.:: NewS CrazE ::. - Sizzling News With CrazyNess!

Windows Home Server On Its Way To Manufacturing

2007-07-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is releasing its Windows Home Server software to manufacturers Monday paving the way for home server devices based on Microsoft's software to be available this fall. Iomega today also announces it becomes the latest to offer hardware that will run Windows Home Server software. Other hardware partners previously announced to offer Windows Home Server devices are Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, LaCie, and Medion.

Iomega this fall says it will sell a user expandable home server for consumers with the ability to add up to four hard drives based on Windows Home Server software. No official word on pricing or exact dates for availability.

Windows Home Server is Microsoft's solution to bringing order to cluttered digital lives. Microsoft is targeting households that want to share storage among multiple PCs. Various models of home server products will provide automatic backup of connected PCs, sharing of digital content between network-attached devices (PCs, Zune media player, or Xbox game console), remote access to data, and storage expansion.

HP's home server is called HP MediaSmart Server, which will offer centralized storage for up to 10 PCs, automated backups of multiple PCs on a network, and file sharing both from within and outside a home's network. HP will also offer its own software applications such as Photo Webshare for photo sharing.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers says its SCALEO Home Server will feature two 500GB SATA RAID array disks, gigabit Ethernet, with up to four hot-swappable drives. Pricing ranges between $690 and $965, according to a German-language Fijitsu Web page.

Sony adds snap to Crackle in bid to attract filmmakers

2007-07-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

In what is arguably one of its more innovative ideas in recent times, Sony Corp has decided to revamp its YouTube lookalike site Grouper and turn it into a talent recruiting station for filmmakers. The renamed Crackle site run by Sony Pictures Entertainment will only run selected submissions from more talented filmmakers rather than taking the open slather, anyone can upload anything approach of YouTube.

The carrot for wannabee filmmakers is that videos chosen by Sony editors to run on the site may well give them a shot at the big time. Sony intends to select the best of the best filmmakers and give them a chance to show their wares and present their ideas to the company's movie producers.

The strategy seems breathtakingly simple yet novel. Playing in the same league as YouTube was a losing battle but presenting a site of select high standard user submitted content could work on a number of levels.

Visitors wishing to see high quality experimental films would be attracted to a site like Crackle. Aspiring filmmakers could work to get submissions accepted as a stepping stone to greater success. Sony could turn Crackle into a site which lends prestige and credibility to video makers whose works are accepted and featured.

However, the big kicker for Sony is that Crackle could well prove to be a fertile ground from which to recruit talent. Of course, if Sony spots somebody particularly good the company may not be so keen to post the video on Crackle before a contract is inked.

It would not surprise if other movie studios are watching this move by Sony closely.

Bush Announces Mideast Peace Conference

2007-07-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday announced an an international conference this fall to include Israel, the Palestinian authority and some of their Arab neighbors to help restart Mideast peace talks and review progress in building democratic institutions.

He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would preside over the session. Bush said the conference would include representatives from Israel, the Palestinians "and their neighbors in the region" and said participants would include just those governments that support creation of a Palestinian state.

Bush also pledged increased U.S. aid to the Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas and called for the convening of a meeting of "donor" nations to consider more international aid, including the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

Bush said the past few years had see "some hopeful, some dispiriting" changes in the Middle East. And he called the present time "a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice."

Bush voiced strong support for Abbas and his moderate Fatah government. Abbas controls just the West Bank after the Islamic militant group Hamas gained authority over Gaza in June.

He said Abbas and his new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, "are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy."

Bush contrasted his government with Hamas, which he said "has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is devoted to extremism and murder."

Only the Palestinians can decide which of these two paths to follow, Bush said.

He noted that the United States has pledged more than $190 million in direct assistance to the Palestinians, most of it already approved and that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a quasi-governmental unit, was making another $228 million available in loan guarantees.

Administration officials said that Bush would await recommendations from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair before deciding whether asking Congress for more.

Blair was recently named as special envoy to the region by the "Quartet" of Mideast peace makers , the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

That group meets in Portugal on Thursday, at which time Rice and other international negotiators will meet with Blair as he begins his new assignment. Snow said that Bush had discussed his new proposals with Blair.

Sole survivor sitting on a $5b fortune

2007-07-15T02:02:00.000-07:00

As the only member of his clan, Jeffrey Lee controls the fate of Koongarra, writes Lindsay Murdoch.

JEFFREY LEE is not interested in the soaring price of uranium, which could make him one of the world's richest men.

"This is my country. Look, it's beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it," he says, waving his arm across a view of rocky land surrounded by Kakadu National Park, where the French energy giant Areva wants to extract 14,000 tonnes of uranium worth more than $5 billion.

Mr Lee, the shy 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and the senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit, has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined.

"There are sacred sites, there are burial sites and there are other special places out there which are my responsibility to look after," Mr Lee told the Herald.

"I'm not interested in white people offering me this or that … it doesn't mean a thing.

"I'm not interested in money. I've got a job; I can buy tucker; I can go fishing and hunting. That's all that matters to me."

Mr Lee said he thought long and hard about speaking publicly for the first time about why he wants to see the land incorporated into the World Heritage-listed national park, where, he said, "it will be protected and safe forever".

The Koongarra deposit is only three kilometres from Nourlangie Rock, one of the most visited attractions in Kakadu.

"There's been a lot of pressure on me, and for a very long time I didn't want to talk or think about Koongarra," Mr Lee said.

"But now I want to talk about what I have decided to do because I fear for my country.

"I was taken all through here on the shoulder of my grandmother … I heard all the stories and learnt everything about this land, and I want to pass it all on to my kids."

This week Mr Lee took the Herald to a rocky outcrop overlooking the Koongarra deposit, a sacred place where, according to his clan's beliefs, a giant blue-tongue lizard still lurks and should not be disturbed.

Here it is, painted on a rock hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years ago, its jaw apparently bitten off in a mystical fight.

This is what Mr Lee calls a djang, or place of spiritual essence, which he has closed to the 230,000 tourists who visit Kakadu each year.

"My father and grandfather said they would agree to opening the land to mining, but I have learnt as I have grown up that there's poison in the ground," he said.

"My father and grandfather were offered cars, houses and many other things, but nobody told them about uranium and what it can do.

"It's my belief that if you disturb that land bad things will happen … there will be a big flood, there will be an earthquake and people will have a big accident."

Mr Lee said there were places on his land where the rainbow serpent had entered the ground that were so sacred, "I can't even go to them or talk about them.

"I can't allow people to go around disturbing everything."

Areva wants to extract the uranium on its 12.5 square kilometre mineral lease at Koongarra, as the price of the ore has soared as world demand has grown.

Mr Lee's declaration that he will never allow the mine to go ahead will put pressure on the Federal Government to formally incorporate the land into Kakadu National Park.

In August 2005 the Federal Government took control of uranium mining from the Northern Territory, declaring the territory open for new mines.

Ranger, a mine with a history of environmental leaks owned by Energy Resources of Australia, has been extracting uranium in Kakadu since 1981.

The Howard Government has always maintained that no new mine would be approved in the territory without the approval of the traditional owners.

The Government has told the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the body under which Kakadu is listed as a heritage site, that it would agree "in principle" for Koongarra to be incorporated into the park if the traditional owners requested it.

Mr Lee, who works as a ranger in Kakadu, said incorporating Koongarra into the park would allow him to see that the land was protected.

"Being part of the park will ensure that the traditional laws, customs, sites, bush tucker, trees, plants and water stay the same as when they were passed on to me by my father and great-grandfather," he said.

As the sole surviving member of the Djok clan Mr Lee does not have any children to pass the land on to.

"I'll have to see what I can do about that," he said.

Another squeeze on Iraq

2007-07-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Congress piles the pressure on George Bush over Iraq. But the main showdown is still to come

THE pressure continues to build on George Bush. On Thursday July 12th the House of Representatives voted to withdraw American troops from Iraq by April next year. In itself that changes nothing: the resolution is unlikely to get through the Senate, and even if it did, yet more votes would be needed to overturn a veto from the president. But as a symbolic attack on Mr Bush’s policy in Iraq it is one more bit of bad news for a troubled leader.

On the same day, rather like a nervous college student trying to explain disappointing grades to his parents, Mr Bush tried to say that a preliminary report on Iraq, showing a few areas of progress but more where little good could be seen, is not the end of the story. Earlier this year Congress ordered that one report be delivered by July 15th, and another by September 15th, on political, economic and security benchmarks to be met in Iraq. This week’s assessment conceded that few have been met, although Mr Bush again told reporters that America should wait for the word from David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who will report in September.

The news is not entirely bad. A separate military brief shows a sharp decline in sectarian violence so far this year. January saw some 2,100 sectarian killings; June saw 650. Spectacular car-bombings and suicide attacks fell from 180 to 90 from March to June. But such statistics have provided elusive hope in the past. The first arrival of troops in the “surge” seemed to show results, before sectarian killings rose again. This month has seen one of the deadliest single terrorist bombings of the war yet.

Mr Bush’s interim report sees satisfactory progress in eight of 18 areas. Perhaps most important is the provision of three brigades by the Iraqi army to help stabilise Baghdad, along with efforts to ensure that the Iraqi government pursues extremists regardless of sectarian affiliation. Previously, the Shia-dominated government was seen as giving Shia death-squads a free hand. But other “satisfactory” results are mere beginnings: the Iraqis have succeeded in forming a committee to review the constitution. Good news, of a sort, but the actual reform is sure to be contentious.

It is in related political areas that progress is described as unsuccessful. The Americans want to see a hydrocarbon law, relaxed de-Baathification provisions, and an election law that would create an independent monitoring commission and begin provincial elections. None of the three has happened yet, although limited progress has been made on the oil law. American legislators, meanwhile, complain that the Iraqi parliament is taking August as a holiday.

The report describes these shortcomings as “lagging indicators”. The final “surge” troops are now just settling in, and the assessment argues that that political progress will follow if the military strategy begins to show success. The reasoning is that if security can be achieved, the politics will follow.

But disaffected members of Congress—nearly all Democrats, and a growing number of Republicans—argue the opposite. Many continue to say that America’s open-ended commitment to stay on has removed a sense of urgency for political progress from the minds of Iraq’s leaders. Only a hint that America is getting fed up might convince them to begin locking themselves into negotiating rooms until the necessary deals are done. This argument is particularly tempting for those who voted for the war, as it implicitly blames the Iraqis for failures so far.

Despite the frustration in Washington, DC, Congress is unlikely to do more than pass symbolic resolutions against the war. More and more Republicans are deserting the president, but the Democrats remain vulnerable to the charge of pulling the plug on the troops just as a bold new strategy showed some signs of beginning to work. General Petraeus himself is an almost iconic figure whom no one in Washington will criticise publicly. This week’s events serve as a set of talking points on both sides, but all eyes are turning to a showdown in September.

Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks

2007-07-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden, the man the United States considers the prime suspect in last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, denied any role Sunday in the actions believed to have killed thousands.

In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, "The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it.

"I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said.

"I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations," bin Laden said.

Asked Sunday if he believed bin Laden's denial, President Bush said, "No question he is the prime suspect. No question about that."

Since Tuesday's terrorist attacks against the United States, Bush has repeatedly threatened to strike out against terrorism and any nation that supports or harbors its disciples.

Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi-born exile, has lived in Afghanistan for several years. U.S. officials blame him for earlier strikes on U.S. targets, including last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

Bin Laden's campaign stems from the 1990 decision by Saudi Arabia to allow U.S. troops into the kingdom after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- a military presence that has become permanent.

In a 1997 CNN interview, bin Laden called the U.S. military presence an "occupation of the land of the holy places."

Immediately after the attacks that demolished the World Trade Center's landmark twin towers and seriously damaged the Pentagon, officials of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said they doubted bin Laden could have been involved in carrying out the actions.

The Taliban -- the fundamentalist Islamic militia that seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 -- denied his ties to terrorism and said they have taken away all his means of communication with the outside world.

The repressive Taliban regime has received almost universal condemnation, particularly for their harsh treatment of women. Only three countries, including Pakistan, recognize them as the country's rightful government.

A high-level Pakistani delegation was set to travel to Afghanistan on Monday to urge Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to hand over bin Laden, CNN learned Sunday.

The Taliban, which controls more than 90 percent of the country, has threatened any neighboring country that allows its soil to be used to help the United States stage an attack on Afghanistan.

MSN nails the Live Earth broadcast

2007-07-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

If there was any doubt as to how MSN would pull off the live internet broadcast of the Live Earth concert series today, it has been cleared. Powered by MSN's Soapbox, the broadcast comes off really well.

As you can see above, the video is nestled nicely among a slider of all of the different concerts, information about the venue that you are watching and links on how you can help the cause. The slider on the bottom also contains live updating information on what is happening on each stage, along with what act is next. The video can also be expanded to occupy the entire area beneath the sponsors' logos. The streaming has been flawless, even on my less than blazing DSL connection.

It is huge to be able to pull off something like this at all, so I give major kudos to Microsoft for being able to do it perfectly. It's a Saturday, so relax, check out some great music, and learn a little about global warming!

Wii Fit aims to balance gaming, fitness

2007-07-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

When Wii hit last fall, one of my coworkers considered canceling his YMCA membership and working out with Wii Sports instead. While some people were working out with Wii and getting good results, I wasn't convinced that Nintendo could replace a good old-fashion gym membership, no matter how much Wii Sports boxing made me sweat.

At E3 on Wednesday, Nintendo kicked it up a notch when Mario creator and all-around gaming god Shigeru Miyamoto introduced Wii Fit, the game that "turns the living room into a fitness center for the whole family," Nintendo says, utilizing an innovative new Wii Balance Board.

Here's the key info from Nintendo:

Lean to block soccer balls, swivel hips to power hoop twirls or balance to hold the perfect yoga pose. As users stand on the Wii Balance Board, included with Wii Fit, their body's overall balance is tied to the game in a way they've never experienced before.
Wii Fit also uses the Wii Balance Board for daily tests. These evaluate two key measures that a household can track via progress charts:

• Body Mass Index (BMI): A weight evaluation based on a ratio of weight to height.
• Wii Fit Age: The Wii Fit Age is measured by factoring the user's BMI reading, testing the user's center of gravity and conducting quick balance tests.

Wii Fit includes more than 40 types of training activities designed to appeal to all members of a household. Training falls into four fitness categories:

• Aerobic Exercise: 10-minute exercises that are designed to get the heart pumping.
• Muscle Conditioning: Controlled motions using arms, legs and other body parts.
• Yoga Poses: Classic poses that focus on balance and stretching.
• Balance Games: Fun activities, such as ski jumping and heading soccer balls, that challenge the player's overall body balance.

According to hands-on impressions from IGN's Matt Casamassina, the Balance Board does a good job detecting subtle changes in movement, and the balancing and stretching exercises are tougher than you might think.

I'm excited to try the Wii Balance Board (maybe not the product's final name) for myself, and not just for Wii Fit. I spent a long time on the phone with my brother last night, dreaming up ways to utilize the Balance Board in more traditional games.

My best idea combined Balance Board surfing with Wii remote sword fighting into what I can only hope would be the long-awaited video game adaptation of the classic comedy Surf Ninjas.

But before I get too attached to my pie-in-the-sky Balance Board fantasies, Nintendo will have to answer a couple questions regarding Wii Fit:

Is it big-man friendly? A lot of mass-market scales can't weigh a 300-pound human. I only hope the Wii Balance Board can be calibrated to measure the weight shifting of us American offensive tackle types.

Is my living room too small? I've squeezed a tight gaming setup, complete with HDTV and surround sound into a super teeny-tiny living room. I'm proud of that, but it doesn't leave me room to get down and do push-ups. If I can't do yoga without bumping the couch or kicking the TV, can I still play Wii Fit?

How bad will my Wii Fit Age suck? Using Body Mass Index as the primary fitness indicator might ignore some limitations of BMI. Wikipedia says:
The medical establishment has generally acknowledged some shortcomings of BMI. Because the BMI is dependent only upon net weight and height, it makes simplistic assumptions about distribution of muscle and bone mass, and thus may overestimate adiposity on those with more lean body mass (e.g. athletes) while underestimating adiposity on those with less lean body mass (e.g. the elderly). However, some argue that the error in the BMI is significant and so pervasive that it is not generally useful in evaluation of health. Due to these limitations, body composition for athletes is often better calculated using measures of body fat, as determined by such techniques as skinfold measurements or underwater weighing.
While I'm not in great shape, I'm not as morbidly obese as my 35.9 BMI would indicate. Anyone with a somewhat muscular build will look bad on a scale that labels nearly all professional athletes "obese."

Of course, including a body composition monitor in a video game controller would be prohibitively expensive. For your average kid or adult, BMI should be a good measurement of fitness. Deep down, I'm just worried that Jessica Alba is going to start making fun of me in her blog when she finds out my Wii Fit Age.

My reservations aside, Wii Fit is sure to be a big hit when it debuts in America in early 2008. This is the game that the new casual gamers have been craving, and it's a game that longtime hardcore gamers (myself included) probably need.

No word on how much Wii Fit will cost, but given the cost of games like Guitar Hero II, I'd put it in the $80 range.

Fake Internet Explorer 8 Alpha screenshots!!!

2007-07-13T01:40:00.000-07:00

A person at leneros.com has posted some of the images saying that the images actually are that of Internet Explorer 8 Alpha.The forum is in Spanish language so it may be difficult for some to understand.Here is the translated version of what he writes-

Internet Explorer 8 goes the development of the new explorer of Microsoft. At the moment, one knows that the greater priority of the company is to implement all the supports of RSS, CSS and AJAX within this new project.
In addition, also they have commented which this navigator will include support for the microformats, small labels written in code HTML that can be interpreted of different form, or like dates of a calendar or information of contact. The support for these microformats already was announced for the new version of Firefox, reason why Microsoft also will include it not to be behind its main competitor.
In fact, this new version of Internet Explorer is an answer towards Firefox 3, since Microsoft does not want that the navigator of Mozilla to them continues taking terrain. At the moment, the date of launching is not known, but Chris Wilson has announced that, at least, needs a year more development or even something more, reason why surely will be necessary to wait for near a year and means to be able to enjoy this new IE.

Here are some of the fake images of Internet Explorer 8 Alpha

Canadian iPod user struck by lightning

2007-07-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

A 37-year-old Canadian jogger suffered "multiple injuries to his head" after ill-advisedly standing under a tree during a thunderstorm while listening to his iPod, the Vancouver Sun reports.

The unnamed victim, reportedly an active church musician and enjoying "religious music" at the time of the incident, was struck by lightning in Vancouver's Burnaby park in June 2005. The impressive list of injuries he suffered has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and includes burns tracing a pattern from his chest, where he was packing his iPod, to his ears - following the path of the device's earphone cables.

To add injury to injury, the jolt also ruptured his eardrums, dislocated the bones in his middle ear, broke his jaw in four places and dislocated it for good measure. He suffered around 50 per cent permanent hearing loss.

Vancouver General Hospital radiologist Dr. Eric Heffernan, who co-authored the report, explained: "Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns. It's because skin is highly resistent and stops electricity from entering the body. It's called the flashover effect - although it can stop your heart and kill you.

