U.S. 'needs tougher child labor rules'

Cristina Traina says in his second term, Obama must address weaknesses in child farm labor standards

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Cristina Traina: Obama should strengthen child farm labor standards


• She says Labor Dept. rules allow kids to work long hours for little pay on commercial farms


• She says Obama administration scrapped Labor Dept. chief's proposal for tightening rules


• She says Labor Dept. must fix lax standards for kid labor on farmers; OSHA must enforce them

Editor's note: Cristina L.H. Traina is a Public Voices Op Ed fellow and professor at Northwestern University, where she is a scholar of social ethics.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama should use the breathing space provided by the fiscal-cliff compromise to address some of the issues that he shelved during his last term. One of the most urgent is child farm labor. Perhaps the least protected, underpaid work force in American labor, children are often the go-to workers for farms looking to cut costs.

It's easy to see why. The Department of Labor permits farms to pay employees under 20 as little as $4.25 per hour. (By comparison, the federal minimum wage is $7.25.) And unlike their counterparts in retail and service, child farm laborers can legally work unlimited hours at any hour of day or night.

The numbers are hard to estimate, but between direct hiring, hiring through labor contractors, and off-the-books work beside parents or for cash, perhaps 400,000 children, some as young as 6, weed and harvest for commercial farms. A Human Rights Watch 2010 study shows that children laboring for hire on farms routinely work more than 10 hours per day.

As if this were not bad enough, few labor safety regulations apply. Children 14 and older can work long hours at all but the most dangerous farm jobs without their parents' consent, if they do not miss school. Children 12 and older can too, as long as their parents agree. Unlike teen retail and service workers, agricultural laborers 16 and older are permitted to operate hazardous machinery and to work even during school hours.

In addition, Human Rights Watch reports that child farm laborers are exposed to dangerous pesticides; have inadequate access to water and bathrooms; fall ill from heat stroke; suffer sexual harassment; experience repetitive-motion injuries; rarely receive protective equipment like gloves and boots; and usually earn less than the minimum wage. Sometimes they earn nothing.

Little is being done to guarantee their safety. In 2011 Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed more stringent agricultural labor rules for children under 16, but Obama scrapped them just eight months later.

Adoption of the new rules would be no guarantee of enforcement, however. According to the 2010 Human Rights Watch report, the Department of Labor employees were spread so thin that, despite widespread reports of infractions they found only 36 child labor violations and two child hazardous order violations in agriculture nationwide.

This lack of oversight has dire, sometimes fatal, consequences. Last July, for instance, 15-year-old Curvin Kropf, an employee at a small family farm near Deer Grove, Illinois, died when he fell off the piece of heavy farm equipment he was operating, and it crushed him. According to the Bureau County Republican, he was the fifth child in fewer than two years to die at work on Sauk Valley farms.

If this year follows trends, Curvin will be only one of at least 100 children below the age of 18 killed on American farms, not to mention the 23,000 who will be injured badly enough to require hospital admission. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries. It is the most dangerous for children, accounting for about half of child worker deaths annually.

The United States has a long tradition of training children in the craft of farming on family farms. At least 500,000 children help to work their families' farms today.

Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although children working on their parents' farms would specifically have been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries about government interference in families and loss of opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the Obama administration shelved them.

Whatever you think of family farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject to the dangers of farm work.

We have a responsibility for their safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor standards for children can be strengthened without killing off 4-H or Future Farmers of America.

Second, the Department of Labor must institute age, wage, hour and safety regulations that meet the standards set by retail and service industry rules. Children in agriculture should not be exposed to more risks, longer hours, and lower wages at younger ages than children in other jobs.

Finally, the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must allocate the funds necessary for meaningful enforcement of child labor violations. Unenforced rules won't protect the nearly million other children who work on farms.

Agriculture is a great American tradition. Let's make sure it's not one our children have to die for.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Cristina Traina.

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Armstrong admits doping: ‘I’m a flawed character’

CHICAGO (AP) — He did it. He finally admitted it. Lance Armstrong doped.

