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From Los Angeles Times

Here's how to opt out of Facebook's facial-recognition feature

If you don't want Facebook to automatically identify you in photos posted by friends, you must opt out. It's a bit tricky, so we'll walk you through the process.

by Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times

June 11, 2011

If you haven't seen it yet, Facebook's new facial-recognition software is a crafty feature. Pass a cursor over a photo that you just uploaded to Facebook and, viola, the person's name pops up like magic.

But what if you're in the photo and you don't want Facebook to automatically identify you? As with many of the social network's features, users have to opt out, and that means navigating a complex web of settings.

If you're worried about revealing too much, here are some ways to shield yourself.

Facebook says the facial-recognition technology makes suggestions only when people upload new photos and it suggests identities only from among their friends. Friends are notified when they are tagged and can remove the tag. Some people have found this feature useful, but if you want to turn it off, here's how.

Once you have done that, it might be a good idea to double-check your other privacy settings. If you want to make your selections as private as possible, go item by item through the "Things I Share" and "Things Others Share" sections and choose "friends only."

Other steps you can take:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-techsavvy-facebook-20110612,0,1258021,print.story

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Badi women of Nepal are trapped in a life of degradation

Sometimes called untouchables among the untouchables, they have for decades been doomed to supporting their impoverished families through prostitution.

by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times

June 12, 2011

Reporting from Dang, Nepal

Bina Badi tends her garden behind a picket fence. Goats leap. Boys fly kites. Water buffalo laze in the river. Idyllic, except for the used condoms that litter the road and the fact that men have visited her house virtually every day for 28 of her 38 years to enjoy her body, and she sees no escape.

South Asia's caste system is infamous. The ancient tradition that once rigidly defined people's occupations continues to shape their social status and sense of self-worth. But few living under its influence are as degraded as the Badis of southwestern Nepal. Sometimes called untouchables among the untouchables — a term more about social than physical contact these days — Badi women have for decades been born into a life of prostitution.

"I started before menstruation, probably around 10," said the round-faced Bina Badi, wearing a flowered dress and gold earrings. "The first time was traumatic. I was terrified. I cried, so afraid."

Bina said her parents didn't force her, although they quietly encouraged her to follow tradition at a time when she was too young to know to do otherwise. One daughter often financially supports several family members.

Adding to Bina's indignity, many of the customers who pay $1 for sex — as many as 10 a day during festival times — are local politicians, businessmen, police officers. These luminaries from higher castes take advantage of her, she said, while shunning her in public, never once using their social position to counter the discrimination underpinning her fate.

Opportunities for other work are so limited, she said, she feels the only way she can survive is through prostitution.

"It's very entrenched," said Man Bahadur Chhetri, program director for the Nepal Youth Foundation.

The spider's silk entrapping the Badis is strong and often subtle. For years, children born of prostitutes without known fathers were unable to secure the national ID card that is needed for schools, government welfare programs, respectable jobs.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ordered the government to extend formal citizenship to Nepal's estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Badis, establish retraining and alternative employment programs and extend grants to vulnerable families.

Bureaucrats stalled until activists threatened in 2007 to undress publicly in Katmandu, embarrassing the government into setting up the programs. But little has changed, say the Badis, who blame inertia, corruption and Nepal's polarized government.

Manu Nepali, 18, whose mother and sister are prostitutes, hoped to raise his family's fortunes by becoming a driver. "I was about 13 before I fully realized what my mother did," he said. "The whole family's been dependent on her body."

His unsuccessful bid to get an ID card cost him half the $200 government grant money, which the family had hoped to use for a house or education. He spent weeks shuttling among bureaucracies before he eventually gave up, as do many in the largely landless, impoverished and illiterate community. Instead he became a common laborer, one of the few jobs open to uneducated Badi men.

Even Badis who have pulled themselves up in society give credit to prostitution. College-educated Nirmal Nepali, president of Dang's Badi Concerned Society, is among the few literate Badis here. His schooling was financed by his eldest sister, who worked for a decade as a prostitute from a room in the family home, encouraged by their parents who welcomed the income.

"I owe everything to them," he said.

Raising the community's sense of self-worth is a challenge in itself. Many Badi families welcome newborn girls for their earning potential, and some fathers even quit their menial jobs to live off their daughters once they're old enough to enter the "family business."

The government grants aren't always dispensed fairly, Nepali said, with non-Badi officials often giving the money to their relatives and friends rather than to the neediest. Of the 1,200 Badi families in his district, only 295 have received stipends, he estimated.