"But in this case, the victim had earphones on and had been sweating from jogging so this was a case of disrupted flashover and the earphones transmitted the electrical current into his head. It's the first time we've had a recorded case of such an incident involving a person wearing headphones and we think the public should be warned."

This is not the first case of iPod lightning strike. Back in 2006, Colorado teen Jason Bunch copped some megavolts while listening to Metallica, but he was possibly saved by the earphone cables which "directed the current quickly away from his chest and, crucially, his heart".

It's not just iPods which can get you unwanted attention from the heavens. In 2005, a 15-year-old British girl was struck by lightning in London park while chatting or her mobile. She suffered a burst eardrum and cardiac arrest and a year later still had "severe physical difficulties as well as brain damage which has led to emotional and cognitive problems". ®

Libby Ordered to Begin Serving Supervised Release

2007-07-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

A judge told Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby to begin serving a term of supervised release, while saying he was ``somewhat perplexed'' that President George W. Bush said the prison sentence he ordered for Libby was excessive.

Libby, freed by Bush from his 2 1/2-year prison sentence in the CIA leak case, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to report to the probation office in Washington by the end of the day tomorrow. Libby, ex-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted in March of obstructing an investigation of the 2003 leak of a CIA official's identity.

Walton said he determined that Libby can still be required to serve two years of supervised release even after Bush commuted his prison sentence on July 2. Bush said the sentence imposed by Walton was ``excessive.''

The prison term was ``consistent with the bottom end'' of federal sentencing guidelines, Walton's opinion said today. ``The court is somewhat perplexed as to how its sentence could accurately be characterized as excessive.''

Bush said today at a press conference that his decision on Libby's sentence was ``fair and balanced.''

A jury convicted Libby on March 6 of lying to grand jurors and federal agents during an investigation into the 2003 leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, a Central Intelligence Agency official whose husband criticized Bush's Iraq war policy.

Jurors found that Libby lied to thwart the investigation of whether the Bush administration deliberately identified Plame to retaliate against her husband, Joseph Wilson.

Supervised Release

After Bush commuted Libby's sentence, Walton questioned whether federal law allowed him to be put on supervised release if he hadn't first served time in prison.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and White House Counsel Fred Fielding filed court papers saying Libby still could be required to serve supervised release. Libby's lawyers said in court papers he ``does not take issue'' with Fielding's legal analysis.

Today, Walton said that with ``great reservation,'' he concluded that Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence while preserving the supervised release didn't violate the Constitution.

Bush had ``rewritten the statutory scheme'' to make it ``applicable to a situation that Congress clearly did not intend,'' the judge wrote.

Walton also wrote that if Libby violates any of the required conditions of his release, which ``this court has no reason to believe will occur,'' he could be ordered to spend the term in prison.

$250,000 Fine

Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment. Libby's lawyers didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Libby paid a $250,000 fine and $400 special court assessment after Bush commuted his sentence.

During Libby's trial, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who revealed Plame's identity in an article in July 2003, testified that her identity was provided to him by then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and confirmed by White House political adviser Karl Rove.

``I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person,'' Bush said today. ``I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, `I did it.' Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter?''

Stand by Iraq 'surge' strategy, Bush urges

2007-07-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- President Bush Thursday used an interim assessment of the Iraq war that showed only mixed progress to urge a skeptical public and a restless Congress to stand by his ''surge'' strategy rather than push for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The White House's report to Congress revealed that the Iraqi government has made satisfactory progress on only eight of 18 benchmarks devised to gauge the success of blunting insurgent violence in Iraq and of stabilizing its government. Bush added that mixed results on two could go ``one way or the other.''

Despite the glass half-empty-or-half-full tone of the report, Bush pleaded for more time for his surge plan to take hold and asked Americans and federal lawmakers to reserve judgment on progress in Iraq until the White House submits its final report to Congress in September.

''Those who believe that the battle in Iraq is lost will likely point to the unsatisfactory performance on some of the benchmarks,'' Bush said in opening remarks to reporters. ``Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism.''

Bush said the surge, which included the addition of thousands of troops sent to Iraq last winter, has only recently reached full capacity and needs more time before its impact can be fully measured.

He struck a defiant tone, saying he will start drawing down troops from Iraq when his military commanders say conditions on the ground are right, ``not because pollsters say it's good politics.''

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on a troop withdrawal measure, with the Senate following soon thereafter. Bush also is facing mounting criticism of his war strategy from Republican lawmakers. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, have called for withdrawing most American forces in Iraq.

Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, also have broken ranks with the administration.

Bush argued that the debate over Iraq is not about removing troops.

''The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost and those who believe the fight can be won, and that as difficult as the fight is, the cost of defeat would be higher,'' he said.

On Capitol Hill, early reaction to the report was as mixed as the report itself. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the interim report showed enough progress to justify waiting for the full September report to re-evaluate.

''But we need to see more progress from the Iraqi people and their government on key political benchmarks where the progress has not been satisfactory,'' Boehner said.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was not as charitable.

''This progress report is like the guy who's falling from a 100-story building and says halfway down that everything's fine,'' Biden said. ``If we continue the way we're going, with the president's failed strategy in Iraq, we're headed for a crash landing.''

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Bush's course on Iraq is a recipe for doom.

''The president ignores a simple truth -- the Iraqi government won't stand up until the United States stands down,'' Byrd said. ``As long as the president commits our troops to referee this civil war in Iraq, the Iraqi government will continue to slow-walk increased security of their own.''

Nintendo packing Wii Wheel with Mario Kart for Wii

2007-07-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Let's not bandy about here, we're pretty much God's gift to green shell snipes, and hook us up with a few red shells and perhaps a banana or two and you can pretty much kiss your Flower Cup goodbye. Nintendo just announced some extensive online functionality for its upcoming Wii-based Mario Kart title, including an undisclosed amount of "more" online competitors, which is always a plus. Nintendo is also packing a free Wii Wheel with each copy of the game to help ease the newbs into the Kart action. No word on how much the new wheel will cost on its own, but we'll be seeing both it and Mario Kart in the first quarter of 2008. More pics after the break.

Spacey Will Return As Lex

2007-07-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

Kevin Spacey will return as Lex Luthor in “Superman: Man of Steel,” according to Variety.

The entertainment paper went on to state that “Superman” director Bryan Singer met with Spacey while in New York to pitch his “Man of Steel” sequel to Warner Bros. execs and got Spacey to come on board for the next film in the franchise which comes to theaters in 2009.

Spacey would like to stick to the same shooting schedule he had for “Superman Returns” so that his time away from his duties as the artistic director for London’s famed Old Vic Theater is not a lengthy one. The actor was away for six weeks for the first film.

“My priorities have changed,” he admitted in the interview with Variety. “Theater is the No. 1 thing in my life. But I love movies and will continue to make movies when I can.”

Besides his busy stage schedule over the next 8-years, Spacey will soon be seen in the upcoming fantasy comedy “Fred Claus,” and can be heard singing two of Dino’s songs on a Dean Martin tribute CD called “Forever Cool,” due out on August 14th.

Is The Page View Dead?

2007-07-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

Pity the poor page view.

Nielsen/NetRatings dealt the aging Internet-audience metric its latest blow when the company said Tuesday that it would no longer provide page-view rankings for Web sites.

Instead, NetRatings (nasdaq: NTRT - news - people ) said it will be adding new measurements, including total time spent on a site and total visits, to provide what it believes will be a more comprehensive snapshot of how much visitors are using a given Web site.

Why the switch? NetRatings cited the broadening use of online video players and so-called "Ajax" (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications that deliver photos, online maps, e-mail and other services and content without having to go to another Web page. As a result, counting page views can significantly underestimate how much a Web surfer is using a site, particularly at Ajax-heavy portal sites like Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Time Warner's (nyse: TWX - news - people ) AOL.

That, in turn, has profound implications for marketers as they determine how much they should spend to advertise on a particular Web property.

In a statement, Scott Ross, director of product development for NetRatings' NetView service, said that total minutes spent on a site per month "is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using [Ajax] and streaming media, but also of Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming.''

But the move drew a mixed response from online advertising experts, who note that many Web sites make no use of Ajax technologies.

James Kiernan, vice president and group director of digital media and innovation at MediaVest USA in New York, said the time is right to evaluate better ways of measuring online audience engagement, but added that he felt it was premature to drop page-viewing rankings.

"Just to take away that metric, which media buyers have been relying on, is surprising,'' Kiernan said.

Sheryl Draizen, general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, said that "obviously it's great that Nielsen is innovating" and agreed that time spent on a site is a crucial metric.

But she added that the industry needs to be cautious because "I don't think we've done enough work yet to come up with what is the replacement for the page view ... It may be that time spent is the right one, but I don't know if we know that yet." (Forbes.com Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller is IAB's chairman.)

Rival online audience-measurement firm comScore (nasdaq: SCOR - news - people ) most frequently uses monthly unique visitors to compile its Web site traffic rankings. But it also uses other metrics, including total time spent, and last year began collecting data on video streams initiated by users at sites such as Google's YouTube, which it said provided a more accurate picture of the online video audience than unique visitors did.

In a December statement discussing new Web traffic data, comScore President and Chief Executive Magid Abraham acknowledged that the "Internet experience today is much more dynamic thanks to Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax," adding that while page views "will not altogether cease to be a relevant measure of a site's value, it's clear that there is an increasing need to consider page views alongside newer, more relevant measures."

Draizen said that regardless of how NetRatings and comScore measure the online audience, "it's not the methodology, it's about the transparency behind the methodology." Unlike Nielsen's TV ratings and Arbitron's (nyse: ARB - news - people )measurement of the radio audience, NetRatings and rival online measurement firm comScore haven't submitted to third-party audits of their methodologies.

But following a meeting in May with officials from the IAB and the Media Rating Council, both firms indicated that they are willing to at least consider cooperating with third-party audits.

All of these efforts highlight the fact that the Internet provides marketers with far more data about consumer behavior than any other medium. The trick is making sense of it all. The stakes couldn't be higher: Research firm eMarketer projects U.S. online advertising to total $21.7 billion in 2007, up 28% from last year.

But the total online ad market still accounts for only a small percentage of overall ad expenditures. Draizen estimates the Internet's share of total ad spending hovers around 6%, which she said reflects just a fraction of its reach among consumers.

"We are still a relatively new medium,'' Draizen said. "We need to make sure the foundation of the new medium is on very solid footing for long-term growth."

Mac OS X with 100 bugs still safer than Windows?

2007-07-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

Apple has plugged around 100 vulnerabilities in OS X so far this year but the malware threat to Mac customers is "insignificant" compared to users of Microsoft Windows.

So far this year, Apple users have been exposed to the kind of vulnerabilities that are more commonly associated with Windows. The Mac maker has plugged security flaws that could have resulted in OS X customers being "owned" by basic actions such as visiting a malicious Web site, watching a video file or opening an e-mail attachment.

However, despite all these vulnerabilities, the Mac's resilient platform, its advanced automatic software update tools and the apparent lack of attention from malware authors, means Apple users are far safer from attack than users of Windows.

"There are no viruses really for OS X -- there have been a few -- but from that point of view the likelihood of you getting hit on an Apple is insignificant compared to PCs," said Patrik Runald, senior security specialist at antivirus firm F-Secure.

"We have seen more vulnerabilities patched over the past 18 months in OS X than we have before, so it is not a foolproof operating system," warned Runald, but he suggested that OS X users were also safer because of the lack of attention from criminals.

"More bad guys are looking at Windows than they are at Apple," he said.

Software vendor CA's VP of development, Eugene Dozortsev, isn't so sure that Mac user's are so safe. In a recent video interview with ZDNet Australia, he said: "Actually, the Mac is as vulnerable as everything else ... Don't make any false assumptions that there are no viruses on Mac. A lot of things like trojans and e-mail worms [affect the Mac] the same as they would in the PC world."

However, in the same video, his colleague Jakub Kaminski, director of content research, said: "There are a couple of specific [OS X threats] but in the whole scale, in the whole picture, it is nothing".

One recent threat that affected some Apple users was called Badbunny, which was a worm that threatened OpenOffice documents. However, it was attacking the open source office productivity suite rather than the Apple platform itself -- Badbunny also affected Windows and Linux systems running OpenOffice.

Apple's iPhone could provide an attack vector for malware authors but the threat from the new device, which is only a few weeks old, is as yet unknown. Despite this, analyst firm Gartner has already published a report warning administrators to beware of the "must have" gadget.

Gartner claimed the iPhone could "punch a hole" through corporate security systems if staff are allowed to use the phone for work purposes.

But F-Secure's Runald said the threat from the iPhone is yet to be realised: "There is a lot of interest in the security community. We are getting our first iPhone in the lab this week and we will see what we can do with it. There have been thoughts about Safari (the browser) and some ideas about what else could potentially be used but as of now we just don't know".

But should the iPhone become ubiquitous, Runald said attacks would be likely.

"As the [iPhone's] popularity grows, we are going to see more threats targeting Apple. It ... is logical -- Windows is the primary operating system used today, which is why we see the most threats. Symbian is the primary operating system for mobile phones, which is why we see most threats for Symbian," he said.

Sony sign exclusive deal with Epic for Unreal Engine

2007-07-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

Sony have set up an exclusive deal with Epic games, maker of the Unreal franchise, to develop an optimised version of their Unreal engine for Playstation 3. Part of the deal also includes the exclusive console version of Unreal Tournament 3.

Multi-touch video iPods to arrive in August

2007-07-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

Apple is preparing to launch a next-generation video iPod in August that features a touch-screen panel similar to the iPhone, according to DigiTimes.

Citing "sources at upstream suppliers," the Far Eastern rumor publication reports that Wintek will be supplying the touch panels for the players.

"The Taiwan-based panel maker will begin shipping capacitive touch screen panels in the second half of 2007," DigiTimes said. "The company noted that its touch screen panels will be used with customers' own software and ICs."

During a private meeting last month, Apple's traditionally tigh-lipped chief executive Steve Jobs all but broke the silence on the future of the video iPod. Speaking to employees at the Apple Town Hall, he said a division of the company was hard at work on next-generation iPods that, like iPhone, would run an embedded version of the Mac OS X operating system.

Picking up on Jobs' comments were Wall Street analysts such as Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, who in a report to clients earlier this week suggested that the current iteration of iPhone represents much of what Apple's flagship iPod line will soon be.

"Specifically, we expect Apple to release high capacity iPods based on OS X sometime during or before Macworld '08 in January," he wrote.

According to Munster, whose reports appear to be somewhat speculative, the new video iPod players would likely include touch-screen media features akin to the iPhone, but not include wireless phone capabilities or Internet features.

The last significant update to Apple's video iPod family came almost two years ago, when the company used a media event to introduce 30GB and 60GB models with color screens and video playback capabilities.

Although the video players were refreshed the following fall, the updates were modest at best -- they included game support, brighter displays, and 20GB of additional capacity on the high-end model.

Musharraf's move to end siege pleases allies, galvanizes foes

2007-07-12T01:59:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Pervez Musharraf's decision to have the army storm the Red Mosque may strengthen the U.S.-allied leader's hand among Pakistanis dismayed at how Islamic extremists used the holy site as a fortress.
It also has pushed a fight over his bungled attempt to fire the country's top judge out of a harsh media spotlight and prompted a fresh show of support from Washington.

But the general has given extremist enemies who have repeatedly tried to assassinate him a new rallying cause, raising the prospect of surging violence as Pakistan heads toward elections and he seeks another five-year term.

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became the latest to demand revenge against Musharraf over the battle, issuing a video statement yesterday urging Pakistanis to wage holy war against their government.

"The big question mark now is what is going to be the reaction of the Islamists," said Shaun Gregory, head of Bradford University's Pakistan Security Research Unit in Britain.

At least 106 people, including 10 soldiers, died in the weeklong confrontation at the mosque, which ended when commandos attacked the heavily armed extremists holed up in the complex.

The extremists had been using the mosque as a base to send out radicalized students to enforce their version of Islamic morality, including abducting alleged prostitutes and trying to "reeducate" them at the compound in the heart of Pakistan's capital.

Although the mosque's pro-Taliban cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was among the dead, the army said dozens of women and children inside when the 35-hour assault began Tuesday escaped unharmed - a critical point for the government, which had feared a bloodbath.

Yet several radical clerics and leaders are calling for attacks on Musharraf's government, insisting the troops slaughtered innocent students and defiled the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque.

A string of attacks since the mosque siege began July 3 has hit at government targets in Pakistan's northwest, where many are sympathetic to the hard-line Islam of the Taliban. At least 30 died, including 17 soldiers and police officers.

Mansoor Dadullah, a senior commander of Taliban fighters in neighboring Afghanistan, yesterday called for suicide attacks on Pakistani security forces.

Still, the siege could blunt an opposition drive against Musharraf's plan to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term this fall without first giving up his post as army chief.

Images of troops surrounding the white-domed Red Mosque amid explosions and gunfire overshadowed a weekend meeting of 60 opposition parties in London designed to coordinate their campaign against Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup.

It also diverted attention from Musharraf's attempt to fire the Supreme Court chief justice, a misstep that set off a broader democracy movement and alienated some Musharraf supporters.

Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister and opposition leader expected by many to return from exile and join Musharraf in a power-sharing deal after general elections, praised his tough line. "I'm glad there was no cease-fire with the militants in the mosque," she told Britain's Sky TV, "because cease-fires simply embolden the militants."

Pakistan's mainstream, liberal newspapers also backed the assault, though ordinary citizens appeared less enthusiastic. Several people interviewed sympathized with the clerics' professed goals, especially closing down alleged brothels in Pakistan's relatively Westernized capital.

But they also criticized the mosque leaders' increasingly aggressive anti-vice campaign, which included stockpiling of weapons at the holy site and an adjoining madrassa, or religious school.

"Musharraf's government did this to please America," Murtaza Khan, a Peshawar shopkeeper, said of the assault at the mosque. But he added: "This incident also shows that there should be checks on the madrassas."

White House, conservationists, note Lady Bird's work

2007-07-12T01:54:00.000-07:00

Washington - The death of Lady Bird Johnson, the one-time US first lady who was an ardent Democrat, champion of social justice and conservationist, brought reaction from the Republican White House as well as fellow environmentalists. Johnson, who shared the White House with the late US president Lyndon Johnson during the stormy Vietnam war years, died at age 94 on Wednesday.

"She was one of the greatest voices for American conservation of her generation, and her commitment to protecting our natural resources inspired our nation to strengthen its conservation ethic. Her touch remains visible today," said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Foundation.

Lady Bird, whose birth name was Claudia Alta Taylor, is best known for her efforts to ban billboard advertisements from the federally- funded national road system. Through her efforts, Congress passed a law banning the eyesores.

But she also fought for preservation of native flowers and plant life, and a special centre at the University of Texas in Austin that she founded continues the scientific work.

President George W Bush, a fellow Texan, saluted Lady Bird's "good life of kindness and service" and even noted her efforts for programmes most associated with the Democratic Party - the struggle for civil rights, and early childhoold education programmes put through Congress by her husband, Lyndon, as part of his Great Society plan.

Lady Bird is credited with pushing her husband especially on Head Start, a programme of early schooling for children from poor families.

"She was much loved in our home state of Texas, and the Bush family is fortunate to have known her," Bush said.

Bush's mother, Barbara Bush, also a former first lady, called Lady Bird a "wonderful, precious lady."

