European consumers spend now more time online than reading newspapers

From The Financial Times: 

The time European consumers spend online has, for the first time, overtaken the hours they devote to newspapers and magazines, a study revealed. [this is not rare: I mean, the level most newspapers and magazines -ugghhh- have here is totally disgusting. Most of them have large sections of “cotilleo“, that is, of gossiping about the personal life of famous stupid people. I am not going to write about television, because that is even more depressing…]

But the growth of new media is expanding total media consumption rather than simply cannibalising print and television.

Print consumption has re-mained static at three hours a week in the past two years, as time spent online has doubled from two to four hours. Viewers are also spending more time watching television, up from 10 hours to 12 a week. [I am sure that blogging has a little responsibility for this…]

The Jupiter Research survey of more than 5,000 people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that Europeans’ use of the internet is still behind the rates seen in the US. A similar study by Jupiter of US habits found that Americans now spend 14 hours a week online – as much time as they spend watching television – and just three hours reading print. [I can only say 😉 ]

However, the rapid spread of fast broadband internet connections in Europe is likely to accelerate the trend. The average time spent online by broadband customers in Europe was seven hours a week, compared with two hours for those with dial-up connections.

Por primera vez, los consumidores europeos emplean más tiempo en internet que en leer periódicos y revistas (lo que no me extraña nada 😛 ). Esto, sin emabrgo, no significó que se disminuyera la lectura de periódicos o las horas dedicadas a la televisión, si no que, se incrementó las horas dedicadas al consumo de comunicación (seguro que los blogs han contribuido a esto…).

Sin embargo, el uso de intenet por parte de los europeos (sobre todo, email y búsquedas) está todavía lejos del nivel de USA. Pero la rápida expansión de conexiones de banda ancha en Europa puede acelerar esta tendencia.

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Mass march against Chávez

From BBC (HT: NoisyRoom.Net):

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in support of the main opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales.

Mr Rosales will face President Hugo Chavez in December’s presidential poll.

The march, which filled the main avenues of the city centre, was the biggest opposition rally Venezuela has seen since early 2004.

Remember Chávez accused Rosales of trying to kill him some weeks ago, before accusing Bush of trying to do the same.

Venezuelan journalist Martha Colmenares has some more photos about this demonstration:

Impressive, eh?

Big Pharaoh is very happy at these news. Me too.

This week Chávez has also been accused of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism and his relation with air-death squads has been uncovered (HT: Publius Pundit). Not a very good week for Chávez.

UPDATE: Chávez will oblige the Venezuelan senators to learn Marx theories in the Experimental University of the Armed Forces (HT: Batiburrillo).

Also blogging about this: Morning Coffee. Also Right Truth, Jihadi du Jour, Red Hot Chuppa politics. Free Thoughts.
En español:

• El País: El opositor Manuel Rosales convoca a miles de personas en una marcha contra Chávez en Caracas.

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Russian Reporter critical of Putin and of his protegé Kadyrov, murdered (UPDATED)

From AOL News:

A journalist shot to death in an apparent contract killing was about to publish a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya when she was slain, her editor said Sunday, as Russia’s top prosecutor took charge of the case.

Anna Politkovskaya, famed for her unsparing coverage of abuses against civilians in Chechnya in the outspoken newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was found dead Saturday in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. She had two gunshot wounds — one to the head.

Politkovskaya, 48, had collected witness accounts and photos of tortured bodies and the article had been due for publication Monday, her newspaper’s editors said.

“We never got the article, but she had evidence about these (abducted) people and there were photographs,” Novaya Gazeta’s deputy editor, Vitaly Yerushensky, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

In a recent radio interview, Politkovskaya said that she was a witness in a criminal case against Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose security forces have been accused of kidnapping civilians and other abuses.

“These are cases of kidnappings, including one criminal case concerning an abduction personally involving Ramzan Kadyrov, a kidnapping of two people, whose photographs are now on my desk,” she said in comments rebroadcast Sunday by Ekho Moskvy.

In the interview, which Ekho Mosvky said had been granted to Radio Free Europe, she said that the victims, an ethnic Russian and a Chechen, were “rounded up, kidnapped for a time and killed. Their bodies showed signs of serious torture.”

This was not the first time there was an attempt to kill her:

Politkovskaya had come under threat repeatedly. In 2004, she fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan. Her colleagues suspected the incident was an attempt on her life.

Is this another proof of how the Kremlin is treating dissidents? Kadyrov –today is his 30th birthday– is a hard-line Muslim who has the support of the Kremlin. Even if the Kremlin has not directly ordered the murder, his support for this kind of “dear leader” is shocking.

UPDATE: Background here (HT Extreme Centre).

Corriere della Sera points out the silence of the Kremlin about her murder. It also says that the murderer has been filmed: it was a young man with a black jacket [giubbotto??] and a black baseball cap. The Makarov pistol he used to kill her was abandoned in the crime site. The newspaper has announced they will carry an independent investigation of her murder.

More on Reuters and Pravda.

Related:

• Chechenya starts demanding women they should wear headscarves.
• Putin’s heroes.

Una periodista, Politovskaya, que ha denunciado los excesos del Kremlin en la guerra chechena, ha sido asesinada de dos tiros -uno en la cabeza- en su ascensor. La periodista había denunciado a Kadyrov, el protegido extremista musulmán del Kremlin, de secuestrar a 2 personas, uno checheno y otro ruso y matarlos después. Según las fotos que declaró tener en su mesa, “sus cuerpos presentan signos de tortura muy importantes”.  No era la primera vez que había un intento de asesinarla: en 2004, tuvo síntomas graves de haber sido envenenada después de haber bebido un té en un vuelo de Moscú al sur de Rusia cuando los sucesos de Beslán. Más información: El Mundo, La Razón, Libertad Digital, El País. In French: Le Figaro, Le Monde. In Italian: Corriere della Sera.

PHOTO: Politovskaya, during the presentation of her new book: “In Putin’s Russia”.

People remembering Politovskaya in Moscow in the Poutkin Square after knowing of her murder.

 

A boy puts a flower next to a portrait of the killed journalist.

Others blogging about this: Sugiero.

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Even the dead are not let in peace

There are two very worrying news about people desecrating cemeteries. In the first one, Juan de Dios Ramos, a Socialist Major from Teror, has been accused by a gravedigger of the cementary of a “continous crime of lack of respect to the dead” (HT: Ajopringue). According to the accusation, he made the gravedigger take out the heads of dead people and, with some other people, they buried them with dead dogs in a rotten state and chicken during a ceremony. The Major has denied it all, but he has a long-time relationship with “santería” rites. The witness has also mentioned that Mr Ramos was smoking and reading the newspaper when the dead were taken out of their burials.

In Galicia, some hooligans entered the Catholic cemetery of Vigo and destroyed graveyards, crucifixes and nearly everything that they found. The police believe the group was big, taking into account the damages that were produced. As a result, the city police is strenthening the vigilance over cemeteries (HT: Contando estrellas, where there is a video showing the condition of the place after the attack).

NOTA: como todos los links están en español esta no la traduzco. 😉

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