Saturday, November 27, 2004

Broadband Over Power Lines interference for shortwave radio


Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 21:30:31 -0500 (EST)
From: parallax@riseup.net

Subject: [IMC-Audio] Broadband interference for shortwave radio

Not sure if people have heard about this...



BPL is short for Broadband Over Power Lines. It is also known as Power Line Communications, or PLC in some places.

Essentially, BPL is high speed internet access/service delivered by way of existing electrical power lines. It is envisioned to provide consumers with a third option for broadband internet access, in addition to cable internet service and a phone company's high speed DSL (digital subscriber line) service.

BPL technology is based on using the 2-80 MHz (megahertz) range of the radio frequency spectrum to transmit data over large powerline arrays. In doing so, BPL will emit enormous amounts of radio frequency interference across lots of frequencies already in use, such as international shortwave and ham radio broadcasts. BPL will put out noise all across the international shortwave broadcasting bands (3-30 MHz), effectively obliterating shortwave radio reception to listeners within the USA.

Also affected will be airline pilots, ship to shore communications, emergency services, lower end TV channels, citizens band (CB) radio, military, police, fire, air traffic control, mobile and AM radio frequencies. Anything operating in the 2-80 MHz range will be affected.

Shortwave radio listeners within the USA will have the toughest time, since BPL will disrupt foreign broadcasts from all over the globe. BPL will ruin large parts of the shortwave radio spectrum within America if pushed ahead quickly and largely implemented across the country by 2007, as envisioned.

Truely, BPL is a clear and present danger to international shortwave broadcasters and listeners all across the world. It is obviously being used as an erected 'firewall' by domestic and international media interests to restrict and censor foreign news and information from reaching American listeners.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been the prime public mover and supporter of BPL in the USA, with its chairman, Michael Powell, recently calling BPL "tremendously exciting" and a "broadband nirvana" for the telecommunications industry. The FCC has also recently voted to allow international media conglomerates the ability to increase their holdings in television stations and newspapers, another signal that fewer and fewer companies will end up controlling more and more of what people hear, see and read.

Internationally, BPL has been tested and halted because of massive radio frequency interference in Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands and other countries. The Austrian Red Cross reported that during an exercise in May 2003, communications were "massively disturbed" by BPL, with intereference levels exceeding the limit by a factor of 10,000. Dietland Hansen, the external chairman of the advisory group on BPL to RegTP, Germany's FCC equivalent, noted, "it suffers the enormous risk of uncontrolled interference to everyone". During test trials of BPL in Britain and Japan, Mr Hansen stated that interference was so strong that they pulled the plug on BPL.

BPL or Broadband Over Power Lines, though a brilliant idea, is too disruptive to broadcasts, transmissions and communications that already occupy and operate within the radio frequency range now in contention. As BPL is seen as a takeover of the entire High Frequency (HF) radio spectrum by a handful of electric utilities subservient to the Bush Administration's love of all things that pollute, so too must efforts be put forth to preserve and protect certain portions of the electromagnetic radio frequency spectrum from the reckless exploitation, damage and pollution of this most unique natural resource.



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New Fund for African Community Radio

AMARC English
AMARC Français
AMARC Spanish

Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 01:57:37 -0000
   From: "Chifu" <chifu2222@msn.com>
Subject: New Fund for African Community Radio



New Fund for African Community Radio
Highway Africa News Agency
http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/hana/
Contact Information:
+27 46 636 1590

