Coker Confidential™

Jonathan appoints man once cited for Islamic fundamentalism as new IGP

2012-01-30T00:03:00.000-08:00

Acting IGP Mohammed Abubakar

Controversy seems to be trailing the appointment of Mohammed Dikko Abubakar as Nigeria's new Inspector General of Police.

Abubakar's appointment has thrown up many posers instead of dousing fears over the nation's security as he had been in Plateau State crisis a year ago. The Justice Niki Tobi panel constituted in September 2001 by former Governor Joshua Dariye on the Jos crisis had recommended the retirement of Abubakar from the police force.

In a White Paper released in Jos, the panel suggested that Abubakar should be dismissed if he refused to retire.

The panel said: "Religious fanatics should not be posted to head state police commands. The commission recommends that for his ignoble role during the September 2001 crisis which resulted in the loss of lives, the former Commissioner of Police, Plateau State Command, Alhaji M.D. Abubakar, be advised to retire from the Nigeria Police Force and in the event of his refusal to do so, he should be dismissed from the service."

The Niki Tobi panel had reportedly indicted Abubakar, who is from Zamfara State, for alleged sponsorship of Islamist militant group when he was Commissioner of Police in Plateau State.

But a source said yesterday that the appointment of Abubakar as the Acting IGP was actually a testimony to his competent handling of the Jos crisis, his brilliance and respect for all parties in the Plateau crisis.

The Guardian gathered that a lot of consultations were made before the choice of Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar was made as the Police High Command boss.

It was unanimously agreed by the Federal Government that the person who should succeed Hafiz Ringim must be an operations man, therefore, the government combed the entire hierarchy of force and decided that Abubakar, who had distinguished himself in crises in various states should fit in into the office.

The Presidency was also said to have contacted veteran retired police officers like Mike Okiro, Parry Osayande and others who unanimously agreed on the choice of Abubakar. Also, traditional rulers including the Emir of Kano and the Oba of Lagos, a retired police officer himself was said to have preferred Abubakar as IGP.

Until yesterday when he became the Acting Inspector General of Police, Abubakar was an Assistant Inspector General of Police.

President Goodluck Jonathan who yesterday approved the appointment of Abubakar as Acting IGP also relieved six Deputy Inspectors General of Police of their jobs.

Presidential Spokesman, Reuben Abati, said in statement announcing the appointment of Abubakar that it "is a first step towards the comprehensive reorganisation and repositioning of the Nigeria Police Force to make it more effective and capable of meeting emerging internal security challenges."

Abubakar enlisted in the Nigeria Police Force on July 30, 1979. He was the AIG in charge of Zone 12 Headquarters in Bauchi, before his new appointment.

Source: Nigerian Guardian

"Dr Death" faces South Africa charges

2012-01-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

Face of a killer - Wouter Basin (AP File)

A South Africa court has rejected an application by "Dr Death" Wouter Basson for a discharge on four charges of unprofessional conduct.

Dr Basson is charged with producing illegal drugs in the apartheid era.

As head of the military's chemical and biological warfare division, he is accused of creating viruses that would only attack black people.

The Health Professions Council (HPC) has ruled that he does have a case to answer.

He could lose his medical licence.

The HPC granted Dr Basson a discharge on two of the charges and part of a third charge against him, but ruled that the hearing on four remaining charges should continue later this year.

HPC professional conduct committee chairman Jannie Hugo said it could not be said that there was no evidence on which a reasonable man could convict Dr Basson.

The man dubbed Dr Death escaped a criminal conviction in 2002, arguing that he had acted under orders of the South African Defence Force (SADF).

He is now a cardiologist in Cape Town.

But the HPC is investigating whether he should be struck off the doctor's roll for providing soldiers with cyanide capsules.

He is alleged to have provided security forces cyanide to help them commit suicide, "weaponising" thousands of 120mm mortar bombs with teargas, and providing drugs that would disorientate SADF prisoners

Dr Basson brought an application saying no evidence of wrongdoing had been brought against him.

"I closed this chapter 20 years ago," he told reporters outside the hearing at the HPC offices in Pretoria last year.

"All I want is to continue serving the country as a medical professional," he said at the time.

The hearing will continue on March 27.

Dr Basson's attorney Wynanda Coetzee, said she was "satisfied" with the ruling but had not yet decided if he would testify, reports say.

Republicans vow to protect high school dropouts from Barack Obama

2012-01-25T22:11:00.000-08:00

By Chris Moody | The Ticket

WASHINGTON -- High school dropouts, do not fear. The Republican Party will protect you from Barack Obama's efforts to keep you at your desk.

At his third State of the Union Address Tuesday night, the president challenged all states to ban children from dropping out of high school before they turn 18. "Tonight," Obama bellowed, "I am proposing that every state--every state--requires that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18."

Obama wasn't proposing a new federal program, but his use of the bully pulpit to tell local jurisdictions how to run their school districts was enough to make some Republicans, already sensitive to the increasing role of the federal government in education over the past few years, bristle.

"That's none of his business!" said Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee while speaking to reporters after the speech. "He's not a principal! He's not a public school teacher! He's not a governor, he's not a mayor. These are matters for state and local government."

Standing in Statuary Hall outside the House chamber, Lee, a senator whose rise to prominence was propelled by the tea party, went on to say that there was plenty in Obama's speech that made him want to scream, but he held his tongue.

"I did not want to be Joe Wilson!" Lee said. Meanwhile, Joe Wilson, who shouted "You Lie!" during a presidential address in 2009, was standing directly behind him, about three feet away.

Regulations on school attendance varies from state to state. Twenty states currently meet Obama's standards by restricting students from dropping out before they turn 18-years-old. Some states allow students to drop out at 16 with parental permission and others require an agreement from the school to let them go. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 8.1 percent of students nationwide dropped out of high school in 2009.

Other Republicans in the crowded hall, fed up with Obama's calls for a more intrusive federal system, lambasted the president for even making the suggestion.

"What are you gonna do, give them the electric chair?" asked Arizona Republican Trent Franks. "It should be handled on the parental level."

Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia, agreed, saying students should have the right to leave if they want to.

"To require them to stay in high school to age 18, those who have absolutely no intention of getting an education or value an education are disrupting the other kids in class. I think it's just a government misguided run amok quote honestly," Gingrey said.

There was, however, one Republican willing to stand up for Obama's call: High school dropout Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Issa, who left high school when he was 17-years-old to join the Army, took Obama's call to mean that the federal government should look into ways to encourage states to raise their age limits on dropping out, and he's fully behind it.

"I agree with him," Issa said. "The truth is that maintaining students from dropping out until they're 18, and every possible inducement, rather than getting rid of them at the first possible moment because they become a 'pest,' because perhaps they're not performing well. That could make a real difference in the level of education people get. Do I promote it? Yes."

"Leave no child behind?" he said. "That has a familiar ring to me as a Republican."

Mandate through the gun: Root cause of Jonathan's struggles with Boko Haram

2012-01-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

Nigeria's late President Yar'Adua

Editor's Viewpoint

There is no question that the "injustice" of decades past led to the subsequent birth of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta ("MEND").

MEND is one of the largest (if not the largest) militant groups in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The organization (essentially a terrorist organization) came into existence in the course of the last two decades, hinging its supposed "legitimacy" on the "exploitation and oppression" of the people of the Niger Delta region.

While it is true that untold devastation had been wrought on the natural environment in that region, MEND's position, as well as that of adjacent groups, would seem to suggest that the leadership of that region (Niger Delta) was not itself complicit in the culture of corruption, that basically ensured that the Federal Government turned a blind eye to the excesses of the foreign oil firms.

While one would not reasonably argue with the facts as they obtain, in relation to the lack of opportunities and economic underdevelopment prevalent in the Niger Delta, that should not give credence to the existence and activities of an organization such as MEND, that resorted to acts of terrorism in its perverted quest for justice.

The fact is that the Nigerian Government of the day struggled to contain MEND much like it is struggling to contain the dreaded Boko Haram Islamic militants.

The truth is that Boko Haram is not really an Islamic sect looking to force Islam on the people of Nigeria. On the contrary, this terrorist group is essentially the military wing of the Kaduna Mafia (now the Arewa Consultative Forum) with the main objective of reclaiming the leadership stake of the core North, in the Nigerian political theater.

According to unimpeachable intelligence sources, those behind Boko Haram are highly placed political figures (including former heads of state of Nigeria).

The problem though is that the monster they (the core Northern leaders) created, has taken on a life of its own.

Although these "usual suspects" have lost control of the group, they are secretly the top cheer leaders for the acts of terrorism and senseless violence the group continues to inflict on the Nigerian people.

President Jonathan knows who these people are and he said as much recently (although he is still technically lying through his teeth). They are essentially the pillars of his rogue administration who feel left out of the current political equation and are out to settle the score.

These "usual suspects" (mostly of Northern extraction) believe that the "Northern mandate" was stolen in the last elections (following the death of the late president Umar Musa Yar' Adua).

In Jonathan, they (the Northern leaders) see a man who was thrust on the people of Nigeria by the barrel of the gun.

As far as they are concerned, if it is okay to assuage for the perceived wrong deeds done to a certain section of the country, then they are more than justified to engage in the same acts of terrorism through a surrogate military wing, with the sole intent of having power shifted back to the core North.

There-in lies Mr. Jonathan's dilemma and the future of Nigeria as a single entity, hangs precariously in the balance, unless honest and well-meaning stake-holders of all ethnicity and background decide to take their country back.

The truth is that the current administration does not enjoy the support of the people that matter, the Nigerian masses.

When you couple that with the fact that there are many in the corridors of academia and influence within the Nigerian theater of operation, who see this current president as a "terrorist imposition", it remains a very tall order for this administration and maybe Nigeria, to survive.

Nigeria analysis: "Things Fall Apart".... Can the center hold?

2012-01-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Nigeria President G.E. Jonathan

By Tim Cocks | Reuters

LAGOS, NIGERIA - "Nigeria is not Animal Farm!" read one placard brandished during days of furious fuel price protests by Nigerians which have combined with a violent Islamist insurgency to moveAfrica's top oil producer closer to what many fear may be a breaking point.

The same political vices of corrupt leadership and abuse of power which George Orwell skewered in his 1945 novella "Animal Farm" have corroded Nigeria's politics since independence from Britain in 1960. Angry popular backlash against these is fuelling the latest violence and unrest in the African continent's most populous state.

This anti-establishment fury brought Africa's second largest economy to a standstill last week. Citizens from all walks of life have taken to the streets after President Goodluck Jonathan's government announced on January 1 it would scrap a motor fuel subsidy, more than doubling fuel prices.

The volcano of public rage has erupted at the same time that a spate of bombings and shootings by a shadowy Islamist sect is threatening to fracture the country's sensitive north-south, Muslim-Christian divide. This religious faultline has caused sectarian conflict claiming thousands of lives in the past.

Some are now asking whether this dynamic but troubled country of 160 million, carved by colonial rulers out of a jigsaw of ethnic and religious groups, can still hold together or risks plunging again into all-out conflict and even break-up.

Many still remember the divisive 1967-1970 civil war over secessionist Biafra that killed over a million people and caused mass starvation, dislocation and suffering.

"As the ripples of incessant bombings and massacres resonate ... fear, anger and hatred have been woven into the very fabric of the nation's life," Soni Daniel, deputy editor of Nigerian daily Leadership wrote in an editorial on Saturday.

"Nigeria has never come as close to the brink of civil war," he added.

The nationwide fuel protests have become an outlet for thousands to vent their grievances against what they see as a venal ruling political class and incompetent government, which is struggling to tackle an insurgency by the Boko Haram Islamist sect based in the largely Muslim north.

"The bottom line is we don't trust the government to do what they say anymore," said student Remi Sonaiya, sitting on a car blaring out Afrobeat music in the heaving Nigerian metropolis of Lagos, while protesters thrashed an effigy of President Jonathan across the face with leafy branches.

Unions launched strikes against the fuel subsidy removal and these are estimated to be costing the country $600 million a day. They have also threatened to shut down Nigeria's 2 million barrel-per-day oil industry, rattling global energy markets.

Talks between Jonathan and labor unions on Saturday failed to reach a compromise, and the unions said the crippling strikes would resume on Monday. But the main oil union said it was not joining the walkouts for the time being.

FEARS OF CIVIL WAR

Jennifer Giroux, senior researcher for the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich University, says the fuel prices issue is "a common rallying point ... A unifying issue that has had an immediate impact on the majority of Nigerians, most of whom are making $2 a day or less."

The crisis mood is a far cry from the cautious optimism that greeted Jonathan last April, when he won Nigeria's cleanest ever election on a pledge to fight graft, fix a crumbling power sector and attract investment into its huge oil reserves.

Then, foreign analysts saw a potential take-off for the economy if the former zoology lecturer could push through key reforms and take steps towards healing the north-south rift.

One such recommended reform was ending the fuel subsidy but the president's January 1 decision to remove it convulsed a country already shaken by a wave of Christmas attacks claimed by Boko Haram, including church bombings that killed dozens and stoked sectarian tensions.

Attacks have continued during the fuel protests. Targeting of minority Christians triggered reprisals by Christians on Muslims in the south, even though the majority of the two communities have shown in the past they can live in peace.

During fuel price protests in southwestern Benin City on Tuesday, five people were killed when a mob attacked a mosque, and 3,000 Muslims of northern origin fled.

Fears that the unrest and violence could degenerate into something even bigger seem to be gaining some traction.

"The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought," Jonathan said in recent comments about the Boko Haram insurgency.

"During the civil war, we knew where the enemy was coming from. (Now) you won't even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house," he said, warning that Boko Haram members were in "all levels of government."

And in a recent interview with the BBC, Nobel prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka said the comparison with the traumatic Biafra war was "not unrealistic."

"We see the nation heading towards a civil war, we know that the (Biafra) civil war was preceded by serious killings by both sides of the regional divide, we've seen reprisals," he said.

"It is going that way, we no longer can pretend it's not. When you get a situation where a bunch of people can go into a place of worship and open fire through the windows, you've reached a certain dismal watershed."

PRESIDENT - AND ARMY - UNDER SCRUTINY

Some question whether civilian Jonathan, who as vice president first took power in May 2010 when his predecessor Umaru Yar'Adua died, has the capacity to lead Nigeria out of its multi-headed crisis.

They worry that his miscalculation of the public mood over the fuel subsidy removal, and his slow reaction to the escalating Boko Haram insurgency suggest he may struggle.

"There are serious questions about how in control the president is, with some really poor decision making. Is Goodluck Jonathan really able to provide visionary leadership?" asked Alex Vines, senior fellow and Africa specialist at London think tank Chatham House.

"There seems to be just drift and indecisiveness."

A civil servant who works with Jonathan says privately that his style differs from the many military rulers that have often run Nigeria in the past. He listens, even lets people interrupt, which some in Nigeria's macho politics may see as a weakness.

The son of a canoe carver in the oil-rich Niger Delta, Jonathan studied zoology, in which he earned a doctorate, and worked as an education inspector, lecturer and environmental protection officer before going into politics in 1998.

He was northerner Yar'Adua's running mate in a shambolic election in 2007, but his campaign to run himself after Yar'Adua's death was controversial because of an informal pact within the ruling PDP party that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south.

As a southeast Christian, by running for the leadership he upset that rotation deal in the eyes of many northerners.

The early signs that Jonathan's first elected term as president would not be smooth came hours after he was sworn in on May 30. A series of bombings killed at least 14 people in a drinking spot inside a barracks in the northern city of Bauchi.

Most observers see a political element to the recurrent violence in the north, which analysts say is also rooted in anger - as with the fuel price protests - against the lack of economic opportunities caused by decades of poor governance.

Boko Haram's heartland in the remote, semi-arid northeast is one of the country's poorest regions, where a failed education system and youth unemployment have conspired to provide easy recruits for extremists.

Last year, Boko Haram attacks spread and even hit the capital Abuja, yet Jonathan's reaction has often appeared low-key. Some critics have faulted him for initially treating the insurgency as a purely security issue, rather than as something requiring a political settlement.

"He's eerily calm considering we could be weeks away from a major confrontation," said Africa Confidential editor Patrick Smith. "The absolute failure ... to wheel on southerners and northerners at the same time to say this is a national crisis and we have to pull together, is striking."

The biggest fear, Smith said, is that the army - whose upper ranks are all southern Christians, while junior officers and lower ranks are a mix of both from many geographical locations - could fracture if a section of it launches a mutiny.

There are already rumblings in the military, he said.

"The next big faultline is the army, and how well they stay together ... If it splits, that is this country's nightmare."

In addition, that fact that Jonathan is an Ijaw from the southern Niger Delta means that any attempt to unseat him by force - especially by a northerner - could trigger a backlash in the Delta by militants who have fought the government before.

A former Niger Delta warlords Mujahid Dokubo-Asari said this month that his people taking up arms to defend Jonathan against Boko Haram was "minutes away.

ROOTS IN CORRUPTION, INEQUALITY

Despite the serious strains, many point out that Nigeria has often lurched from crisis to crisis but, at least since the Biafra war, has managed to avoid a total breakdown.

An armed uprising in the Niger Delta last decade - similarly driven by anger at the failure of politicians to deliver local services - lasted years and shut down almost half of Nigeria's oil and gas output at one stage. Nevertheless, Delta militants signed a peace deal with the government in 2009.

"The president can survive the dual crisis if he manages to keep the support of key political actors from the Parliament, the state governors and some sectors of the civil society," Gilles Yabi, West Africa Project Director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank, told Reuters.

"I don't think that the level of radicalization and polarization that preceded the Biafra war can be easily reached today," he added.

Others feel however the country may have come to a crossroads. "Do things have to get either better or worse very quickly or can it just muddle along as it always has?" said Antony Goldman, who heads London-based PM Consulting.

Yabi said it was encouraging that the unions promoting the strikes had agreed to go into negotiations with the president.

Goldman noted that Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau did not specifically rule out talks in an otherwise defiant online video in which he defended recent killings of Christians as justifiable revenge attacks and said Jonathan had no power to stop the group's insurgency.

In his video, Shekau appears to echo popular complaints against dysfunctional established politics when he says "injustice is unbelief, democracy is unbelief and the constitution is unbelief."

Stephen Ellis, a historian at the Africa Studies Center at Leiden University in the Netherlands, sees Jonathan as a wily politician who has already shown he has the skills to operate in Nigeria's challenging politics, which he calls "a very rough business ... like a poker game ... or juggling chain saws."

Ellis makes the point that all the country's power brokers, including those in the restive North who may be pursuing their own agendas by using the Boko Haram insurgency to pressure southerner Jonathan, are dependent on the national oil income.

"If you are a member of the Nigerian elite, including those in the north, you need the Nigerian state to be in business," he says, a factor which could lead, as in the past since the Biafra war, to a fresh political accommodation that restores calm.

But tackling the deeply and widely embedded corruption that lubricates all levels of Nigeria's political system is a much tougher challenge in the long term.

"A really determined effort to stamp out corruption would itself be massively destabilizing. It can only be done gradually," Ellis said.

But until this happens, outbreaks of angry protests and violence are likely to recur in an energy-rich country that pumps 2 million barrels of oil a day with the help of oil majors like Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, while its citizens face crumbling roads, abysmal public hospitals, chronic power shortages and an economy rigged in favor of powerful import oligarchs.

"Nigeria ... has been ruled by the same cult of mediocrity - a deeply corrupt cabal - for at least forty years, recycling themselves in different guises and incarnations," said famed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in a recent interview with the Christian Science Monitor.

Achebe's acclaimed 1958 novel "Things Fall Apart" tells of social dislocation stemming from colonial rule and can be seen as a prescient foretelling of Nigeria's post-independence pains.

So any political deal may only buy some time before the next explosion of anger in a deeply fractured and unequal society.

"For ordinary people, it's become about everything that's wrong in Nigeria ... about tens of millions of people paying for the champagne lifestyle of dozens of people," Goldman said.

Xbox workers threaten suicide in China labor tiff

2012-01-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

BEIJING, CHINA — Dozens of workers assembling Xbox video game consoles threatened to commit suicide by leaping from a factory dormitory in a dispute over compensation that was defused but highlights growing labor unrest as China's economy slows.

Workers said Thursday that colleagues at contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group's factory in Wuhan climbed to the top of the six-story building and made the suicide threat last week. The workers said their colleagues were angry after Foxconn said it was closing down the Xbox assembly line and reneged on compensation.

A government official talked them down. Foxconn, which makes iPads for Apple Inc., Xboxes for Microsoft Corp. and other gadgets, declined comment.

Strikes and other job actions have risen in recent months as factories cope with rising costs and declining orders.

Source: AP News

Mayor Bloomberg learning to code

2012-01-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has resolved to take an online computer coding course.

The mayor is joining more than 180,000 people currently taking part in Code Year, a campaign to encourage more people to program.

"My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012!" he wrote on Twitter.

Participants in the course receive an interactive lesson each week, via email.

The campaign promises that participants will be "building apps and websites before you know it".

It has proved a hit on Twitter with thousands using the hashtag "#codeyear".

It is not clear what Mr Bloomberg hopes to do with his new computer skills, but his decision to learn comes at a time of renewed interest in encouraging people to program.

Codecademy, the start-up behind Code Year, was launched in August of last year in response to the company founders' "frustrations" with learning how to program.

The US site offers free web-based tutorials in programming JavaScript.

More than six million lessons were completed within the first month of the site going live.

Codecademy co-founder Zach Sims tells Mashable. “It’s too awesome for words.”

Google further pads its portfolio with IBM patents

2012-01-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

Google has gained hundreds of patents from IBM as it continues its intellectual property spending spree.

It has acquired 187 patents and 36 applications, adding to the 1,000 it purchased from IBM last summer.

The latest patents include a system for "using semantic networks to develop a social network".
Google has spent billions building its technology rights portfolio, including a $12.5bn deal for Motorola Mobility.

The California-based company has been actively bolstering its patent catalogue in the face of lawsuits from key competitors such as Apple and Microsoft.

Among the patents acquired in this latest deal is US Patent 7,865,592 which relates specifically to social networking sites, allowing "identifying common interests between users of a communication network".

Vicki Salmon, the chair of the litigation committee of the UK Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, believed this might be a nod that Google was moving from protecting existing technology and beginning to plan for the future.

"When you start you have to play catch-up," she told the BBC.

"When you've finished playing catch-up and you've got yourself in a stronger position, you then can begin to look forward."

Other patents included a method for using web-based applications across additional devices, and an intriguingly titled computer phone.

Neither Google nor IBM would comment on the deal when approached by the BBC.

Last year, Google accused its competitors of buying up what it called "bogus patents" in order to slow the development of its Android operating system.

However, the company now appears to have succumbed to the same approach as it adds the IBM patents to a portfolio that also includes technology for driverless cars.

"Although you can object to a lot of cost of inconvenience by virtue of people enforcing their patents, the patent system still exists," Piers Strickland, a lawyer specialising in mobile telephone patent litigation, told the BBC....

"In order to engage with that you've either got to take licences from from people's patents, and/or aggressively increase your bartering position by buying patents.

"I think they've realised that they just had to get real, and understand that you can't just ignore the system."

Google's agreement to buy Motorola Mobility, announced in August last year, includes 24,500 patents, many of which could be used to defend the use of features on its Android mobile operating system.

The purchase is currently being reviewed by competition regulators.

Google's Motorola move came off the back of losing out on buying the 6,000-strong patent portfolio of bankrupt telecoms firm Nortel. It was outbid by a consortium of companies including Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion.

"The reality is that you've got a fairly vicious turf war going on between the different operating systems," explained Ms Salmon.

"People want to be in there, and they want their platform established and people to be using them."

Google is just one of many technology companies involved in patent lawsuits which seek to slow down competition or strike lucrative licensing fee settlements.

On Wednesday, US mobile operator AT&T was forced to pay Tivo - the digital video recorder specialist - $215m plus additional undisclosed monthly licensing fees.

The fee will vary depending on AT&T meeting growth targets for digital video recording customers until 2018.

"No matter which projections you take, they all involve AT&T paying us significantly higher revenue than $215m," Tivo chief executive Tim Rogers said.

Source: BBC Technology News

More time at school may boost IQ

2011-12-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

Spending more time at school may increase intelligence, according to a study of Norwegian men.

The research, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that an extra year in the classroom could boost IQ by nearly four points.

The authors said that extra schooling had a "sizeable effect" on IQ in early adulthood.

But they do not know if this applies to all children, or just those in this study.

A link between a higher IQ and more education has already been established, the authors say.

However, determining whether spending more time in school actually improves IQ is more difficult, as it is possible that children with a naturally higher IQ are those who choose to spend more time in the education system.

Researchers from Statistics Norway, which publishes official government data, and the University of Oslo took advantage of a natural experiment in the Norwegian education system and its effect on 107,223 pupils.

Between 1955 and 1972 regional governments in Norway increased compulsory schooling from seven to nine years. It meant pupils left school at 16 instead of 14.

The effect of this forced increase in schooling was measured at the age of 19, when the military gave all men eligible for drafting an IQ test.

The researchers reported that: "An unusually large increase in both average education and average IQ is apparent at the same time as the reform was introduced."

They said one additional year in school raised IQ by 3.7 points.

They added: "By exploiting the increase in schooling induced by a comprehensive compulsory schooling reform, this study is able to uncover a statistically significant and sizeable effect of middle school education on IQ scores in early adulthood for Norwegian men."

The statisticians caution against drawing too many conclusions, as they admit that the effect may only apply to Norwegian society or its education system at the time.

However, they argue that it may be possible to improve intelligence in adolescence.

Risiti for your peace of mind and convenience

2011-12-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

It's still in beta but look out! Why, you might ask? Well, something timely and ingenious is coming soon and there is no question it is bound to be a winner with consumers, young and old.

Let me ask you a question? How big is your wallet or for the ladies, how congested is your handbag?

Most folks are already guessing what I am arriving at more-so as the daily consumer purchases elicit a record of the transactions you are a party to.... or the receipt.... in this case, the precursor to Risiti, a more than welcome escape from receipt overload!

Risiti.com is an online receipt management system that was born from the frustrations of never ending emailed and paper receipts, scattered throughout our already busy lives.

These receipts, brought into one management location, allows Risiti users to not only retain their receipts indefinitely, but also to gain insight into their spending habits, turning their receipts into a fiscal management tool, with a view to better managing their finances and developing 'healthier' spending habits.

Now, it becomes easier and convenient to locate your receipts for returns, taxes, expense reports and much more.

Getting a receipt into Risiti.com is just a few clicks away. Users are currently able to upload receipts by emailing in a smartphone photo of their paper receipt or by forwarding in any emailed receipt to upload@risiti.com.

The receipt is then processed through the system where date, merchant, total, and tax are extracted from the receipt.

Once in the system, users can tag each receipt based on their needs including such things as business expenses and tax deductible items. If a user needs to access one of their receipts, they can easily do so by filtering down their data by tag, date range, and location of purchase.

The Risiti.com team is dedicated to benefiting the consumer and with that goal in mind the receipt management features of Risiti.com will always be free to use.

Furthermore, if a user needs to get their receipt data out of the system they can easily export their data, another feature Risiti intends to keep free to the user.

The team at Risiti is determined to make sure the consumer's needs and concerns are paramount, hence Risiti values customer feedback and will work diligently to always address any consumer concerns.

"File it away!" You deserve the peace of mind and let Risiti provide just that, for you.

Sign up today at http://www.risiti.com/

Iran says it will not return US drone

2011-12-12T02:13:00.000-08:00

Iranian headache for Obama

TEHRAN, Iran — Remaining defiant in the face of crippling sanctions and diplomatic hand-twisting, Iran insists it will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.

Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.

Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.

Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.

Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

Source: AP News

Microsoft and GE in new healthcare venture

2011-12-08T03:37:00.000-08:00

REDMOND, WA - General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), through its healthcare IT business, and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) today announced plans to create a joint venture aimed at helping healthcare organizations and professionals use real-time, systemwide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience. Upon formation, the new company will develop and market an open, interoperable technology platform and innovative clinical applications focused on enabling better population health management to improve outcomes and the overall economics of health and wellness.

As healthcare providers and payers around the globe shift from episodic single-patient care to continuous population management, new requirements have emerged for integrated care processes, greater insight and engaging patient experiences. These delivery system reforms, including a shift toward new payment models, require healthcare providers to address gaps and integrate data across silos of care delivery to help enable better care coordination and performance improvement.

This new joint venture will combine Microsoft’s deep expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions, empowering healthcare professionals and organizations with the intelligence and capabilities to respond to the rapidly evolving and complex healthcare landscape.

“The complementary nature of GE Healthcare’s and Microsoft’s individual expertise will drive new insights, solutions and efficiencies to further advance the two companies’ shared vision of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system,” said Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE. “The global healthcare challenges of access, cost and quality of care delivery are creating a new focus on the performance and accountability of healthcare delivery systems — in every country, at every level of care. This venture will demonstrate what is possible when leading companies with complementary capabilities work together to meet a common goal.”

The new company will deliver a distinctive, open platform that will give healthcare providers and independent software vendors the ability to develop a new generation of clinical applications. The venture will develop healthcare applications on the platform using in-house developers and the platform will connect with a wide range of healthcare IT products. GE Healthcare IT will immediately be able to connect existing products to the platform, helping current customers to derive new insights.

“High-quality, affordable healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing every nation, but it’s also an area where technology can make a huge difference,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “Combining Microsoft’s open, interoperable health platforms and software expertise with GE’s experience and healthcare solutions will create exciting opportunities for patients and healthcare providers alike. Working together, GE and Microsoft can help make healthcare systems more intelligent and cost efficient while improving patient care.”

The two parent companies bring complementary expertise to this new venture and will contribute intellectual property, including the following:

•	Microsoft Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform
•	Microsoft Vergence, a single sign-on and context management solution
•	Microsoft expreSSO, an enterprise single sign-on solution
•	GE Healthcare eHealth, a Health Information Exchange
•	GE Healthcare Qualibria, a clinical knowledge application environment being developed in cooperation with Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City, Utah) and Mayo Clinic

The long-term vision of the venture is to create new value by offering a healthcare performance management suite that includes many of these products.

In addition to the new joint venture, GE Healthcare and Microsoft will each maintain a strong presence in the healthcare IT industry, as both parent organizations will continue to sell other products and services to healthcare organizations around the globe.

“Improving the quality of healthcare through innovative collaboration is a goal that we share with GE Healthcare and Microsoft. Working together with others to identify new ways to improve health outcomes and drive down cost is a hallmark of our patient-care philosophy,” said C. Michel Harper, M.D., executive dean for Practice, Mayo Clinic. “We’re pleased to see healthcare IT companies embrace this same idea and come together in new ways. We look forward to seeing the progress this new endeavor will bring in medicine.”

“Intermountain Healthcare and GE have a strong history and partnership in developing and advancing transformational healthcare information technologies,” stated Charles S. Sorenson, MD, president and chief executive officer of Intermountain Healthcare. “Our common vision is driving powerful advancements in healthcare and improving the clinical work process by making real-time information available at the point of care. We look forward to continuing our efforts to further these principles, achieving our combined objectives, and putting these important technologies into practice.”

The new company’s products and services will provide the information and insight required to help address many critical problems in the healthcare system today, including these:

•

Healthcare associated infections. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 1.7 million healthcare associated infections occur annually, resulting in $35 billion in additional healthcare costs^1,2 and the loss of nearly 100,000 lives.³ By pulling together data from disparate IT systems, identifying those patients most at risk for a given HAI, and surfacing guidelines and protocols within provider workflow, the solutions will enable healthcare organizations to more effectively deploy their resources and deliver better care at lower costs.

•

Chronic disease management. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 133 million Americans (nearly half of all adults) live with at least one chronic illness and most chronic diseases require a lifetime of ongoing care.⁴ To help patients and their physicians work together more efficiently to manage chronic conditions, the platform and applications will support the sharing of data from at-home medical devices (such as blood pressure cuffs, scales and glucometers) with caregivers to facilitate better tracking of chronic conditions, coordination of treatment schedules, management of medication regimens and timely interventions.

The new venture complements the existing offerings from both parent companies and is expected to yield job growth in its first five years of existence. It will operate globally, offering interoperability platforms and application solutions targeting both healthcare providers and payers. Michael J. Simpson, vice president and general manager at GE Healthcare IT, will serve as the company’s CEO.

The new company, which has yet to be named, will be headquartered near the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., with significant presence in Salt Lake City, Utah, and additional cities around the world.

Launch of the new joint venture is subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected in the first half of 2012.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

About Microsoft in Health

Microsoft is committed to improving health around the world through software innovation. Over the past 16 years, Microsoft has steadily increased its investments in health, with a focus on addressing the challenges of health providers, health and social services organizations, payers, consumers and life sciences companies worldwide. Microsoft closely collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners and develops its own powerful health solutions, such as Microsoft Amalga and Microsoft HealthVault. Together, Microsoft and its industry partners are working to deliver health solutions that enable better health outcomes for more people.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Source: CNBC News

Facebook absorbs Gowalla developers as part of software team

2011-12-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Facebook has announced it is hiring the co-founders of Gowalla.

The social network is also taking on other developers from the location-based "check-in service". Gowalla will close in 2012 as a consequence.

The news comes days after Facebook announced plans to take on "thousands" of new members of staff.

The company is opening a software engineering centre in New York as part of the strategy - its first away from of the West Coast of the US.

Despite a report last week by CNN that Facebook had acquired Gowalla for an undisclosed sum, the company said on Monday that it had taken on key members of the businesses's staff but had not bought the organisation outright.

"We're excited to confirm that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams," a statement said.

"While Facebook isn't acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we're sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time."

Texas-based Gowalla is a two-year-old social network based around the idea of allowing users to "check in" to locations and share pictures from their visits.

Members used to receive virtual "items" at certain check-in points. However, the company struggled against a larger competitor, Foursquare.

In September it refocused its efforts on becoming a travel service, offering "social guides" to 60 cities, including London, Paris and Chicago, based on its members' postings.

A blog post on Gowalla's site said: "Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla's user data.

"As we move forward, we hope some of the inspiration behind Gowalla - a fun and beautiful way to share your journey on the go - will live on at Facebook."

The original CNN report suggested that the Gowalla team would work on Facebook's Timeline feature.

Timeline turns users' profile pages into digital scrapbooks, making it easier for them to view each others' life histories.

The feature was announced in September, but has yet to be rolled out to many of the site's members.

Facebook already had a location-based service built into its mobile device apps and website, but experts say the network may want to use the developers' experience to create a richer experience.

"Facebook Places seems to work fairly well but they want to make a big play in this area," said Lee Bryant, the European managing director of Dachis Group, a social media consultancy.

"Location-based services are still in their early stages. Gowalla was interesting and slightly more story-based than Foursquare, which Facebook may feel will help it strengthen its Timeline service."

The announcement follows Friday's news that the firm plans to open a software engineering centre in New York in early 2012.

The company already employs an advertising team in the city. However, it is the first time the company has created a software base that is not on the US West Coast.
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced the New York expansion plan at a press conference attended by the city's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and other officials.

"We are trying to grow at a clip that will allow us to get the very best people and integrate them," she said.

"We will be adding thousands of employees in the next year."

The new office will be headed up by Serkan Piantino. He previously led the engineering team behind Facebook's News Feed and helped develop its Timeline feature.

Ms Sandberg did not specify how many of the promised posts would be created in New York.

The moves come ahead of an expected share flotation which analysts say may occur in the first half of next year.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the firm could raise $10bn through the sale, valuing the company at $100bn.

It quotes sources saying that the initial public offering (IPO) could be completed by June.

Facebook has declined to comment, saying it does not want to add to speculation about the move.

Source: BBC Tech News

Nigeria's Central Bank Governor wins Forbes award

2011-11-29T18:21:00.000-08:00

Lamido Sanusi

Nigeria's central bank governor Lamido Sanusi has been voted Africa Person of the Year by Forbes magazine.

He beat five other candidates for the inaugural award - including Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote.

Mr Sanusi, 50, has spearheaded reforms in Nigeria's troubled banking sector since his appointment in 2009.

The central bank bailed out nine banks and removed their chief executives who were accused of fraudulent practices.

Several of the ousted bankers have been put on trial for alleged financial mismanagement.

Forbes magazine's readers gave Mr Sanusi the most votes in an online poll.

He beat Mrs Sirleaf, the Liberian president who was awarded this year's Nobel Peace prize, Mr Dangote, a Nigeria business tycoon who tops Forbes' list of Africa's richest people, former Cape Verde President Pedro Verona Pires, who won this year's $5m Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa and Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate who died in September.

Last year, another financial publication, The Banker, named Mr Sanusi the Central Bank Governor of the Year.

Mr Sanusi's critics says his reforms have led to massive job losses in the banking sector.
But when receiving the award, he said the central bank's role was not to create jobs but to create an environment for business to thrive, Nigeria's privately owned newspaper, The Daily Trust, reports.

He called on the government to show tighter fiscal discipline and to discourage imports.

"You cannot be exporting crude oil and be importing refined petrol," Mr Sanusi said, according to The Daily Trust.

Nigeria is a leading oil producer but its leadership has consistently misappropriated billions of dollars of crude oil revenue, since it gained its independence from Great Britain in 1960.

AT&T and T-Mobile USA withdraw merger application

2011-11-28T01:55:00.000-08:00

US telecoms giant AT&T and Deutsche Telekom have cast doubt over the $39 billion sale of T-Mobile USA by withdrawing their merger application to the industry regulator.

AT&T also said it would include a $4 billion charge in its fourth-quarter accounts to cover any potential compensation due if the deal does not go ahead.

The US Justice Department moved to block the sale at the end of August.

The two firms said they would focus on clearing the deal with the government.

AT&T agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in March, aiming to create the largest US wireless network.

However, the government has said the merger would lead to higher prices and restrict choice, and has requested a court order to block it.

As a result, the two firms have withdrawn their application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

This would allow them to "focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice", the companies said.

They would then focus on seeking approval from the FCC, they added.

The deal needs the approval of both the Justice Department and the FCC to go ahead.

AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile would give the US telecoms firm about 43% of the US mobile phone market.

Water The Bamboo® Moment: Fear of Failure or Fear of Success

2011-11-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear of failure or success has haunted many would-be successful people. To put it bluntly, graveyards are filled with countless intentions that were never acted upon because of fear. Fear is generally about control. People with a fear of flying don’t really have a fear of flying, they have a fear of crashing. The mind is so powerful it can make something seem real that has not yet occurred.

Recently, a young man told me that he could not get a job and I asked him how many had he applied for. He replied, “none.” I challenged him to get 33 rejection letters or emails in a row, and if he did I would take him to dinner and give him $100 dollars. After checking on him a few months later, he was unable to collect on the bet because he was gainfully employed after only 7 rejections.

Bamboo Rule: Success awaits those who are willing to deal with rejection.

Fearing rejection before you apply for a job is normal. Nobody wants to get rejected but there is no reason to assume the answer is no. What if you went for the rejection? After studying the most successful people I found that they had the ability to recover from failure or rejection. In other words, they kept on watering. In Water The Bamboo® I recommend creating a vision board—I call mine a success board—it inspires me and keeps my vision vivid. I can see it, feel it, even smell it—this helps me stay focused. When I reach a milestone or suffer a setback I am not thrown off my vision.

Bamboo Rule: The turtle only moves when it sticks its neck out.

To learn more about how you can achieve success by pushing through rejection, read Chapter 16, Take Risks in Water The Bamboo^®: Unleashing The Potential Of Teams And Individuals.

Penn State, Joe Paterno and the defacing of America

2011-11-15T00:27:00.000-08:00

Viewpoint

"Joe (Paterno) is perceived to be a father figure or grandfather figure, and that's a very hard thing for people to get to that realization, that your dad is bad."------ former Penn State assistant coach Matt Paknis.

Like most people this past week, I have followed with rapt but uncomfortable attention the news coming out of Penn State University as it relates to the child sex-abuse scandal.

Former defensive coordinator Gerald "Jerry" Sandusky is accused of sexually molesting boys as young as 10 years old (the very thought of that makes me cringe with disgust) over a 15 year period.

While it is true that emotions and opinions have run across the spectrum in just about every direction you can imagine, one thing has been evidently clear, albeit unfortunately; that the victims, no, not the so-called student athletes or Joe Paterno or the Penn State student body, the real victims - the little boys (at the time) who were sexually assaulted by this sick and utterly depraved excuse for a human being, have been relegated to the background of the real conversation.

I am really not sure if I can say anymore about this matter. Why, you might ask?

Well, like most folks in the country who were all wrapped up the the "legend of Joe Paterno", a man who many saw as the very epitome of morality and everything that was good about America, I really just realized that I knew nothing about this case until I read the full grand jury findings.

Then it dawned on me why Joe Paterno was fired and why he should NEVER be allowed to coach again or be trusted with the mantle of custodial leadership on any American college campus! It also dawned on me how much we were lost as a nation, when the well-being of our most precious asset, our children and those that are vulnerable in society are sacrificed time and again, for a buck and change.

The Board of Trustees at Penn State University has demonstrated leadership that is at best rudderless and the conduct of some of the students has been at best disgraceful; what with the distasteful hero-worship of a man (Joe Paterno) who we've now found out was not exactly who we thought he was.

Like most individuals who conceal their true nature and put on appearances for the rest to see, Joe Paterno showed us not just how flawed he was, but how dishonest and callously deceptive he could be.

We have him (Joe Paterno), the Board of Trustees at Penn State University and the general "leadership" at Penn State to thank for destroying the innocence and future of America, while aiming to preserve their reputation, integrity and financial well-being.

It is obvious from the news still emanating in "drip-drip" fashion from Happy Valley that Joe Paterno ran a dictatorship where no one challenged his authority and everything was aimed at protecting him and the program from being maligned, at all cost.

Joe Paterno and everyone in a position of authority at Penn State knew about this sick man.

This video from 1987 shows Jerry Sandusky talking about his "work with children" and as the grand jury document shows, he was investigated just a decade later for having "inappropriate" contact with a young boy.

I shudder to think Penn State might actually not be an isolated case and that this decadence may in-fact be common place, particularly in small-town America, where all they have is the college football team and the ol' ball coach.

Read the full grand jury presentment here.... and it can't help but make you weep for this nation of ours.

Billionaire Warren Buffet buys "huge" stake in IBM

2011-11-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

Warren Buffett - one of the world's most closely watched investors - has disclosed building a 5.4% stake in IBM.

Mr Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fund started buying shares in the firm in March, eventually spending around $10.7bn.

The billionaire had steered away from technology firms in the past.

However, he said that he had been impressed by IBM's road map for how it planned to attract IT firms outside the US to sign up to its services.

"If you're in some country around the world and you're developing your IT department you're probably going to feel more comfortable with IBM than with many companies," he told the US television station CNBC.

He said he started buying the stock after he read IBM's 2010 annual report and spoke to technology professionals in the businesses his fund had already invested in.

He said he realised there was a lot of "continuity" in the US-headquartered business.

"It is a big deal for a big company to change auditors, change law firms, or change IT support," he said.

"There's a fair amount of presumption in many places that if you're with IBM, you stay with them."

Mr Buffett said he had not told IBM's chief executive, Sam Palmisano, about the investment before announcing it on TV. He added that he does not plan to increase his stake which was why he was comfortable talking about it.

Until now the US bank, State Street, was the biggest known investor in IBM by a clear margin. A September filing revealed the lender owned 5.5% of of the firm.

When asked about other investments Mr Buffett noted that he would never buy stock in Microsoft because of his friendship with the company's founder and chairman Bill Gates.

Mr Buffett's actions are closely monitored by other investors because of his track record for spotting and buying undervalued stocks. However, IBM's shares only rose slightly after the broadcast.

IBM said it is not commenting on the news at this time.

Source: CNBC News

BMW unveils new electric and hybrid concept cars

2011-11-12T13:39:00.000-08:00

Getty Images - BMW i8 Concept car

NEW YORK — BMW unveiled a pair of concept cars Wednesday, one a hybrid and one electric, made of light-weight carbon fiber and a see-through glass exterior.

The cars are expected to go into production within the next two to three years.

The carbon fiber in the i3 city car and i8 sports car significantly reduces the weight of the vehicle and the size of its frame, giving designers more flexibility and creating more interior space for passengers, said Richard Kim, who designed the exteriors of both vehicles.

The material, used in the aerospace sector and also for high-end bicycles, is valued for its strength-to-weight ratio. Its uses are expanding, however, and engineers are designing everything from camping equipment to pool cues.

For the German automaker, it allowed for more glass where there is traditionally metal, Kim said. The doors of both vehicles are mostly made of glass, along with much of their roofs and tail ends.

BMW said the car offers "superb safety in the event of a collision."

The final product may not appear as dramatic, but will have the same feel as the concept cars, Kim said.

"You may not see as much glass, but you will be able to see the light coming through," Kim said at a sneak peak event Wednesday in New York. The cars officially debut next week at the Los Angeles auto show.

The i3 is expected to go into production in 2013, with production of the i8 following a year later. The cost of the car has yet to be determined, though carbon fiber is not cheap.

The four-door i3 is designed for urban driving, with its wheels pushed out to the corners of the frame for stability. It has coach-style doors, with rear and front doors swinging open at the center of the vehicle.

The added stability of carbon fiber allowed designers to eliminate the support pillar traditionally found between the front and back doors, which will make it making it easier to enter and exit the vehicle, Kim said.

The i3 comes in an all-electric version that can go 80 to 100 miles on a single charge, but buyers have the option of adding a small gas engine that would recharge the battery if needed. It takes about six hours to fully charge the battery.

The sporty i8 has two winged doors made of glass and a sleek silhouette. The exterior is designed to help the car cut through the air more efficiently.

The all-wheel drive car has a battery and a gas engine that work together, with the battery powering the front wheels and a gas engine powering the rear wheels. Without the gas engine, the car has a range of about 20 miles, but fully charges in less than two hours.

Source: AP Auto Spotlight

Africa's silent but robust mobile phone industry growth

2011-11-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

Africa is the fastest-growing mobile market in the world, and is the biggest after Asia, an association of worldwide mobile phone operators has said.

The number of subscribers on the continent has grown almost 20% each year for the past five years, the GSM Association report on Africa says.

It expects there will be more than 735 million subscribers by the end of 2012.

Analysts say bad and expensive landline connections in Africa are responsible for the high mobile phone usage.

Peter Lyons, GSMA's director of spectrum policy for Africa and Middle East, told the BBC that mobile penetration in Africa had reached 649 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2011.

"That is equivalent to a 65% penetration rate. Out of every 100 people, 65 have some form of mobile connectivity," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

In a report, GSMA says that 96% of subscriptions are pre-paid with voice services currently dominating, although uptake of data services is increasing steadily.

The Kenyan government's abolition of the 16% general sales tax on mobile handsets in 2009 has resulted in handset purchases increasing by more than 200%, it says.

Kenya is at the forefront of mobile money transfers, with 8.5 million users, the report says.

Nigeria has the highest number of mobile phone subscriptions in Africa - more than 93 million, representing 16% of the continent's total mobile subscriptions, GSMA says.

South Africa, with its more developed infrastructure, has the highest broadband penetration - 6%, followed by Morocco with 2.8%, the report says.

"The mobile industry in Africa is booming and a catalyst for immense growth, but there is scope for far greater development," Mr Lyons said.

He said 36% of people in the 25 largest African mobile markets still had no access to mobile services.

"To take full advantage of its potential, African countries need to allocate more spectrum for the provision of mobile broadband services, as well as introduce tax cuts for the industry," Mr Lyons said.

The report says African countries have allocated far less spectrum to mobile services than Europe, the Americas and Asia, which inhibits connectivity to many people in rural areas.

"Sufficient spectrum should be provided for mobile broadband services through 3G, HSPA [High-Speed Packet Access] and LTE [Long Term Evolution] technologies," it says.

Source: BBC Technology News

Cain 'beyond reproach' as Perry stumbles over his lines....

2011-11-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

Texas Governor Rick Perry

Texas Governor Rick Perry could not remember the third government agency he plans to abolish, if elected president.

The eight contenders for the Republican presidential nomination have faced off over the economy at a debate in the state of Michigan.

Front-runner Mitt Romney criticised the government bailout of US car makers in the state, while his rivals said banks should not become too big to fail.

The debate was the first since sexual harassment allegations emerged against Mr Romney's chief rival, Herman Cain.

He dismissed the accusations, calling them "character assassination."

To a chorus of boos from the audience - aimed at the CNBC interrogators and not at Mr Cain - the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza said his character was beyond reproach.

"The American people deserve better than someone being tried in a court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations."

The biggest drama of the evening came when Texas Governor Rick Perry stumbled over his lines, finding himself unable to name the three federal departments he would eliminate if he became president - a key policy and a regular part of his stump speeches.

"The third agency of government I would - I would do away with education, the... commerce... commerce and, let's see. I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops," he said.

The answer he was looking for, he told moderators later, was the Department of Energy.

The Michigan debate, staged by the cable business channel CNBC, was held at Oakland University in Rochester.

In a series of questions focused on pressing economic issues, candidates discussed a range of topics from the eurozone debt crisis to the domestic housing market to bailouts for the domestic auto industry.

They generally agreed that the US should not "bail out" Europe, but warned that budget deficits in the US could create a similar crisis to the one faced by eurozone nations.

Candidates also used the time to reprise their calls for flat tax plans, social security reform and the repeal of President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

Each candidate was asked specifically what they would do about healthcare costs immediately after repealing the law.

Mr Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, called for individual state decisions on health care laws, while former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman argued for better access to medical records as a way of improving care.

The debate came nearly two months before the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses to nominate a Republican nominee.

Tyrants: From figures of fear to figures of fun

2011-11-08T01:06:00.000-08:00

A younger Muammar Gaddafi

By Mary Beard

From Roman emperors to Colonel Gaddafi, it's easy to turn tyrants from figures of fear into figures of fun. But while their behaviour was often brutal and bloody, that's not all they were, writes Mary Beard.

On 11 March, 222 AD, a posse of rebel soldiers tracked down the Roman Emperor Elagabalus to his hiding place - he had come to power in a coup just four years earlier, supposedly dividing his time between fundamentalist religious reforms, corruption and self-indulgence - but not before they had sodomised and skewered some of his few remaining loyal troops.

Now the tyrant was holed up in a latrine, desperately hoping to keep clear of the liberators, out for his blood. No such luck. The rebels rooted him out, killed him, triumphantly dragged his body through the streets and then threw his mutilated remains into a drain.

The Roman accounts of Elagabalus's end, if not outright unreliable, are certainly embellished at the edges. They may be as misleading as those confused mobile phone images that purported to record the final, bloody moments of Colonel Gaddafi a couple of weeks ago. But what is clear is that one of the basic story lines of "the death of a tyrant" - from hopeless hiding places to sewers and sodomy - was already well established 2,000 years ago.

It's more, though, than just these stories of the tyrant's death that we share with the Romans. We've inherited from them the standard cliches about the life of a tyrant too. In fact, we still operate with a more-or-less Roman view about what's despotic about a despot.

Then as now, of course, killing was central to the image, on a mass scale and sometimes in ingeniously ghastly ways. The Emperor Nero not only massacred his opponents, but he tried to get rid of his own mother using a specially constructed collapsible boat. In fact the tough old bird was a strong swimmer and had to be disposed of using more orthodox methods.

But it doesn't stop with violence. Tyrants are responsible for all kinds of lurid disruptions to the normal rules of social life. Disruptions that have been the trademark of tyranny for at least two millennia.

Take the rules of gender, for a start. Gaddafi's battalion of high-heeled, heavily made-up female bodyguards seem uncannily close to Elagabalus's new Roman governing senate, which was to be made up entirely of women.

But you can add to that the tyrant's penchant for eccentric accommodation - from Gaddafi's idiosyncratic "tent" to Nero's notorious "Golden House" in Rome - and his dubious hobbies. The emperor Domitian was said to have spent his leisure hours stabbing flies with his pen, Gaddafi obsessively collecting pictures of Condoleezza Rice and sticking them into his scrapbook.

'Hearsay and fantasy'

More than anything though, the tyrant - ancient or modern - adopts weird forms of dress. Elagabalus was criticised for being the first Roman to wear outfits made entirely of silk. Gaddafi was derided for his silly, pantomime military uniforms, with their row upon row of spurious medals. To be honest "silliness" here is largely in the eye of the beholder. Quite why Prince Charles's much decorated, gaudy military outfits are not thought silly even though he has never, to my knowledge, seen a single day's service in an actual war, I really can't imagine.

These stereotypes of tyrants are a confused mixture of truth, semi-truth, hearsay and utter fantasy. I very much doubt Gaddafi had the time to go searching for pictures of Condy in the international press, or that Elagabalus's female senate was more than the figment of some ancient tabloid imagination.

So why have they proved so lasting? For various reasons I think. Partly, they are a neat way of turning the dictator from a figure of fear to a figure of fun. Partly, the silly costumes and the mad houses are a whole lot easier for us to talk about than the torture and the murder that goes with tyranny.

But partly, it's laziness. It requires almost no intellectual effort whatsoever to bandy around an off-the-peg, identikit image of the monster - wicked from his clothes to his very core.

It's harder to think about the nuances of tyranny. And it's particularly hard to face the uncomfortable fact that very few of these loathed tyrants are as wholly bad as it suits us to assume.

Nero may have been a murderous persecutor, but even his fiercest critics conceded that he mounted admirable and unprecedented relief measures for the people after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. And, as we know, even the most vicious murderer may love his family deeply, be kind and generous to them, and be loved in return. "Badness" comes in inconveniently complicated ways.

Oil profits

I'm not trying to rehabilitate Nero, or stand up for Gaddafi. If I lived in Libya I hope I would be on the rebel side. And I feel confident that overall the world is a better place without the colonel. Though whether it will be a better place with whatever the National Transitional Council turns into we'll just have to wait and see.

My point is not that we should see Gaddafi as a good man - no-one would try to convince the relatives of Yvonne Fletcher or of the victims of Lockerbie of that. My point is that we sell ourselves short if we don't work a bit harder to move beyond the stereotypes and get a more complicated view of the tyrant. We need to understand why some people supported him, as they passionately did - and not always bad people for bad reasons.

Have you ever wondered why Nelson Mandela was such a friend of the Libyan leader? Or why Mandela's grandson is actually called Gaddafi. It goes back to the 1970s and 80s when Gaddafi gave cash and weapons to the ANC in their fight against apartheid.

Sure, he probably did the same for any band of thugs who fetched up in Tripoli, with a begging bowl for some "anti-colonial cause". But, in this case, at a time when many European countries were still treating anti-apartheid freedom fighters as terrorists, and when the British government was dragging its heels even on economic sanctions against white South Africa, Gaddafi came up with the goods. The Libyan record is bound to look different when you see it from an African rather than a European point of view.

Adulation is 'distrusted'

It also looks a bit different if you dip into some of the statistics about recent conditions in Libya before the war, gathered by the UN and the US state department - hardly natural friends of Gaddafi. No, they don't include any good news about Libyan human rights. Gaddafi's regime was authoritarian at best, violently repressive at worst.

But how often are we told that life expectancy in Libya far exceeds its neighbours, that Libya has a substantially lower child mortality rate than Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Tunisia, the highest literacy rate in North Africa - on US estimates, not the Libyan propaganda machine - as well as free hospitals and childcare?

The profits of oil have not simply been flowing into the pockets of the few, or into the weapons that still stuff the warehouses. Among all the things that have been going terribly wrong under the Gaddafi regime, some things have been going right.

The Romans were actually a bit more prepared than we are to face up to the complexities of tyranny. Among all the cliches they tossed around about the Emperor Nero, they did stop to wonder how to explain the seemingly good things he did. Did he start out well and only later go to the bad? Or was he the victim of a change of advisers?

But it was Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the sharpest Roman historian of them all, who hit the nail on the head. In the introduction to his book that would include an account of the reign of Domitian (the notorious fly-stabber), Tacitus reflected on how best to analyse tyranny. It's problematic, he wrote, because it's very hard to find out the truth.

The temptation is to go one of two ways - total adulation for the tyrant's achievements or blanket vilification of his crimes. Readers, he went on, distrust adulation. It looks like flattery. They tend to trust vilification, as criticism appears more objective. But that doesn't mean, he warns, that it is necessarily right.

Maybe we should remember Tacitus's words the next time some time-expired despot crawls out of a sewer to his death.

Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Cambridge University in the UK. She is also an author.

Even in the face of potential Israeli attack, Iran remains defiant....

2011-11-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

By Marwa Awad - Reuters

The United States fears Iran's growing military power because it is now able to compete with Israel and the West, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments carried by an Egyptian newspaper on Monday.

Responding to a toughening stance from the United States and Israel against Tehran, Ahmadinejad accused Washington of inventing conspiracies to discredit Iran and sowing discord with its near neighbor Saudi Arabia.

"Yes, we have military capabilities that are different from any other country in the region," Egyptian daily al-Akhbar cited Ahmadinejad as saying. "Iran is increasing in capability and advancement and therefore we are able to compete with Israel and the West and especially the United States."

"The U.S. fears Iran's capability," he told the paper. "Iran will not permit (anyone from making) a move against it."

Iran's Islamic rulers, who say Israel has no right to exist, deny accusations that they are seeking nuclear weapons and have warned they will respond to any attacks by striking at Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf.

A senior U.S. military official said on Friday Iran had become the biggest threat to the United States and Israel's president said the military option to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons was nearer.

Ahmadinejad repeated that Iran does not own a nuclear bomb, but said Israel's end was inevitable.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is expected this week to issue its most detailed report yet on research in Iran seen as geared to developing atomic bombs.

"It is Israel that has about 300 nuclear warheads. Iran is only keen to have nuclear capability for peaceful means," he said, accusing Washington of lumping Iran with Syria, the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The U.S. portrays those four as "the Axis of Evil to save the Zionist entity (Israel). But the Zionists are bound to go out of existence," he said.

Responding to a U.S. claim that Iran was involved in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Ahmadinejad said: "Iran is farthest from thinking of carrying out such crimes but the U.S. is always inventing conspiracies against Iran."

"The U.S. fears any friendship between us and Saudi Arabia and therefore incites disagreements," he said. "To stop the U.S. in its tracks we must deepen the elements of friendship... We are ready for this and the relation between Saudi and Iran already exists and has not been cut off."

More bloodshed in northern Nigeria as Jonathan stands pat

2011-11-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

President Jonathan in pensive mood

By the Editor-in-Chief

It has become an all too common occurrence, more-so since Nigeria's current leader, Goodluck Jonathan assumed power in May of 2010.

Just to establish the facts as they are, the last time there was another "upheaval" along ethnic or religious lines, was when another Southerner, Olusegun Obasanjo, also a former military ruler, was in office. It was then the Northern states decided to adopt the Islamic code of Sharia, again in defiance of the central government.

While many are quick to refer to the recent wave of attacks as strictly a religious affair, under the auspices of the Boko Haram Islamic sect, this writer begs to differ, as any right thinking observer with deep knowledge of the inner-workings of Nigeria's political power-play, will understand exactly where I am coming from.

To get a clear understanding of the reasons behind Nigeria's political malaise, one has to go back to the origins of the "marriage of convenience" called Nigeria. The truth is that while the latter "has not worked" to date, it has not been for a lack of the requisite ingredients for success, but more as a result of the machinations of a powerful few within the Northern political establishment and their backers in the South.

Since Nigeria's independence from the United Kingdom on October 1, 1960, the country has been plunged into untenable political tension, mostly as a result of the legacy of feudalism and political entitlement practiced and felt by the Northerner ruling class, respectively.

The legacy of the British Empire as it relates to the contraption and division of several African States (including Nigeria) that were under their rule at the time, is unquestionably what has led to majority of the wars you see across both North Africa and much of Africa to the South (this writer detests the term sub-Sahara and as such will not use it).

Nigeria is a prime example of the preceding point as the 1961 plebiscite, which showed the rather sharp differences between the Hausa dominated North, the Igbo dominated East and the Yoruba dominated West, led to the fracturing of the country as the power imbalance continued to shift more in favor of the core North.

This disequilibrium and perceived (but real) corruption of the electoral and political process led to several back-to-back military coups in 1966. The first was led by a collection of largely Igbo military officers who went on to assassinate then Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (a Northerner), the Northern Premier Ahmadu Bello and Premier Ladoke Akintola of the Western Region.

The instability from this coup then led to a counter-coup orchestrated largely by Northern military officers and it led essentially to a blood-bath of immense proportions, with military and civilian figures, mostly of Igbo extraction, bearing the brunt of it.

With a young "Northern" officer, Yakubu Gowon (his background itself lending credence to the complicated nature of Nigeria's body polity) now at the helm of the central government, the ethnic and religious undertones of the successive coups, would only serve to fan the embers of division in the country.

Nigeria was soon plunged into a civil war as increasing violence against the Igbo across much of the North, only increased their desire for autonomy, as the military and other security apparatus in the country (largely dominated by the North at the time) offered the Igbo little or no protection.

By May 1967, the Igbo dominated Eastern Region had declared itself an independent state called the Republic of Biafra under the leadership of Lt Colonel Emeka Ojukwu in line with what he said were the "wishes of his people". The Nigerian Civil War began as the Nigerian (the North with the acquiescence of the West) side attacked Biafra (South-eastern) on July 6, 1967 at Garkem signaling the beginning of the 30 month war that ended in January 1970. Over a million people died as a result of the three year war for the soul and destiny of what is today still Nigeria.

Then leader, Yakubu Gowon, in the spirit of brotherhood declared "no victor, no vanquished" as the Biafra rebels surrendered and Nigeria "remained in tact".

Events since the end of that Civil War would seem to however buttress the notion of many watchers of the Nigerian political climate, who claim the country remains a "power keg" waiting to explode.

Since 1970, Nigeria, after the first two military coups, has had six military coups, with two being unsuccessful - the one in 1976 which killed the Head-of-State but did not remove the government and the unsuccessful Gideon Orkar-led coup of 1990 against then military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida.

This is hardly a recipe for success and the fact that Nigeria seemed to have turn the corner in 1999 with the advent of the still fragile Second Republic, does not change the fact that the ethnic and religious undercurrent, a tool used by the Northern elite in particular to advance their selfish interests, remains a headache and one for which the cure is no where in sight.

The biggest obstacle to Nigeria's progress remains the greed and avarice commonplace with the ruling class, in the North and the South as well. The Northern ruling class however have a voracious appetite for power and have shown over the years that they are willing to do anything to not only get it, but also hold on to it.

Their cohorts in the Southwest and the Southeast are always there to strengthen them from behind, as long as the stakes are not so high that the over-arching interests of either of them (North and Southern ruling class) is threatened.

Consequently, the general population, who really could care less about the ethnic or religious "differences" being used by a few sectional interests to divide them, remain the proverbial pawns in this dangerous game.

The Northern power structure is intent on destroying the political and social fabric of the nation, unless their wishes are granted. Their born-to-rule disposition which was hatched in the incubators of power in the North and perpetuated in the corridors of power across much of the nation, has become a self-fulfilling prophesy, but with unintended consequences.

Boko Haram was not supposed to go on a killing spree and murder innocent Northern and other civilians, as well as their political leaders (Boko Haram's benefactors). The Northern power brokers, with the usual suspects leading the charge, can only watch as the fire they had hoped would "burn gently" has slowly engulfed their domain, while threatening the corporate existence of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

It has not helped matters either that Nigeria has a "smiling president" that thinks he needs not do anything, but hope for "Divine Intervention". One can't however blame a man who has never really worked for anything he has become, but had it all given to him, literally.

President Jonathan needs to however realize that the blood of the innocent citizens who have been murdered in cold blood by these band of marauders and terrorists, must be avenged. While I know the concept of revenge, more-so when it is justified, has become untenable to the sycophants in the halls of the UN and the liberal Human Rights Watch (both organizations that have outlived their usefulness), Nigeria's government must NOT negotiate with Boko Haram, but ensure that the group and its benefactors, who are well known to those in power, are brought to task for their acts of treason and sedition against the Nigerian State.

The Nigerian people and much of the civilized world needs to see this president finally live up to his responsibilities and duties as the leader of one of the most important democracies in the world.

Intellectual Capital: Unique solutions from development to deployment

2011-11-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

In my first installment of a new weekly feature to be titled "Intellectual Capital" (on Wednesdays), I will be delving into the unconventional but effective business model of a Northwest company that is stirring up the pot in the IT Consulting and Software Development space, iFusionIT.

iFusionIT, LLC is a software development company that specializes in SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), Gaming, BI (Business Intelligence) reporting and IT Consulting. The Bellevue based company also has earned critical acclaim for its work in the Utilities and Finance verticals.

Established in 2006, the company has managed to stay on a clear path, even in the most trying of times, the last three years in particular.

The IT Consulting space is about as compact as the Telco space was a few years back. However, in keeping with the vision of its founders (IT gurus in their own right with a combined experience of close to two-thirds of a century), the company has stuck to its business model, by leveraging its solid base of partners, consultants and industry network, while executing with precision on its clients' mission critical needs.

In addition to an office in Bellevue (its corporate headquarters), iFusionIT also has an office in India and the company has stayed lean and efficient, while maximizing its expertise and core competencies to its advantage, as well as that of its clients.

Most private organizations are reticent to talk about their growth, more-so in this most dire of economic times, in recent memory.

The leadership at iFusionIT however extolls its own virtues in this regard, pointing to its almost 200% growth (organically) over the last three years, again, in the face of some of the most emaciating economic circumstances.

How did they do it, you might ask? Well, for starters, they have never wavered from their number one guiding principle, that of understanding their customer's needs and thus tuning their processes to meet those needs in a timely and efficient manner.

In the age of Cloud Computing, Lean Project Management and Data Warehousing, it can be rather easy for an organization to lose sight of what made them successful in the first place.

At iFusionIT, the focus seems to have always been on doing what was needed, when it was needed and precisely just the way it was needed.

That may sound rather simplicistic, but far too often, organizations make things more complicated than they ought to be, but at iFusionIT, the key to the company's ability to stay ahead of the game, has always been to keep things simple.

While keeping things simple, iFusionIT has also understood the importance of pioneering in technological innovation. The company is able to support development projects, by virtue of its State-of-The-Art network infrastructure, it claims is second to none.

Furthermore and perhaps critical to its ability to be strategic, is that its project management team specializes in the most conventional project methodologies, such as SDLC, AGILE, SCRUM and WATERFALL, from design to implementation.

It is quite a tall order for a relatively small company to be so ambitious, but iFusionIT has shown that it has absolutely no qualms in mixing it up with the big boys.

The future will tell, but for now, it looks pretty bright.

About iFusionIT
Founded in 2006, iFusionIT envisioned building a comprehensive solution to lead IT Consulting services, Mobile Application Development, Gaming services and Service Oriented Architecture. The founding members have over 50 years of IT experience themselves; leading, developing and designing IT projects.

The company through its innovative ideas has grown in various verticals such as IT, Utilities, Gaming, Finance and Business Intelligence Technologies.

We are a trusted partner to the world's leading organizations and institutions. We believe in an eco-system where everyone working for us benefits and we take pride in doing what is right for the customer.

As Nintendo continues to bleed, forecast revised downwards

2011-10-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

TOKYO - Japanese game maker Nintendo Co. said today its net loss grew to 70.3 billion yen ($925 million) for the six months through September, battered by the strong yen and weaksoftware sales.

The maker of the Wii game console and DS handheld slashed its forecast for the full year through next March to a 20 billion yen ($263 million) net loss, it said in a statement. In July, it had predicted an annual net profit of 20 billion yen.

Nintendo, which scored success by courting casual gamers, is now battling increased competition from Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other devices that offer simple games.

Competition in portable gaming is also heating up with the anticipated arrival of rival Sony Corp.'s latest portable offering, PlayStation Vita. Vita goes on sale in Japan on Dec. 17, and early next year in the U.S. and Europe.

The strong yen has also dealt a heavy blow to the company, which receives nearly 80 percent of its sales overseas. Nintendo said exchange rate losses totaled 52.4 billion yen ($689 million).

Overall sales during the half-year tumbled 41 percent to 215.7 billion yen. And the half-year loss was twice as big a loss as the company had projected in July. During the same period last year, it had a net loss of 2 billion yen.

Nintendo's 3DS handheld, which offers 3D gaming without special glasses, has been a relative disappointment since it went on sale in February in Japan and in March overseas.

The company is fighting to win back customers ahead of the critical year-end shopping season, cutting the price of the 3DS, and is coming out with more games, including 3D versions of its trademark Super Mario games.

The price reduction has lifted 3DS sales, the company said Thursday. For the six months, it sold 3.07 million units of the 3DS, and 8.13 million units of software.

One title, "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D," sold more than a million units, but the company acknowledged that the 3DS "has yet to have many hit titles."

Sales of its regular DS handheld for the half-year fell to 2.58 million units from 6.69 million the same period a year ago. Sales of Nintendo DS software declined to 28.99 million units during the six-month period from 54.84 million last year.

As for its Wii game console, sales for the period fell to 3.35 million units from 4.97 million units last year, while software sales declined to 36.45 million units from 65.21 million a year earlier.

Source: AP News

It's an e-mail scam, not a "Nigerian scam"....

2011-10-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

Editor's Corner

Imagine my surprise when I turned to the consumer page of the Attorney General of the State of Washington to find that a whole people, in this case citizens of Nigeria, had been painted with a wide brush (see former website content below in italics). Regarding the latter, I am talking about the much talked about e-mail scams or advance fee fraud, many believe originated from that West African nation.

"E-mail Scams - Advance fee and counterfeit check/Nigerian scams: If you suffered a financial loss you can file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov"

To better understand this issue, it will be prudent to give a brief overview of the most populous country on the African continent, a nation that has disbursed so much good to much of humanity, with some bad mixed in (show me a perfect country or people).

Nigeria gained its independence from Britain on October 1st, 1960. For the last 51 years, the country has experienced a civil war (that lasted for three years 1967-1970 and killed 1 million of its citizens) while also enjoying a long spell of economic prosperity and boom from the 70s to the late-80s (much from oil and other natural resources she has been blessed with).

Lately, beginning in the 1990s, the countrys infrastructure, image and over-all national reputation has taking a beating, mainly as a result of defective leadership laced with unbecoming greed and avarice.

The general climate of corruption (not quite different from what you would find in most countries but quite overt in Nigeria) has led to an expected societal breakdown, where law, order and common decency became an exception and not the norm.

For all of its struggles with corruption and the systematic destruction of its storied instututions and culture, much of this by its own military, with the acquiescence of the West (the latter mostly concerned with taking its resources by any means), the country has re-set itself back on course, with democratic elections in 1999 and has never looked back since.

The descent into "white collar crime" with the e-mail scams and other forms of criminal activity (by a very marginal minority) does NOT define the nature and character of Nigerians (close to 200 million people), with many Nigerians contributing as physicians, scientists, technology experts and business executives in much of the world, particularly Africa, Europe and the United States (with a well established immigrant population in the Puget Sound as well).

While the e-mail/advance fee scam has generally been portrayed as a "Nigerian Scam", recent investigations by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) (working in conjunction with the FBI and Interpol) have shown that most of these crimes (e-mail/advance fee scams) have actually been commited by citizens of other West African countries, namely Ghana, the Sierra Leone and Liberia (due to the wars and extreme poverty in the latter two).

The interesting spin to the preceding information is that America's next door neighbor, Canada, has become a notorious breeding ground as well for a large proportion of these e-mail and other transactional scams. Witness the Canadian "lottery winner" e-mails as well as the offer to send you a "cashiers check" when you try to sell your car on Craigslist.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), a body recently set up by Nigeria's democratically elected government, has also been very aggressive in pursuing the perpetrators of ALL financial crimes, within the Nigerian state.

While it is true that the Nigerian government "needs to do more to ensure that this menace is curtailed (at least within its borders), one can say that the US government also needs to do more, by advising its citizens not to reply to e-mail solicitations to receive money from "relatives", they never had in Nigeria or anywhere else in the first place.

The advance fee fraud and e-mail scam developed a life of its own by the default of enablement. The greed and avarice in the United States (particularly on Wall Street) is there for all to see, but I am yet to see any Attorney General websites or newspapers refer to those as "American scam" or even worse still, label the scam on Wall Street with an ethnic delineation.

I am grateful to the deputy Chief-of-Staff of the Washington AG for heeding my call and that of other well-meaning and hardworking Nigerians to remove the "Nigerian" label on this disgraceful activity.

One would hope that the likes of Sean Robinson (Staff Writer at the Tacoma News Tribune) might also learn something and understand that much like the criminals on Wall Street and those on the corners of the worst neighborhoods of Tacoma and indeed America who murder (serial killers et al), rape, pillage, molest and commit countless heinous crimes, are not branded with an American or other ethnic-American brush, it would be fool-hardy to do the same to others.

NATO's hypocrisy and a dictator's death by the drain

2011-10-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Editor's Corner

It is obvious to many now (although most of us had said it) that NATO's sole motive for being at the helm of the so-called "humanitarian mission to protect civilians" in the Libyan conflict, was to eliminate Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator. Dan Glazebrook recently wrote that the NATO mission had been turned on its head as French and British leaders with the acquiescence of Washington, sought to use the opportunity to pursue their own personal agenda.

There is no questioning the fact that Gaddafi needed to go, but that should have been up to the Libyan people and not a band of thugs and marauders, who have in fact raped and pillaged, while also summarily executing thousands of innocent African immigrants in Libya.

What is befuddling is that neither NATO or Washington know exactly who these Libyan "liberators" are, or do they....

Several credible reports have emerged since the war began that there is in fact a strong Al-Qaeda presence in the National Transitional Council.