The most famous and haunting image of Lady Bird was standing by then vice president Johnson as he was sworn in as president minutes after the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas, in her home state of Texas.

Kennedy's widow, Jackie, stood on the other side of Lyndon Johnson during the swearing-in on Air Force One, her pink suit still stained with the blood of her dead husband.

Lady Bird was also a role model for the early women's movement as a businesswoman who brokered a small inheritance into a giant media company in Texas. Her wealth and media savvy were springboards for her husband's political success.

Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said her support for civil rights "helped ensure that the 1960s were a time of great progress toward the ideal of equality on which our country was founded."

Prisoner of Bush

2007-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - In the next few days, a slew of folks will begin the dissection of what went wrong for John McCain. Was it immigration? Was it his fundraising? Was it his energy level?

There's an argument to be made for all of the above and thanks to the McCain camp's comfort with many members of the media, expect a lot of reporters to get their hands on fascinating details of internal disputes between the principle players in this latest campaign drama.

Already, the "he said, he said" between those loyal to John Weaver and those loyal to Rick Davis is filling up reporters' notebooks fast. Whose idea was it to get into salary bidding wars with a self-funder like Mitt Romney? Whose idea was it to spend so much so early on infrastructure when it wasn't clear $100 million was doable? Whose idea was it to build a 50-state operation before the four-state operation was in place?

But instead of focusing on the minutia of now, let's look at how McCain's presidential tries will look in five years, assuming this is basically it.

There will be a one word explanation for McCain's failure: Bush - the "Newman" (Jerry Seinfeld's annoying rival) in McCain's tragic presidential sitcom.

The role Bush played in stopping McCain's rise in 2000 is obvious and has been chronicled with great detail. But for Bush's dismantling of McCain's Republican credentials in the 2000 South Carolina primary, McCain probably wins the presidency in a much more decisive way than Bush did that year.

However if that were the only example of McCain being stopped by Bush, this tragic sitcom would only have a pilot.

There's a saying, if you can't beat him, join him - or in McCain's case, become him. But becoming Bush wasn't a good idea. With the help and influence of longtime adviser John Weaver, McCain attempted to re-create what they viewed as the best of Bush's two campaigns -- 2000 and 2004.

They did what they thought Bush did in 2000, created the illusion of juggernaut by signing up activists left and right. But the campaign didn't have the revenue stream (i.e. Rolodex) that Bush had in 2000 to pay for these expensive endorsements.

Then, there's the courting process that McCain attempted with social conservatives, not unlike what Bush did in '98 and '99. At the time, Bush was still carrying his dad's political baggage with this crowd. But through a concerted effort, Bush made himself acceptable with this crowd.

Well, McCain, circa '06-07, tried the same thing. But it didn't work because he seemed to undermine his positives with independents while not getting the same positive lift with rank-n-file social conservatives.

But it wasn't just in structure that McCain attempted his Bush transformation, it was also on issues. The two signature issues that have helped bring about Bush's historically dismal job ratings -- Iraq and immigration -- served as a deadly one-two punch for McCain, with immigration perhaps being the deadlier issue politically. Showing resolve on Iraq was actually winning him grudging respect from leery conservatives. But McCain's resolve on immigration was too much of a reminder of the McCain conservatives learned to loath in 2000.

McCain's political career now will forever be entangled with Bush. He was the lovable loser of 2000, the guy who came out of 2000 more popular than either Bush or Gore. And then, when he attempted to emulate his one-time foe, what does that bring him: one of the most dramatic downfalls of a presidential frontrunner in sometime.

The bitter irony for McCain, of course, is that one gets the sense that the country is yearning to support a candidate whose profile is McCain's, but circa 2000 not today. The public appears burnt out on partisanship and wants a post-partisan leader. That was John McCain in 2000. Of course, the public liked McCain's schtick in 2000 but didn't crave it, which is why he didn't win.

2008 appears to be different. Independent voters, in particular, seem desperate to support a candidate who isn't too tied to one party's ideology. In short, the public may really yearn for the 2000 version of John McCain.

It's this John McCain that one should expect to see again on the campaign trail. It's his last best chance to recover.

There's a Shakespearan quality to McCain's political problems. If the ending is as unhappy as things appear now, some writer more talented than I will have a literary field day entangling Bush and McCain, painting McCain as the tragic hero who spends his final days muttering the name "Bush."

Mosque Crisis May Boost Musharraf's Hand

2007-07-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - President Pervez Musharraf's decision to have the army storm the Red Mosque may strengthen the U.S.-allied leader's hand among Pakistanis dismayed at how Islamic militants used the holy site as a fortress.

It also has pushed a fight over his bungled attempt to fire the country's top judge out of a harsh media spotlight and prompted a fresh show of support from Washington.

However, the general has given extremist enemies who have repeatedly tried to assassinate him a new cause to rally around, raising the prospect of surging violence as Pakistan heads toward elections and he seeks another five years in power.

Al-Qaida's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, became the latest to demand revenge against Musharraf over the battle, issuing a video Wednesday urging Pakistanis to wage holy war against their government.

``The big question mark now is what is going to be the reaction of the Islamists,'' said Shaun Gregory, head of Bradford University's Pakistan Security Research Unit in Britain.

Some 106 people, including 10 soldiers, died in the weeklong confrontation at the mosque, which turned a chunk of the capital into a war zone and ended when commandos attacked the heavily armed militants holed up in the sprawling complex before dawn Tuesday.

While one of the mosque's defiant clerics was among the dead, the army said Wednesday that dozens of women and children still inside when the 35-hour assault began escaped unharmed - a critical point for the government, which had feared a bloodbath that could anger the public.

Nevertheless, several radical clerics and militant leaders are calling for attacks on Musharraf's government and security forces, insisting the troops slaughtered innocent students and defiled the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque.

Even before the final battle there, a string of attacks after the mosque siege began July 3 hit at government targets in Pakistan's northwest, where many people are sympathetic to the hard-line Islam of the Taliban. At least 30 people died, including 17 soldiers and policemen.

The military has responded by setting up extra checkpoints in North Waziristan and sending troops to Swat, two regions where radicals - some with alleged ties to the Red Mosque - hold sway.

Mansoor Dadullah, a senior commander of Taliban fighters in neighboring Afghanistan, on Wednesday called for suicide attacks on Pakistani security forces, but said in a telephone call to The Associated Press that his men had been too busy to go to the mosque's aid.

The United States, which is counting on Musharraf to prevent al-Qaida and the Taliban from rebuilding in the frontier region and to help stabilize Afghanistan, reiterated its support for the Pakistani president Tuesday.

The general is ``a strong ally in the war against these extremists,'' President Bush said, also praising Musharraf as a promoter of democracy. ``I like him and I appreciate him,'' Bush said.

At home, the siege could blunt an opposition drive against Musharraf's plan to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term this fall without first giving up his post as army chief.

Images of troops surrounding the white-domed Red Mosque to a soundtrack of explosions and gunfire overshadowed a weekend meeting of 60 opposition parties in London designed to coordinate their campaign against Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup.

It also diverted attention from Musharraf's attempt to fire the Supreme Court chief justice, a misstep that set off a broader democracy movement and alienated some of the leader's own supporters.

Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister and opposition leader expected by many to return from exile and join Musharraf in a power-sharing deal after year-end general elections, praised him for taking a tough line on the Red Mosque.

``I'm glad there was no cease-fire with the militants in the mosque because cease-fires simply embolden the militants,'' she told Britain's Sky TV on Tuesday. ``There will be a backlash, but at some time we have to stop appeasing the militants.''

Pakistan's mainstream, liberal newspapers also backed the assault, though ordinary citizens appeared less enthusiastic.

Several people interviewed by AP sympathized with some of the clerics' professed goals, especially closing down alleged brothels in Pakistan's relatively Westernized capital.

Still, they also criticized the mosque leaders' increasingly aggressive anti-vice campaign, which included kidnapping alleged Chinese prostitutes, and their stockpiling of weapons and ammunition at the holy site and an adjoining madrassa, or religious school, for girls.

``Musharraf's government did this to please America,'' Murtaza Khan, a 55-year-old shopkeeper in Peshawar, said of the army assault at the mosque.

But then he added: ``This incident also shows that there should be checks on the madrassas. If something like this is going on in any madrassa, action can be taken in time.''

Ikram Sehgal, a Pakistani political analyst, said that sentiment could help Musharraf broaden public support for cracking down on violent Islamic radicalism. The siege ``has woken up people in Pakistan who were generally favorable to the Taliban and to the clerics,'' Sehgal said.

Gregory, the expert at Bradford University, said that while the mosque raid alone was not enough to dispel doubts about Pakistan's willingness to confront militants, it could help Musharraf secure the support he needs to stay in power.

``The Americans can say, 'Well, Musharraf has come through and confronted the Islamists.' It works in the favor of the secular political parties. And I do think that amongst that center of gravity of Pakistani people, who are broadly moderate in economic and social and religious terms, this is going to be broadly welcomed,'' he said.

Google to buy Postini for $625 million

2007-07-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. agreed Monday to buy e-mail security company Postini for $625 million, underscoring the search giant's increasing rivalry with Microsoft in business software.

The all cash deal is aimed at beefing up Google offerings for the workplace, which already include e-mail, calendaring and documents.

Google, in Mountain View, started seriously going after corporate customers earlier this year, when it released a package of office products called Google Apps Premiere Edition that cost $50 per user annually. However, the bundle has yet to catch on with large corporations, which demand the kind of highly secure e-mail, encryption and archiving that Postini offers.

Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google's business division, said that the acquisition will allow companies to get their software from a single vendor, rather than separately. Previously, Google offered Postini's software as part of a partnership between the two companies.

"We were dating back then, now this is marriage," Girouard said.

Google claims at least 100,000 customers for its business software, though that number is unreliable because it hasn't been updated for more than six months. At least 1,000 new clients sign up for the package daily.

However, the figures include both the paid Premiere Edition and a free version of the software, which is supported by advertising. Google declined to provide a break down between the two.

Postini, in San Carlos, is a private company that was founded in 1999 and once flirted with an initial public offering. But the company ultimately decided to be acquired, something its chief executive, Quentin Gallivan, attributed to Google's infrastructure, ability to get Postini's products to more customers and its international reach.

Postini has 35,000 customers. Overlap with Google's customers, according to Google, is small.

Google has shown increasing ambition in the business software market, an area dominated by Microsoft and its Office software suite, as a way to maintain its rapid growth. Google's advertising business, although still strong, will eventually become more difficult to expand given its already large size.

As a point of differentiation, Google is marketing its business software as more convenient because it is hosted online with Google, rather than requiring a download. Therefore, Google's products are accessible over any Internet connection and not tied to a single computer.

However, analysts have given Google mixed reviews for its nascent efforts, because of shortcomings that make its products incompatible with Microsoft's far more popular Word documents, for instance. The availability of advanced features on Google's products is also limited, according to many analysts.

Chris Le Tocq, an analyst for Guernsey Research, said that Google's acquisition of Postini will reassure potential customers that it is serious about business software, a worry for some customers given Google's focus on search and online advertising. Still he was skeptical.

Companies that adopt Google's software probably would still have to buy Microsoft's software, simply to communicate with the vast number of businesses that don't use Google's products. Costs would therefore go up, not down, defying Google marketing its products as a cost saver.

Le Tocq called Google's efforts "more of a proof of concept than a functional reality."

Next: a Nano iPhone?

2007-07-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

A financial analyst says Apple will follow its iPhone with a cheaper version based on the iPod Nano.

Apple Inc. will follow up its debut iPhone with a cheaper version based on the iPod nano, a JPMorgan financial analyst said yesterday, echoing comments last week by bloggers scouring the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database.

Kevin Chang, a Taiwan-based analyst with New York's JPMorgan Chase & Co., said that Apple will release a less-expensive iPhone in the fourth quarter, according to Reuters.

Chang, who based his forecast on unnamed sources in the supply channel and an Apple application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filed last week, said a follow-on to the current iPhone could be based on the iPod nano, Apple's flash drive-based music player. "We believe that iPod nano will be converted into a phone because it's probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod nano," Chang told Reuters.

At US$300, a scaled-down nano-based iPhone might sell as many as 30 million to 40 million units in 2008, Chang argued. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has fixed the iPhone sales target through 2008 at 10 million handsets.

Apple's iPod nano currently sells for between $149 and $249.

Chang's take comes after bloggers last week noticed a July 5 patent application titled "Touch pad with symbols based on mode" that, they theorized, could serve as the interface for an entry-level iPhone.

Both Unwired View and MyiTablet," for instance, noted that the patent described a touchpad-based device that would serve as only phone and iPod. Unlike the current iPhone, the cheaper alternative would not boast a large screen or allow Internet browsing.

The patent application spells out a touchpad, similar to the iPod's click-wheel, that would change modes -- and its display -- depending on the application. When in phone mode, for example, the circular touchpad could show dialing numbers in a style reminiscent of long-obsolete rotary phones. Switch to music mode and the touchscreen reverts to a traditional iPod click-wheel for traversing artist or genre lists.

Apple introduced the iPhone on June 29 to fanfare and long lines of customers.

Fifth ‘Harry Potter’ film forgets to capture the magic

2007-07-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an anomaly in the famed children’s book series: It marks the only time author J.K. Rowling seems to have lost sight of her core audience. Much of the novel, which revolves around the takeover of the wizarding academy Hogwarts by government officials at the Ministry of Magic, is a deft satire of clueless bureaucracy run amok. Rowling also crafts a hard-to-miss allegory with distinctly contemporary parallels, about wartime leaders who insist on positively spinning the news and ignoring the realities at hand.

Critics generally praised Rowling’s bid for adult respectability. But for those readers not yet old enough to vote — or those of us who vastly prefer magical yarns to political tracts — the book is an oddly alienating experience. Skipping from one disjointed anecdote to the next, Rowling never develops an overarching plot device (like, say, the “Triwizard Tournament” that unfolded in the fourth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) to hold the book together. It’s a little bit of a shock, too, when we come to the end and discover that the Potter saga has barely been advanced: Harry and his pals are in the same spot they were at the end of The Goblet of Fire, trying to defeat an increasingly corporeal Lord Voldemort before he rises to power.

Adapting this behemoth for the movies was certainly no easy task — and it can’t have been made any easier by the fact that The Order of the Phoenix follows Mike Newell’s extraordinary adaptation of The Goblet of Fire , the first film of the Potter series to capture the mixture of grimness and majesty that propels Rowling’s novels. But even grading on a curve, this new movie turns out to be a near disaster. Director David Yates ( The Girl in the Cafe ) and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg ( Contact ) — both newcomers to the franchise — have no handle on Rowling’s shapeless narrative. They merely give in to the sprawl. The result is talky, tedious and — if you haven’t recently read Phoenix — nearly impossible to follow.

At the start of the film, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is once again spending a long, lonely summer in the suburbs with his Uncle Vernon (Richard Griffiths) and Aunt Petunia (Fiona Shaw) and his increasingly immense cousin Dudley (Harry Melling). Once again, Dudley picks a fight with Harry, but this time — before Harry can fight back — a pair of evil Dementors descend upon them and Harry must use magic to save them both. It’s the strongest proof yet that the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is back.

But the Ministry of Magic would prefer to keep its bureaucratic head buried in the sand. Not only does the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy), refuse to believe Harry’s story about the Dementors; he threatens to expel him from Hogwarts for illegally using magic in the human world. As in Rowling’s novel, these early sections are the strongest, especially when Harry attends a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry, which is rendered like a vast big-city corporation, with harried office workers streaming past and magical elevators rising into the sky.

But there’s not much tension here — of course Harry’s not going to be expelled — and once he gets to Hogwarts, there’s not much of a story, either. The ministry appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, a Fudge toadie named Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). Ostensibly, the movie is about Harry trying to prove to Umbridge and Fudge that Voldemort’s threat is real and imminent. But, honestly, who cares? The audience already knows that Voldemort has returned — and it’s not much fun waiting for a bunch of blowhards on the screen to figure it out.

The previous “Harry Potter” movies often suffered from a certain dutifulness; the filmmakers seemed so determined to faithfully transcribe all of Rowling’s twists and turns that they allowed the joy to drain out of the proceedings. This time, the problem is a different one: Goldenberg’s screenplay transcribes all the wrong things. The most interesting part of the novel — namely, Harry’s increasingly hostile teen angst — is subsumed far into the background. Two lively new good guys — the grrl-power witch Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena) and the wizard Kingsley Shacklebolt (George Harris), one of the few faces of color in the series — are introduced in a rush and then even more quickly rushed off the screen. Instead, we get scene after scene of Harry, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) talking each other’s ears off, punctuated by bursts of special effects (such as the appearance of a giant named Grawp) that seem to have nothing to do with anything.

(And for all the pruning that Yates and Goldenberg have done — including the elimination of a subplot involving Ron joining the Quidditch team — they weren’t smart enough to either remove or properly explain the presence of a surly “House Elf” named Kreacher, voiced by Timothy Bateson; even if you’re familiar with the book, you might not know what this odd creature is doing trolling around here.)

Without any emotional or physical conflicts to resolve, Radcliffe, Watson and Grint all look bored or confused (or, most often, both). One of the chief pleasures of this franchise has been watching these kids grow up — a point brought home here by occasional flashbacks to the previous films. But in The Order of the Phoenix they all seem to be stuck in a state of arrested development. Even Harry’s much-anticipated first kiss, with classmate Cho Chang (Katie Leung), feels awkward and curiously uneventful. (Or maybe Radcliffe is just a really lousy kisser.)

The movie has only two saving graces, both of them new additions to the cast. Staunton, better known as the meek abortionist in Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake , has a grand time as the pink-and-fuchsia-bedecked Umbridge, who finishes her most ruthless declarations with a chirpy giggle. She might be the scariest villain in all of the “Harry Potter” movies because she looks so unnervingly familiar — an amalgamation of every two-faced schoolteacher you ever had, who would smile graciously on parents night but then reveal her truly wicked colors the next day in the classroom.

And then there’s Helena Bonham Carter, playing the Azkaban prison escapee Bellatrix Lestrange. With her hair teased into a rat’s nest and mascara smeared across her eyes, she looks like Bonham Carter’s Marla Singer character from Fight Club gone to seed — and every time the actress opens her mouth, she sends off a shock wave of Grand Guignol -style humor that cuts straight through the static. Alas, she arrives late and hangs around for only about 10 minutes. Like everything else about Order of the Phoenix , she ultimately seems to be marking time before she can get to part six.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

**

Director: David Yates

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Length: 138 min.

Rated: PG-13 (violence)

Christopher Kelly is the Star-Telegram film critic, 817-390-7032

Nintendo Wi-Fi service reaches 5 million users

2007-07-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Nintendo said Wednesday that its Wi-Fi Connection service--which allows Nintendo DS users to play wirelessly against each other--has surpassed 5 million users.

All told, the video game giant said, users have initiated more than 200 million sessions, playing games like Animal Crossing: Wild World, Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters and others wirelessly.

And despite the attention paid to next-generation video game systems like the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, the DS is currently the best-selling system of all, having moved 470,000 units in April, according to NPD Group.

McCain Campaign Suffers Key Shake-Ups

2007-07-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - John McCain's campaign manager, chief strategist and other senior aides quit Tuesday, the second major staff shake-up in a week for the Republican presidential candidate who trails his rivals in money and polls.

