The Red Bra Advert,Too Hot in America

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Model Ashley Graham poses  KOMPAS.com - An advert for plus-size bras has been banned on American television because it is thought to be too raunchy for viewers

Network executives pulled the commercial starring full-figured model Ashley Graham over fears that it was revealing just too much cleavage.

Plus-size lingerie firm Lane Bryant was planning to air the advert this week during a break in Dancing With The Stars.

But ABC network chiefs refused to screen it, sparking claims that they were discriminating against larger models.

A source at Lane Bryant said: 'The cleavage of the plus-size model, they said, was excessive, and we don't think that's the case.

'It certainly appears to be discrimination against full-sized women.'

The 25-second advert shows Ashley in a series of poses in Lane Bryant underwear.

A voiceover says: 'Mom always said beauty is skin deep. Somehow, I don't think this is what mom had in mind.'

Lane Bryant said the Fox network also originally refused to show the ad during American Idol and insisted on the advert being re-edited.

They finally agreed to feature it during the final ten minutes of the show.

A Lane Bryant spokesman said: 'We knew the ads were sexy, but they are not salacious.

'Our new commercials represent the sensuality of the curvy woman who has more to show the world than the typical waif-like lingerie model.

'What we didn't know was that the networks, which regularly run Victoria's Secret and Playtex advertising on the very shows from which we're restricted, would object to a different view of beauty.'

A Fox spokesman insisted: 'We didn't treat them any differently than Victoria's Secret.'

ABC declined to comment.

Cold War......

KOMPAS.com – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is heading to a meeting of NATO ministers in Estonia at a time when the 61-year-old organization is suffering from a kind of mid-life crisis.

Almost 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in the midst of an intense self-examination, trying to rethink its basic purpose.

NATO was founded to blunt the long-extinct threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Now it finds itself divided on many fronts: doubts among some members about its combat mission in Afghanistan, unease with the continuing presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, prickly relations with Moscow and concerns about the wisdom of expanding NATO deeper into Russia's backyard.

Clinton and 27 of her NATO counterparts will gather Thursday in Tallinn, capital of the former Soviet state of Estonia, where they're expected to take stock of the alliance and the challenges it faces.

Among the most difficult issues on the agenda are NATO's outlook for success in Afghanistan and the prospects for putting the Balkan nation of Bosnia on track toward NATO membership.

The foreign ministers also are expected to debate the future of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for Europe, which boils down to a question of whether to withdraw the remaining Cold War-era U.S. nuclear weapons there.

The Tallinn meeting, in fact, could split over the question of whether it's time to remove an estimated 200 U.S. nuclear bombs that remain at six air bases in five NATO countries.

The Obama administration hasn't taken a public position on the fate of this small but politically nettlesome nuclear arsenal. Administration officials say NATO should debate the matter and make a collective decision.

But the U.S. is trying to persuade Russia to match any Western reductions of these short-range nuclear weapons with cuts of its own. Some in Europe, including the Germans, are less certain that such linkage is needed.

The meeting also is likely to review progress in rewriting what NATO calls its "strategic concept," updating its mission statement for the first time since 1999.

That document predated the Sept. 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, which is eagerly pursuing NATO membership.

A final draft spelling out NATO's new mission is to be endorsed when President Barack Obama and other alliance leaders meet in November.

U.S. relations with Europe have deteriorated in recent years, in part due to opposition inside the alliance to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of Obama's main foreign policy goals upon entering the White House was to repair ties with Europe, while also "resetting" relations with Russia, which regards NATO expansion as a threat to its influence in the former Soviet Union.

There is no serious talk inside NATO of dismantling the alliance but, as analyst Stephen Flanagan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it in an interview, "Some are questioning what it's for."

The original purpose was framed in purely defensive terms: to protect Western Europe from a potential land invasion by the USSR.

Today there is no USSR, and no credible military threat to NATO as a whole. But the Russia-Georgia war served as a reminder to other former Soviet republics that are now NATO members — like the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — that their neighborhood is still dangerous.

NATO's Western European members, including Germany, are more likely to view Russia as a major trading partner and source of natural gas and oil.

