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Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media mogul who once shared control of Bezeq, is weighing a return to the telecommunications industry.

Ilan Ben-Dov's holding company Scailex said yesterday that it was in talks with Saban to sell him its controlling 44.5% of Partner Communications. But the company added it was also in negotiations with otherparties to sell the stake - and that the talks with Saban had not yet yielded any agreement.

"The company is holding talks with the Saban group and simultaneously is examining other deals with additional entities," Scailex said. "No agreements have been reached with any entity and there is no certainty these talks will result in a binding agreement."

Meanwhile, TheMarker has learned that Saban also previously explored buying control of Cellcom Israel. His representatives held talks with Nochi Dankner's IDB group, Cellcom's parent company, but the discussions stopped short because Dankner sought too high a valuation for the company.

Both Ben-Dov and Dankner are carrying massive debts and need to find cash quickly. Ben-Dov was close to selling Partner back to the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa in the summer, before the latter rescinded its offer.

News of the talks between Scailex and Saban lifted the shares and bond prices for all the companies involved in trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange yesterday. Partner stock jumped 7.4% to NIS 21.80, raising its market valuation to NIS 3.4 billion. Scailex soared 41.8%, while its bonds rose as much as 12%, although that still left them at junk yields of up to 80%.

Of Scailex's Partner shares, 16% of the 44.5% are pledged to bondholders and 12% to Hutchison, which made a $300 million loan to Scailex to buy Partner from it three years ago.

If Saban does agree to buy Partner, he will acquire it in stages, taking the 16.6% of Scailex's Partner shares that are unpledged for a sum of NIS 550 million to NIS 650 million, or NIS 22 to NIS 25 each.

Meanwhile, Saban reportedly will open talks with Bank Leumi about buying its 5% Partner stake at the same price, or a total of NIS 200 million. Likewise, he will try and buy out other major Partner shareholders, such as Migdal Insurance and the investment house Excellence.

Market sources believe Leumi would answer favorably to an offer of NIS 25 a share, but the bank has not yet been approached. .

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Haim Saban in talks to buy Partner

The Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia has called for tighter government controls on social media.

Diana Bryant was one of the keynote speakers at a Family Law Conference in Hobart.

She said social media was now having a major impact on family court proceedings and it was very difficult to control.

"On YouTube at the moment there are some really distressing videos of parents manipulating their children and they're available for anyone to watch," Ms Bryant said.

"That's something that's never happened before.

"We have social media, it's there, and the legislators do need to find some way of dealing with it."

Geoffrey Sinclair from the Law Council of Australia said comments on Facebook and Twitter, or videos on You Tube, were very hard to control.

"We are seeing more and more of details of cases being put into public media by disgruntled litigants," he said.

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Family court chief calls for social media controls

Im telling our people, if you have an opponent with a pulse, you need to run as if your political life depended on it. State Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, CTMirror.com, Oct. 8.

While the vast majority of media attention has been focused on the U.S. Senate race this year, and the prospects of Republicans gaining control of the upper chamber, there is an equally intense battle being fought locally with control of the General Assemblys Senate chambers at stake. Democrats hold 22 of the 36 Senate seats. Republicans need only to flip five seats to take control. Not an easy task, but not impossible given the current political climate. There are four open Senate seats in this years election as a result of incumbents choosing to retire three Democrats and one Republican. Probably no contest is being more fiercely fought than the 19th Senate District seat being vacated by Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia, which could go either way. State Rep. Christopher Coutu, R-Norwich, and Sprague Democratic First Selectman Catherine Osten are engaged in a hotly contested battle fueled by a general dislike for each other. This ones personal. Another contest that should have Democrats concerned is the 33rd Senate District seat being vacated by Sen. Eileen Daily, D-Westbrook. Freshman state Rep. James Crawford, D-Westbrook, a retired teacher, is being challenged by Republican newcomer Art Linares, also of Westbrook and a former student of Crawfords. But theres an added twist in this contest a third party candidate, Melissa Schlag of Haddam. Schlag is the Green Party candidate and former executive director of the Citizens for Protection of Public Lands, the grassroots organization that successfully fought the controversial Haddam land swap. Crawford voted in favor of the swap last year, but has since changed his position. An open seat in Bridgeport is likely to remain in Democratic hands, meaning Republicans will have to oust two or three other Democratic incumbents to take control of the Senate a tall order. But the winds of change may favor the GOP if and its a big if Republicans can turn a handful of Senate races into a referendum on Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Since taking office in January 2011, the governors approval ratings have not risen above 50 percent. His best showing was in a March Quinnipiac University poll where his popularity climbed to 44 percent with 45 percent disapproving of his job performance. If GOP challengers can tap into the anger of the electorate over high taxes and high unemployment by focusing on Malloys policies, and their Democratic opponents support of those policies, its possible. Williams advice to his fellow Democrats to run as if your political life depended on it shouldnt be ignored. Ray Hackett is The Bulletins editorial page editor. He has more than 20 years covering Connecticut politics. He can be reached at (860) 425-4225 or rhackett@norwichbulletin.com

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Hackett on Politics: Battle for Senate control isn’t just about Washington

THURSDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Social media can be used to help convince young adults to use condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, a new study finds.