In a statement, the Arizona senator said Terry Nelson and John Weaver offered their resignations, ``which I accepted with regret and deep gratitude for their dedication, hard work and friendship.''

Nelson, a veteran of President Bush's successful 2004 re-election effort, said he stepped down as campaign manager and Weaver, a longtime aide who was a key player McCain's failed 2000 presidential bid, said he left his post of chief strategist. Both resignations were effective immediately.

Following the two out the door were political director Rob Jesmer and deputy campaign manager Reed Galen, officials said.

At the Capitol, McCain said he would ``of course'' remain in the presidential race, and disputed the idea that the staff changes marked a major shake-up that reflects his campaign's recent troubles.

``People are free to make their own assessments. I think we're doing fine,'' McCain said. ``I'm very happy with the campaign the way it is.''

Other officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid discussing private conversations, said Nelson was fired. But several people close to Nelson disputed that characterization.

Two officials said Rick Davis, a longtime McCain aide who ran the 2000 race, will take over the campaign and that other changes also were likely.

The shake-up comes just six months before the first voting in Iowa and as McCain, once considered the front-runner, seeks to regain some momentum with a diminishing list of options to lift his candidacy.

McCain's fortunes soured considerably this year as he embraced President Bush's troop increase for the Iraq war, an unpopular conflict with the public but one supported by most Republicans, and a bipartisan immigration bill that has divided the GOP.

Over the past six months, his donors and supporters were turned off by what they viewed as McCain embracing the policies of a lame-duck president with abysmal approval ratings. That caused McCain's polling and fundraising to suffer.

The campaign said Mark Salter, a senior aide whom some consider McCain's alter ego, will continue to advise him and the campaign without pay, an arrangement worked out last week. Earlier, officials had said Salter would cease day-to-day activities with the campaign.

McCain said discussions were ongoing about Salter's future role, adding, ``he will remain actively involved in my campaign.''

McCain hired Nelson more than a year ago to start laying the foundation for the senator's long-expected second presidential run. Weaver has been with McCain for at least 10 years.

``It has been a tremendous honor to serve Senator McCain and work on his campaign,'' Nelson said. ``I believe John McCain is the most experienced and prepared candidate to represent the Republican Party and defeat the Democratic nominee next year.''

Weaver said: ``It has been my honor and a distinct privilege to serve someone who has always put our country first. I believe that most Americans will come to the conclusion that I have long known there is only one person equipped to serve as our nation's chief executive and deal with the challenges we face, and that person is John McCain.''

As word of the changes became public, McCain was on the Senate floor defending the troop buildup in Iraq and contending that reinforcements had only just been put in place. He made his sixth trip to Iraq last week.

``Make no mistake. Violence in Baghdad remains at unacceptably high levels,'' but the United States and Iraq seem to be ``moving in the right direction,'' McCain said. ``The progress our military has made should encourage us.''

Days ago, the candidate laid off dozens of staffers after lackluster fundraising and excessive spending left him with just $2 million.

McCain raised just $11.2 million in the second financial quarter of the year, which ended June 30. That was less than the $13.6 million he brought in during the year's first three months when he came in third behind Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

In what would be a major strategic shift, the campaign said it was seriously considering taking public matching funds of about $6 million. But doing so could tie the campaign's hands by limiting the amount of money it can spend in individual states, particularly if his rivals forgo taxpayer money as expected.

McCain's popularity among Republicans has dropped since the start of the year, in part because of his support for measures in Congress that don't sit well with the GOP's base, like the immigration bill. He declined to participate in an early test of organizational strength in the leadoff state of Iowa this summer, and, the 70-year-old is fighting the perception that he is yesterday's candidate.

McCain's support in national polls has slipped. He is in single digits in some surveys in Iowa and South Carolina, trailing Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Romney, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, and Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator who hasn't officially entered the race.

Apple shares hit intraday high on rumor of cheaper iPhone

2007-07-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

Shares of Apple (APPL) hit an all-time trading high Tuesday after an analyst speculated that the company would come out with a less expensive, smaller iPhone later this year.
Apple shares traded as high as $134.50 Tuesday morning, eclipsing a previous 52-week high of $133.34 set Friday. In the afternoon, they settled back and the stock closed up $2.02, or 1.6%, to close at $132.35.

The company's stock had already skyrocketed roughly 40% in the months preceding its release of the iPhone on June 29. The iPhone contains a cellphone, media player and wireless Internet access, and it retails for $499 to $599.

Many analysts have predicted Apple would introduce future versions at lower price points, and a patent filing that was disclosed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last Thursday further fueled the rumor mill.

The patent application, filed in November, describes a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad displaying illuminated symbols that could change depending on the mode in use. Drawings in the filing show an iPod-like device with a scroll wheel resembling a rotary phone dial. Apple enthusiast websites quickly offered up their interpretation: an iPhone Nano.

J.P. Morgan analyst Kevin Chang said in a note to clients late Monday the patent could lead to a new iPhone that will cost $300 or less. Unlike the current iPhone, which is controlled by a 3.5 widescreen touch screen display, the new model will likely be controlled by a scroll wheel and might have limited functionality.

"We believe it's a strong sign that Apple could potentially convert every iPod nano into a nano phone," he wrote, referring to the company's popular flash memory-based music player.

The Nano currently sells for $199 to $249, depending on the amount of included memory. The Nano and Apple's iPod Shuffle comprise the majority of the estimated 50 million iPods the company sells each year, Chang said.

Chang said there's "a decent chance" that Apple would accept operator subsidies for a cheaper iPhone model, which could sell 30 million to 40 million units in fiscal year 2008.

"The global introduction of this model should be much faster than iPhone, given the former's limited functionality and lower customization requirement," he wrote.

Despite Wall Street's enthusiastic reception, not every patent filing indicates the development of an actual product, emphasized Jay Sandvos, a patent attorney and partner at the law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein.

Many of Apple's rivals are emulating the style of the iPod click wheel, he said, so "it makes sense to seek patent protection for every possible aspect of such a device whether or not Apple actually plans to use it — just to prevent competitors from doing something along these lines."

Apple has set a target of selling 10 million iPhones worldwide by 2008, gaining roughly a 1% share of the cellphone market. The gadget is expected to go on sale in Europe later this year and in Asia in 2008.

5 Dead In Florida Small Plane Crash

2007-07-10T14:35:00.000-07:00

A small plane trying to make an emergency landing crashed into two houses Tuesday, killing five people and starting fires that seriously burned three others in one of the homes, authorities said.

NASCAR confirmed that Dr. Bruce Kennedy, a Daytona Beach plastic surgeon and husband of International Speedway Corporation President Lesa France Kennedy, and NASCAR Aviation pilot Michael Klemm were among the dead. The plane was registered to a Daytona Beach company linked to NASCAR's late chairman.

The identities of the victims on the ground were not immediately released.

Authorities said an adult and two children died in the homes that were quickly gutted by the fire after the airplane crashed in the suburban Orlando neighborhood around 8:40 a.m.

The crash comes on the heels on of the death of former NASCAR
chairman Bill France Junior. He died June fourth at his Daytona
Beach home. He was 74. Lesa France Kennedy is France's daughter.

Authorities did not release the identities of the others killed.

Matt Minnetto, a fire investigator with Sanford Fire Department, said two people aboard the plane were confirmed dead in the crash and the plane itself was scattered in several pieces. At least three people were injured in one of the homes, including two adults and a boy about 10 years old who had burns over 80 to 90 percent of his body, Minnetto said.

"They have shut down the entire neighborhood, and they are evacuating people in the area because there have been explosions since the plane hit the home," reports CBS affiliate WKMG.

The twin engine Cessna 310 was registered to Competitor Liaison Bureau Inc. of Daytona Beach, said Kathleen Bergen with the Federal Aviation Administration. Competitor Liaison is based in Daytona Beach and registered under the name of William C. France, the late chairman of NASCAR, online records from the Department of State Division of Corporations show. James C. France also is listed as an officer of the company.

The plane was traveling from Daytona Beach to Lakeland when the pilot declared smoke in the cockpit. The pilot was attempting to land at the Orlando Sanford International Airport when the plane crashed about a mile or two north of the airport, Bergen said.

A firefighter who responded to the blazes was also hurt trying to reach the victims.

Eric Domnitz, who lives just down the street from the crash, said the fire was twice the size of a normal two-story house in the neighborhood. He hurried with a fire extinguisher to a horrific scene and said he saw some of the victims.

“It's in my head. The woman was just melting. It looked like her skin was just melting off,” he said. “The guy, he was melting. He looked like wax.”

Neighbors reported hearing a wooshing sound and the crash explosion as they were readying for their days.

"I've never seen so many flames, never in all my life," Marcela Rodriguez told the Orlando Sentinel. She was eating breakfast at a friend's home when the plane crashed two houses away.

Rodriguez said she ran out and was unable to see anyone because of the heat and flames.

Heather Stahley, who also lives in the neighborhood, told the Orlando Sentinel she was upstairs with her two children when she heard the "boom, boom, boom" of the crash.

"Then I saw the two homes engulfed in flames and black smoke," she said. "I just couldn't believe it was happening."

Nasa sends icebreaker to Mars in search of life

2007-07-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

A SPACE probe designed to look for signs of life in the oceans that once covered Mars will be unveiled by Nasa scientists this week.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will be sent to the icy wastelands near the red planet’s north polar ice cap. It will be launched next month and is expected to reach the planet in May.

When the probe lands its task will be to dig deep into the soil, scoop out chunks of ice and analyse them for signs of past or present life forms.

The landing site has been chosen as the most likely point to find buried ice that once formed part of the planet’s oceans.

“The arctic plains are the right place for the next step in Mars exploration and this is the right time to go there,” said Leslie Tamppari, Phoenix project scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We expect to touch Martian ice for the first time.”

Mars is now a cold desert planet with the thinnest of atmospheres and no water on the surface. However, previous missions have shown that there are large amounts of ice below the planet’s crust in the northern arctic plains.

Data from previous missions suggest that billions of years ago water flowed through canyons and formed large shallow seas. Some of these may have still been in existence 100,000 years ago.

The search for water is more than scientific. Nasa’s long-term goal is to send a human to Mars and a manned mission would be easier if the crew was guaranteed a source of water on arrival.

The Phoenix probe is one of the largest that Nasa has sent to Mars and will require descent thrusters to control the landing. A Nasa spokesman said that the probe would use a high-definition camera to gather geological data on the area around the landing site as the craft descended.

Many of the scientific instruments for Phoenix were built or designed for the 2001 Mars Surveyor Lander, which was mothballed, and the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander in 1999, which is though to have crashed on landing.

“This site wouldn’t be my first choice as a place for looking for life,” said Colin Pillinger, professor of planetary sciences at the Open University, who oversaw Britain’s ill-fated Beagle mission that was lost on the red planet in 2003.

“The temperature is going to be very low in a permanent polar region, which reduces the chances of finding [signs of] life. If you were a microbiologist you wouldn’t be keen to send a probe to the Martian north pole but it is new and that makes it exciting.”

Nasa is also this week due to launch its Dawn probe, which will penetrate deep into the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. It will investigate two of the largest asteroids, thought to be part of the “rubble” left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

Scientists think these may have been potential planets in the making that were never given the opportunity to grow.

Sony Cuts Price of 60GB PlayStation 3, Introduces New Version

2007-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

The new version will be available in August and the price of the current 60G-byte model will fall by $100 from Monday.

Sony Corp. is introducing a new version of its PlayStation 3 console in North America in August and cutting the price of the current 60G-byte model by US$100 from Monday, it said.

The price of the current console with a 60G-byte hard-disk drive will fall to US$499 or C$549 from Monday and a new version with 80G-byte hard-disk drive will be launched in August at US$599 or C$659, which is the same price that the 60G-byte model has been selling at until now.

The new pricing means that the top-of-the-line PlayStation 3 will still carry the same price tag as it has since launch so while the price of the 60G-byte model has been cut it's perhaps not the lower price that analysts have been looking for from Sony for several months.

The PlayStation 3's price, the highest ever for a games console, has been criticized since before it was launched in November last year and it is cited by many as a reason for relatively poor sales of the console. Sony missed its shipment target for the first few months and has been struggling to keep up with Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s smash-hit Wii console, which costs about half as much.

The timing of the cut comes as some surprise. On Friday Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters in an interview that Sony had no plans at present to cut the price of the console.

The 80G-byte version of the console was first revealed in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in March. The machine was officially announced by Sony in late May and first went on sale in South Korea in June.

Sony said the extra hard-disk space will appeal to online gamers and those interested in using the PlayStation 3's Internet connection to download movie trailers and games. The new version will also come packaged with the "MotorStorm" game that supports up to 12 people playing online in the same game simultaneously.

Earlier on Monday before Sony announced its price cut, the head of Microsoft's Japan unit said the company has no plans to cut the price of its Xbox 360 console should Sony reduce the PlayStation 3 price.

"I think we have very competitive pricing," said Darren Huston, president of Microsoft's Japan unit at a Tokyo news conference.

Tech week in review: Does Universal want an iPod tax?

2007-07-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Universally foolish. The Universal Music Group decided not to renew its contract with Apple to sell music through iTunes. Details on the negotiations between the two firms are murky, but it seems that the record company -- whose labels produce a third of all new albums released in the U.S. -- will now sell its songs through iTunes on a kind of ad hoc basis.

Industry observers suggest the deal faltered over Universal's desire for more pricing flexibility than Apple would allow -- the company wants to be able to sell songs for more or less than Apple's standard 99 cent price tag. Universal may even be angling for a share of revenue Apple gets from selling iPods (Microsoft pays record companies a similar fee for each Zune it sells). But Universal is on shaky ground here; sales through Apple's iTunes store accounts for a healthy slice of its bottom line, and most of its best customers, of course, own iPods. Does Universal really want to anger these people?

Google buys GrandCentral. After several weeks of rumors pointing this way, Google announced that it had acquired GrandCentral, a company that offers a clever and much-loved "phone integration" service. The company mashes together all your phone numbers -- home, work, cell, etc. -- into one GrandCentral number; when people call you there, all or some of your phones ring, depending on the caller. Google says that current GrandCentral users should see no interruption in service, but while the two companies' networks are being integrated, GrandCentral will only be available to new customers through an invitation-only private beta.

Faulty Xboxes. Microsoft announced that it would spend $1.15 billion on repairs for many of the 11 million Xbox 360 video game systems it has sold since Nov. 2005. During the past several months, players who used their systems a lot noticed an awful problem -- three red lights flash on the machine, then it shuts down. Gamers call it the Red Ring of Death.

One more thing.... Unconfirmed reports suggest Apple released some kind of phone or iPod or small Web device at the end of last month. Have you heard anything about this? Yeah, me neither. But apparently the company sold a million units in a single week, some kind of record. Obviously, someone's already hacked it.

Pakistani Delegation Reaches Besieged Mosque for `Last' Talks

2007-07-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

A delegation of Pakistani religious scholars started talks to end a standoff at Islamabad's besieged Red Mosque between security forces and militants who want to enforce Islamic law in the capital.

``This is our last effort to avoid bloodshed'' and to secure the release of women and children hostages, former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, leading the delegation, told reporters today before leaving for the mosque.

The delegation stopped outside the mosque and established contact with deputy chief cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi via loudspeakers, GEO television channel reported. Ghazi refuses to come out of the mosque, while the delegation turned down his request to go inside, according to the broadcaster.

The siege has increased pressure on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who has remained army chief since taking power in a 1999 coup. Delegates from 37 opposition parties yesterday demanded he resign. In March, Musharraf ousted Pakistan's top judge, sparking nationwide demonstrations. He has been criticized by Islamic parties for supporting the U.S.-led war on terrorism since 2001.

At least 24 people have died since July 3 in gun battles at the mosque in an escalation of a dispute with students that began in April. Religious Affairs Minister Muhammad Ijaz ul Haq yesterday said ``known terrorists who are wanted inside and outside the country'' are holding women and children hostage at the mosque, or Lal Masjid.

`Utmost Restraint'

Musharraf, who appointed Hussain to lead the talks with Ghazi, today urged the ``utmost restraint to save the lives of women and children,'' Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood said in a telephone interview.

Musharraf said two days ago that the students in the mosque must ``surrender or die.''

The government told Ghazi he must free all women and children and parents of students detained when they visited their children on the premises, Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said yesterday. Ghazi must surrender unconditionally to security forces, he said.

Militants, who have exchanged gunfire with security forces in the past seven days, agreed to stop fighting to facilitate talks, Geo said.

A gunman killed during the siege was wanted in connection with a failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz when he was campaigning for a parliamentary seat in 2004, Haq said.

``These terrorists control the operation from inside the mosque,'' Haq said. ``Abdul Rashid Ghazi is no longer in control.''

Central Asia

Some of the gunmen come from nations in Central Asia, AAJ television network reported, citing unidentified government officials and without naming the countries.

A Pakistani army commando was shot dead by militants and three security personnel were wounded when they tried to breach the walls of a seminary adjacent to the mosque yesterday, the government said.

Justice Rana Bhagwandas, acting Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, today formed a panel of two judges who will seek information from the government about the siege, according to a statement released by the country's highest appeal court.

The mosque's chief cleric, Maulana Muhammad Abdul Aziz, established a religious court at the mosque in April to try to bring Islamabad under Islamic law. Aziz, who is Ghazi's brother, was arrested when he tried to escape dressed as a woman last week. He was charged with murder and terrorism.

Resistance `Only Option'

``Resistance is the only option, as the government has closed the doors for negotiation,'' Ghazi said in an interview with AAJ television on July 6. ``Since we are only defending ourselves, we have enough ammunition. We prefer death to surrender.''

Students at the mosque last month took seven Chinese hostages from what they called a massage parlor and brothel in the vicinity. Police negotiated their release a day later.

Musharraf has stressed that Pakistan must follow a path of moderation. He has pledged to boost economic growth in the nation of 165 million people, the world's second-largest Muslim nation, in an effort to reduce the threat of terrorism and extremism.

U.K. Jury Convicts Four Over July 21 Terror Attack

2007-07-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Four men were convicted today of taking part in a botched suicide attack on London's public transport system on July 21, 2005, two weeks after bombers murdered 52 commuters during the morning rush hour.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassin Omar, Hussein Osman and Ramzi Mohammed were convicted by a jury in London of conspiracy to murder in an attack targeting three trains and a bus. The jury is still considering charges against two other defendants.

The July 21 attack came as Londoners were recovering from the deadliest attacks on the city since World War II and the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. On July 7, 2005, four other Muslims had blown themselves up, killing commuters in attacks also aimed at three trains and a bus.

The four defendants convicted so far claim it was a hoax designed as a protest against the war in Iraq. The prosecution said the men had incompetently mixed the chemicals used in their bombs and had planned to kill hundreds of people.

The attempted attacks were carried out on a bus in Hackney and on trains at Warren Street, Shepherd's Bush and Oval underground stations.

Lost His Nerve

The jury is still considering charges against Manfo Kwako Asiedu and Adel Yahya.

Asiedu, who didn't set off a bomb, said he went along with the gang's plans because he was frightened of them. He claims he never intended to kill and deliberately defused a bomb to save lives. The prosecution says he intended to become a suicide bomber and lost his nerve on the morning of the attack.

