies. "This kind of precipitous growth within a 12-month...

NEW YORK - Suddenly this week, scattered outposts in the media have started mentioning the "I" word, or at least the "IO" phrase: impeach or impeachable offense. The sudden outbreak of anger or candor–or, some might say, foolishness–has been sparked by the uproar over revelations of a White House approved domestic spying program, with some conservatives joining in the shouting. Ron Hutcheson...

MS. MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NEWS STORIES FOR WOMEN IN 2005 Advances, Setbacks and Cultural Milestones MOST SIGNIFICANT: Sandra Day O'Connor resigns from the Supreme Court, leaving a vacancy and likely a shift in direction of the court threatening to narrow women’s rights. MOST OUTRAGEOUS REJECTION OF SCIENCE: FDA controversy: stalls once again on Plan B – flying in the face of scientific decision...

WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The United States has suspended publishing a lifestyle magazine aimed at improving America's image abroad among young Arabs, in a further sign of troubled U.S. public diplomacy efforts. The State Department, which sponsors the $4.5 million annual publication and distribution throughout the Arab world of the Arabic-language magazine "Hi," said on Thursday it stopped...