"The real beneficiaries aren't Badi," said his wife, Mira. "Or if they are, well-connected people get it rather than the single mothers, young girls, who really need it."

Badis trace their roots to the Licchavi dynasty in what is now northern India's Bihar state. In the 14th century, the tribe moved to Nepal, according to a research paper by Thomas Cox, an anthropologist at Katmandu's Tribhuvan University. There they received land and money for providing concubines to small-time rulers in western Nepal.

After 1950, local royalty lost power in a pro-democracy movement, and the Badis saw their clientele disappear. The tribe eventually turned to prostitution.

"With economic and social changes, their status went down and down," said Ghanashyam Dangi, founder of Rapti Vidyamandir Management College in Ghorahi. "Eventually they became common prostitutes and untouchables." Although Nepal banned untouchability in 1955, the practice remains deeply rooted.

Tatulam Nepali, 75, renowned for her singing and dancing, proudly recalls performing for the royal family in Katmandu.

"Three hundred years ago we sang and danced for kings," she said. "Now people misuse us, force us into prostitution. But our performance culture should be revived."

Limited education among Badis has hindered greater respectability even as the caste system slowly loses its grip. And most of those who try to break out to run tea stalls, tobacco shops or hair salons say customers know they're Badis and refuse to pay, abusing them or boycotting their business.

"You can change laws," Nirmal Nepali said. "It's a lot harder to change the culture."

Bina Badi, whose name is tattooed on her left fist, grew up in a dirt-poor family in which all four daughters became prostitutes. At one point, each of them married and seemed to free themselves. But they soon divorced and drifted back into prostitution.

Their drum-maker father and housewife mother lived off their daughters' earnings, his craftsmanship largely unappreciated in the rush for electronics and cheap drum imports from Bangladesh.

Bina Badi averages three or four customers a day.

"We don't want to continue, but if we don't, we can't eat," she said. "The government should help us find other jobs."

Although society is slowly changing, discrimination against Badis remains profound, she said, including prohibitions against using the same village pump, entering other people's homes, brushing against them.

"For many years, I thought it was my fate to be a prostitute," she said. "Now I realize this system wasn't made by God. It was made by man."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nepal-prostitutes-20110612,0,6459509.story

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California students must have whooping cough immunizations by fall

June 11, 2011

More than 1,000 people in California have been infected with whooping cough this year, and health officials Friday encouraged the public to get immunizations against the bacterial disease.

A new law goes into effect on July 1, requiring middle and high school students to show proof that they have received a whooping cough booster shot, known as Tdap, before entering school this fall. Authorities urged parents to make sure their children get the vaccine early in the summer to avoid a rush of vaccinations in August and September.

So far in 2011, there have been 1,102 cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, reported to the state. That's a rate of about 8 cases of infection per 100,000 people. The rate is higher than normal, but also shows an improvement from the peak of the epidemic last year, when there were about 23 cases per 100,000 people.

"While it is too early to know if this year will reach the same high levels of this debilitating disease, California is currently experiencing more cases than would be typically expected," Dr. Howard Backer, interim director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement.

Whooping cough is a dangerous disease that killed 10 infants in 2010, all of whom were too young to have received the first three doses of the vaccine. Health officials say it is especially important that anyone in contact with a newborn baby is vaccinated, in order to cocoon the infant from the dangerous bacteria.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Costa Mesa police chief warns cutbacks would hurt city's 'community policing'

City Chief Executive Tom Hatch's proposal to save an estimated $1.35 million a year would reduce the number of active-duty police officers from 139 to 131, according to the Daily Pilot.

However, in a letter to Hatch, interim Police Chief Steve Staveley said that significant cuts to the force would hinder its ability to continue to do community policing, where officers solve problems at their roots instead of merely responding to calls.

"Let me be very clear … I am a very strong advocate and longtime practitioner of what is now called community-oriented or -based policing," Staveley wrote. "Anytime an agency as busy as the Costa Mesa Police Department falls below a certain level of staffing you must expect that it will develop into a strictly law enforcement agency."

The plan would add 10 sworn reserve positions, two K-9 units to patrol, two park rangers, a crime scene specialist and four support jobs, as well as transfer four helicopter pilots to ground-based duties, city spokesman Bill Lobdell said in a news release.

The plan also proposes that Costa Mesa share SWAT team duties with neighboring communities, outsource the city jail and fold the 911 center into the Police Department.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/police-chief-warns-cutbacks-would-hurt-community-policing-in-costa-mesa.html#more

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