Yahya, who was out of the country at the time of the attack, claims he had nothing to do with the plot. The prosecution alleges he planned the whole thing.

The case is being conducted at Woolwich Crown Court, a specially designed high-security courthouse adjacent to Belmarsh jail where the men are being held.

Justice Adrian Fulford told the jury today that he would accept verdicts against Asiedu and Yahya if 10 of the 12 jurors agree. Under U.K. law, majority verdicts are permitted when jurors can't reach unanimous agreement. The nine women and three men, who will return to court tomorrow, have been listening to evidence since the beginning of the year and deliberating since June 28.

Bush Directs Ex-Aides Not to Testify About Firings (Update2)

2007-07-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

July 9 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush ordered two former aides not to answer questions from Congress about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The White House conveyed the directive in letters to lawyers for former Counsel Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor, the ex-White House political director. Taylor is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in two days. White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Miers's successor, also sent letters to House and Senate lawmakers leading the congressional inquiry informing them of Bush's decision.

``The president feels compelled to assert executive privilege with respect to the testimony sought,'' said Fielding's letter to the lawmakers. He said he was informing attorneys for the two former aides ``of his direction to Ms. Taylor and Mrs. Miers not to provide this testimony.''

Lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives are trying to determine whether the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year was carried out for improper political motives, such as to stymie probes of Republicans or prompt investigations of Democrats.

The letters were sent to Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate panel, and Michigan Democrat John Conyers, who heads the House Judiciary Committee, White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Conyers said in a statement today he is ``extremely disappointed'' by Bush's decision. ``Contrary to what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally,'' he said.

Contempt Citations

Leahy has previously threatened to seek a congressional vote on contempt citations if the White House refused to comply with the requests for documents.

Should lawmakers seek to hold the Bush administration in contempt, it could move the dispute to the courts and spur a constitutional showdown between Bush and the Democratic-led Congress.

``I haven't heard anything from Mr. Fielding or anybody else at the White House that would justify a claim of executive privilege,'' Leahy said yesterday on CNN. He said Taylor ``sent something like 60,000 e-mails on the Republican National Committee account, not e-mails to the president, but political e- mails while she was there.''

In a July 7 letter to Leahy and Fielding, Taylor's lawyer, W. Neil Eggleston, said his client was caught in an ``unseemly tug of war'' between Congress and the president.

`Without Hesitation'

``Absent direction from the White House,'' Taylor, 32, would testify ``without hesitation'' about the firings, her lawyer wrote.

She faces ``two untenable choices,'' Eggleston wrote. ``She can follow the president's direction and face the possibility of a contempt sanction by the Senate'' or put herself ``at odds with the president'' by cooperating with the congressional inquiry, her lawyer wrote.

He urged the Senate to ``direct its sanction'' for any refusal to testify ``against the White House, not against a former staffer.''

George Manning, a partner in the Atlanta office of the Jones Day law firm who represents Miers, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Fielding also informed the lawmakers of Bush's refusal to provide a detailed list of documents the president considers covered by his assertion of executive privilege. The two lawmakers had demanded the log of documents by today.

``This demand is unreasonable because it represents a substantial incursion into presidential prerogatives'' and ``would impose a burden of very significant proportions,'' Fielding wrote.

Bush has offered to let his aides be questioned behind closed doors without a transcript and with a promise that lawmakers wouldn't issue a subpoena for a follow-up. The congressional panels have rejected those conditions.

Bush Losing Support in GOP Regarding Iraq

2007-07-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

A mounting number of Republican lawmakers are faltering in their support of President Bush and are beginning to push for adjustments in his plans regarding Iraq and our troops.

According to the Baltimore Sun’s web site, “In the past two weeks, three GOP senators -– including one of the party’s leading voices on foreign affairs and one of Bush’s allies -– have urged the president to change course toward withdrawal.”

“It should be clear to the president that there needs to be a new strategy,” said Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander. “Our policy in Iraq is drifting.”

The Los Angeles Times' web site cited another senator who feels changes need to be made, “New Mexico Sen. Pete V. Domenici said the president’s approach was not working and called for a new one that would allow American troops to start leaving.”

“I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops,” said Domenici, who has fervently opposed congressional efforts this year to force the administration to scale back the U.S. military presence in Iraq. “But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home.”

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

In "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," Harry returns for his fifth year of study at Hogwarts and discovers that much of the wizarding community is in denial about the teenager's recent encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort, preferring to turn a blind eye to the news that Voldemort has returned. Fearing that Hogwarts' venerable Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is lying about Voldemort's return in order to undermine his power and take his job, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep watch over Dumbledore and the Hogwarts students.

But Professor Dolores Umbridge's Ministry-approved course of defensive magic leaves the young wizards woefully unprepared to defend themselves against the dark forces threatening them and the entire wizarding community, so at the prompting of his friends Hermione and Ron, Harry takes matters into his own hands. Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves "Dumbledore's Army," Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing the courageous young wizards for the extraordinary battle that lies ahead.

Warner Bros. Pictures Presents A Heyday Films Production, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” The film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson and Julie Walters.

The film was directed by David Yates and produced by David Heyman and David Barron. Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling. Lionel Wigram served as executive producer.

The behind-the-scenes creative team included director of photography Slawomir Idziak, production designer Stuart Craig, editor Mark Day, costume designer Jany Temime and composer Nicholas Hooper.

Concurrently with the film’s debut in conventional theatres, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”: An IMAX 3D Experience will be released in IMAX theatres worldwide. Using proprietary 2D to 3D conversion technology, scenes from the movie’s finale (approximately 20 minutes) have been converted into An IMAX 3D Experience®, the most immersive cinematic 3D in the world. The film has been digitally re-mastered into The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. A special on-screen cue—a green icon of flashing glasses across the bottom of the screen—will alert moviegoers when to put the 3D glasses on, and a red icon will appear, indicating when the glasses should be taken off. IMAX®, IMAX® 3D, IMAX DMR®, IMAX MPX®, The IMAX Experience® and An IMAX 3D Experience® are trademarks of IMAX Corporation.

Movie information
Release Date (USA): 2007-07-11
Rating (USA): PG-13
Release Date (UK): 2007-07-11
Rating (UK) : 12A
Director: David Yates
Producer: David Heyman;David Barron;Michael Goldenberg (screenplay)
Studio: Warner Bros.
Writer/s: JK Rowling (book); Michael Goldenberg

What Live Earth Really Meant

2007-07-08T14:22:00.001-07:00

Wandering the cavernous information hall at Live Earth's Tokyo site on Saturday — munching on a whole-grain, locally made peanut butter muffin and browsing for a 100% hemp towel — I noticed the solar panels. Like the events in Sydney, Shanghai, London, Washington and other cities, Live Earth Tokyo was intended as a rock festival-cum-environmental fair, where concertgoers could learn about the energy-saving benefits of fluorescent lightbulbs while jamming to groups like Genesis, who reformed for the London show. Organizers had stressed that the massive festivals themselves would be as green as could be — the Tokyo show was to be powered by solar energy and biodiesel made from recycled cooking oil. So I wasn't surprised to see an array of solar panels at the center of the information hall, apparently hooked up to a big-screen TV playing the feed from the concert stage next door. Very green, except for the fact that we were indoors, and there was no sun.

From the day the concert series was announced by former Vice-President Al Gore, Live Earth had to battle doubt and disinterest. The public had grown increasingly jaded over all-star charity rock festivals, particularly two years after the even larger Live 8 benefit shows for Africa and global poverty. (Live 8 organizer Sir Bob Geldof dismissed Gore's effort as "just an enormous pop concert.") And while the organizers claimed to be raising awareness, critics scolded that the global public is well aware of the perils of climate change.

Even more pertinent was the criticism that the giant carbon footprint of an event that involved jetting pop stars and their entourages around the globe, and encouraging hundreds of thousands of fans to travel to concert sites, was inherently at odds with Live Earth's energy-conservation message. Around half the carbon footprint in any given show usually comes from the audience traveling to the concert, and though Live Earth promised to offset those emissions, it wasn't yet clear how — not to mention that offsets are inherently dicey. The Tokyo show drew much of its electricity from an existing solar plant on the grid, but that meant that Tokyo homes and businesses normally supplied by solar would have needed to supplement their power from dirtier sources. That's a net loss for the environment. Many rock stars who sat out Live Earth felt the same way. "We're using enough power for ten houses just for lighting," Artic Monkeys' drummer Matt Helder told AFP. "It'd be a bit hypocritical [if we played]."

Even some Live Earth organizers admitted the contradiction. "It's very obvious that any event like this is not environmentally friendly," says Yu Nakajima, who was in charge of greening the Tokyo show. "It's probably better not to have an event at all."

Well, there is the music. Despite worries that some of the acts would play to acres of empty seats, the top shows in London and New Jersey were all but sold out, and more than 400,000 people arrived for a free concert on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach headlined by Lenny Kravitz and Macy Gray — even though a Brazilian judge had only authorized the concert days before. Even the smaller shows seemed well-attended, if a bit schizophrenic: the Tokyo concert segued from the gentle folk of Japanese pop star Cocco, who tearfully sang about manatees threatened by a military base on her home island of Okinawa, to the American rap-metal group Linkin Park, who urged the crowd to "get rowdy."

If Gore was being characteristically hyperbolic when he claimed the concerts could reach up to 2 billion people on the Internet — sure, and so could this story — the sheer size and spread of the events meant that for a day at least, climate change (or, the rock concerts it has prompted) dominated headlines across the world. But would the Earth have been better off if we all stayed home and did nothing, literally? "That's a fair thought," Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson told TIME before his band's Tokyo show. "It's also a cynical one." He's right. It's time to get past the obsession over carbon footprint size and offsets, over who's an eco-hypocrite and who is truly green. We need to use energy far more wisely, both individually and internationally, but with hundreds of millions in the developing world getting richer and producing more carbon every day, the threat of climate change is far, far bigger than our personal conservation habits. It will require technological change and painful political choices such as carbon taxes, gas taxes and mandatory greenhouse gas emissions caps. That means, especially for the young, the un-rock star act of voting.

Live Earth's success will be measured not by the number of trees the initiative plants or the number of energy-efficient light-bulbs sold as a result, but by whether it motivates concertgoers to make climate-change their generation's political priority, and press their leaders to act on it. Al Gore and company deserve credit for putting forth a 7-point pledge for concertgoers that includes a demand that countries join an international treaty mandating a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That will only happen if voters reward politicians who fight to cut carbon gas emissions, and punish those who don't. "It's not what we do today that matters," says Live Earth Tokyo's Nakajima. "It's what we all do tomorrow, and all the next days after. That's how we'll know how successful Live Earth really is."

Why We Went Nuts About the iPhone

2007-07-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

July 16, 2007 issue - It's hard to determine the wackiest aspect of iPhone craziness leading up to the launch of Apple's eagerly (to say the least) awaited venture into the cell-phone world on June 29. Was it the relentless media attention, which blended nuts-and-bolts business coverage with the obsessive overkill of a Paris Hilton stalkfest? Or was it the lunacy of the people dying to get those phones at the earliest possible moment? Standing outside New York's Fifth Avenue Apple store on launch day, with dozens of reporters interviewing the masses who braved days of heat and rain to snare their palm-size prize, there was a sense of being in the middle of a Zeitgeist hurricane. When people got wind that I was in possession of an actual iPhone, I was mobbed by rubberneckers. Since then, I've been suffering nightmares where I find myself gripping my iPhone for dear life, pursued, à la "A Hard Day's Night," by a pack of rabid fanboys desperate to run their fingers on my multitouch screen.

The iPhone itself is off to a ring-a-ding start, selling an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 units the first weekend. (Apple and exclusive carrier AT&T aren't announcing figures, but the latter did say it moved more iPhones that weekend than any previous cell phone sold in a month.) And the reviews are uniformly positive. (My own take, after three weeks of iPhoning, still holds: though there's still work to be done, the beautiful screen, the clever multitouch navigation and the well-designed and -integrated applications make this gizmo a genuine breakthrough.)

But sales figures and reviews don't speak to the unprecedented hoopla. What was it that made a five-ounce slab of silicon, aluminum and glass so important to us?

In part, you can chalk it up to the iPod factor. Before 2001, Apple was a company that made cool computers that only a small fraction of the public cared to buy. But over the next few years, 100 million customers discovered Apple's tiny music player, and bonded with it as they had with no previous gadget. The same crowd welcomed the news that Apple was going mobile. "Everyone we talk to hates their phones," Steve Jobs told me the week before the launch, in an attempt to explain the iPhone anticipation. People wondered if Apple could do for cell phones what it did for MP3 players.

That love-hate relationship we have with cell phones underlies the depth of our involvement with technology itself. Our everyday tools are the stuff of 1950s science-fiction novels. But though the digital age has widely expanded our abilities, the difficulty of accomplishing these tasks with ease often leaves us frustrated. When something comes along that promises to fulfill our ambitions, we pay attention. And when that something also promises to perform its duties with beauty and pizzazz—Apple's trademarks—we get a visceral buzz that's as much artistic enthusiasm as consumerism.

We've heard a lot recently about of the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' landmark "Sgt. Pepper" album. Back in 1967, new releases by universally loved bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys were anticipated breathlessly, and greeted by monster sales, heated analysis and sonic ubiquity. These days, with our fractured tastes and long-tail preferences, no single musical act binds the culture in that way. But we do have technology in common, and when Steve Jobs says, in effect, "I Want to Take You Higher," he is feeding our hunger to merge our business needs and our entertainment desires in one irresistible package.

In 1967, it was "All You Need Is Love." In 2007, it's "All You Need Is AT&T Activation." Welcome to the summer of technolust.

Users Blast iPhone Battery Policy

2007-07-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

A U.S. consumer rights group is attacking Apple and AT&T over the fee consumers must pay for battery replacement.
A U.S. consumer rights group is attacking Apple and AT&T over the fee consumers must pay for battery replacement.

The Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights is taking the two firms to task over the fact that the fees and methodology for the battery replacement scheme wasn't announced in advance of the product launch.

Apple published information about its battery replacement plan on its Web site on Friday after the product went on sale. Replacement costs owners of the $499 or $599 device $79 plus $6.95 shipping charges. The process takes three business days, and Apple will offer a loan unit to tide users over during this period for an additional $29 charge.

The group complains that this left consumers in the dark before they purchased the device. The iPhone battery is soldered to the inside of the device and cannot be swapped by users.

The consumer advocates argue that because the replacement scheme wasn't fully disclosed before the device went on sale, some consumers who have purchased it may not have done so, had full information been available.

In a letter the group observes: "News reports quote Apple as stating that the iPhone's battery will eventually deplete itself after 300-400 charges." This means some customers will need to pay the battery tax within ten months of purchasing the product, the advocates warn.

NASA's Oft-Delayed Asteroid Mission Pushed to September

2007-07-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

For the third time in two days, NASA postponed the launch of its asteroid-bound Dawn probe Saturday, with liftoff now slated for no earlier than September.

The new delay for Dawn comes after its planned Monday liftoff was moved to July 15 earlier Saturday, but now clears the spacecraft's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site for the August flight of NASA's Mars Phoenix lander.

NASA spokesperson George Diller said mission managers opted for the new launch target because of limited liftoff opportunities in July and the need to prepare for the planned Aug. 3 Phoenix flight.

"A September launch for Dawn maintains all of the science mission goals that a July launch would have performed," Diller said in an update from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

The $449 million Dawn mission will be the first to launch a probe to both Vesta and Ceres, the two largest space rocks in the solar system, in the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The eight-year mission is slated to carry Dawn first to Vesta in October 2011, where it will orbit the bright, dense space rock. After a detailed mapping mission, Dawn is slated to move on to spherical Ceres - which is also considered a dwarf planet - by February 2015.

NASA initially had until July 19 to launch Dawn before standing down to allow preparations for Phoenix's August launch.

Dawn's mission has weathered a series of delays over the last week. Plans for a Friday launch were reset to Sunday after nearby storms prevented fueling of the spacecraft's Delta 2 rocket. Mechanical issues with a telemetry relay aircraft and the unavailability of a tracking ship delayed the planned launch from Sunday to Monday, and ultimately to July 15.

Dawn also survived an initial cancellation in March 2006, before NASA revived the science mission a few weeks later.

NASA has until about Oct. 20 to launch Dawn, after which the Vesta and Ceres begin to move away from each other in their respective orbits, the mission's principal investigator Chris Russell has said. They two space rocks will be near each other again in about 15 years, he added.

Army commander killed in bid to free mosque hostages

2007-07-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

Pakistan's security forces were struggling to bring to an end a six-day siege of a radical mosque Sunday night after an army commander was killed.
The senior commando officer, a lieutenant-colonel, was killed as he and his troops attempted to blow holes in the walls of the mosque compound in Islamabad in an attempt to enable some of the hundreds of women and children inside to escape. Troops have surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, since Tuesday when clashes between armed students and security forces began after months of tension.
The known death toll in the stand-off was least 21 but as gunfire rattled the windows of residences across the normally peaceful capital it was thought that the number of killed may be significantly higher.
"The government may have to rethink its strategy in the light of the sad martyrdom of a senior army official and the resistance that has been shown by what appears to be highly trained militants," said the deputy information minister, Tariq Azeem.
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the cleric leader of the students, has said he and his followers are ready to die rather than surrender, and that he and his followers hoped their deaths would spark an Islamic revolution.
A day earlier, President Pervez Musharraf warned the militants that they would be killed unless they surrendered. Officials said they did not know how many people remained inside but there could be up to 2,000. Fifty to 60 hard-core militants were believed to be leading the fighting.
Intelligence officials have claimed that the fighters belong to several known terrorist organisations.
Twelve female students in the Red Mosque are on hunger strike and have demanded to leave the besieged complex, according to a source at the mosque. The Lal Masjid has been a hotbed of militancy for years, known for its support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and opposition to Gen Musharraf's backing for the US-led campaign against terrorism.
Pakistani newspapers have questioned how the confrontation has been allowed to escalate.
Critics noted that the Red Mosque first earned a reputation for militancy in the 1980s under its founder, Maulana Abdullah, who used to work for Pakistan's military intelligence. When he was assassinated the mosque was taken over by his sons, Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, who was captured last week as he tried to flee disguised in a burqa. Both brothers were at one time in the pay of the government as civil servants.
Commentators fear that a full-scale assault on the mosque could cause bloodshed on a scale witnessed in 1984 when the Indian army forcibly evicted Sikh separatists from the Golden Temple at Amritsar.

What's Latin for 'No one is happy?'

2007-07-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI's revival of the old Latin Mass on Saturday doesn't seem to make anyone happy.

The pontiff is not trying to replace the New Mass (which is over 40 years old, but "new" in Roman Catholic Church years), but is making the Latin Mass available to priests who have a "stable group of faithful" who wish to go old school.

Italian bishop Luca Brandolini was quite unhappy about the Pope's announcement.

"It's a day of mourning, not just for me but for the many people who worked for the Second Vatican Council. A reform for which many people worked, with great sacrifice and only inspired by the desire to renew the Church, has now been cancelled."

It's not just members of the Roman Catholic community who are criticizing the move. The Anti-Defamation League called the move a "body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations." The League is concerned about a prayer from the Good Friday Tridentine (Latin) Mass for the conversion of Jews.