He was light on the details and didn’t name names. He mused that he might not have been caught if not for his comeback in 2009. And he was certain his “fate was sealed” when longtime friend, training partner and trusted lieutenant George Hincapie, who was along for the ride on all seven of Armstrong’s Tour de France wins from 1999-2005, was forced to give him up to anti-doping authorities.

But right from the start and more than two dozen times during the first of a two-part interview Thursday night with Oprah Winfrey on her OWN network, the disgraced former cycling champion acknowledged what he had lied about repeatedly for years, and what had been one of the worst-kept secrets for the better part of a week: He was the ringleader of an elaborate doping scheme on a U.S. Postal Service team that swept him to the top of the podium at the Tour de France time after time.

“I’m a flawed character,” he said.

Did it feel wrong?

“No,” Armstrong replied. “Scary.”

“Did you feel bad about it?” Winfrey pressed him.

“No,” he said. “Even scarier.”

“Did you feel in any way that you were cheating?”

“No,” Armstrong paused. “Scariest.”

“I went and looked up the definition of cheat,” he added a moment later. “And the definition is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe. I didn’t view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field.”

Wearing a blue blazer and open-neck shirt, Armstrong was direct and matter-of-fact, neither pained nor defensive. He looked straight ahead. There were no tears and very few laughs.

He dodged few questions and refused to implicate anyone else, even as he said it was humanly impossible to win seven straight Tours without doping.

“I’m not comfortable talking about other people,” Armstrong said. “I don’t want to accuse anybody.”

Whether his televised confession will help or hurt Armstrong’s bruised reputation and his already-tenuous defense in at least two pending lawsuits, and possibly a third, remains to be seen. Either way, a story that seemed too good to be true — cancer survivor returns to win one of sport’s most grueling events seven times in a row — was revealed to be just that.

“This story was so perfect for so long. It’s this myth, this perfect story, and it wasn’t true,” he said.

Winfrey got right to the point when the interview began, asking for yes-or-no answers to five questions.

Did Armstrong take banned substances? “Yes.”

Did that include the blood-booster EPO? “Yes.”

Did he do blood doping and use transfusions? “Yes.”

Did he use testosterone, cortisone and human growth hormone? “Yes.”

Did he take banned substances or blood dope in all his Tour wins? “Yes.”

In his climb to the top, Armstrong cast aside teammates who questioned his tactics, yet swore he raced clean and tried to silence anyone who said otherwise. Ruthless and rich enough to settle any score, no place seemed beyond his reach — courtrooms, the court of public opinion, even along the roads of his sport’s most prestigious race.

That relentless pursuit was one of the things that Armstrong said he regretted most.

“I deserve this,” he said twice.

“It’s a major flaw, and it’s a guy who expected to get whatever he wanted and to control every outcome. And it’s inexcusable. And when I say there are people who will hear this and never forgive me, I understand that. I do. …

“That defiance, that attitude, that arrogance, you cannot deny it.”

Armstrong said he started doping in mid-1990s but didn’t when he finished third in his comeback attempt.

Anti-doping officials have said nothing short of a confession under oath — “not talking to a talk-show host,” is how World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman put it — could prompt a reconsideration of Armstrong’s lifetime ban from sanctioned events.

He’s also had discussions with officials at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, whose 1,000-page report in October included testimony from nearly a dozen former teammates and led to stripping Armstrong of his Tour titles. Shortly after, he lost nearly all his endorsements, was forced to walk away from the Livestrong cancer charity he founded in 1997, and just this week was stripped of his bronze medal from the 2000 Olympics.

Armstrong could provide information that might get his ban reduced to eight years. By then, he would be 49. He returned to triathlons, where he began his professional career as a teenager, after retiring from cycling in 2011, and has told people he’s desperate to get back.

Initial reaction from anti-doping officials ranged from hostile to cool.

WADA president John Fahey derided Armstrong’s defense that he doped to create “a level playing field” as “a convenient way of justifying what he did — a fraud.”

“He was wrong, he cheated and there was no excuse for what he did,” Fahey said by telephone in Australia.

If Armstrong “was looking for redemption,” Fahey added, “he didn’t succeed in getting that.”

USADA chief Travis Tygart, who pursued the case against Armstrong when others had stopped, said the cyclist’s confession was just a start.

“Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of doping and deceit,” Tygart said. “His admission that he doped throughout his career is a small step in the right direction. But if he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities.”

Livestrong issued a statement that said the charity was “disappointed by the news that Lance Armstrong misled people during and after his cycling career, including us.”

“Earlier this week, Lance apologized to our staff and we accepted his apology in order to move on and chart a strong, independent course,” it said.

The interview revealed very few details about Armstrong’s performance-enhancing regimen that would surprise anti-doping officials.

What he called “my cocktail” contained the steroid testosterone and the blood-booster erythropoetein, or EPO, “but not a lot,” Armstrong said. That was on top of blood-doping, which involved removing his own blood and weeks later re-injecting it into his system.

All of it was designed to build strength and endurance, but it became so routine that Armstrong described it as “like saying we have to have air in our tires or water in our bottles.”

“That was, in my view, part of the job,” he said.

Armstrong was evasive, or begged off entirely, when Winfrey tried to connect his use to others who aided or abetted the performance-enhancing scheme on the USPS team

When she asked him about Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who was implicated in doping-related scrapes and has also been banned from cycling for life, Armstrong replied, “It’s hard to talk about some of these things and not mention names. There are people in this story, they’re good people and we’ve all made mistakes … they’re not monsters, not toxic and not evil, and I viewed Michele Ferrari as a good man and smart man and still do.”

But that’s nearly all Armstrong would say about the physician that some reports have suggested educated the cyclist about doping and looked after other aspects of his training program.

He was almost as reluctant to discuss claims by former teammates Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis that Armstrong told them, separately, that he tested positive during the 2001 Tour de Suisse and conspired with officials of the International Cycling Union officials to cover it up — in exchange for a donation.

“That story wasn’t true. There was no positive test, no paying off of the labs. There was no secret meeting with the lab director,” he said.

Winfrey pressed him again, asking if the money he donated wasn’t part of a tit-for-tat agreement, “Why make it?”

“Because they asked me to,” Armstrong began.

“This is impossible for me to answer and have anybody believe it,” he said. “It was not in exchange for any cover-up. … I have every incentive here to tell you yes.”

Finally, he summed up the entire episode this way: “I was retired. … They needed money.”

Ultimately, though, it was Landis who did the most damage to Armstrong’s story. Landis was stripped of the 2006 Tour title after testing positive and wound up on the sport’s fringes looking for work. Armstrong said his former teammate threatened to release potentially destructive videos if he wasn’t given a spot on the team. That was in 2009, when Armstrong returned to the Tour after four years off.

Winfrey asked whether Landis’ decision to talk was “the tipping point.”

“I’d agree with that. I might back it up a little and talk about the comeback. I think the comeback didn’t sit well with Floyd,” Armstrong recalled.

“Do you regret now coming back?”

“I do. We wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t come back,” he said.

The closest Armstrong came to contrition was when Winfrey asked him about his apologies in recent days, notably to former teammate Frankie Andreu, who struggled to find work in cycling after Armstrong dropped him from the USPS team, as well as his wife, Betsy. Armstrong said she was jealous of his success, and invented stories about his doping as part of a long-running vendetta.

“Have you made peace?” Winfrey asked.

“No,” Armstrong replied, “because they’ve been hurt too badly, and a 40-minute (phone) conversation isn’t enough.”

He also called London Sunday Times reporter David Walsh as well as Emma O’Reilly, who worked as a masseuse for the USPS team and later provided considerable material for a critical book Walsh wrote about Armstrong and his role in cycling’s doping culture.

Armstrong subsequently sued for libel in Britain and won a $ 500,000 judgment against the newspaper, which is now suing to get the money back. Armstrong was, if anything, even more vicious in the way he went after O’Reilly. He intimated she was let go from the Postal team because she seemed more interested in personal relationships than professional ones.

“What do you want to say about Emma O’Reilly?” Winfrey asked.

“She, she’s one of these people that I have to apologize to. She’s one of these people that got run over, got bullied.”

“You sued her?”

“To be honest, Oprah, we sued so many people I don’t even,” Armstrong said, then paused, “I’m sure we did.”

