Morning Media Summary

Tech:

Facebook phones to be unveiled next month:
“London-based City A.M. is reporting that Facebook, in conjunction with Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC, will launch two Facebook-branded smartphones at the Mobile World Conference next month. The Facebook phones will reportedly offer a user interface based on Google’s Android platform.”

Hackers turn back the clock with Telnet attacks:
“A new report from Akamai Technologies shows that hackers appear to be increasingly using the Telnet remote access protocol to attack corporate servers over mobile networks.”

Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More:
“It’s taken a while, but Google has finally caved in to pressure from the entertainment industries including the MPAA and RIAA. The search engine now actively censors terms including BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. The reactions from affected companies and services are not mild, with BitTorrent Inc., RapidShare and Vodo all speaking out against this act of commercial censorship.”

Facebook Launches Social Login & HTTPS To Protect Your Privacy:
“There has been much fuss over security during the last few days at Facebook. First there were reports about Facebook getting hacked in Tunisia. And then another report came up about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page getting hacked. And to top all this, another supposed XSS hack plagued Facebook wherein a lot of users are seeing a status update from a Roy Castillo whom they are not even friends with. In order to counter all these security issues, Facebook has introduced 2 new features.”

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

Top Republicans craft strategy to fight EPA’s expanding regulatory reach:
“Top Republicans in the House and Senate are in the middle of crafting a plan to stop unprecedented regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of carbon dioxide emissions, but confusion abounds the details.”

Insurance / Gambling:

Online Gambling Webmasters getting Ready for Auction:
“Online gambling webmasters are set to start a bidding war on 2,300 web domain names tonight as the online gambling domain name marketplace GamblingInvest.com holds an online auction that will run until February 2nd 2011. Thousands of viable domain names are going up for auction and some of these could become highly profitable to the right webmasters. Domain names like Jackpot News.com, Bookmakers.mobi are just two examples of the domains that will be available through ProxiBid.com.”

Health / Safety:

The real snow job in D.C.: Obamacare waivers skyrocket to 729 + 4 states; 4 new SEIU waiver winners:
“When last we examined the growing list, privileged escapees topped 222.”

Economics:

CBO: Social Security to begin running permanent deficits this year, not 2016:
“The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that Social Security will pay out $45 billion more in benefits this year than it will collect in payroll taxes, further straining the nation’s finances. The deficits will continue until the Social Security trust funds are eventually drained, in about 2037.”

Rand Paul proposes $500 billion in federal budget cuts:
“U.S. Sen. Rand Paul wants to slash numerous federal programs, including food stamps for the poor, to save $500 billion in a single year.”

Chavez tackles housing crisis by urging poor to squat wealthy parts of Caracas:
“Hugo Chávez has sent out troops to take over farms and urged the poor to occupy “unused” land in wealthy areas of Caracas, prompting a wave of squats that is rattling Venezuela’s middle class.”

Ohio Mom Kelley Williams-Bolar Jailed for Sending Kids to Better School District:
“An Ohio mother’s attempt to provide her daughters with a better education has landed her behind bars.”

Legal:

DOJ seeks mandatory data retention requirement for ISPs:
“The U.S. Department of Justice and an organization representing police chiefs from around the country renewed calls on Tuesday for legislation mandating Internet Service Providers (ISP) to retain certain customer usage data for up to two years.”

Labor:

AFL-CIO, Chamber release joint statement to push infrastructure spending:
“Two of Washington’s biggest rivals released a short joint statement Wednesday to push for more spending on the nation’s infrastructure.”

Transportation/ Land Use:

Obama Talks Rail in D.C., But Not in Florida: