Google unveils tools to prevent ads alongside undesirable content

Google, which has seen a slew of companies withdraw ads after they appeared alongside extremist content, said Tuesday it was introducing new tools to give firms greater control.

“We know advertisers don’t want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values,” Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler said in a post on the internet giant’s blog.

“So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content.”

The move came a day after an apology by a senior Google executive after the British government and a handful of top firms including Marks and Spencer and HSBC bank pulled their adverts after they appeared alongside extremist content on its internet platforms.

Schindler said Google will tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators on its video-sharing site YouTube, and “is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform”.

A boycott by firms worried about damaging their image could cause incredible damage to Google as advertising makes up the overwhelming majority of the internet giant’s revenue.

Schindler said Google acknowledged that companies have brand guidelines which dictate where and when they want their ads to appear, and that it wants to give them more control to do that.

“In the coming days and months, we’re introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web,” said Schindler.

The British government put its YouTube advertising on hold on Monday, saying “it is totally unacceptable that taxpayer-funded advertising has appeared next to inappropriate internet content — and that message was conveyed very clearly to Google.”

A Marks and Spencer spokesman said: “In order to ensure brand safety, we are pausing activity across Google platforms whilst the matter is worked through.”

AFP

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Philippine President Duterte Closes the Door on Legalizing Gay Marriage

Although President Duterte of the Philippines is a controversial personality, his recent statement on gay marriage will elicit positive and negative reactions from different camps. 

News that Rodrigo Duterte would not, after all, support gay marriage came partway through a lengthy speech during the Philippine President’s two-day trip to Myanmar, apparently closing the door on a campaign pledge to consider legalizing it.

In an address to Myanmar’s Filipino community on Sunday, Duterte castigated E.U. lawmakers who last week adopted a resolution condemning “the many extrajudicial killings” of his drug war. Then, referencing a recent edition of TIME magazine, in which the cover story focuses on changing attitudes to gender identity and sexuality in American culture, he warned of attempts to impose Western values on the Philippines.

Is there a link between climate change and diabetes?

No positive side to climate change. CNN reports that scientists have long warned that rising global temperatures may impact public health in a devastating way because climate change is associated with deadly weather events, the spread of infectious diseases and even food shortages.

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Bad News If You Put Milk or Sugar In Your Coffee

 

Although the way you take your coffee tends to be non-negotiable, new research suggests that people who like theirs light or sweet don't just end up drinking a bunch of empty calories, but may also end up eating worse than people who drink plain black coffee. The same goes for tea drinkers who add milk and sugar to the mix, but the effect doesn't seem to be quite as extreme. Unlike in previous studies where sweetened soda drinkers appeared to compensate for calories they drank by eating less overall, when researchers from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of California, San Diego, compared the diets of 19,400 coffee and teas drinkers for a study recently published in Public Health, they found that people tend to simply ignore the extra milk and sugar calories they slip into their drinks — no one's eating less at lunch because they had a splash of creamer in their morning coffee. Compared to tea, coffee tends to be the biggest calorie bomb, since nearly 2 out of 3 coffee drinkers use caloric additives like sugar, milk, creamer — and let's not talk about Frappuccinos and PSLs...

Read complete story here.

Cancer prevention tips

Around one third of deaths from cancer are due to the 5 leading behavioral and dietary risks:

high body mass index,

low fruit and vegetable intake,  lack of physical activity, tobacco use, and alcohol use.

*Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight: Don’t just look at the scale; check your waist measurement as a crude measurement of your abdominal fat. Men’s waists should be no larger than 37 inches and women’s waists  31.5 inches or less.

*Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day: You can break that into 10- to 15-minute blocks, and even more activity may be better.

*Avoid sugary drinks and limit consumption of energy-dense foods:

*Eat more of a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes such as beans.

*Limit alcoholic drinks to two for men and one for women per day.

*Limit red meats (beef, pork, lamb) and avoid processed meats:

Limit consumption of salty foods and foods processed with sodium.

Don’t use supplements to protect against cancer: It’s not that supplements are bad

It’s best for mothers to breastfeed babies exclusively for up to six months and then add other foods and liquids.

The post Cancer prevention tips appeared first on Vanguard News.

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Buhari’s cabinet weak, ineffective — Momodu

The publisher of Ovation Magazine and a former presidential candidate, Mr. Dele Momodu, has criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, describing members of his cabinet as timid and weak. Momodu told SUNDAY PUNCH in a telephone interview that he disagreed with Buhari’s approach to fighting corruption.

The post Buhari’s cabinet weak, ineffective — Momodu appeared first on Punch Newspapers.

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NANS vows to go ahead with protest despite Tuface withdrawal

The National Association of Nigerian Students has said students will go ahead with the planned protest scheduled for Monday to draw government attention to the suffering of the majority of Nigerians despite the withdrawal of the  convener of the protest, Tuface From the match. 

The Deputy Coordinator of NANS in the South West, Mr. Saheed Afolabi, said this while speaking with our correspondent on the telephone on Sunday.