Near the end of the first interview installment, Winfrey asked about a federal investigation of Armstrong that was dropped by the Justice Department without charges.

“When they dropped the case, did you think: ‘Now, finally over, done, victory’?”

Armstrong looked up. He exhaled.

“It’s hard to define victory,” he said. “But I thought I was out of the woods.”

___

AP Sports Writers Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Eddie Pells in Denver and Dennis Passa in Melbourne contributed to this report.

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Oil falls as traders weigh China data, 2013 demand

The price of oil slipped to near $ 95 a barrel Friday but remained near four-month highs after new data showed China‘s economy rebounded in the final quarter of last year, suggesting an increase in energy demand.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for February delivery was down 26 cents to $ 95.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained $ 1.25 to finish at $ 95.49 a barrel. That was the highest close for crude on the Nymex since Sept. 17 and a result of the positive economic reports out of the U.S.

“Investors were prompted to some profit-taking to lock in recent gains, while the markets try to digest the Chinese economic data that slightly improved market sentiment” said a report from Sucden Financial Research in London.

China’s economy grew 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from the previous quarter’s 7.4 percent. In December, retail sales and factory output growth both accelerated, the National Bureau of Statistics reported.

The figures suggest increased energy demand, a key driver of oil prices. But overshadowing markets were concerns that the U.S. could face a new economic crisis if political leaders fail to resolve discord over spending cuts and the country’s borrowing limit, which needs to be raised to avoid an unprecedented federal default.

Higher expectations for oil demand in China also contributed to an upwardly revised oil consumption forecast from the International Energy Agency.

Global oil demand is expected to rise to 90.8 million barrels a day this year, the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly oil market report released Friday. That’s 930,000 daily barrels more than in 2012 and 240,000 barrels a day higher than the agency’s previous forecast released in December.

The IEA said that economic figures for China had in recent months raised concerns about growth, but that seems to have changed. “Recent data suggest the tide may have begun to turn,” it said in the report.

The IEA described market conditions as tighter than expected, with oil production in Saudi Arabia at the end of 2012 relatively weak. Analysts described that as a call to producing nations to keep supply up.

“This IEA report is basically a message to Saudi Arabia: ‘Please, please, don’t cut further,’” said Olivier Jakob, an analyst with Petromatrix in Switzerland.

Traders were also keeping an eye on the hostage crisis in southern Algeria. Algerian forces launched a raid to free hostages being held by militants at a remote natural gas facility. Casualties were reported. Spanish, Norwegian and British oil companies have evacuated workers from energy facilities in the country, which produces both natural gas and crude oil.

Meanwhile, brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, fell 46 cents to $ 110.64 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

— Wholesale gasoline was down 1.36 cent to $ 2.7689 a gallon.

— Natural gas added 1.9 cents to $ 3.513 per 1,000 cubic feet.

— Heating oil lost 1.01 cents at $ 3.0044 a gallon.

___

Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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London Firefighters to Protest Against Savage Cuts

LONDON, ENGLAND–(Marketwire – Jan 18, 2013) – London firefighters will be attending a mass lobby of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) meeting on Monday to protest at plans to close 12 fire stations, remove 18 fire engines and slash 520 firefighter posts. The lobby has been called by the London region of the Fire Brigades Union.

This follows a decision by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson to drive through £45m of cuts in the LFEPA budget.

FBU regional secretary for London, Paul Embery said: ”The proposed cuts are reckless and wrong. You can”t slash 12 fire stations, 18 fire engines and 520 firefighter posts without jeopardising public safety. The helicopter crash that occurred earlier this week showed the importance of having a properly-funded, well-resourced fire service in the capital, and it is worthy of note that the first crew at the scene was mobilised from a station – Clapham – earmarked for closure and arrived within four minutes. The safety of Londoners is playing second fiddle to crude economic considerations. We are calling on the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, Ron Dobson, and Boris Johnson to think again. If they don”t, we will campaign as vigorously as we can, alongside the public, to defend London”s fire service.”

LOBBY OF LFEPA MEETING – 1.30pm – 21 JANUARY

LONDON BRIGADE HQ – 169 UNION ST – SE1 0LL

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Wall Street edges lower on earnings, China data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell modestly on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 rose to its highest level in five years, as a weak outlook from Intel was weighed against encouraging data out of China and a fourth-quarter profit at Morgan Stanley .

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 6.68 points, or 0.05 percent, at 13,589.34. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.60 points, or 0.18 percent, at 1,478.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 10.63 points, or 0.34 percent, at 3,125.37.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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IOC VP: Armstrong must tell 'whole truth'

LONDON (AP) — Lance Armstrong's doping confession to Oprah Winfrey was "too little, too late" and failed to provide any new information that will help clean up the sport he tarnished through years of cheating, the vice president of the IOC said Friday.

A day after stripping Armstrong of his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the IOC urged the disgraced former Tour de France champion to supply details to anti-doping authorities in order to "bring an end to this dark episode."

In an interview with The Associated Press, IOC vice president Thomas Bach said Armstrong's admission to Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs — after years of vehement denials —was not enough.

"If he thinks this interview would help him get credibility back, I think this is too little, too late," said Bach, a German lawyer who leads the IOC's anti-doping investigations. "It's a first step in the right direction, but no more.

"If he really loves his sport and wants to regain at least some credibility, then he should tell the whole truth and cooperate with the relevant sports bodies."

Armstrong is under pressure to come clean to the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and the independent commission set up the International Cycling Union.

"We have three sports bodies he can address," Bach said by telephone. "He needs to give testimony under oath. After lying for more than a dozen years, he needs to be questioned by experts and not just in a well-orchestrated interview."

In a statement from Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC said: "We now urge Armstrong to present all the evidence he has to the appropriate anti-doping authorities so that we can bring an end to this dark episode and move forward, stronger and cleaner."

In the interview with Winfrey, Armstrong acknowledged that he used EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and blood transfusions in order to win the Tour de France seven times.

"This is not enough," said Bach, who is a leading contender to succeed Jacques Rogge as IOC president in elections in September. "I hoped he would be more precise, that you would get an idea of who were the people behind him. He's even protected the famous Dr. Ferrari."

Bach was referring to Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who worked closely with Armstrong and has been accused of being a mastermind of the cyclist's doping program.

"In some parts of the interview he was pretty evasive, in some parts contradicting himself," Bach said.

Bach said the interview offered no information beyond the USADA report that detailed widespread doping by Armstrong and his teammates and led to the stripping of his Tour titles and a lifetime ban from Olympic sports.

"We have no new facts — not a single new fact going beyond the USADA report," Bach said.

Armstrong denied in the interview that cycling body UCI covered up positive tests or helped him avoid detection.

Bach said the interview provided no allegations that would put cycling's Olympic status in jeopardy. Senior Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, a former head of WADA, suggested this week that cycling could be kicked out of the Olympics if there was proof of UCI collusion with Armstrong.

"I still hope for a full inquiry, but in general, you have to consider the anti-doping system since then has changed very much for the better," Bach said. "The UCI has introduced the blood passport, there is more target testing and out-of-competition testing and better methods for detecting EPO. You cannot draw conclusions from 10 years ago."

In Lausanne, the IOC said it "unreservedly condemns" the actions of Armstrong and all drug cheats.

"This is indeed a very sad day for sport but there is a positive side if these revelations can begin to draw a line under previous practices," the statement said. "It is the IOC's firm expectation that all parties involved will draw the necessary lessons from this case and continue to take all measures to ensure a level playing field for all athletes."

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Did Scientology ad cross line?

The Church of Scientology is also at fault for thinking the advertorial would survive The Atlantic readers' scrutiny, Ian Schafer says.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The Atlantic published and pulled a sponsored Scientology "story"


• Ian Schafer: On several levels, the ad was a mistake


• He says the content was heavy-handed and comments were being moderated


• Schafer: Experimenting to raise revenue makes sense, but standards should be clear

Editor's note: Ian Schafer is the founder and CEO of a digital advertising agency, Deep Focus, and the alter ego of @invisibleobama. You can read his rants on his blog at ianschafer.com.

(CNN) -- "The Atlantic is America's leading destination for brave thinking and bold ideas that matter. The Atlantic engages its print, online, and live audiences with breakthrough insights into the worlds of politics, business, the arts, and culture. With exceptional talent deployed against the world's most important and intriguing topics, The Atlantic is the source of opinion, commentary, and analysis for America's most influential individuals who wish to be challenged, informed, and entertained." -- The Atlantic 2013 media kit for advertisers

On Monday, The Atlantic published -- and then pulled -- a story titled "David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year." This "story" went on to feature the growth of Scientology in 2012.

Ian Schafer

Any regular reader of The Atlantic's content would immediately do a double-take upon seeing that kind of headline, much less the heavy-handed text below it, shamelessly plugging how well Scientology's "ecclesiastical leader" Miscavige has done in "leading a renaissance for the religion."

This "story" is one of several "advertorials" (a portmanteau of "advertising" and "editorials") that The Atlantic has published online, clearly designated as "Sponsor Content." In other words, "stories" like these aren't real stories. They are ads with a lot of words, which advertisers have paid publications to run on their behalf for decades. You may have seen them in magazines and newspapers as "special advertising sections."

The hope is that because you are already reading the publication, hey, maybe you'll read what the advertiser has to say, too -- instead of the "traditional" ad that they may have otherwise placed on the page that you probably won't remember, or worse, will ignore.

There's nothing wrong with this tactic, ethically, when clearly labeled as "sponsored" or "advertising." But many took umbrage with The Atlantic in this particular case; so many, that The Atlantic responded by pulling the story from its site -- which was the right thing to do -- and by apologizing.

At face value, The Atlantic did the right thing for its business model, which depends upon advertising sales. It sold what they call a "native" ad to a paying advertiser, clearly labeled it as such, without the intention of misleading readers into thinking this was a piece of journalism.

But it still failed on several levels.

The Atlantic defines its readers as "America's most influential individuals who wish to be challenged, informed, and entertained." By that very definition, it is selling "advertorials" to people who are the least likely to take them seriously, especially when heavy-handed. There is a fine line between advertorial and outright advertising copywriting, and this piece crossed it. The Church of Scientology is just as much at fault for thinking this piece would survive The Atlantic readers' intellectual scrutiny. But this isn't even the real issue.

Bad advertising is all around us. And readers' intellectual scrutiny would surely have let the advertorial piece slide without complaints (though snark would be inevitable), as they have in the past, or yes, even possibly ignored it. But here's where The Atlantic crossed another line -- it seemed clear it was moderating the comments beneath the advertorial.

As The Washington Post reported, The Atlantic marketing team was carefully pruning the comments, ensuring that they were predominantly positive, even though many readers were leaving negative comments. So while The Atlantic was publishing clearly labeled advertiser-written content, it was also un-publishing content created by its readers -- the very folks it exists to serve.

It's understandable that The Atlantic would inevitably touch a third rail with any "new" ad format. But what it calls "native advertising" is actually "advertorial." It's not new at all. Touching the third rail in this case is unacceptable.

So what should The Atlantic have done in this situation before it became a situation? For starters, it should have worked more closely with the Church of Scientology to help create a piece of content that wasn't so clearly written as an ad. If the Church of Scientology was not willing to compromise its advertising to be better content, then The Atlantic should not have accepted the advertising. But this is a quality-control issue.

The real failure here was that comments should never have been enabled beneath this sponsored content unless the advertiser was prepared to let them be there, regardless of sentiment.

It's not like Scientology has avoided controversy in the past. The sheer, obvious reason for this advertorial in the first place was to dispel beliefs that Scientology wasn't a recognized religion (hence "ecclesiastical").

Whether The Atlantic felt it was acting in its advertiser's best interest, or the advertiser specifically asked for this to happen, letting it happen at all was a huge mistake, and a betrayal of an implicit contract that should exist between a publication of The Atlantic's stature and its readership.

No matter how laughably "sales-y" a piece of sponsored content might be, the censoring of readership should be the true "third rail," never to be touched.

Going forward, The Atlantic (and any other publication that chooses to run sponsored content) should adopt and clearly communicate an explicit ethics statement regarding advertorials and their corresponding comments. This statement should guide the decisions it makes when working with advertisers, and serve as a filter for the sponsored content it chooses to publish, and what it recommends advertisers submit. It should also prevent readers from being silenced if given a platform at all.