Researchers enrolled online networks of friends who were randomly assigned to an intervention group or a "control" group.

The 942 participants in the intervention group signed up to "like" and receive news from Just/Us, a Facebook community created to promote sexual health. The site featured weekly discussions about topics such as condom use, talking with partners about sexual history, and how to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, there were daily updates in the form of video links, quizzes, blogs and discussion threads.

The 636 people in the control group, called 18-24 News, shared general news of interest to 18- to 24-year-olds.

Two months after taking part in the social networking groups, 68 percent of those in the Just/Us group reported using a condom the last time they had sex, compared with 56 percent of those in the 18-24 News group. The rate of condom use during sex in the previous two months was 63 percent in the Just/Us group and 57 percent in the 18-24 News group, the investigators found.

However, the effects seen in the Just/Us group faded over time and there were no differences between the two groups at the six-month follow-up, according to the report published in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"The use of social media to influence sexual risk behavior in the short term is novel. It is a first step in considering how to reach the overwhelming numbers of youth online, and how to maximize approaches to technology-based interventions," lead investigator Sheana Bull, of the Colorado School of Public Health's University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said in a journal news release.

The author of an accompanying commentary, Dr. Nathan Cobb, from the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the American Legacy Foundation in Washington D.C., agreed that this use of social media was a step in the right direction. "For health-behavior change intervention designers, Facebook offers something unprecedented -- direct access to an individual's social network, in real time, and without the need for tedious network enumeration by participants," he wrote.

"However, such approaches require multidisciplinary teams that include social media specialists, marketers, and software developers as equal partners in design and intervention development. Building such teams will undoubtedly require changes to traditional funding and development models, but the potential is too large to be ignored or minimized," Cobb added.

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Social Media Could Boost Condom Use, Study Suggests

By Jamie Lendino

Not feeling the cord-cutting craze? From live sports and 24-hour news to a vast array of premium channels, most Americans are staying with cable or satellite TV for now. The problem is, aside from the lack of la carte channel options, TV providers also make it exceptionally difficult to watch the programming you pay for from computers and mobile devices. Enter the venerable Slingbox, which since 2005 has made it easy to "place-shift" live TV and recorded DVR content, letting you watch it on any device over the Internet when you're away from home.

Now, after a four-year hiatus, Sling Media is back with the Slingbox 500 ($299.99 direct), its first consumer product since the Slingbox Pro-HD and the somewhat misguided SlingCatcher. With the 500, the Slingbox finally includes features many fans have been clamoring for, such as full 1080p streaming and Wi-Fi support. In an age of direct Internet streaming services, parts of the way the Slingbox 500 works are beginning to feel quite dated. But if you want to get the most out of your cable or satellite TV subscription, the Slingbox 500 remains a great way to stream live TV and recorded DVR content to any of your computers or mobile devices, at home or on the go.

Design, Connections, and SetupWith its twisted design, the Slingbox 500 looks kind of like an inspired piece of modern art. It's made entirely of matte black plastic with a textured finish that feels durable and scratch resistant.As a coworker commented, it's no longer flat on top, so people won't be putting stuff on top and watching their Slingboxes overheat, which used to happen with the older models.

In the package, you get lots of goodies. Aside from the Slingbox itself, there's a small remote control, an AC adapter, an HDMI cable, component and composite video cables, a pair of stereo RCA audio cables, an Ethernet cable, and a printed instruction manual.The HDMI port seems like an exciting addition at first, but thanks to encryption issues from the TV providers, it only passes through regular TV and basic cable channels like USA HD. To get around this problem, Sling Media recommends a simultaneous HDMI and component audio and video cable setup; I ended up testing with the component connection.

The Slingbox 500 also includes an internal IR blaster for controlling your cable-company-issued set-top box. This means you don't have to fiddle with the little plastic external one on a wire, as you did with older models. Sling Media says the blaster is strong enough to bounce off the walls and hit the sensor on the set-top box. If that doesn't work in your setup, the company still includes the old IR blaster on a wire in case you need it.

I tested the Slingbox 500 with a Dish Network Hopper DVR and a Samsung HDTV. From the back of the Dish Hopper, I ran both HDMI and the five component A/V cables from the output jacks to the inputs on the Slingbox 500. Then out from the Slingbox 500, I connected the existing HDMI cable (from the Dish Hopper) to the back of the TV. The Slingbox 500 took about two minutes to boot for the first time; it installed a software update during this time, which I assume was already on the Slingbox, because I hadn't yet connected it to a network.

You can connect to 802.11b/g/n networks on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz channel. I added the Slingbox 500 to our test WPA2-encrypted 5GHz network without issue, and then picked up the new remote to control the Slingbox's new TV interface. After inputting my location and zip code, the unit scanned the connected inputs and asked about our service provider, for which I selected Dish New York. It already had the Dish Hopper in its set-top box database and loaded the appropriate remote control layout. I tested the programmed remote buttons as directed, and everything worked properly from the Slingbox remote. I had no problem bringing up the menu and channel guide, switching channels, and powering the Hopper off or onand that was without using the external blaster cable, and while standing in front of both devices.

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Sling Media Slingbox 500