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LONDON (AP) -- Is Rupert Murdoch's best-selling newspaper in open revolt?

The associate editor of The Sun newspaper fired off an 800-word broadside Monday at the U.K. police phone hacking investigation that has led to the arrest of some of the paper's most senior journalists. Trevor Kavanagh called the probe a phone-hacking "witch hunt" that was threatening "the very foundations of a free press."

Kavanagh's criticism was directed at police and politicians, but media watchers say its wording left no doubt he was also aiming his ire at the senior Murdoch lieutenants who have been sent in to handle the scandal, and possibly even the media mogul himself.

"Instead of being called in to questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked," Kavanagh said in a prominent op-ed column.

Bold faced letters exclaimed that: "This witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on press freedom." That was an apparent reference to Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, where Britain ranks 28th behind former Eastern bloc countries such as Poland and Slovakia.

Kavanagh, one of Britain's most influential political journalists, said the scale of the police investigation into phone hacking was out of proportion to the alleged wrongdoing and was taking resources away from British counterterrorism work ahead of the Olympics, a claim denied by Scotland Yard.

Police released an unusual statement detailing the number of staff assigned to the investigation — 169 — and insisting that "at no stage has any major investigation been compromised as a result of these deployments."

The investigation into illegality at Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid and its sister paper, The Sun, has already led to a slew of arrests — including police officers, executives and well-known British tabloid journalists. No one has yet been charged, but the inquiry has uncovered widespread wrongdoing, including voicemail interception, computer hacking and illicit payments to public officials for information.

After an attempt to bury the scandal failed, Murdoch's News Corp. appointed a management and standards committee to get to the bottom of the criminality at his British newspaper subsidiary, News International. The committee, which reports to News Corp. executive vice president Joel Klein, has been pouring through millions of old emails and other documents in an attempt to turn the page on the scandal.

A comment widely attributed to a committee source recently spoke of the need to "drain the swamp" — a statement that has infuriated some journalists.

"The Sun is not a 'swamp' that needs draining," Kavanagh thundered in his first line. "Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times."

Observers said Kavanagh's "swamp" comments were a clear dig at the management standards team.

"Obviously that phrase — allegedly coming from a senior member of the MSC team — has deeply upset many people at the Sun," said Paul Connew, a media commentator who has held senior positions at several tabloids. "It's hardly helped the atmosphere."

Journalism professor Roy Greenslade went even further, calling the editorial "a thinly veiled attack on The Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch."

Connew disagreed, saying that Murdoch may share Kavanagh's frustrations about having his paper at the center of a massive police inquiry.

"This may well reflect Rupert's position," he said of the column.

It may also reflect the position of other newspapers. Few journalists defended the News of The World before it was shut, but the reaction to the arrests at The Sun has been more mixed. The right-leaning Daily Telegraph said in an editorial Monday that "the hacking inquiry is too heavy handed," while the Daily Mail wondered whether police could really spare all that manpower "to investigate the alleged misdemeanors of some News International journalists."

Of course, even rival newspapers may have a self-interest in taking the heat off The Sun. Two veteran tabloid reporters told The Associated Press last year that paying police for tips — which is a crime in Britain — was common across the industry.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they still worked in the media industry.

Allegations of bribery are particularly sensitive for the U.S.-based News Corp. America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act could be used to impose fines even in cases where activity has occurred overseas.

In the United States, Murdoch also owns the Fox television network and The Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Murdoch himself was expected in London sometime later this week.

___

Online:

Kavanagh's column: http://bit.ly/yesJD1

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Top editor at Sun tabloid attacks UK hacking probe

The 4D core is the ability to identify the emotional content, the legibility, word diversity and standardization.

LUDWIGSBURG, Germany -- Pintexx, an international company that focuses on sophisticated software solutions for the processing and optimizing of text, has announced today that it has released the Microsoft Add-In of the 4D Wording Optimizer.

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Microsoft Word Add-In helps identify document tone.

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IPAD 2 DASH CAMERA TEST VIDEO HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR C - Video

12-02-2012 15:14 We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. We Are Anonymous. ****************************************************************** Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is an Internet meme that originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known. In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative, international hacktivism, undertaking protests and other actions, often in retaliation against anti-digital piracy campaigns by motion picture and recording industry trade associations. Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution. Although not necessarily tied to a single online entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan, their associated wikis, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of forums. After a series of controversial, widely ...

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Anonymous: Freedom - Video

A new electronic system could save the once-threatened method of paying by cheque, its developers have said.

Paper cheques fell out of favour with banks as they were costly to process and need to be stored afterwards, yet they remained popular with customers, particularly the elderly.

Now a team of academics has developed a system which has the benefits of easy, electronic money transfer while preserving the physical attributes of something that is handed to the payee.

The team from Newcastle (Frankfurt: 725198 - news) , York and Northumbria Universities developed the system after speaking to a group of 80-year-olds from Tyneside.

Their research is to be presented today at the Computer Supported Co-operative Work conference in Seattle, in the US.

The new cheques look identical to traditional ones, save for the grey background on each one which is actually billions of tiny dots laid out in a specific pattern.

The account holder writes out the cheque as normal, but uses a digital pen which ‘reads’ the cheque as it is written. Once completed, they tick a box - the only difference to a normal cheque - and the information is transmitted directly to the payee’s bank account.

Dr John Vines, of Newcastle University, said: “Sending a cheque in a Christmas or birthday card is something many people do - not just the older generation.

“It’s easy and safe but it’s also personal.

“The beauty of this system is that it is a safe and cheap electronic transaction for the banks but it’s a physical paper-based transaction for the customer.”

Project lead Professor Andrew Monk, a psychologist at the University of York, said the 80-year-olds canvassed clearly understood cheque payments.

“Many of us still use cheques and in some cases the only alternative is to hand over cash which often isn’t ideal,” he said.

“For the banks, it’s not only the time and cost of processing cheques but, at present, where you store them after they have been processed.

“But for the bank’s customers - and particularly the older generation - cheques are seen as a vital part of their financial independence.

“They provide a permanent record which means they can easily keep track of what’s being spent.

“The people who worked with us also valued the experience of handing over a signed cheque to a named individual rather than the anonymity of online transactions.

“The beauty of our design is that you not only have something physical to hand over to the recipient, you also have a cheque book stub as a record.”

According to Newcastle University, cheque use has been falling in the UK since 1990. While the number of cheques being written each day is still high - around 3.5 million a day - this is down from 11 million in 1990.

A study by Age UK last year called The Way We Pay revealed 73% of people over 65 in the UK still frequently use cheques.

Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director-General of Age UK, said: “We’re delighted these researchers asked older people what they need and want in this critical part of daily life, paying bills and making payments.

“Hopefully banks will now see the potential and invest in this kind of innovative design which preserves what many people find invaluable about cheques but also makes the most of modern technology.”

Dr Vines added: “The larger lesson from this story is that we all need to listen carefully to what 80 and 90 year olds have to say to us.

“They grew up in a time when financial practices were quite different to the ones we are used to now but their values are pertinent to all of us.”

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Digital pen to save paper cheques