"I love him”, says Lon Snowden of his son Edward. “And I want to communicate with him. I don't want to put him in peril.” The two men have not spoken since Edward fled to Hong Kong after he leaked classified information about America's huge worldwide covert surveillance operations. Lon Snowden says he believes that his son would return voluntarily to the United States which has charged him with espionage if he had a guarantee that he’d not be held prior to any trial and that he'd not be in anyway gagged.
One of the world's largest media empires, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, will be divided in two shortly. The corporation's entertainment arm, which includes Hollywood movie studio, will split from its publishing business when US financial markets close. Here is our business correspondent Mark Gregory.
Rupert Murdoch spent his career building a global media group that last year had revenues of $34bn. Now at the age of 82 he is breaking it up. The stated logic is financial, but there is also an unstated logic behind this split-- the division lessens the risk that the highly profitable movie-making and television arm of the business will be contaminated by the fallout of a phone hacking scandal that's engulfed Mr Murdoch's British newspapers.
Our business correspondent Mark Gregory
The social networking website Facebook has announced major changes to the way it displays advertising in an attempt to deal with concerns about offensive content. Facebook said that from Monday adverts would be removed from pages that feature violent or sexual content.