Central and eastern European members of the alliance view Russia more uneasily because of Moscow's history as an imperial power. The new members of the NATO club tend to see the alliance's nuclear arsenal as a counterbalance to Russia's military might.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary-general, thinks the organization should work more closely with other military alliances far beyond Europe's borders — to include rising powers China and India. He says the Afghanistan war experience has shown the need for such global linkages.

"But some fear NATO stretching itself too thin," he told a University of Chicago audience on April 8. "Others are afraid that NATO wants to rival the U.N. For these reasons, among others, there is hesitation about NATO engaging more systematically with countries like India or China."

Cybersecurity is emerging as a major worry for NATO, and Estonia is a fitting venue for discussing this emerging threat.

In April and May 2007, during heightened tensions between Russia and Estonia, hackers unleashed a wave of cyber attacks that crippled dozens of Estonian government and corporate sites in one of the world's most wired countries.

Estonian authorities traced the attacks to Russia and suggested they had been orchestrated by the Kremlin — a charge Moscow denied.

Adm. James Stavridis, the top NATO commander in Europe, says the 2007 case — and the prospect of others to come — poses a hard question for the alliance.

The NATO credo of "an attack on one is an attack on all" is the fundamental pledge by all signatories to the NATO founding treaty. But does a cyber attack against one NATO member compel the alliance as a whole to come to that country's defense?

"In 1949 when the treaty was written, no one could have conceived this cyber world," Stavridis said in a Feb. 2 speech.

"In NATO in particular, in my view, we need to talk about what defines an attack ... because in this unsettled sea in which we sail, I believe it is more likely that an attack will come not off the bomb rack of an aircraft but as electrons moving down a fiber optic cable."

While the meeting is expected to focus on security issues, some see the upcoming meeting in Tallinn as, in part, a chance for a little marriage counseling.

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb says the meeting could help the U.S. and its European allies air pent-up frustrations and ease tensions. "I feel it is time for the grumpy old Atlantic couples to renew their wedding vows," he said.

Hot.....Hot....Hot...

- Some people work out to look good naked. Others skip a step.

Inside a heavily curtained fourth-floor dance studio is a male-only class specialising in "Hot Nude Yoga", a form of sensualised tantric yoga practiced nude.

A few classes are co-ed, but male-only gatherings tend to be more popular and have become a mini-phenomenon in the gay community, with studios in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. A studioless group in Chicago practices in the apartment of a nude yoga enthusiast.

Fans say the nudity aids in deepening their yoga practice while building a close, and emphatically non-sexual, community.

"A lot of people, especially living in New York, don't get the opportunity to connect with people in an intimate way," said Aaron Star, who started the naked yoga movement.

And while participants do occasionally report a frisson of excitement, Star and the practice's aficionados make one thing clear: This is about physical fitness.

"This is about yoga and appreciating your body," said John Cottrell, 40, who teaches naked yoga classes in Salt Lake City twice a month. He calls them a safe, non-threatening space "to help men especially look at themselves in a different way.

"It's just fun. It's a great workout," he says.

Star began the practice to appeal to a primarily gay male audience and achieved fame in the yoga world with his DVD series "Hot Nude Yoga", which allows aspiring yogis to practice in the privacy of their homes.

Hot, yes - in temperature, for starters.

Awkward? That, too.

At the small class I attended, an undeniable sexual charge hung in the room, making the exercise at times painfully weird and embarrassing. Many nude yoga classes revolve around partnering positions, a series of postures that put two men within striking distance of the other's privates.

Not all serious yogis think the practice makes sense.

"I don't see the point," said Mary Dillion, who teaches clothed yoga in Manhattan. "I have a yoga practice that I like and I can be naked in my home. I don't need to do naked yoga."

And Joshua Stein, editor-at-large for OUT Magazine, who attended a class in 2008, says the quality of the yoga was diminished by the heightened sensuality.

"It's almost as if the yoga is something between an afterthought and an excuse," said Stein, who is heterosexual. "It gives you this grey area where you can be intimate physically, but not so aggressively intimate as in a bath house or in a bar."

He describes being asked to do a child's pose - a kneeling pose with arms stretched forward on the ground - while a partner draped himself on his back. "It's not something you really need a partner to do," he said.

Star acknowledges that partner work is a popular feature of Hot Nude Yoga that "generates a certain amount of heat" and keeps his client list high. Still, practitioners say they constantly combat the notion that their classes are orgies veiled as exercise.

At Nude Yoga NYC in Manhattan, nude yoga is not such a boys club. Instructor Isis Phoenix, 29, said her co-ed nude yoga studio attracts "a well-rounded population of ages, genders and sexual orientations". The men usually outnumber women two-to-one, however.

Phoenix sees nudity as an extra pull for men, who often need an incentive to practice yoga. Still, she nixed the idea that nudity created a sexual element, but one of comfort.

"Men more often fall into a general greater ease with their bodies than women do," she said.

But the trend seems to appeal mostly to gay men. David Flewelling teaches Mudraforce Yoga at a home studio in Montreal, Canada. As at Star and Cottrell's studios, the majority of attendees at Mudraforce are gay.

Flewelling said sex is never part of the experience. Nude yoga, while extremely sensual, is not sexual, he said.

"There's something fantastic about exercising without clothes," he said. "You're free of the restrictions that clothes put on and it puts everyone on an even keel."

Even teachers of naked yoga, while railing against the suggestion that the class is tantamount to foreplay, can send mixed signals. When my class ended, I took aside the instructor, Jeffrey Duval, and asked how he got into naked yoga. Duval acknowledged he attended his first class because he thought it was about sex.

But his experience surpassed all his expectations.

"You're shedding away your clothes, but you're also shedding away insecurities and fear," he said. "I can't think of a more perfect way to practice."

Polish President Died By Plane Crash

KOMPAS.com – Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Although initial signs pointed to an accident with no indication of foul play, the death of a Polish president and much of the Polish state and defense establishment in Russia en route to commemorating one of the saddest events in Poland's long, complicated history with Russia, was laden with tragic irony.

Reflecting the grave sensibilities of the crash to relations between the two countries, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally assumed charge of the investigation. He was due in Smolensk later Saturday, where he would meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was flying in from Warsaw.

"This is unbelievable — this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on TVN24 television.

It is "a cursed place, horrible symbolism," he said. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."

Andrei Yevseyenkov, spokesman for the Smolensk regional government, said Russian dispatchers asked the crew to divert from the military airport in North Smolensk and land instead in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, or in Moscow because of the fog.

While traffic controllers generally have the final word in whether it is safe for a plane to land, they can and do leave it to the pilots' discretion. Air Force Gen. Alexander Alyoshin confirmed that the pilot disregarded instructions to fly to another airfield.

"But they continued landing, and it ended, unfortunately, with a tragedy," the Interfax news agency quoted Alyoshin as saying. He added that the pilot makes the final decision about whether to land.

Russia's Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 97 dead. His ministry said 88 of whom were part of the Polish state delegation. Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up for the roughly 1 1/2-hour flight from Warsaw's main airport.

Some of the people on board were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers' strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

"This is a great tragedy, a great shock to us all," former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said.

The deaths were not expected to directly affect the functioning of Polish government: Poland's president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position's domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Most top government ministers were not aboard the plane.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel.

The aircraft was the workhorse of East Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the crashes have been attributed to the chaos that ensued after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds.

The presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, the general director of the Aviakor aviation maintenance plant in Samara, Russia told Rossiya-24. The plant repaired the plane's three engines, retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment and updated the interior, Alexei Gusev said. He said there could be no doubts that the plane was flightworthy.

The plane tilted to the left before crashing, eyewitness Slawomir Sliwinski told state news channel Rossiya-24. He said there were two loud explosions when the aircraft hit the ground.

Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the red and white national colors of Poland stuck up from the debris.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish officers.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders but Putin's decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Kaczynski wasn't invited to that event. Putin, as prime minister, had invited his Polish counterpart, Tusk.

Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev both called Tusk to express their condolences and they promised to work closely with Poland in investigating the crash. Tusk said they had been the first to offer condolences.

"On this difficult day the people of Russia stand with the Polish people," Medvedev said, according to the Kremlin press service.

Putin told Tusk that he would keep him fully briefed on the investigation, his spokesman said.

