Facebook and Microsoft Join Hands to Locate Missing Children

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

On 20 May 2011 (Friday), Facebook and Microsoft formally unveiled an alliance to remove child pornography, and those who share these, from the world's leading online social network. Facebook will use PhotoDNA technology that Microsoft and Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid developed to search for marches to pictures in a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database.

This effort will have dual main effects. First, it will ferret out pornographs from Facebook as well as those accounts who share these around. It can also help law enforcers trace the sources of these photos in order to have the perpetrators face justice.

Second, the project will also help locate missing children from a large probabability that these youngsters keep themselves connected with friends through Facebook. Read more. [Associated Free Press: "Facebook and Microsoft battle child porn," Manila Bulletin 21 May 2011]

Filipino Wins First International Tobacco Control Award

PHILIPPINES
On 18 May 2011 (Wednesday), Filipino physician Ulysses Dorotheo won the The Judy Wilkenfeld Award for International Tobacco Control Excellence that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kinds presented in the United States for pushing tobacco control in the Philippines. He is the first Asian to win the prestigious prize.

Dorotheo, a neuro-ophthalmologis, is current project direct for the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance under its Southeast Asia Initiative on Tobacco Tax (SEASTCA-SITT). SITT is a five-year program aimed primarily at raising tobacco taxes and prices in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippiens, and Vietnam.

The Philippines "has among the lowest cigarette prices in the world; consequently ranks among those with the highest smoking prevalence," noted HealthJustice, an NGO involved in tobacco control in the country. Filipinos dying from tobacco-related diseases in the country has increased to 87,000 annually, according to the Department of Health. [Source: Virgil Lopez: "Filipino wins international award for tobacco control," SunStar Network Exchange (20 May 2011)]