The old prayer goes like this:

For the conversion of Jews. Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, you do not refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.
The New Mass for Good Friday has the following prayer:

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption.

The move to make the Latin Mass available is aimed at appeasing more conservative members of the Catholic Church, such as the one-million-member strong Society of Saint Pius X. But the group still needs to work out some doctrinal differences with the Vatican before everyone in the flock is satisfied.

AMD announces $7.5 million Transmeta investment

2007-07-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

AMD announced a $7.5 million investment in Transmeta yesterday, bolstering the stock prices of both companies, with Transmeta up $0.24 to $0.94 while AMD rose $0.20 to $14.39. AMD will receive preferred stock in exchange for its investment.

The investment is a badly-needed shot in the arm for Transmeta, who reported earnings of just $2.1 million at the end of its first quarter in May, compared to $19.5 million the year previous. The company will cut its workforce by 15 to 20 percent in this quarter in order to help stem such losses. The company is on the ropes, and there are lots of questions about its future.

Transmeta no longer actively designs or manufacturers processors, but has transitioned, obviously not without cost, into a licenser of its CPU technology. AMD did not specify what technologies or licenses the new investment covers, but it praised Transmeta as an industry innovator.

"Transmeta has been an innovative force in the industry for more than a decade," said Dirk Meyer, president and COO of AMD. "Transmeta was a key ally in helping to bring our highly-successful AMD64 technology to market and has supported the widespread industry adoption of both AMD64 and AMD's HyperTransport technology. Our investment will support Transmeta's technology development work and AMD's efforts to leverage Transmeta's innovative energy-efficient technologies to the benefit of AMD's customers."
AMD's investment is likely to further cement ties between the two companies. Sunnyvale has already agreed to sell Transmeta Efficeon processors as part of Microsoft's FlexGo project and has previously licensed Transmeta IP for use in the Athlon 64/Opteron products.

The cynic will note, of course, that Transmeta is also in the middle of a legal battle against Intel. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Delaware, alleges that Intel's entire x86 microprocessor line, from the Pentium Pro on down to the present day, infringes on one or more of ten patents.

In the suit, Transmeta is seeking treble damages and a licensing deal. The company says that Intel has made over $100 billion on the processors at issue in this case, so we suspect that if Transmeta can build a strong suit, Intel might opt to just buy the beleaguered company.

NASA Buys $19 Million Toilet System

2007-07-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- In space, a loo costs a lot.

NASA has agreed to pay $19 million for a Russian-built toilet system for the international space station. The figure may sound astronomical for a toilet in space, but NASA officials said it was cheaper than building their own.

"It's akin to building a municipal treatment center on Earth," NASA spokeswoman Lynnette Madison said Thursday, explaining the cost of the new toilet system.

Also, astronauts are familiar with how it works since it's similar to one already in use at the space station. The new system will be able to transfer urine to a device that can produce drinking water.

The new system is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. side of the space station in 2008. It will offer more privacy than the old toilet system, which will definitely be needed: The space station crew is expected to grow from three to six people by 2009.

The system will be installed on the American side, and the current toilet system on the Russian side will remain in place.

The space station toilet physically resembles those used on Earth, except it has leg restraints and thigh bars to keep astronauts and cosmonauts in place. Fans suck waste into the commode. Crew members also have individual urine funnels which are attached to hoses, and the urine is deposited into a wastewater tank.

Crew members using the current toilet system on the Russian side must transfer tanks of their urine to a cargo ship, which burns up in Earth's atmosphere once undocked from the station.

The $19 million toilet system was part of a larger contract valued at $46 million that NASA signed this week with RSC Energia, a Russian aerospace company. The extra equipment includes software updates for the station's inventory management system, a spare air pump and engineering support for a mechanism which allows space shuttles to dock with the space station.

Pakistan 'may rethink strategy' in mosque siege

2007-07-08T05:42:00.001-07:00

A Pakistani Minister says the Government may rethink its strategy for dealing with the six-day siege of mosque in the capital Islamabad after a top commando was killed, raising the official death toll to 24.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azeem says the Government has held back from a full-scale assault on the Red Mosque to protect women and children inside, but the situation is "tense" after the soldier's death early Sunday (local time).

"The Government may have to rethink its strategy in the light of the sad martyrdom of a senior army official and the resistance that has been shown by what appears to be highly trained militants," Mr Azeem told AFP.

The military says Colonel Haroon Islam died after an operation to blast through part of the wall surrounding the complex in a bid to let children and women out of the mosque.

"It has turned into a full hostage siege. The militants have really fortified their position and are not letting women and children leave the premises," he said.

Mr Azeem says 24 people have been killed in the stand-off and about 50 injured people are still in hospital.

He says claims by the mosque's main cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, that 335 people were killed in the fighting were "laughable".

"One needs to now question his state of mind. On one side he claims the only thing they have are Kalashnikovs and then he said he had enough weapons to fight for one month," Mr Azeem said.

Ghazi, the deputy leader of the hardline Red Mosque, is heading the resistance by hundreds of students and Islamic militants holed up inside and surrounded by Government forces since last week.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has warned those holed up in the mosque to surrender or be killed.

Cleric reports hundreds killed in mosque

2007-07-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 8 (UPI) -- At least 335 students, mostly women, died when Pakistani forces bombed the wall of a mosque under seige by Islamists in Islamabad, a cleric claimed Sunday.
Abdul Rashid Ghazi's allegations could not be independently confirmed, the Indo Asian News Service said.

Rashid said 310 women and 25 men died inside Lal Masjid, known as the Red Mosque, overnight when Pakistani forces attempted to blow holes in the compound's walls.

The Pakistani army hoped the holes would allow students inside to escape, said a military statement.

A Pakistani colonel died Saturday night in the heaviest firing in the six-day seige, BBC News reported. The colonel was shot by students inside the mosque as his forces advanced on the wall, the BBC said.

In a statement Saturday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the students had no option but to surrender.

As many as 1,800 students remained in the mosque Saturday, BBC said.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

2007-07-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

There seemed to be a spring in the step of President Bush as he and the First Lady walked to Marine One this morning for the flight to Camp David.

It’s his 61st birthday – and about a hundred guests of White House staffers had been invited to give him a friendly send-off as he got a head-start on his weekend at 9:15 A.M.

As birthday gifts go, there was good economic news for him this day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics was out this morning with its job numbers for June.

It reported 132,000 new payroll jobs last month – more than most analysts expected. And the national unemployment rate was steady at a healthy 4.5%.

“We are happy about that,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto was quick to volunteer at the start of his morning briefing for reporters.

The White House trumpets the figures, saying they bring to more than two million – the number of new jobs created over the past year. Further, said Fratto, the nation has now enjoyed “46 consecutive months of strong job growth.” He said there’s been “strong wage growth” as well.

But on this birthday, Mr. Bush presides over a war in Iraq that’s now well into its fifth year. And he’s losing the support of key Republicans.

Just yesterday, Sen. Pete Domenici, (R-N.M.), announced his loss of confidence in the president’s Iraq strategy and embraced a plan to get U.S. troops out of combat there by spring.

With that, Domenici joined the ranks of fellow Republican Senators Dick Lugar and George Voinovich, who went public recently with their doubts and concerns about the President’s handling of Iraq.

The White House said today that it has enormous respect for Domenici and regards him as thoughtful and someone to listen to. But spokesman Fratto disputed reporters’ assertions that Pres. Bush now faces a hemorrhage of republican support.

There can be no disputing the plunge of support for Mr. Bush in the polls. The lastest CBS News survey shows him with a pitiful 27% approval rating and 65% disapproval. They’re the worst poll numbers of his presidency.

Yet, Mr. Bush is standing his ground on Iraq.

“It’s a tough fight,” he said in his Fourth of July speech Wednesday to National Guard personnel in West Virginia, “but I wouldn’t have asked troops to go into harm's way if the fight was not essential to the security of the United States of America.”

However difficult the fight is in Iraq, he said “we must win it.”

And a week ago yesterday, he suffered a devastating political blow, when his so-called Immigration Reform plan died in Congress. It was the top item on his legislative agenda this year.

So it’s not the setting for a really happy birthday – though he has just over 18 months left in office to turn things around.

He gave himself a present last evening, going to the Nationals-Cubs game at R.F.K. Stadium. As presidents do, he arrived a little late and left during the 7th inning stretch, but he seemed to enjoy himself - watching the game from the owner’s box and munching on hot dogs, nachos and chicken tenders.

And we know he gets a lift by going to Camp David this weekend.

By my count, it’s his 124th visit to the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. And counting today, he’s spent all or part of 386 days there.

As recently as last Sunday at his folks place in Kennebunkport, Maine – he needled me for keeping track of his time at Camp David and his Texas ranch.

Sorry, Mr. President – but Happy Birthday just the same.

300 girls may have died in Pakistan mosque siege

2007-07-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

As Pakistan forces continue to beseige Islamabad's Red Mosque, the number of people killed in the standoff so far remains unclear.

The official tally is 24, including a Pakistani Lieutenant-Colonel killed in operations overnight.

But the Taliban-style extremists, holed up inside the mosque, claim 300 people, mostly young girls, were killed overnight when troops blew up a part of the surrounding wall.

Pakistan has held back from storming the compound because there could be up to 2500 human shield hostages inside, some of them children as young as 5 years-old.

The compound houses a boys and a girls school. The students were inside when radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi barricaded them in last Tuesday after clashes between troops and his armed followers.

Some students have emerged but it has proved very difficult for the authorities to know who is a militant and who is a genuine student.

The elder brother of the cleric tried to escape dressed as a woman on Wednesday.

The younger Ghazi says he prefers martyrdom to giving up, in the hope of sparking an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

Sony Expected to Drop PlayStation 3 Price by $100 Next Week

2007-07-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

Retailer information points to a PS3 price drop to $499 coming July 12

With price being many consumers’ sticky issue on the PlayStation 3, Sony appears to be adjusting the price of its new games machine sooner than expected.

A member of the DVD Talk forum acquired a Circuit City flyer for the week of July 15, and posted a number of gamer-specific deals. Of extreme interest is the retailer’s price on the PlayStation 3, listed at $499.99 after a $100 “price break.”

It was originally unclear if the $499 price point was just a specific to Circuit City, but a merchandising manager at a supposedly large retailer confirmed with GameDaily that the price drop is to be retail-wide on July 12, with the first wave of ads to promote the new PS3 price starting July 15.

It is now believed that Sony Computer Entertainment America will be officially announcing the new $499 price of the PlayStation 3 at its E3 press conference next week, scheduled for the morning of July 11.

The $499 price point was previously occupied by the 20GB version of the PlayStation 3. Sony launched its console in November 2006 with two variants – one at $499 and the other a $599 – with the more expensive version featuring a larger, 60GB hard drive and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Citing reasons related to consumer demand, Sony in April discontinued the $499 20GB PlayStation 3 leaving only the more expensive $599 60GB model on the market. Since that move, the issue of price has cropped up in various interviews with Sony executives.

Sony president Ryoji Chubachi said to the Financial Times, “We are re-examining our [PS3] budgeting process in terms of pricing and volume. Sales assumptions change and the market is competitive. We are in the midst of revisiting our strategy for the PS3.”

More recently, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer said in June regarding the PS3’s price, “That is what we are studying at the moment. That’s what we are trying to refine.”

Puzzlingly, amidst all the evidence of a pending price cut, Chubachi told Reutersearlier today, “At present we have no plans [to cut the PS3 price].”

Although the upcoming new price of 60GB PlayStation 3 is the same as the discontinued 20GB version, which represents little actual savings for gamers looking for an even cheaper way onto Sony’s new game platform, those interested in the console’s high-definition movie playback capability will find some extra value.

All PlayStation 3 (and various other Blu-ray player) purchases made from July 1 to September 30 are entitled to five free Blu-ray Disc movies as part of a special promotion from the Blu-ray Disc Association.

The upcoming $499 price will also put the PlayStation 3 on par with Sony’s cheapest standalone Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-S300.

When the PlayStation 3 first launched last year, it was an able movie player, but it lacked several important features of standalone machines – for example, DVD upscaling. Thanks to regular firmware updates from Sony, however, the PlayStation 3 is now able to upscale DVD movies up to a 1080p resolution – putting it on easily on par with the best Blu-ray Disc players on the market.

Pakistani forces dynamite mosque wall

2007-07-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Pakistani security forces besieging a radical mosque in the capital Islamabad blew up part of the wall of the compound, a security official said.

There was also an intense exchange of fire before midnight (local time) between security forces and Islamists holed up inside the fortified Red Mosque complex, the official said.

"Security forces dynamited the wall to allow people inside to come out if they want to," he told AFP.

People inside the compound who wished to leave risked being shot by hardline students if they attempted to climb the wall, which is seven to eight feet (2.1 to 2.4 metres) high, he said.

Breaching the wall also gave security forces a clearer picture of what was happening, he said.

A 13-year-old boy escaped on Saturday morning through a similar hole in the wall.

Pakistani forces have held back from raiding the now bullet-pocked mosque but there were intense clashes during the day.

An AFP photographer at the scene said heavy firing between the security forces and the militants continued for more than 45 minutes late on Saturday with several bullets hitting the walls of several houses.

A man with a bullet wound was brought to a hospital from a residential area near the embattled mosque.

Relatives said he was hit while having dinner in his house in a curfew-bound area.

Earlier President Pervez Musharraf told the besieged Islamists to surrender or face the risk of being killed.

Bush accuses US Cong of failing to meet its duties

2007-07-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

Washington, July 07: President George W Bush on Saturday accused Democratic lawmakers of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.

"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."

The White House has said the failure of a broad immigration overhaul was proof that the Democratic-controlled Congress cannot take on major issues. "We saw this with immigration, and we're seeing it with some other issues where Congress is having an inability to take on major challenges," said spokesman Tony Fratto.

The main reason the immigration measure died, however, was staunch opposition from Bush's own base -- Conservatives. The President could not turn around members of his own party despite weeks of intense effort.

The immigration bill was the top item on Bush's domestic agenda. With its demise, Bush was left to focus on the annual appropriations process and reining in federal spending.

"Democrats have a chance to prove they are for open and transparent government by working to complete each spending bill independently and on time," Bush said. "I urge democrats in congress to step forward now and pass these bills one at a time. "

Bureau Report

West Nile still threat in dry weather

2007-07-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

Many of us are feeling the effects of this summer's dry start - lawns are turning brown, streams are drying up and flowers are wilting.

Even without wet weather, mosquitoes remain a threat - particularly because of their ability to transmit West Nile virus to humans. As we have done in years past, we can still drain, dunk and protect to reduce our risk of contracting West Nile virus this summer and fall.

West Nile virus first came to our region in 2002. Since that time, human cases of the illness have continued to decline in our area.

In 2006, Hamilton County had one reported case of the virus in humans, compared to 29 in 2002. While human West Nile virus cases are down in our region, they continue to climb in other parts of the country.

In Idaho in 2006, almost 1,000 human cases of the virus were reported and West Nile virus activity was detected in all 48 contiguous states for the second year in a row. These numbers tell us that the virus is likely here to stay.

Hamilton County General Health District staff began testing mosquitoes for West Nile virus this month. When West Nile virus-positive mosquitoes are identified, we will advise residents in those areas about steps they can take to reduce the mosquito population and prevent mosquito bites, including:

DRAIN

* During long periods of dry weather, look for items in your yard that might collect water when it does rain. Clean up litter and check tires, buckets, flower pots, wading pools and similar items that could create standing water and become mosquito breeding sites. An upturned bottle cap can become a breeding site for thousands of mosquito larvae.

* Frequently change water in bird baths and pet bowls.

* Drain small puddles after heavy rainstorms.

DUNK

* Apply mosquito larvicide, sometimes called mosquito "dunks," to areas of standing water that cannot be drained. The dunks are environmentally safe and won't harm pets. Purchase them at your local hardware store.

PROTECT

* Cut your grass and trim shrubbery.

* Make sure screens in windows and doors are tight-fitting and free from defect.

* Wear long sleeves and pants during peak mosquito hours - dawn and dusk.

* Use an Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellent such as those containing DEET, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Follow the directions on the package.

West Nile virus is a viral disease affecting the central nervous system that can be transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. Symptoms can appear three to 14 days after someone is bitten by an infected mosquito.

The chance that any one person is going to become ill from a single mosquito bite remains low. The risk of severe illness and death is highest for people over 50, although people of all ages can become ill.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, contact your physician for evaluation.

* Serious symptoms in a few People - About one in 150 people infected with West Nile virus will develop severe illness. The severe symptoms can include high fever, headache, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis. These symptoms may last several weeks, and neurological effects may be permanent.

* Milder symptoms in some people - Up to 20 percent of the people who become infected have symptoms such as fever, headache and body aches, nausea, vomiting and sometimes swollen lymph glands or a skin rash on the chest, stomach and back. Symptoms can last for as short as a few days, though even healthy people have become sick for several weeks.

* No Symptoms in most people - Approximately 80 percent of people (about four out of five) who are infected with the virus will not show any symptoms at all.

Appeals Court Rejects Lawsuit on Surveillance

2007-07-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

A divided federal appeals court today dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down.

The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue.

Because it is extremely difficult to show concrete injury from the highly classified program, the effect of the ruling was to insulate the program from judicial scrutiny in ordinary federal courts.

The majority did not rule on the merits of the case, though the appeals judge who wrote the lead opinion, Alice M. Batchelder, said the case provoked “a cascade of serious questions.” Those questions included whether the program violated a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with the Constitution’s First and Fourth Amendments.

But Judge Batchelder was implicitly critical of the decision last year by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court in Detroit, whose ruling striking down the program was stayed during the appeals. “The district court answered all of these questions in the affirmative,” Judge Batchelder wrote, “and imposed an injunction of the broadest possible scope.”

A second appeals court judge, Julia Smith Gibbons, concurred in the judgment dismissing the case but did not join in Judge Batchelder’s extensive and technical discussion of whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue. Judge Gibbons agreed, however, that the case turned “upon the single fact that the plaintiffs have failed to provide evidence that they are personally subject to the program.”

She added that “plaintiffs are ultimately prevented from establishing standing because of the state secrets privilege,” a legal doctrine that requires courts to limit or dismiss cases when allowing them to proceed would disclose information harmful to national security. Judge Batchelder did not discuss the privilege.

A number of other challenges to the program have been consolidated before a federal judge in San Francisco, and the federal appeals court in California, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, will hear an appeal from one of the judge’s preliminary rulings next month.

Some plaintiffs in that case contend that they can prove standing even under the Sixth Circuit majority’s analysis. Those plaintiffs, an Islamic charity and two of its lawyers, say they have seen a classified document confirming that their communications were actually intercepted.

In dissent on the Detroit case yesterday, Judge Ronald Lee Gilman wrote that the issue of the plaintiffs’ standing presented “the closest question in this case.” But he wrote that at least the plaintiffs who are lawyers did have standing.

Those lawyers said they have had to change the way they communicate with clients in the Middle East because they feared that their discussions would not be confidential.

“To my mind,” Judge Gilman wrote, “the attorney-plaintiffs have articulated an actual or imminent harm” because the program “puts them in the position of abrogating their duties under applicable professional-responsibility rules if they communicate with clients and contacts via telephone and e-mail.”

Standing, Judge Gilman wrote, is the hard part. “Once part that hurdle,” he said, “the rest gets progressively easier.”

