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IF THE latest allegations by an Italian shutterfly are true, beleaguered celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz isn’t as original as her reputation would have us believe.

Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz is being sued by an Italian photographer who says she used his pictures without permission. [...]

According to legal papers filed at a New York federal court, Mr Pizzetti said Ms Leibovitz, 59, hired him to scout locations in Italy for an advertising campaign for Lavazza coffee in April 2008.

He said he photographed the Trevi Fountain in Rome and Plaza San Marco in Venice as well as other images which he sent to her digitally, but was later informed Ms Leibovitz would not be travelling to Italy for the photo shoot.

Mr Pizzetti said that in October, when the calendar was released, he noticed two of his photographs had been used, with models superimposed on it.

IN WORLD WAR II, America’s women pilots took to the air for the US army, but they received little in the way of either compensation or recognition.

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) pilots each already had a pilot’s license and were trained in military aviation at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. More than 25,000 women applied for WASP service; fewer than 1,900 were accepted and those who were, paid their own way to Texas for the months of rigorous military training.

Some 1,078 women earned their wings becoming the first women in history to fly American military aircraft — but for $250 a month. They were not officially part of the military. They received no benefits. They were not honored — until now:

President Obama on Wednesday signed a measure awarding the 300 surviving Women Airforce Service Pilots from World War II the Congressional Gold Medal. [...]

EIGHTEEN MONTHS after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto the United Nations is to investigate the death of Pakistan’s first (and thusfar, only) female prime minister.

After nearly a decade in exile, having been removed from her elected office twice on charges of corruption, Bhutto had been back in her country for just over two months when she was killed.

There has been much controversy surrounding the assassination, both as to the exact cause of Bhutto’s death, as well as who was responsible for the assassination.

Twenty other people in close proximity to Bhutto that day were also killed during the attack.

This week, a close aide to Pakistan’s Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, confirmed reports that Mehsud was behind Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan’s Express TV reported.

The Pakistani government and CIA officials have said in the past that Mehsud was responsible for Bhutto’s death.

Credit: WAN/Cambon

IN 1993 World Press Freedom Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly to highlight the fundamental principles of press freedom.

The theme this year is the safety of journalists and the threats they face in their work. Last year alone 70 journalists were killed worldwide in the course of their reporting.

It’s estimated at least 827 journalists have died throughout the world since 1993 — doing their jobs.

Hunger strike

In the run-up to World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, Reporters Without Borders is campaigning for the release of three women journalists who have been “taken hostage” by governments.

Four members of Reporters Without Borders have been on hunger strike since 28 April in support of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran on a charge of spying for the United States.

JOE FIELD made today happen. No relation to Joe Plumber or Joe Sixpack, he is however the proud proprietor of Flying Colors Comics and lifelong comic book fan.

It was in a Big Picture column Joe wrote in 2001 for Comics & Games Retailer magazine that he put forward the idea of an event dedicated to the promotion and showcasing of comics to attract new readers.

I’d like to take the original “Open House” idea, couple it with the strong allure of the word “free”, then add some elements to it to make a truly sizzling event for our market. Bear with me as I plan in this public forum’ (not necessarily the final name) Free Comic Night! A specific time-block on an evening during which retailers would give a free comic book to everyone who attends the promotion.

Read Joe Field’s May 2001 Big Picture column

TWITTER AND news hacks have a lot to answer for:

[...T]here’s incentive for Twitter users to post whatever is on their mind because it helps them grow their online audiences.

But in an emergency, that tendency means people write about their own fears of symptoms and widespread deaths, which can create an uninformed hysteria, he said.

The debate about swine flu on Twitter is not one-sided, however. And the site is not the only place online where people are talking about the outbreak.

Some Twitter users have expressed concern that the swine flu story is being hyped.

Read the full CNN story

And this is what xkcd has to say on the subject: (click on image)

SO HERE it is, the answer that has conservatives positively lining up to push Miss California, Carrie Prejean, into the political stage:

Now I have to say there has been some mismanaged activism here, and it’s backfired. Meghan Daum sums it up rather well:

Prejean’s remarks, taken on their own, were hardly an advertisement for Proposition 8. She didn’t sound much different from, ahem, President Obama. During the campaign, he said he was against Proposition 8, in favor of civil unions and believed marriage should be between a man and a woman (apparently he’s not yet hip to the term “opposite marriage”).

Never mind that Prejean, a Christian, didn’t seem terribly invested in seeing her beliefs legislated. As she stood in the high-wattage, 15-minute glare that illuminates nonstories everywhere, she became the newest poster girl for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. As for Hilton, in attempting to strike down his enemy, he managed to empower her.

SEVENTY YEARS ago, Marian Anderson would not have imagined there would be a Black First Family in the Whitehouse. Then, although she could and did sing for “the crowned heads of Europe”, she wasn’t permitted to perform in many American venues because she was black.

It was the efforts of and Eleanor Roosevelt (and Franklin D. Roosevelt) that saw Anderson perform an open-air concert on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. Washington, D.C. at the time was a segregated city and when black artists would perform at Constitution Hall, black patrons were upset that black artists could be onstage, but black patrons had to sit it the back. The DAR has never been a political organization, and to avoid this conflict, declined to schedule black artists.

(If you want to make your own amusingly offensive ecard to celebrate IWD, you can do so at someecards.com Registration required. )

THIS YEAR b has chosen three things to remember in honor of International Women’s Day:

- This year’s focus suggested by the United Nations is Women and men united to end violence against women and girls

- Even in the 21st century, women still do two-thirds of the world’s work but receive only 10% of the world’s income

- There are not enough women in the sciences at a time when we can ill afford to except 50% of our potential brainforce

So, let us:

… be assertive and strong, and defend ourselves and our sisters

… develop a sense of what we and our work are worth and have the self-respect to make sure that worth is recognized and compensated

WELL NOW. If you’re in the market for new wheels you have some tough choices: regular gas guzzler or healthy hybrid? SUV or one size down? Free gas for a year, or fixed-price gas for three years? Chrysler, for example, offers a gas card that sets your gas price at $2.99 /gallon for those three years.

(And what if the price comes back down? Not a hope in hell, I hear you cry! Once the US public is used to paying prices higher than they have ever paid, the government will just go with it…)

Gas or gun?

But here’s a real doozy: $250 free gas, or a certificate to pick up your spanking-new handgun? This is a deal being offered in Butler, Missouri. Here’s the scary thing. Walter Moore, from Max Motors, claims 80% of the buyers are turning down the free gas and taking the gun instead. It’s all ok of course: those certificate-holders are subject to the routine background check that’s done on all applicants for small arms licenses. And look how well that’s gone, aside from the odd school massacre…

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