Archive
Reuters blog archive
from Photographers Blog:
Nude without the nudity
WARNING: SOME IMAGES CONTAIN NUDITY
San Francisco, California
By Beck Diefenbach
Photographing the nude body in America presents many challenges. So when Reuters editor Mike Fiala asked me to shoot the latest chapter in the public nudity ban in San Francisco, I knew I would have a lot of factors to consider.
GALLERY: SAN FRANCISCO'S NO TO NUDE
Different parts of the world react differently to nudity in the news. In America, it is often considered taboo to print a photo of frontal nudity even if it is considered newsworthy.
If you are unaware, San Francisco does not have a city ordinance banning nudity in public. It is just one of those San Francisco-ism everyone else in the country likes to joke about. Until the last year or two, this clothing optional lifestyle never really caused much of a kerfuffle. But recently, store merchants in the city's Castro district have requested that the city put a stop to bare skin.
Castro District Supervisor Scott Wiener has been trying to change the city code to eliminate the daily nudist activity. He proposed a ban that would prohibit nudity in most public places, but would still allow it in particular parades and street festivals (we are in San Francisco after all). The final vote by the 11 city supervisors was set for Tuesday and I was assigned to photograph it for Reuters.
from MediaFile:
Sony’s case of iPad 3 launch envy
Sony, in a bout of bad timing, is hosting an event on March 7 in San Francisco for tech reporters at the same time as Apple's reported iPad 3 unveiling and the Japanese conglomerate wants to make sure it won't get ditched.
Sony, which some people consider to be the "Apple of the '80s", sent out a helpful e-mail on Tuesday informing invited members of the press of the scheduling conflict without mentioning the world's most valuable tech company.
from FaithWorld:
San Francisco may vote on banning male circumcision
(A Jewish circumcsion, 18 November 2007/Chesdovi)
A group opposed to male circumcision said they have collected more than enough signatures to qualify a proposal to ban the practice in San Francisco as a ballot measure for November elections.
But legal experts said that even if it were approved by a majority of the city's voters, such a measure would almost certainly face a legal challenge as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of religion.
from Reuters Investigates:
Japanese quake cost bad, but far from the worst
By Ben Berkowitz
The March 11 Great Tohoku Earthquake in Japan was a tragic disaster of historic proportions -- but from a purely financial standpoint it pales in comparison. (For a special report on insurers, click here.)
Estimates are still coming in but it seems likely the quake will end up ranking as the costliest of the last generation in insured losses, surpassing even the Northridge earthquake that struck southern California in 1994. (The one that collapsed a number of major freeways, by way of reference).
from Environment Forum:
Video Q+A with solar entrepreneur Dave Llorens
Solar energy is not a new technology, yet the adoption rate in the United States continues to crawl along. Just one percent of homes have made the switch to solar power and the reason is primarily a lack of understanding of how it all works, says Dave Llorens, founder and CEO of One Block Off the Grid (1BOG), a California solar retrofit company that groups together neighbourhoods to cut costs for consumers.
"The problem is nobody has it, but you should," Llorens recently told Reuters in San Francisco, adding that it is common for in-home Q&A sessions to go on for hours and hours. "Everybody is so hungry for information, it's like nobody knows anything."
from MediaFile:
The New York Times tries local news, far away
If you read often enough about the supposed death of the newspaper business, you would think that the nation's newsrooms are increasingly depopulated, barren places, with darkened offices and empty cubicles... the occasional tumbleweed blowing past. (Actually, large stretches of Tribune Co's New York bureau look just like that, as I saw earlier this year).
In San Francisco, Chicago and other metropolitan centers, you would be wrong. It's true that both cities bear unfortunate marks of how rough the advertising decline, rise of the Internet and financial crisis have treated their news operations: Hearst was toying with shutting down the San Francisco Chronicle, and Chicago's leading daily papers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, are owned by bankrupt companies. Improbably enough, both are turning into hot spots for local news competition.
from MediaFile:
YouTube goes live Outside with Dave Matthews
YouTube is getting together with the organizers of the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival to bring the show live to its users in the U.S. starting this Friday Aug 28th through to Sunday Aug 30th.
Top of the bill is Dave Mathews Band along with Jason Mraz, Raphael Saddiq, Thievery Corporation and many others all performing at the event in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
from Your View:
Beauty of Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is pictured from an elevated location in Northern California. Your View/Ananta Khanal
from Entrepreneurial:
Twitter-based shopping website seeks retailers
Buying something online can be a frustrating process. The shear numbers of websites offering the same product can lead to endless hours of surfing to try to find the right deal. Consumers often become overwhelmed and end up not buying anything at all.
Prashant Nedungadi (see Nedungadi's personal five-day entrepreneur journal, exclusively for Reuters.com) has been one of those people and decided to use that frustration to launch IMshopping.com, a website that utilizes a combination of software and sales experts to direct buyers to the precise product they're looking for. What Nedungadi has dubbed "human-assisted shopping" is a network of retail experts, or guides, and the broader community of IMshopping's more than 30,000 registered users.
from Shop Talk:
Levi’s heart — and 501s — still in San Francisco
It was in San Francisco where Bavaria-born Levi Strauss first stitched and sold his now-iconic riveted blue jeans and it is San Francisco where the 156-year-old company will stay.
At least for the next ten years.
The San Francisco-based company said it will remain in the City by the Bay through 2019, ending speculation that the global apparel brand would move its headquarters to an outlying, lower-rent area.