Judge Gilman also put some distance between his views and those of Judge Taylor. “Without expressing an opinion concerning the analysis of the district court,” he wrote, “I would affirm its judgment.”

In January, not long before the appeal was argued, the White House announced that it would submit the N.S.A. program for supervision by a secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Judge Gilman, the only judge to address the significance of that move, discounted it. He said the administration has reserved the right to resume warrantless surveillance and that the appeal was therefore not moot.

Judge Batchelder was appointed by President George Bush, Judge Gibbons by President George W. Bush and Judge Gilman by President Bill Clinton. Judge Taylor, the district court judge, was appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We are deeply disappointed,” the group’s legal director, Steven R. Shapiro, said in a statement, “by today’s decision that insulates the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails.”

Mr. Shapiro said the group is weighing its options, including the possibility of appealing to the United States Supreme Court.

Report: U.K. Bomb Plot Suspects Eyed U.S.

2007-07-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

An Iraqi doctor is the first suspect to be charged in attempting bombings in London and Glasgow, AP reports.

Bilal Abdullah, 27, is believed to have been riding in a Jeep Cherokee that was loaded with gasoline canisters and driven into Glasgow's airport last Saturday. "I have now made the decision that there is sufficient evidence and authorized the charging of Bilal Abdullah with conspiracy to cause explosions following incidents in London and Glasgow," said British prosecutor Susan Hemming.

BBC News has just obtained new video of the Glasgow crash; it contains graphic images.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that two of the doctors being held in the attacks may have attempted to come to the United States. Sources said Mohammed Jamil Asha, 26, and a suspect who hasn't been identified inquired about enrolling in graduate medical programs with the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, a national organization based in Philadelphia.

Staff revolt shakes Hurricane Center, but director stays for now

2007-07-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

MIAMI -- When there is tension at the National Hurricane Center, it's usually because a powerful storm is bearing down on Miami, New Orleans or some other U.S. city. But the turmoil these days is focused on demands from many staffers that new Director Bill Proenza be ousted.

Proenza said in an interview Friday he has no intention of resigning but will if his bosses feel it is best for the center and the public. About half the center's employees say Proenza has undermined the public's confidence in them by exaggerating the forecasting problems they would face if an aging weather satellite failed.

Staffers and the man who was led them since January were able to agree on one thing - the center is still capable of protecting coastal residents from hurricanes as the Atlantic season nears its traditionally busiest months.

"With or without the satellite, you are safe," senior hurricane specialist Lixion Avila said. "The center is going to work with Proenza, without Proenza."

But the tension was palpable as reporters camped outside the concrete bunker-like building. Proenza gave an interview no more than 20 feet from his forecasters, who quietly went on with their work - behind a glass wall with shades drawn. The room where media usually transmits word of a storm's dangers was instead the scene of an internal dispute gone public.

Avila said he just wants the situation to be resolved so he and his fellow forecasters can focus on their work. Twenty-three staffers released a statement Thursday night urging the Commerce Department, of which the center is part, to appoint a new leader now.

"Nobody's happy about doing what we did," senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said. "We tried so hard not to go this route. There are costs involved, but the costs of not speaking up for the nation's hurricane program were higher in the long run."

Proenza blamed many of the problems on a Commerce Department team sent this week to review the center's management and organizational structure and ability to provide accurate and timely information. The team's report is due by July 20.

Proenza said some staffers felt pressure by the team's presence and joined the call for his ouster because they did not want to be seen aligned with him.

"We may have some disagreements in the philosophy of making changes at the hurricane center in the future as far as what we want for new capability, new science and technology," Proenza said. "Does that justify removing someone?"

Proenza, 62, said if his superiors asked him to resign, he would respect that decision and would help his replacement ensure a smooth transition. After a 40-year government weather service career, Proenza took over from Max Mayfield, who was praised by his former colleagues.

Proenza said his boss, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Conrad Lautenbacher, had given him "no guarantees" about his future, but insisted the damage was repairable.

NOAA spokesman Anson Franklin said Proenza remained in charge of the hurricane center.

"We continue to have confidence in the abilities and professionalism of our forecasters. They will do the job they need to do," Franklin said. "It would be best if we all focused on (storm) preparedness at this point and let the assessment team complete its work."

Proenza has publicly criticized the government for failing to provide enough funding, particularly to replace an aging weather satellite and increase research. He also said NOAA has spent money on an anniversary celebration while cutting research money.

But staff members say he is misrepresenting the satellite problem, and they worry the consequences of his campaign to replace it could hurt their forecasting abilities.

James Franklin, the forecaster, said Proenza had misrepresented what would happen if a key satellite called QuikScat failed. It is now past its expected life span, and Proenza has argued that tracking forecasts could be up to 16 percent less accurate without it.

"He has been very loudly saying if it failed our forecasts for landfalling storms would be degraded, that warning areas would need to be expanded," Franklin said. "None of that is the case, and he knows that we feel that way. The science is not there to back up the claims that he's making."

Avila and Franklin say they depend on QuikScat more for intensity information and not as much on a storm's track. Avila said the satellite was like a BMW with leather seats: nice but not essential. When asked if he thought Proenza misspoke intentionally, he said: "Don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity."

Franklin worried that Proenza's statements would result in inferior technology hastily being substituted for QuikScat, possibly funded with money pulled from reconnaissance flights sent to investigate Atlantic storms.

The International Association of Emergency Managers maintained its support for Proenza, but "we're quite concerned that his employees have turned on him," said Larry Gispert, the group's first vice president. The association is a nonprofit organization of nearly 3,000 emergency management professionals from local, state and federal governments, military, private industry and volunteer organizations.

Still, Gispert urged NOAA to resolve the situation quickly.

"This stuff could have gone on either preseason or after the season," Gispert said.

Proenza said whether he stays or goes, the hurricane center will still function well.

"Everybody has gone into a frenzy of concern and I can understand why. But it's interesting to note that despite that frenzy of concern, that everybody is still working well together," Proenza said.

Microsoft May Spend $1 Billion to Fix Defective Xbox 360s

2007-07-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE — In another setback for Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) unprofitable entertainment and devices division, the company says it is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360 video game console.

Microsoft declined to detail the problems that have caused an onslaught of "general hardware failures" in recent months but said Thursday it will extend the warranty on the consoles to three years.

The glitches, and the bad publicity, could weigh the company down as it claws for market share in the highly competitive console market.

In May, the Xbox 360 ranked No. 2 in unit sales behind Nintendo's Wii, but still beat out Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3, according to data from NPD Group.

"We don't think we've been getting the job done," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player, a distant competitor to Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) powerhouse iPod. "In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking."

Bach said the company made some manufacturing and production changes that he expects will reduce Xbox 360 hardware lockups, but he declined to identify the problems or say which others might remain.

Microsoft said it will record a charge of up to $1.15 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, to cover the additional costs associated with the warranty extension.

The news comes just days before the video game industry descends on Santa Monica, Calif., for its annual E3 conference, and it could overshadow Microsoft's plans to build buzz for holiday season video game releases and "Halo 3," a much-anticipated shoot-'em-up for the Xbox 360 set to launch in September.

The software maker also said Thursday that sales of the game console fell short of expectations for the fiscal year that just ended.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, estimates that Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $6 billion since 2002.

Microsoft has written down larger amounts in the past — more than $10 billion in the late 1990s related to investments in telecommunications companies, and more than $5 billion related to antitrust issues — but a $1 billion write-down for one division in one quarter is significant.

"It suggests the problem is pretty widespread," Rosoff said.

Microsoft will pay for shipping and repairs for three years, worldwide, for consoles that experience hardware failure, which is usually indicated by three flashing red lights on the front of the console, something gamers sometimes refer to as "the red ring of death."

This isn't the first time Microsoft has made changes to the Xbox 360 repair plan. Last December, the company extended the warranty from 90 days to one year for U.S. customers. In Europe, the warranty previously expired after two years.

Microsoft also will reimburse the "small number" of Xbox 360 owners who have paid for shipping and repairs on out-of-warranty consoles, Bach said.

In June, bloggers speculated that the Xbox 360 return problem was getting so severe that the company was running out of "coffins," or special return-shipping boxes Microsoft provides to gamers with dead consoles.

"We'll make sure we have plenty of boxes to go back and forth," Bach said in an interview.

Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in a conference call that the company sold 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles since the product's November 2005 launch, missing a target for 12 million units by the end of the fiscal year.

Xbox 360 prices range from $299 to $479, depending on their configuration.

Microsoft's entertainment and devices division reported an operating loss of $315 million on $929 million in sales for the three-month period that ended in March. Microsoft has said it expects the division to post a profit in fiscal 2008.

Microsoft announced the warranty extension after markets closed Thursday. Microsoft shares fell 11 cents to $29.88 in extended trading after falling 3 cents to $29.99 in the regular session.

Russia Plays Whack-A-Mole With Download Sites

2007-07-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW — A music download site that was the poster child for U.S. anti-piracy crusaders and an obstacle to Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization has been shut down by Russian authorities, according to the U.S. government.

The victory, however, was short lived: The same company behind Allofmp3.com has launched a similar site that resembles the shuttered service, provides the same legal disclaimers and sells songs at a fraction of the price of iTunes.

Moscow prosecutors declined to comment on whether allofmp3.com had been shut down, leaving it unclear if the government was behind the site's disappearance.

But the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington said Russian authorities severed the connection between the company, Media Services, and its Internet service provider, Master Host, using a court order.

"This action follows months and years of the U.S. government, Congress and industry urging Russia to step up its protection of intellectual property," Gretchen Hamel, spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative, said in a statement.

Last week's unplugging of allofmp3.com coincided with talks this week between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in the United States.

That fueled speculation that Russia was demonstratively clamping down on its online piracy problem in a bid to sweeten relations that have soured amid disagreements on Kosovo and a planned U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Allofmp3 has been cast as the epitome of Russia's shoddy copyright enforcement and repeatedly held up by U.S. trade negotiators as imperiling Moscow's WTO bid.

But a sister site has quietly emerged from the wings.

Mp3sparks is run by the same Moscow-based company behind Allofmp3. Its director, Vadim Mamotin, has insisted that its Web sites are 100 percent legitimate.

Aside from the color scheme, the new site's interface is virtually identical to allofmp3.com.

Its disclaimer is similar, too: "MediaServices pays license fees for all materials downloaded from the site subject to the Law of the Russian Federation," it says.

A call to the contact number listed on the site reached the puzzled receptionist at a company selling wooden flooring.

"Why do people keep calling here?" said the woman, who did not give her name.

Mamotin maintains that by paying royalties to a Russian licensing group, allofmp3.com was in compliance with Russian laws.

The Western music industry contends, however, that the licensing group never had the permission of record labels to collect and distribute royalties on their behalf.

This fall, Visa International and MasterCard Inc. stopped accepting credit card transactions for purchases made at MediaServices' sites and a slew of Western record labels are suing the company, which is already the focus of three copyright violation cases in Russia.

The music companies contend that MediaServices' sites sell millions of songs by their artists without paying them anything. Media reports have put the company's annual revenues from allofmp3.com at $18 million to $30 million.

"Allofmp3.com violated copyright law in Russia and internationally by ripping off artists and taking music it had no right to sell worldwide," said Igor Pozhitkov, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Russia. "The apparent closure is a positive move which recognizes what we have always stated — that the site is illegal. But this is not the end of the story — Russia is a huge source of Internet piracy."

He would not name any sites he considers pirates, however, on the grounds that it would amount to advertising them.

Oleg Nezus, the head of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, the disputed licensing body which collected the royalties from MediaServices, said he had not received fees from allofmp3.com for months.

Nezus provided a 2004 decision by the Moscow Arbitration Court that obliges his organization to represent MediaServices. He said he has tried to distribute "substantial" contributions among rights holders, but has been rebuffed.

He confirmed that his organization had a licensing agreement with mp3spark.com.

FBI Probing Threat to Goldman Sachs That Says 'Hundreds Will Die'

2007-07-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK — The FBI is investigating anonymous threats against the Goldman Sachs investment firm that were mailed to newspapers around the country, but does not consider the threats to be of "high credibility," The Associated Press has learned.

The handwritten letters, which were penned in red ink on loose-leaf paper and mailed to 20 newspapers, contained the warning, "Hundreds will die. We are inside. You cannot stop us." The letters were signed "A.Q.U.S.A."

A federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told the AP on Friday that the FBI "does not assign high credibility to the threat" because of the circumstances surrounding the letters including their brevity and the nonspecific nature of the threat.

Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, said the investment firm was working closely with law enforcement authorities, adding that authorities told the firm they don't believe the threat is credible.

"We take any threat to the safety to our people seriously," DuVally said Friday. "We have a broad range of security measures in place to counter all likely threats and we're monitoring the situation closely."

New York FBI spokesman James Margolin said the bureau was trying to determine the origin of the letters. "All threats are taken seriously," he said.

The letters, which were postmarked in late June from the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx, were being analyzed by FBI and U.S. Postal inspectors at the FBI crime lab in Washington, D.C., and at the postal service lab in Dulles, Va., said Tom Boyle, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

A second investigator familiar with the case told the AP it may be difficult to isolate the fingerprints of whoever sent the letters because others have touched the envelopes since they were deposited in a neighborhood mailbox.

Investigators also will be looking for DNA evidence that may have been contained in saliva left when the envelopes were sealed. In addition, they will be examining the postal bar codes routinely stamped on letters to pinpoint exactly where the letters entered the mail stream.

The letters were mostly sent to smaller newspapers in Seattle; Boise, Idaho; Corpus Christi, Texas; Fort Wayne, Ind., and Bayonne, N.J. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. is the largest newspaper to have received one of the letters; theirs was postmarked June 27.

The newspapers notified local law enforcement agencies after receiving the letters and in some cases also alerted Goldman Sachs directly, law enforcement officials said.

Goldman Sachs did not receive any of the threatening letters, Boyle said.

Goldman Sachs is based in New York, and has offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other cities. About 3,000 people work in its 44-story Jersey City tower.

Americans Celebrate Independence Day With FireWorks

2007-07-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

President Bush is calling on Americans to be patient, as the U.S. troop buildup takes effect in Iraq. Mr. Bush spoke at an Independence Day event in the state of West Virginia -- as Americans across the country celebrated the July 4th [Independence Day] holiday. VOA White House Correspondent Paula Wolfson has more.

Americans celebrated the Fourth of July with parades, fireworks and a sense of caution.

Just days after attempted car bombings in Britain, security was tight in major U.S. cities where large crowds gathered for the holiday.

At an appearance before military personnel and their families, President Bush spoke of the importance of meeting the terrorist threat, both at home and abroad.

"In the war against radicals and extremists, in this war on terror, you are showing that the courage that won our independence more than two centuries ago is alive and well here in West Virginia," said Mr. Bush in his speech.

The president defended his Iraq policy and urged Americans to be patient as additional U.S. forces join a troop surge.

"We must succeed for our own sake. For the security of our citizens, we must support our troops. We must support the Iraqi government and we must defeat al-Qaida in Iraq."

The president returned by mid-day to a Washington already packed with holiday visitors.

They gathered under unusually tight security. Those hoping for a prime spot to view the fireworks passed through security checkpoints that ringed the vast lawn between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument.

"It's kind of funny (strange) because I think the intent of the terrorists was to remove and scare us,” said one citizen at a checkpoint. “But if you look around, I don't see, to be honest, I don't see any fewer people. I don't see people walking around afraid."

This July Fourth marked the passing of 231 years since the U.S. declared its independence from Britain. And in Washington and elsewhere, Americans joined in one big national birthday party.

Women talk most? Shut your mouth!

2007-07-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Women gossip. They natter incessantly with girlfriends on the phone. They want the full scoop. The details.

As for men, there's that whole strong, silent-type thing. And when they get home from work they're more interested in a ballgame than relating the day's events. So it stands to reason that women talk a lot more than men, right?

Wrong.

A University of Texas at Austin psychologist and his colleagues appear to have laid to rest the long-standing myth that women talk more than men. Their study of 400 male and female students in the United States and Mexico found that males and females both say about 16,000 words a day, or 17 words a minute during waking hours.

The new research, to be published Friday in the journal Science, shatters a recently popularized myth that women speak about 20,000 words a day compared to the 7,000 of men.

"The culture is convinced there are these big differences," said the study's senior author, James Pennebaker, chairman of UT's psychology department. "But no one has ever bothered to ask where the numbers came from."

Pennebaker said the inspiration to put the numbers to the test came less than a year ago as he read a Q&A in the New York Times between noted interviewer Deborah Solomon and Dr. Louann Brizendine, a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Brizendine had written a book called "The Female Brain," which makes a biological case for "feminine behaviors" such as chatterboxing. During the course of the interview, the 20,000-7,000 figure came up, which was widely circulated in the media after the book's publication.

"I just knew that couldn't be right," said Pennebaker who studies the use of language and emotion.

During the last decade, he and his students have developed a digital voice recorder that unobtrusively tracks people's real-world conversations. Programmed to automatically record for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, participants don't know when the device is on.

The group had previously conducted six language studies in the United States and Mexico — none specifically for tallying spoken words — during which participants had worn the devices for up to 10 days. Pennebaker and his students, including former pupil Matthias Mehl who is now at the University of Arizona, realized they already had the perfect database for testing Brizendine's theory.

Their final count showed men speaking more in three of the studies, and women more in the other three. The final count had women saying more words than men, 16,215 to 15,669, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Although the life of a college student may differ from other walks of life, psychologists generally agree that if strong differences in talkativeness between the sexes existed, they would have come out in the research.

Brizendine, for her part, readily conceded the point after seeing the new study.

"The most interesting part now becomes now, why, indeed, has that particular myth been so persistent?" Brizendine said of women talking more than men.

It's a question no one can answer with certainty. Any guesses — do men think women talk more because they're trying to focus on the football game? — are bound to start more myths rather than debunk them.

At the same time, Brizendine lightheartedly noted that men would do well to retain rather than dispel the women-talk-too-much myth. Before the study, she said, American men coming home from work could plausibly tell their wives they talked too much and had some cause to ask their wives for peace and quiet.

"Now," she said, "That's no longer an excuse."

The source of Brizendine's usage of the the 20,000-7,000 split, which she dropped in subsequent editions after psychologists complained about the book's first printing, remains a more serious matter to some scholars. Brizendine said she relied on a "variety of secondary sources," but no scientific study in particular.

That's because no original scientific sources exist for such a claim, said Mark Liberman, a professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.

His own inquiry found the earliest use of the figures by James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who employed it as a "guesstimate."

"My current belief is that this started as someone's idea of a plausible estimate, and was turned into a false scientific factoid by writers who like to misuse the authority of science," he said.

Analysis of spoken words by Pennebaker and others have over-turned other myths, such as the fact that men are perceived to be more self-important than women. In fact, according to Pennebaker's records, women used "I" more than men did.

"There's no question that many real differences among such groups exist, but popular discussions of such differences have a very high ratio of fantasy to reality," Liberman said.

"My advice: when a pop psychologist or journalist starts to tell you something about the biological or social differences between groups — men vs. women, old people vs. young people, black people vs. white people — put your hand on your wallet."