As an advertising professional, I sincerely hope this doesn't spook The Atlantic or any other publication from experimenting with ways to make money. But as a reader, I hope it leads to better ads that reward me for paying attention, rather than muzzle my voice should I choose to interact with the content.

After all, what more could a publication or advertiser ask for than for content to be so interesting that someone actually would want to comment on (or better, share) it?

(Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said native advertising accounts for 59% of the Atlantic's ad revenue. Digital advertising, of which native advertising is a part, accounts for 59% of The Atlantic's overall revenue, according to the company.)

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ian Schafer.

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“Gangnam Style” takes top song prize at “K-pop Grammys”

(Reuters) – South Korean rapper Psy‘s quirky viral hit “Gangnam Style” took the prize for top song on Wednesday at the 27th annual Golden Disk Awards, a Korean pop event dubbed the “Korean Grammys.”

The two-day celebration of all things K-pop, including performances by superstars such as the boy band Super Junior, was held in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur before hordes of screaming fans, a testimony to the soaring popularity of Korean pop music around the world.

Nowhere has that been more apparent than with “Gangnam Style,” an infectious hit that made history last month when it became the first ever video on YouTube to reach 1 billion views, the latest record on the song’s surge into mainstream pop.

The tune won the Song of the Year award, the final prize.

The awards were only the latest accolades for Psy, 35, in what has been a whirlwind year for the chubby rapper, the first K-pop artist to achieve mainstream success in the United States as a result of “Gangnam Style.”

Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, and only a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy raps in Korean and busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.

The song, released in July, was meant as a commentary on the rampant materialism of today’s South Korea – particularly in relation to the Gangnam section of the city, which Psy has termed Seoul’s Beverly Hills.

“My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it,” Psy told Reuters in August.

The popularity of the song, which has prompted many copycat and parody videos, has added fuel to growing international interest in Asian pop music, especially the K-pop industry, which now aims to follow Psy into mainstream Western pop music.

Thanks to their youth, glowing image and the style of their songs and dances, K-pop fans have grown rapidly in Southeast Asia, formerly dominated by stars from the West as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

A Malaysian fan who queued for three days to get into the first night of the awards ceremony said she loved how the K-pop stars strived for perfection.

“K-pop stars have been working very hard, even before they make their first debut. They spend a lot of time practicing to become a perfect artist,” said the 20-something Tay Ching Ee. “This is what other artists should learn from them.”

The Golden Disk Awards began in 1986, with winners chosen based on album sales and digital downloads. The ceremony first ventured overseas in 2012, when it was held in Japan.

On Tuesday, the first night, Super Junior again won the best album award with their album “Sexy, Free & Single.” Boy band Shinee scooped the Most Popular Star prize.

(Additional reporting by Angie Teo and Belinda Goldsmith; writing by Elaine Lies; editing by Patricia Reaney)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Mauritius expected to welcome 1 million tourists this year

PORT LOUIS (Reuters) – Tourist arrivals in Mauritius are expected to rise to the one million mark this year after numbers barely changed in 2012, largely due to sluggish growth in the island’s key European market, data showed on Thursday.

Arrivals are seen increasing by 3.5 percent this year from the 965,441 registered in 2012, when they rose just 0.1 percent, the country’s statistics agency said.

Finance Minister Xavier Duval said earlier this month lower dependence on Europe for tourists and exports has helped the Indian Ocean island weather the economic crisis better.

The government expects the economy to grow 3.7 percent this year, up from 3.3 percent in 2012.

“Visitors from Europe which represented 67 percent of arrivals in 2009 have been declining to 58 percent last year – a drop which has been compensated by higher tourists from other regions namely Africa and Asia,” Duval said.

He expected a boost in arrivals this year as Air Mauritius starts direct flights to China and Russia.

Statistics Mauritius said arrivals from Europe were down 8 percent year-on-year to 560,699 while visitors number from Africa grew 14.7 percent to 265,215.

(Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff; Editing by James Macharia, John Stonestreet)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Market Ready: Tips on Entrance Halls

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