highwayafrica@ru.c.za

November 21, 2004
Posted to the web November 23, 2004

Guy Berger
Marrakech
African community radio may get a boost from the formation of an international task force to investigate setting up an international fund to underwrite resources for the sector, a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco decided today (21 November, 2004).
The initiative parallels global initiatives to set up a "Digital Solidarity Fund" that flowed out of last year's United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
Community radio voices struggled for recognition at WSIS, and have now decided to go it alone to raise donor resources to support their activities, particularly for buying broadcast equipment.
The initiative to create a global fund will "need to find ways to articulate with the Digital Solidarity Fund which is focused on telecoms infrastructure", said Steve Buckley, president of world community radio network, AMARC which arranged the Morocco meeting.
AMARC operates in 110 countries, has 364 member stations in Africa and operates the Simbani news agency.
Buckley noted that opportunities existed for community radio to expand its scale in many countries. International development agencies were now ready to mainstream the funding of community radio. Ten years earlier, only Denmark and UNESCO had been interested in funding community radio. Now the G8 countries and other international groups were in on the act.
He said the fund would "focus on short term investments for long-term sustainability". It would be a catalyst for national policy changes to create the funding to dramatically increase the scale of community radio.
Social returns on community radio were enormous, said Nick Ishmael- Perkins, a London-based development consultant, who outlined how this grassroots form of media could advance the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. He explained that community radio: was a cost- effective way to reach particular audiences; had programme content and structure that promoted people's rights to participation in health, education and other areas of development and democracy; used local languages to increase people's understanding and access to information.
Ishmael-Perkins gave the example of a radio station in Cameroon which had been shown to raise community awareness about reforestation by two-thirds.
Speaking in support of a specialised fund, George Christensen, vice president of AMARC, and a radio journalist based in The Gambia, said community radio had won global recognition as an important sector of the media.
However, notes of caution were sounded by several speakers, warning that "selling" community radio as a delivery channel for development ideas could contradict the importance of the medium in giving voice to active community voices.
Jayaweera Wijayanandra, director of Unesco's Communications Development Division, spoke about the difficulties of getting donors to forego direct relations with projects and work instead through a global fund.
>From the World Bank, Krezentia Duer, said that her institution had tended to look at information for development in terms of linear information dissemination. This focused on examples like the media giving the public information about government spending.
She explained the difficulties of persuading her banking principals about seeing community radio in terms of giving communities voice, and about getting donors to accept that performance indicators were problematic in a genuinely participatory approach to development.

Another speaker, Beninese broadcaster, Souleye Issiaka emphasised the importance of going beyond support for broadcast infrastructure to encompass resources for training for community stations. He also underlined the need to build national associations of community radio stations that could lobby for support for public funds from their national governments.

A closing declaration called for both an Africa-wide fund as well as national level funds for supporting community radio.

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WHO Warns of Dire Flu Pandemic

MEDICAL: DISEASES: INFECTIOUS : NEWS: WHO Warns of Dire Flu Pandemic

CNN.com Health
WHO warns of dire flu pandemic
Thursday, November 25, 2004 Posted: 10:06 PM EST (0306 GMT)

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The World Health Organization has issued a dramatic warning that bird flu will trigger an international pandemic that could kill up to seven million people.

The influenza pandemic could occur anywhere from next week to the coming years, WHO said.

"There is no doubt there will be another pandemic," Klaus Stohr of the WHO Global Influenza Program said on the sidelines of a regional bird flu meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

"Even with the best case scenario, the most optimistic scenario, the pandemic will cause a public health emergency with estimates which will put the number of deaths in the range of two and seven million," he said.

"The number of people affected will go beyond billions because between 25 percent and 30 percent will fall ill."

Pandemics occur when a completely new flu strain emerges for which humans have no immunity.

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The complete article may be read at the URL above.

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Chinese journalist and dissident Liu Jingsheng to be released

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Chinese journalist and dissident Liu Jingsheng to be released
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Chinese authorities are reportedly about to release dissident and founder of the underground magazine "Tansuo" ("Investigation") Liu Jingsheng, on 27 November. Liu has been imprisoned since 28 May 1992. The surprise commute in his sentence would appear to be a conciliatory gesture towards the international community, Human rights organisations in China, have said. RSF has called for Liu's full civil and political rights to be restored and repeated its appeal for the release of all China's jailed journalists, Internet users and cyber-dissidents. In the wake of the announcement of a 2005 release for journalist Wu Shishen, the planned release of Liu appears to be a fresh indication of the Wen Jiabao government's desire to ease international pressure on China over its imprisoned dissidents.

Source:
 - IFEX
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Venezuela media law undercuts freedom of expression

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Venezuela media law undercuts freedom of expression
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A draft law to increase state control of TV and radio broadcasting in Venezuela threatens to undermine the media's freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch(HRW) has said. Venezuela's National Assembly, which has been voting article by article on the law, known as the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, is expected to approve it today. "This legislation severely threatens press freedom in Venezuela," said Josè Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division at HRW. "Its vaguely worded restrictions and heavy penalties are a recipe for self-censorship by the press and arbitrariness by government authorities."

Source:
 IFEX

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* Families row over home PC access *

 * Families row over home PC access *
Arguments over who gets to use the home computer are breaking out in families across the UK, says a survey.
Full story: