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Updated December 3, 2012, 1:30 pm
On Dec. 4, 1945, the Senate approved U.S. participation in the United Nations.
On Dec. 4, 1892, Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who overthrew the democratic republic and headed an authoritarian regime in Spain for 36 years, was born. Following his death on Nov. 20, 1975, his obituary appeared in The Times.
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On This Date
By The Associated Press
1783 Gen. George Washington said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York. 1816 James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States. 1918 President Woodrow Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles peace conference. 1942 U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time in World War II. 1945 The Senate approved U.S. participation in the United Nations. 1978 Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco’s first woman mayor when she was named to replace George Moscone, who had been assassinated. 1980 The rock group Led Zeppelin announced it was disbanding after the death in September of drummer John Bonham. 1980 The bodies of four American nuns slain in El Salvador two days earlier were unearthed. (Five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.) 1991 Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity. 1995 The first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission. 2001 The United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to the terrorist group Hamas. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Actor Jeff Bridges turns 63 years old today.
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Actress Marisa Tomei turns 48 years old today.
AP Photo/Dan Steinberg
1933 Wink Martindale, Game show host, turns 79 1944 Chris Hillman, Rock singer, musician (The Byrds), turns 68 1948 Johnny Lyon, Rock singer (Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes), turns 64 1955 Cassandra Wilson, Jazz singer, turns 57 1966 Fred Armisen, Actor, comedian (“Saturday Night Live”), turns 46 1969 Jay-Z, Rapper, turns 43 1973 Tyra Banks, Model, TV host (“America’s Next Top Model”), turns 39 Historic Birthdays
Francisco Franco 12/4/1892 – 11/20/1975 Spanish dictator. Go to obituary »
67 John Cotton 12/4/1585 – 12/23/1652
American Puritan leader85 Thomas Carlyle 12/4/1795 – 2/5/1881
English philosopher and historian27 Crazy Horse 12/4/1849 – 9/5/1877
American Indian Chief60 Lillian Russell 12/4/1861 – 6/6/1922
American singer and actress78 Wassily Kandinsky 12/4/1866 – 12/13/1944
Russian abstract painter50 Rainer Maria Rilke 12/4/1875 – 12/29/1926
German poet94 Fung Yu-lan 12/4/1895 – 11/26/1990
Chinese philosopher88 Alfred Hershey 12/4/1908 – 5/22/1997
American psychologist75 Pappy Boyington 12/4/1912 – 1/11/1988
American flying ace
Updated December 2, 2012, 1:29 pm
On Dec. 3, 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.
On Dec. 3, 1895, Anna Freud, the Austrian-born psychologist who pioneered the field of child psychoanalysis, was born. Following her death on Oct. 9, 1982, her obituary appeared in The Times.
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On This Date
By The Associated Press
1818 Illinois was admitted to the union as the 21st state. 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States. 1947 “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway. 1948 The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. 1964 Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley who had stormed the administration buildingthe previous day and staged a massive sit-in. 1965 The album “Rubber Soul” by the Beatles was released. 1967 Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. 1967 The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York City to Chicago. 1979 Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum before a rock concert by the Who. 1989 East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party’s Central Committee resigned. 1997 South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy. 1999 Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet; the spacecraft was presumed destroyed. 2009 Comcast and GE announced joint venture plans, with Comcast owning a 51 percent controlling stake in NBC Universal. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Actress Julianne Moore turns 52 years old today.
AP Photo/Dan Steinberg
Actress Amanda Seyfried (“Mamma Mia,” “Big Love”) turns 27 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
1930 Jean-Luc Godard, Director, turns 82 1931 Jaye P. Morgan, Singer (“The Gong Show”), turns 81 1941 Mary Alice, Actress, turns 71 1948 Ozzy Osbourne, Rock singer (Black Sabbath), turns 64 1960 Daryl Hannah, Actress, turns 52 1968 Brendan Fraser, Actor (“The Mummy” films), turns 44 1973 Bruno Campos, Actor, turns 39 1973 Holly Marie Combs, Actress (“Charmed”), turns 39 1980 Anna Chlumsky, Actress (“My Girl” movies), turns 32 Historic Birthdays
Anna Freud 12/3/1895 – 10/9/1982 Austrian/English psychoanalyst. Go to obituary »
72 Gilbert Stuart 12/3/1755 – 7/9/1828
American portrait painter58 George Brinton McClellan 12/3/1826 – 10/29/1885
American general77 Cleveland Abbe 12/3/1838 – 10/28/1916
American meteorologist73 Octavia Hill 12/3/1838 – 8/13/1912
English activist and leader of the British open-space movement56 Charles Alfred Pillsbury 12/3/1842 – 9/17/1899
American flour miller and food products manufacturer68 Ellen Swallow Richards 12/3/1842 – 3/30/1911
American chemist66 Joseph Conrad 12/3/1857 – 8/3/1924
English novelist86 Carl Koller 12/3/1857 – 3/21/1944
Czech-born American eye surgeon61 Anton von Werbern 12/3/1883 – 9/15/1945
Austrian composer65 Hayato Ikeda 12/3/1899 – 8/13/1965
Japanese prime minister (1960-4)66 Richard Kuhn 12/3/1900 – 8/1/1967
German biochemist and Nobel Prize winner53 John von Neumann 12/3/1903 – 2/8/1957
Hungarian-American mathematician
Highly reminiscent of Miss Marple from the Agatha Christie novels of my early youth, Ms. Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of the series of books by Alexander McCall Smith, can be rightfully called the Miss Marple of Botswana.
Evidently the third in the series of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, I found this to be a lightweight paperback novel that hearkens back to a more simplistic era of story-telling: simple characters that have just enough mystery to hold your attention to keep turning the pages without ever being on edge or expecting too much.
Mr. Alexander McCall Smith adopts a much different style in his Isabel Dalhousie series as well as the 44 Scotland Street series that despite being lightweight reading have a certain quality about them that introduce the most abstract topics in a most philosophical way, making the stories as endearing as they are thought-provoking.
While I might not continue with the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, I will continue to hold Mr. McCall Smith in the highest regard and count him among the finest storytellers of our generation.
Who is allowed to read through your e-mails — or update your Facebook page — when you die? In many states across the U.S., there are no clear answers to such basic legal questions.That’s why Cynthia Creem, along with numerous other policymakers nationwide, is fighting to bring clarity to the high-tech confusion. A Massachusetts state senator, Creem proposed a bill this year that would give executors access to e-mail accounts of the deceased. “You would certainly have access to somebody’s desk,” Creem says. “Why should this be any different?” Her bill would make Massachusetts the sixth state to put a “digital asset” law on the books. But tech companies are wary of new privacy-related legislation — and in this case, Google hired a lobbyist to oppose it.
A question increasingly on the minds of lawyers, academics and legislators is how to deal with the ever expanding digital footprints we leave behind when we die. High-profile showdowns over online accounts have often pitted bereaved parents against industry behemoths armed with terms-of-service agreements, those novella-length contracts that everyone checks and no one reads. But now that baby boomers are moving online too, this probate problem will become much more widespread: by one estimate, 580,000 Facebook users will have died this year in the U.S. alone. Creem’s colleagues clearly share her concern: Massachusetts legislators unanimously passed her bill in the senate this June. Meanwhile, bar associations from Oregon to Nebraska are drafting their own measures outlining whether these e-things are bound.
What qualifies as a digital asset? “Anything that we store online, on our computers or in a cloud that might have value,” says George Washington University law professor Naomi Cahn. “It’s not just financial value. It’s also emotional, personal value.” That definition covers everything from domain names to Twitter handles, apps to frequent-flyer miles — or perhaps, to cite a favorite example of Cahn’s, the virtual sword used in video game Age of Wulin that sold at an auction for $16,000. “Everyone is basically moving their lives online,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “And that includes a lot of personal things they might have kept in the file cabinet or in the box under their bed.” Last year, security-software company McAfee surveyed 3,000 people in 10 countries, asking about the financial value they’d assign to assets such as music files and online photo albums: the U.S. average was just under $55,000.
If after we die, our belongings and treasured mementos are under username and password instead of lock and key, executors may need legal rights to get and use those passwords. Virtual walls may guard the information that survivors need to manage the estate or the answers and closure they seek after losing a loved one. “These issues are coming up with parents trying to trace their children’s lives,” says Cahn, “whether it’s someone who has died in Iraq or whether it’s someone who has committed suicide.” But for companies like Google or Yahoo, which provide the platforms for these assets, their business model depends on users’ trust. Users expect them to defend their privacy with a broad sword, so the companies have fought to protect that privacy even after the users are gone. (Check out TIME’s nine tips for protecting your digital assets.)
Helen and Jay Stassen, a Wisconsin couple whose son committed suicide in 2010, served Google and Facebook with court orders after being denied access to their son’s accounts. “We are his parents, we are his sole heirs,” says Helen. “We are saying, ‘We own this.’ And that’s what this fight is.” Court orders like theirs help support that argument, but even then the process isn’t simple. Google quickly gave up the e-mails following the court order, but Facebook dragged the process out for months after being served last April. The Stassens say they were embroiled in negotiations and eventually agreed to sign a contract stating that they’ll never show the contents of the account to anyone outside the immediate family. “We have served them with a court order and they’re giving us negotiations?” Helen says. “People need to understand how difficult this is. There will be other parents in our situation. Or a spouse. Who knows?”
When a user dies, Facebook’s standard practice is to “memorialize” the page by restricting who can see it but still allowing friends to leave messages and grieve together. (The company will also close the account upon request.) The policy of Yahoo, whose mail service has some 300 million unique visits per month, states that survivors may request to have the account deactivated and the contents permanently deleted — but that’s it. LinkedIn says it would not grant access to a deceased member’s account unless legally required to do so. Other companies are more open to requests, but new networks and platforms arise all the time, and estate law, which is often very old, hasn’t caught up in providing broad guidelines for online industries.
Estate law also varies from state to state, and the statutes passed so far don’t agree on what needs to be made available. Creem’s bill applies only to e-mail, same as laws in Rhode Island and Connecticut, where the eldest statute was passed in 2005. Indiana’s covers electronic “documents” and “information.” In Idaho and Oklahoma, everything from microblogging to social networking is covered. Perhaps more important, legal experts aren’t sure how these young laws would fare if pitted against terms-of-service agreements in court. “The first big case on this issue will be a very interesting one,” says attorney Katie Zulkoski, whose firm is working on a digital-asset bill in Nebraska. “It’s really unclear, and someone will test it. I don’t know which side, but someone will.”
Creem’s Massachusetts bill explicitly states that the law will supersede any provider contract. And Google didn’t lobby against that or any particular provision. The company doesn’t oppose giving survivors access but says it believes the issue can be addressed with technology — rather than, say, 50 different state laws. One way to limit confusion is for all state statutes to look the same. That’s the mission of the Uniform Law Commission, a nonprofit association that champions federalism by drafting and promoting state laws. The group “severely” expedited its study of digital assets this year, according to commissioner Suzanne Walsh. “It’s part of the legislative process to look at your laws, dust them off and see what needs to be updated,” she says, and with these bills proliferating, the time to standardize them is now or never. Still, at the very fastest, a uniform
draft will not be ready for another year. In the meantime, some members of Congress are trying to make sure federal law stays out of the fray: California Republican Representative Darrell Issa just proposed a two-year moratorium on any Internet-related legislation.Cahn and other legal minds have suggested another option that doesn’t involve legislation and that may be more palatable to the industry. That is to have the providers add a proactive step to the sign-up process. For instance: “Upon your incapacity or death, do you a) want no living soul to ever sift through your messages or b) want access given to the executor of your estate?” This could help the companies both adhere to internal privacy policies and account for a common criticism of digital-asset laws — that there’s a potential for prying relatives to see and learn things the deceased never intended.
Regardless of where you live or what your current state law mandates, lawyers suggest accounting for your digital assets — specifying what they are and whether anyone should be able to access them after you are gone. “It’s really important that the people who are trying to put the puzzle together when somebody passes have the ability to access that information,” says attorney Victoria Blachly, who is working on a digital-asset bill in Oregon. Creem, meanwhile, thinks of her own digital photo albums as her bill waits for action by the Massachusetts house of representatives. It’s unlikely that it will be passed during the state’s current informal session. But she says that if she needs to, she’ll submit the bill again, “all over again, with vigor.”
Updated December 1, 2012, 1:28 pm
On Dec. 2, 1954, the Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
On Dec. 2, 1923, Maria Callas, the legendary American soprano opera singer, was born. Following her death on Sept. 16, 1977, her obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
By The Associated Press
1804 Napoleon was crowned emperor of France. 1823 President James Monroe outlined his doctrine opposing European expansion in the Western Hemisphere. 1954 The Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist who would lead Cuba to Communism. 1969 The Boeing 747 jumbo jet debuted. 1980 Four American churchwomen were raped, murdered and buried in El Salvador. (Five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.) 1982 Doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center performed the first implant of a permanent artificial heart in a human. Barney Clark lived 112 days with the device. 1990 Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s center-right coalition easily won the first free all-German elections since 1932. 1990 Composer Aaron Copland died at age 90. 1993 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by security forces in Medellin. 1999 A power-sharing cabinet of Protestants and Catholics sat down together for the first time in Northern Ireland. 2001 Enron filed for Chapter 11 protection in one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history. 2010 The House voted to censure Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., for financial and fundraising misconduct. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers turns 29 years old today.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., turns 73 years old today.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
1925 Julie Harris, Actress, turns 87 1931 Edwin Meese III, Former attorney general, turns 81 1944 Cathy Lee Crosby, Actress, turns 68 1954 Stone Phillips, Broadcast journalist, turns 58 1960 Rick Savage, Rock musician (Def Leppard), turns 52 1968 Lucy Liu, Actress, turns 44 1973 Monica Seles, Tennis player, turns 39 1978 Nelly Furtado, Rock singer, turns 34 1981 Britney Spears, Singer, TV judge (“The X Factor”), turns 31 Historic Birthdays
Maria Callas 12/2/1923 – 9/16/1977 Greek-American opera singer Go to obituary »
46 John Breckinridge 12/2/1760 – 12/14/1806
American politician57 Rene Waldeck-Rousseau 12/2/1846 – 8/10/1904
French premier31 Georges Seurat 12/2/1859 – 3/29/1891
French painter63 Charles Ringling 12/2/1863 – 12/3/1926
American circus owner72 Ruth Draper 12/2/1884 – 12/30/1956
American entertainer64 George Richards Minot 12/2/1885 – 2/25/1950
American physician and Nobel Prize winner70 Sir John Barbirolli 12/2/1899 – 7/29/1970
English conductor and cellist71 Peter Carl Goldmark 12/2/1906 – 12/7/1977
Hungarian-American engineer; developed the first commercial color television50 Gianni Versace 12/2/1946 – 7/15/1997
Italian-American fashion designer
