Poor Mojo's Newswire

BANGALORE (Reuters) – Two separate groups of iPhone and iPad users have sued Apple Inc alleging that certain software applications were passing personal user information to third-party advertisers without consent. In the lawsuits seeking class action, filed in a federal court in California, the plaintiffs sought a ban on passing of user information without consent and monetary compensation, according to case documents. At some point, both cases may be consolidated into one by the judges presiding over the cases, said Majed Nachawati, a partner at law firm Fears & Nachawati, one of the attorneys for the complainants. Along with Apple, makers of popular apps such as Textplus4, Paper Toss, Weather Channel, Dictionary.com, Talking Tom Cat and Pumpkin Maker were also named co-defendants in the lawsuits filed on December 23.

Do you have to be good at spelling to be a good writer? Not necessarily, at least not in Oregon public schools. As middle and high school kids begin taking state writing tests next month, they'll have a new tool at their fingertips: spell check. For the first time, Oregon is allowing students -- those taking online and paper tests -- to use a spell check button on a computer to check their work before submitting answers to the writing test prompts. State officials say the change is an opportunity to better assess students' writing skills and focus less on typos. "We are not letting a student's keyboarding skills get in the way of being able to judge their writing ability," said state Superintendent Susan Castillo. "As we're using technology to improve what we're doing with assessments as a nation, we believe that spell check will be one of those tools."

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record." This latest revelation comes after Media Matters uncovered an email sent by Sammon to Fox journalists at the peak of the health care reform debate, ordering them to avoid using the term "public option" and instead use variations of "government option." That email echoed advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn public opinion against health care reform. Sources familiar with the situation in Fox's Washington bureau have expressed concern about Sammon using his position to "slant" Fox's supposedly neutral news coverage to the right.

A New Hampshire couple has pulled their son out of his local high school after the teen was assigned a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist." Aimee Taylor says her oldest son, 16-year-old Jordan Henderson, was required to read "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," this fall for Bedford High School's personal finance class. The book is a first-person account of author Barbara Ehrenreich's attempts to make ends meet while working minimum wage jobs in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. . . . [The father also says,] "…These words are illegal to say on national TV and radio in this country and yet here they are in this book."