Rossiya-24 showed hundreds of people around the Katyn monument, many holding Polish flags, some weeping.

Poland's parliament speaker, the acting president, declared a week of national mourning. Tusk called for two minutes of silence at noon (1000GMT) Sunday.

"The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," he said.

In Warsaw, Tusk also called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where several thousand people gathered to lay flowers and light candles. Black ribbons appeared in some windows in the capital.

Kaczynski, 60, was the twin brother of Poland's opposition leader, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Kaczynski's wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters.

Lech Kaczynski became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year's presidential vote.

The nationalist conservative had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party.

The constitution says the parliament speaker announce early elections within 14 days of the president's death. The vote must be held within another 60 days.

Poland, a nation of 38 million people, is by far the largest of the 10 formerly communist countries that have joined the European Union in recent years.

Last year, Poland was the only EU nation to avoid recession and posted economic growth of 1.7 percent.

It has become a firm U.S. ally in the region since the fall of communism — a stance that crosses party lines.

The country sent troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and recently boosted its contingent in Afghanistan to some 2,600 soldiers.

U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be deployed in Poland this year. That was a Polish condition for a 2008 deal — backed by both Kaczynski and Tusk — to host long-range missile defense interceptors.

The deal, which was struck by the Bush administration, angered Russia and was later reconfigured under President Barack Obama's administration.

Under the Obama plan, Poland would host a different type of missile defense interceptors as part of a more mobile system and at a later date, probably not until 2018.

Kaczynski is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

In the village of Gorzno, in northern Poland, the streets were largely empty as people stayed home to watch television.

"It is very symbolic that they were flying to pay homage to so many murdered Poles," said resident Waleria Gess, 73.

"I worry because so many clever and decent people were killed," said high school student Pawel Kwas, 17. "I am afraid we may have problems in the future to find equally talented politicians."

Apple Prepare to war with Amazon

KOMPAS.com - The first official reviews of Apple's much puffed-up and publicised iPad have come in... and they are surprisingly positive. Many gadget gurus derided the tablet computer at its January launch, as a lack-lustre bigger version of the iPhone with few new features.

Now just two days before the U.S. launch, reviewers have been able to prise the devices from the notoriously secretive Apple for hands-on testing.

Critics from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both praised the iPad's ease of use and battery life - which lasted longer than Apple's claim of 10 hours.

Reviewers at both papers said the tablet computer, which goes on sale in the UK this month, works nicely for web surfing or consuming media like video and books.

'If you're mainly a web surfer, note-taker, social-networker and emailer, and a consumer of photos, videos, books, periodicals and music ... this could be for you,' Mr Mossberg said.

However, he added that the speedy device, which will start at $499, had 'annoying limitations.'

'The email program lacks the ability to create local folders or rules for auto-sorting messages, and it doesn't allow group addressing. The browser lacks tabs. And the Wi-Fi-only version lacks GPS,' he said.

Mr Pogue described the 9.7" tablet as 'so bright and responsive', but added: 'The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less money with a full keyboard, DVD drive, USB jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the works.'

eReader war heats up

The reviewers were split over whether the iPad could topple Amazon's Kindle as the most popular eReader on the market. Currently the Kindle makes up 90 per cent of the eReader market. The Kindle DX, which has a 9.7" screen, is in a similar price bracket, at $489.

The Journal's Walt Mossberg said he preferred the iPad to the Kindle.

PC Mag's Tim Gideon added: 'Kindle: I like you, but I am nervous about your future.

'The iPad displays books in a way that is much flashier than your black and white e-ink screen. It shows illustrations in colour. Page turns actually look like page turns.'

However, David Pogue from the New York Times said the device's 1.5lb weight was too heavy for reading compared to Kindle's 10oz.

He added: 'You can't read well in direct sunlight' and 'You can't read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine, not even a Mac or iPhone.'

However, Apple's iBook store will not come preloaded on the iPad, allowing other companies, including Amazon, to create online bookstore apps for the device.

Readers will therefore be able to buy eBooks from a number of different suppliers but read them on their iPad.

Amazon said the company would 'look forward to making Kindle for iPad available very soon,' but didn't confirm if the App would be ready for the U.S launch on Saturday.