Siege at Pakistan Mosque Continues

2007-07-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 5 — A hard core of militants numbering in the dozens remained holed up in the beseiged Red Mosque complex today as Pakistani forces continued to exert pressure on them. Three helicopter gunships hovered over the religious seminary affiliated with the mosque, and security forces exchanged fire with militants inside.

The interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, said today that 50 to 60 people remained inside the mosque, while more than 700 male and 400 female students who had been inside had surrendered. The minister said the death toll had risen to 19 people killed in clashes with the security forces around the mosque, which started on Tuesday.

Around 3 o’clock this morning several large explosions, mortar fire and a heavy exchange of gunfire could be heard coming from the area of the mosque, indicating that some kind of military operation was under way.

Pakistani security forces arrested one of the leaders of the rebellion on Wednesday as he tried to escape disguised in a burqa, the long, concealing robe that many pious Muslim women wear. Today, the arrested leader, Maulana Abdul Aziz, called for those remaining inside the mosque to flee or surrender, The Associated Press reported. He is the elder of the two brothers leading the uprising.

Mr. Sherpao said that there would be no negotiations with the younger brother, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, who is believed to still be inside the complex.

“He should surrender unconditionally,” Mr. Sherpao said.

The religious complex was founded by the brothers’ father, a famous jihadi leader who was assassinated in 1998.

Seven of the people leaving the complex today were arrested and blindfolded. “They are suspected hardcore militants,” said Col. Muhammad Ali of the Pakistan Army Rangers. “I don’t know what their objectives were. We are investigating.”

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, directed the security services today to be patient and to allow parents to safely take their daughters out of the school, known as Jamia Hafsa, according to the state-run news media.

The standoff at the mosque complex has been an embarrassment for the government since January, when radical students there began mounting a series of public challenges to General Musharraf, calling for the imposition of Islamic sharia law throughout Pakistan.

Western diplomats and General Musharraf’s political opponents here say that the general has failed to stand up to the Islamic extremists, and that their widening influence threatens the security of the country, which is on the front line of American-led efforts to battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

After a bloody and chaotic day on Tuesday, the government moved in heavy armor and more Pakistani Army Rangers overnight, imposing a curfew around the mosque, also known as Lal Masjid, which lies just a few blocks from the main government offices in Islamabad.

Those remaining inside the mosque were given a deadline of 11 a.m. Wednesday to lay down their weapons and surrender. The authorities cut off the power in the area and demanded that nearby residents stay in their houses.

Popular feeling seemed to be turning against the radical leaders on Wednesday. Relatives of students who attended the separate male and female schools inside the mosque compound said they had not been aware that weapons were kept in the complex.

Security forces announced over a loudspeaker that the government would give each student 5,000 rupees (about $82) and arrange for alternative education in government-run schools if they left the mosque complex peacefully.

“We ensure no action against women and children and those who were not involved in any unlawful activity, and promise them a safe passage and 5,000 rupees each, by President Pervez Musharraf, as expenses for traveling to their homes,” the minister of state for information and broadcasting, Tariq Azim Khan, said at a news conference Wednesday.

Gut feeling

2007-07-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

"Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more --
That's all that we live for"
--Oliver

New York

May I be frank? I'm no fan of Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest.

Excuse me for sounding like a puritan -- or a vegan -- but is an event in which you are rewarded for eating your own vomit really a sport? And if so, shouldn't Joe Rogan be hosting it?

Look, I get it. I watched Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi ingest 66 and 63 wieners in 12 minutes, respectively (if not respectably) on the 4th of July. It's a spectacle. When ESPN color commentator Rich Shea declared, "Possibly tommorow you'll look up American Hero and find pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Neil Armstrong, Taylor Hicks and Joey Chestnut," I laughed.

Shea, who is also the president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, had tongue firmly planted in cheek (and, in case you're wondering, the world record for tongue eating is held by Dominic Cardo, who ingested three pounds, three ounces of pickled beef tongue in 12 minutes).

But after witnessing Chestnut and Kobayashi both figuratively and literally make pigs of themselves on Wednesday, I have to ask: Are we a nation with a competitive eating disorder?

Baked beans. Brains (cow). Burritos. Doughnuts and dumplings. Turkey, chicken and even turducken. Meatballs and matzohs. Peas and pizza. Ham. And Spam. There's a competitive eating contest -- and corresponding record -- for every item in the pantry, an opportunity for some sweaty swallower to make a mark indelible on an item edible.

I don't want to regurgitate all the old beefs: that competitive eating contests only confirm the rest of the planet's worst assumptions of us; that it is immoral to mass-consume when half of the world is starving … and the other is obese; that gluttony is no more of a sport worthy to be televised than is onanism, the old mastication versus masturbation debate.

I do, however, want to ask why so many in the media, especially television broadcasters, seem to salivate at the very notion of discussing the Nathan's event. Why talking heads from ESPN to CNBC seemed to celebrate Chestnut's gustatory feat Thursday morning, as if he had accomplished something greater than simple gluttony.

Is it extraordinary, what Chestnut did? Of course. So is hawking a loogie 30 yards, or farting at a decibel-level that would drown out AC/DC performing "TNT" live (or, at the very least, compel Angus Young to flee the stage). Or pulling out your own Nathan's Famous and seeing what type of distance you can get with your own spray zone. All feats, I should mention, that I at least attempted in college. As did you, probably.

But, as competitive eating hurls toward its first ingesticide -- and I'm not including the 28 year-old Sacramento woman who died after imbibing too much water as part of a radio station competition earlier this year -- I just cannot stomach the Ken Brockman-esque approach that talking heads take to reporting this story. Is there even one anchor out there with the guts (all puns intended, of course) to say that binging, as an organized sport (check out IFOCE's or Major League Eating's websites), is just demented and sad? And, furter-more, that just because ESPN televises something does not mean it's a sport?

A few years ago my friend Adam and I found ourselves in South Bend, Indiana (home of the Fighting Irish), on St. Patrick's Day. To celebrate the occasion, we headed straight to McDonald's and challenged one another to a "Shamrock Shakedown." We purchased three super-sized shamrock shakes apiece and engaged in a seven-minute all-you-can-drink competition. Adam, a superior imbiber, should have won, but he was the hare to my tortoise. And so he fell prey to brain freeze.

As our competition was nearing its close, a McDonald's employee approached us. "Please leave," she said. "You're grossing out the other customers."

She was right, of course. The superlatives of human digestion, be it the size of one's appetite or the result of such ("Dude, look at the length of that loaf I just pinched!") are best left to your own, and your closest frat buddies', entertainment. But, as I watched Kobayashi place his hands over his mouth to cover his own vomit -- not out of any regard for your viewing pleasure, but simply so that he could force it back down his throat to avoid disqualification -- I wondered why that was any more fit for television than a Pee Wee Herman peep show visit.

Please, if you find yourself sitting in your dorm room and have the urge to 1) down a gallon of milk in one hour, 2) eat two pieces of white bread, unlubricated, in less than a minute or 3) swallow three packets of Saltine crackers in 60 seconds, by all means, do it. The experience is enhanced if you wager on it, and, more importantly, you are not sitting in your room alone.

But don't expect me to pat you on the back for it. Unless you're choking.

Great moments in pop culture gluttony:

M*A*S*H
Corporal Maxwell Klingler, in his most inspired attempt to earn a Section Eight discharge from the army, consumes an entire Jeep.

Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life"
A seriously obese diner is coaxed, after ingesting an egregiously sumptuous feast, into swallowing a tiny after-dinner mint. The diner explodes.

Stand By Me
Gordie relates the tale of Lardass Hogan, who exacts revenge on his tormentors by turning a pie-eating contest into a full-blown "barf-o-rama".

The Simpsons
Homer sues an all-you-can-eat restaurant after it runs out of food before his hunger has been sated. His attorney, the irrepressibly slimy Lionel Hutz, asks the jury, "Do those sound like the words of a man who's had ALL he can eat?"

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
A veritable parable against gluttony, avarice and ill-tempered brats.

The Great Outdoors

Chet Ripley (John Candy) visits a steakhouse and wolfs down "the ol' 96er," a 96-ounce steak, so that the rest of his family can dine for free.

Domenici Breaks with Bush War Policy

2007-07-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Sen. Pete Domenici (N.M.), a 36-year Republican veteran of the Senate, abandoned President Bush's Iraq war policy today by publicly endorsing legislation designed to withdraw nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008.

Domenici, a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, is the fourth senior Senate Republican to sharply criticize Bush's war strategy in the past two weeks. He announced during a press conference in Albuquerque that he was co-sponsoring legislation that would embrace the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for a major redeployment that would leave only a limited number of troops in Iraq to focus on counter-terror operations and securing the border.

"I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

Domenici's defection is the latest from a growing number of senior Senate Republicans who have decided to oppose the White House's preferred plan of waiting for a mid-September progress report on the effectiveness of Bush's "surge" plan of boosting the U.S. deployment in Iraq this year by tens of thousands of troops.

Rather than wait for that report, to be drafted by the administration, Domenici and other senior Republicans have called for a change in course this summer in advance of the coming legislative fight this month in the Senate on the authorization bill for the Pentagon.

"I am unwilling to continue our current strategy," Domenici said flatly, blaming the Iraqi government for its inability to get its internal administration in order.

Early last week Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the leading Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a rebuke to the White House with a more than 5,000-word address on the Senate floor declaring that the surge was not working and that the "current path" on Iraq was not acceptable. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, applauded Lugar's speech and said he would offer his own amendments calling for a change in policy during the defense authorization debate next week.

And Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) also endorsed a call for withdrawing troops, sending a letter to Bush personally making that request.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to force Republicans into abandoning Bush on a series of votes on Iraq. As of now, he appears to be short of the two-thirds votes needed to over-ride a presidential veto of legislation setting a withdrawal date, but the statements from Domenici and the other senators give momentum to Democrats upon which they hope to build.

Specifically, Domenici endorsed a bill written by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) that adopts the 79 recommendations from the Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), as the policy of the United States.

Piracy police raid Honeywell site

2007-07-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is investigating allegations of an extensive illegal music filesharing ring at a Honeywell plant in Scotland.
Investigators from the BPI raided the plant in Motherwell with police officers at 0840 BST yesterday morning.

The investigators made copies of the contents of computers for detailed forensic analysis.

Honeywell said that it was cooperating fully with both the police and the BPI over the investigation.

Legal boundaries

The BPI says the raid follows a two-month investigation prompted by a tip-off from a Honeywell employee.

The BPI said the information from the insider pointed to "thousands of music files being shared illegally".

This is the first time that the BPI has raided a business in pursuit of illegal music filesharing. Previous such raids have concentrated on domestic filesharing.

It is illegal to copy and distribute songs on an internal company computer network but no company has yet been prosecuted due to such activites taking place on its premises.
A number of Honeywell employees are assisting the police with their enquiries and a report will be submitted to the the Procurator Fiscal, Scotland's official prosecutor.

Ann Van Hooydonck, a Honeywell spokeswoman in Europe, said the company "considers copyright infringement a very serious matter" and has policies aimed at preventing piracy on its premises.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor stressed the legal liabilities of businesses that do not put strict policies in place to prevent staff copying and distributing music on company equipment.

"Filesharing music in the workplace is illegal, misuses company resources, wastes employees' time and introduces network security risks," Mr Taylor said.

He pointed out that failure to put an anti-piracy policy in place "could expose the company, and the employees concerned, to the risk of civil proceedings or a criminal investigation."

Filesharing is illegal if the music is copyrighted and permission has not been sought.

The Motherwell plant manufactures electronic building control systems.

Sensitive giant probes atomic world

2007-07-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

Sensitive giant probes atomic world
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

City-dwelling scientists wanting to escape the cacophony of urban life could do worse than land a job at the home of the UK's most powerful microscope.

The vault in which the behemoth is housed is buried deep under the streets that flank the Albert Hall in London.

Once the double doors - designed to eliminate contamination of all kind, not just noise - suck shut, the room takes on the air of a mausoleum.

Even the technicians and scientists gathered at the base of Titan, as the microscope is known, talk in hushed, respectful tones.

But their silence is not just for the benefit of their fellow academics, it is an operational requirement of the machine.

"If the sample drifts, it kills the experiment," said Dr David McComb of Imperial College London, where the microscope is housed.

With a machine that is able to image individual atoms, even the vibrations caused by talking too loudly are enough to shunt a sample. When scientists are operating at such small scales, tiny shifts can appear huge.

"The drift rate has got to be better than one nanometre per minute," he explained.

One nanometre is a billionth of a metre.

"It's about how much your finger nail grows in one minute," said Dr James Perkins, one of the research scientists who use the sensitive giant to probe the atomic structure of the world.

Random scatter

Titan is a transmission electron microscope, the first of its kind in the UK and one of only a handful found in labs around the world.

Its maker, FEI Company, says it is the most powerful commercially available scope on the market.

When it is running at full power it will be used to probe everything from new materials for ultra fast computers to tissue samples that may shed light on diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The £2.4m ($4.8m) scope is capable of imaging objects just 0.14 nanometres in diameter, useful for probing the atomic structure and chemistry of materials.

It works by firing electrons through an incredibly thin sample, just microns (one millionth of a metre) thick, and observing the changes to the particles as they pass through and out the other side.

"What happens to the electrons tells us about how the atoms were arranged in the sample," said Dr McComb.

In essence, the trajectories of the electrons can be mapped, like snooker balls scattering on a table. Knowing their trajectory as they exit allows scientists to build up a picture of the internal structure of the sample.

In addition, measuring the energy lost by electrons gives scientists clues about the identity of the atoms in the sample and how they bond together.

"That is enormously powerful," said Dr McComb.

Research boost

The machine has been bought by the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) using money from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

It was installed in August 2006 and should soon be running at full power.

Already there is a raft of projects that could use the super-scope.

Medical researchers, for example, hope to use it to uncover the secrets of bone disease.

"Clearly, if we want to tackle diseases like osteoporosis, we need new drugs and clinical trials," said Dr McComb.

"But in order to develop those we also need to understand the process of osteoporosis. We need to understand how bone and tissue interact and why that process changes as we get older."

Teams have proposed to use Titan to examine the microscopic and chemical changes on the surfaces of bones in both healthy and diseased tissue.

Other teams want to understand the role of iron metabolism in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

"We are not quite sure what the state of the iron is or how it interacts with the tissues in the brain," said Dr McComb. "But if we can understand that then potentially we can feed that into research into something that can disrupt or modify that process."

Researchers from LCN are also queuing up to test new materials for efficient fuel cells and catalysts, as well as examining the atomic structure of semiconductors to optimise or boost their performance in future computers.

Eventually, the knowledge gained will also allow scientists to start building materials atom by atom.

"We're ramping up, we're starting to get results," said Dr McComb. "I expect over the summer we'll really start rocketing."

Hackers lift the bonnet on iPhone

2007-07-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Hackers lift the bonnet on iPhone

Hordes of hackers and security researchers have been poring over Apple's iPhone in an effort to discover vulnerabilities in the handsets.
Top of their list has been cracking the code that ties the phone to operator AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive network.

If successful, it would allow iPhone owners the ability to use their handset on other networks, including in Europe.

Some have already worked out ways to activate the phone without having to register it with AT&T through iTunes.

One prominent hacker, Jon Lech Johansen, has published an activation tool on his website.

Mr Johansen - better known as DVD Jon - rose to fame at the age of 15 when he wrote and distributed a program that cracked the encryption codes on DVDs.

Although the new tool allows people to switch on the device and use many of its functions, it does not allow users to make phone calls.

"There are people who want an iPhone to use it as an iPod and wi-fi device without having to enter into a two-year AT&T contract," wrote Mr Johansen on his blog.

Video nasty

He is one of a community of technophiles probing the much-hyped gadget. Researchers at Errata Security say they have exposed a flaw in the gadget's web browser that could allow a hacker some control over the phone.

The flaw in the Safari browser is the same as one Errata discovered earlier this year in a test version of the program designed to run on Microsoft Windows.

However, the firm's chief executive Robert Graham noted that the handsets were less vulnerable than other products.

"We think the iPhone is inherently more secure than competing smartphones - such as those based on Windows Mobile or Symbian," he wrote on his blog.

In particular, Mr Graham said that the phone's ability to receive updates when connected to iTunes was a "good sign" and a measure that would provide an extra level of security to the phone.

But not all investigations of the long-awaited gadget have been so measured.

Within hours of it going on sale, photos and videos appeared on the web showing the inner workings of disassembled phones.

Apple parts and repair site Ifixit.com, conducted one of the most clinical dismantling, posting numerous of high-quality photos alongside technical commentary.

But others were more amateur. One video on YouTube called iPhone smash showed two people taking the phone apart with a hammer.

The video has so far been viewed over 300,000 times and has generated a mixture of support and outrage.

Scamming the Spammers

2007-07-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Scamming the Spammers
Internet spammers are creative, but so are the people devoted to catching them
June 7, 2007 Issue

Spam -- those unwanted, illegal emails that clog inboxes worldwide with pleas from deposed princes or secrets to boosting sexual performance -- is notoriously hard to stop. Even as investigators hail the recent capture of Robert Soloway, the 27-year-old known as the "Spam King," who is accused of sending millions of unwanted emails, Jennifer LeClaire of the technology news service NewsFactor.com reports that internet security experts believe the volume of spam will "remain unchanged."

In response to this onslaught of spam, Ron Rosenbaum of the Atlantic (Subscription required) reports that a culture of counter-con artists known as "scam-baiters" has emerged to fight the spammers themselves. Rosenbaum focuses on one group known as 419 Eater, which claims more than 20,000 registered members. The anti-spam crusaders focus their efforts on the notorious Nigerian-style email scam run by "419 scammers" -- named after the Nigerian penal code for fraud (419) -- who send out mass emails promising access to a vast African fortune in order to lure money from unsuspecting victims.

The 419 Eater community tries to "reverse this dynamic," Rosenbaum reports, and scam the scammers. Members respond to Nigerian-style emails, "simply to waste their time and resources," according to the group's website. Scam-baiters play the role of an unwitting victim who is tantalizingly close to sending in money. "Blinded by the same greed that blinds their marks," Rosenbaum writes, scammers are enticed into a series of time-consuming and often humiliating tasks deemed necessary for the financial transaction. Scammers have taken long trips (known as "safaris") to collect promised money, many have posed for humiliating photos, and some have even been fooled into transcribing lengthy novels (such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter adventures) entirely by hand. One particularly gullible scammer carved an intricate wooden sculpture of a computer after a scam-baiter posed as a representative of an art gallery. Evidence and photographs of successful scam-baiting is then posted on a part of the 419 Eater website known as the "trophy room."

The righteous veneer of the scam-baiters as "cyber-guardians" begins to wear off, according to Rosenbaum, when visiting this trophy room. Searching through the posted photos, it is not difficult to see a trend: Nearly every victim of the scam-baiters is black. The website states, "Scambaiting is not a racist activity. Anyone with racist views is most definitely NOT welcome on this site." But Rosenbaum points out that the rhetoric used by the 419 Eater of "owning" scammers (when a scam-baiting session is successful) is problematic.

If sites like the 419 Eater would simply, "[l]ose the trophy rooms," Rosenbaum argues, many of the racist undertones of the group would be dispelled. Humiliating photos do little to help the fight against internet fraud. Rosenbaum writes that the scam-baiters are "superhero-like" in their mission to protect innocent people from spam, but is quick to add, "I like my superheroes humble."