Book publishers are set to reap the rewards as the battle heats up between Apple and Amazon for eReader customers.

Today, Amazon agreed to halt heavy discounting of eBook best sellers in new pricing deals with two major publishers.

The agreements with HarperCollins and CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster will allow publishers to charge up to $14.99 for some popular titles - more than the tough $9.99 pricing cap that Amazon had set previously.

The new deals, that mirror those struck with Apple, mean Amazon will have the same array of titles that rival what Apple will offer on its digital bookstore.

Currently Apple allows publishers to set the price for their own books, with Apple receiving 30 per cent from each sale. This is very different from the standard publishing pricing, as used by Amazon. In this version publishers sell books at a wholesale rate. Then Amazon makes a profit by marking up the books above this.

John Makinson, Chief Executive of Penguins Books, said: 'We have all struggled in this industry to find an online model that works successfully in terms of content and the consumer's propensity to pay.

'I think myself that the iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid model that will be attractive to consumers.'

Penguin will share 30 per cent of its revenue from eBook sales for iPads with Apple. Mr Makinson said this compared to the 50 per cent publishers typically paid to book retailers including Amazon.

Google :Attack in Vietnam

HANOI, KOMPAS.com — Google Inc. accused Vietnam of stifling political dissent with cyberattacks, the latest complaint by the Internet giant against a communist regime following a public dispute with China over online censorship.  Like China, Vietnam tightly controls the flow of information and has said it reserves the right to take “appropriate action” against Web sites it deems harmful to national security.
     
The cyberattacks targeted “potentially tens of thousands,” a posting on Google’s online security blog said Wednesday.  It said it was drawing attention to the Vietnam attacks because they underscored the need for the international community “to take cybersecurity seriously to help keep free opinion flowing.”

Google apparently stumbled onto a scheme targeting Vietnamese-speaking Internet users around the world while investigating the surveillance of e-mail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists, one analyst suggested.  The attackers appear to have targeted specific Web sites and duped users into downloading malware programs, said Nart Villeneuve from The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. That may have allowed the infiltration and surveillance of activists, he said.

“This kind of stuff happens all the time in China,” said Villeneuve. “It has a chilling effect. It silences people.”

Google engineer Neel Mehta wrote in the posting, “these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.”
     
The mining project involving a subsidiary of Chinese state-run aluminum company Chinalco is planned for Vietnam’s Central Highlands and has attracted strong opposition.  Foes fear the mine would cause major environmental problems and lead to Chinese workers flooding into the strategically sensitive region.
     
The computer security firm McAfee, which has investigated the malware, also discussed the attacks in a blog posting Tuesday. “We believe that the perpetrators may have political motivations and may have some allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” wrote George Kurtz, McAfee’s chief technology officer.
     
Vietnamese officials did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.  Last fall, the government detained several bloggers who criticized the bauxite mine, and in December, a Web site called bauxitevietnam.info, which had drawn millions of visitors opposed to the mine, was hacked.

The malware apparently began circulating at about that time, according the McAfee blog. It said someone hacked into a Web site run by the California-based Vietnamese Professionals Society and replaced a keyboard program that can be downloaded from that site with a malicious program.
     
Google says its dispute with China was triggered by a hacking attack that emanated from the mainland and attempts to snoop on dissidents’ e-mail. Last week, Google shut down its search operations in China, Vietnam’s northern neighbor, after complaints of cyberattacks and censorship there. Google now redirects search queries from China’s mainland to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
     
On Tuesday, many users of the Chinese Google search engine experienced difficulties. Analysts suggested the troubles may be linked to the company’s decision to move to Hong Kong. Google initially said it was an in-house technical problem but later shifted its explanation, blaming the “Great Firewall” — the nickname for the network of filters that keep mainland China’s Web surfers from accessing material the government deems sensitive.
     
The sudden disruption and lack of explanation fit with how the government has brought companies to heel previously in the heavily monitored Chinese Internet industry, analysts said.

“I don’t think anyone should be surprised,” said Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur and author of the technology blog Digicha. Tuesday’s problems were payback by the government, he said, because “Google humiliated China.”