That France, Britain and the United States, the first two in particular could be seen as hypocrites in all of this, is not even debatable. After all, this was the same Gaddafi that the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy (the new Napoleon), Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi, welcomed as a friend at the G8 Summit in Italy, just two years ago.

The irony of all ironies is that most of the same weapons allegedly used by Gaddafi to "murder his own people" were supplied to him by, you guessed it, his "old friends" in Britain and the United States.

Here are some cold facts to ponder:

Many of the weapons used by Libyan dictator’s regime were in fact purchased from Britain. According to the AP: “Britain sold Libya about $55 million worth of military and paramilitary equipment in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010, according to Foreign Office statistics. Among the items: sniper rifles, bulletproof vehicles, crowd control ammunition, and tear gas”
The notorious Khamis brigade troops (Libya’s elite forces under the direct command of one of Gaddafi son’s) contracted an $170 million command and control system from General Dynamics UK – one of the deals cut with the personal backing of the then British PM Tony Blair.
Not only did the British arm the forces of the Gaddafi regime, they also trained them. The Khamis brigade troops were also trained by the SAS as well as being armed by British companies.
The British government was complicit in the rendition and torture of several Libyans and one of the victims Sami al Saadi is currently suing the British government, for its active organization and participation, as revealed in documents unearthed, after Gaddafi's fall.
Documents also show that the CIA kidnapped the Libyan rebel commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj in 2004, along with his pregnant wife and he was delivered to Gaddafi's regime for rendition.
According to a BBC report, from the files unearthed at Gaddafi's compound after his overthrow, CIA agents were indeed present at some of those interrogations at the notorious Abu Selim prison.
Ironically, it was Saif al Islam, Gaddafi's son who is still at large, who freed Belhaj in 2010, under the "de-radicalization" drive, championed by the former.

While the CIA had obviously begun their relationship with the regime earlier, by 2008, former president George W. Bush sent his top diplomat Condoleezza Rice to Libya for talks with the regime, and in the same year, Texas-based Exxon Mobil signed an exploration agreement with the Libyan National Oil Corp. to explore for hydrocarbons off the Libyan coast.

According to the same AP Report, the White House approved the sale of military items to Libya in recent years, giving private arms firms licenses to sell everything from explosives and incendiary agents to aircraft parts and targeting equipment.

Furthermore, the Bush administration approved the sale of $3 million of materials to Libya in 2006 and $5.3 million in 2007.

In 2008, Libya was allowed to import $46 million in armaments from the US. The approved goods included nearly 400 shipments of explosive and incendiary materials, 25,000 aircraft parts, 56,000 military electronics components, and nearly 1,000 items of optical targeting and other guidance equipment.

One can conclude that the West, with Britain, France and the United States leading, armed and supported Gaddafi and his legion of doom, in the torture and sometimes murder of Libyan opposition figures and other citizens, opposed to his tyrannical rule.

They supported Gaddafi politically by opening up diplomatic channels and meetings, while also working hard to open the regime up to Western commercial interests.The United Nations, for all its chattercrawl, was itself complicit in all this, albeit, mostly by default.

Gaddafi's fate should be an eye-opener for all to see that not all that glitters is gold. African and non-Western leaders, whose countries possess untold resources, germane to the sustenance of Western economic interests, need be aware, that the latter will go to any length, to get what they need and want.

That the United Nations and its "first cousin" the ICC have become a tool for the various machinations of Western imperialists, is even more reason for leaders of African and other developing nations, to reconsider their membership of those failed institutions.

Video of Gaddafi's capture and subsequent execution below (Warning! - Graphic Material):

Apple full-year profits up 85%

2011-10-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

The world's biggest technology company Apple has reported full year results, showing net profit for the year to 25 September at $26b, up 85% from the previous year.

Even that was not enough to satisfy Wall Street, with the shares falling nearly 5% in after-hours trading.

There was some disappointment with the fourth quarter of the year, when no major new products were released.

It is the first set of results since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.

In the fourth quarter of the year, Apple sold 17.1 million iPhones, which was a 21% increase on the same period last year, and 11.1 million iPads, which was a 166% increase.

But analysts had been expecting iPhone sales of 20 million in the quarter.

Apple said sales were hurt in September by customers waiting for the new version, the iPhone 4S, which was released on 14 October.

It sold four million of the new models in the first three days after launch.

"The numbers came in weak. They need to set records every time they report to keep up the momentum," said Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners.

Apple sold 4.9 million Mac computers in the quarter - up 27% over the same period last year.

Many analysts believe that the company's future remains "uncertain" as core consumer fear of a lack of continuity of innovation, following the death of Jobs, may ultimately lead to the loss of some brand loyalty.

Like most colonial atrocities, German crimes against humanity haunt Namibians

2011-10-17T00:34:00.000-07:00

Germany refuses to pay reparations for its crimes in Namibia

In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, film-maker and columnist Farai Sevenzo asks why there are no memorials to those killed in Namibia during German colonial rule.

According to The Namibian newspaper, there was a 2.8% decrease in the number of tourists visiting Namibia last year while some 984,099 visitors had gone through Windhoek airport in the year of Africa's football World Cup in neighbouring South Africa.

When I read these figures, I assumed the slight decrease could only be due to the depressing global economic climate - for anyone who has seen the beauty of this stunning African nation would gladly return there were it not for the cruel fate of the gods of credit, who have ordered the tourists to stay at home instead of travelling to faraway lands.

After all, an elephant in the bush may look better in high definition television.

But as we were reminded in the last week, 107 years before this year's high definition nature programmes, a different kind of visitor had been in South West Africa - as Namibia was known before its independence in 1990 - in search of conquest, not elephants.

Between 1904 and 1908, German occupiers systematically massacred ancestors of the Herero and Nama people for daring to rebel.

Under the leadership of Lieutenant General Lother von Trotha, the rebelling groups were killed or driven into the desert, where thousands died of thirst - all normal practice at the time for conquering armies.

But it was what followed which has cast a century-long shadow over German-Namibian relations.

'Gruesome experiments'

Not content with mere conquest, the Germans placed the survivors in concentration camps, built their colony with slave labour and then shipped off thousands of heads belonging to the dead to Berlin - for the totally barbaric aim of proving the inferiority of the defeated Africans in dubious medical experiments.

Fast forward to free Namibia, which had been demanding the return of these skulls, lost to German storage units.

It is a fact of life that we all value our dead, that the living wish to honour the departed and the ruthless disregard for the humanity of the owners of these heads would weigh heavily on any African.

Much had been written about the parallels of the Namibian genocide with its gruesome experiments surrounding the African dead and the subsequent Nazi holocaust of World War II.

Modern German politicians were quick to offer their regret for the sins of their forefathers and claimed to accept "moral responsibility" for the genocidal crimes of the past.

But no reparations were to be paid to the Herero and Nama descendants of this bloody history.

Instead, the German government says it already pays through development aid and recently announced about $173m (£110m) in aid for 2011-2012.

'Prayer and anguish'

Despite the fact that the Namibian victims of this crime see it as genocide, Germany has never acknowledged it as such and the scars of the past remain fully visible in the present day.

Namibia is not a poor country - fish and beef exports, diamonds and uranium - should be supporting 2.1 million people.

Yet the legacy of German colonialism has left hundreds of thousands without land and German descendants still farm on land that was forcefully taken from the murdered.

It is not difficult to imagine how such a situation may end, particularly as a tiny fraction of the population continues to run the economy and the landless remain without land.

As 20 skulls from the thousands that were taken arrived in Windhoek last Thursday, many voices were raised in prayer and anguish and, Africans being as close to their dead as they imagine their dead are to them, a deep sense of gravitas seemed to overlay proceedings.

But no firm answers were given on the issue of reparations - nor when the Herero and Nama can expect the rest of their ancestors' heads to be returned.

And in present day Namibia, frequented as it is by hundreds of thousands of tourists - German and other kinds - there is no standing memorial to the Namibian dead, no plaque at Luderitz, Swakopmund or Shark Island to mark the sites of German concentration camps or the mass graves of those who died.

Why should such a story matter? For those of us with such short histories, the past is a permanent shadow, forever by our side or right behind us.

Just 27 years before South Africa's Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu - 80 last week - was born, a German army commander was issuing orders, in writing, to exterminate Namibians, drive them into the desert and poison the wells.

There are volumes of records in the Windhoek Archives detailing the massacres and recording every death of enslaved laborers.

Of course, there are those who say we must move on, we must close the chapters on tragic histories.

It is our lot on this continent to forever be urged to forget the past when such a past is so near and is as tangible as a four year old's skull in a medical laboratory far from African lands.

No amount of development aid could erase that.

Kercher family remember 'forgotten' daughter

2011-10-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

Kercher was murdered in cold blood

By Colleen Barry and Alessandra Rizzo

PERUGIA, Italy — Meredith Kercher would have been 25. The British student would have finished her degree at Leeds University and perhaps been preparing for another Halloween, a day she loved.

Instead, her family awaits an appeals verdict expected Monday against former roommate Amanda Knox, of Seattle, who was convicted along with her Italian ex-boyfriend of murdering Kercher in 2007.

Kercher's killing has spawned one of Italy's most sensational and closely watched trials. Yet to her family's frustration, Kercher has been eclipsed in the public's eye by the 24-year-old Knox, as supporters of the photogenic American mount a high-profile campaign to free her.

By contrast, Kercher's family has chosen to remain largely silent during the years of trial and appeal, quietly honoring her memory on the Nov. 1 anniversary of her death and her birthday on Dec. 28. But they are growing increasingly agitated as the appeal verdict approaches.

In one of the few TV interviews they have granted, Kercher's sister Stephanie and mother Arline said attention should focus on justice for the victim, not Knox or her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who is also appealing his conviction alongside Knox.

"In this whole case — going on four years — Meredith has been forgotten," Stephanie Kercher said in a recorded interview on RAI public television this month.

"The attention has completely moved from Meredith to Amanda and Raffaele," she said. "She was lovely, kind and we lost her."

On her last Halloween, one day before her death, Meredith dressed as a vampire. Photographs, some of the last of her life, show her smiling brightly with red lipstick, a high-collared cape wrapped around her neck.

The young student fought hard for approval from her university to study in the charming medieval town of Perugia, arriving in September 2007. She was excited to have found a room with a view of the Umbrian landscape, court records show. She shared the apartment with two young Italian women and Knox, who moved in around the same time.

Kercher made friends fast, testimony in the first trial shows. Within weeks, she had a small group of British girlfriends with whom she went dancing or watched films, and she had started dating a young Italian living downstairs. Giacomo Silenzi has said they fell in love quickly, and has been left to wonder what the future might have held had she not been killed.

On the last night of her life, she ate pizza and apple crumble with a small group of friends, watched a movie and went home alone around 9 p.m., according to court testimony.

Meredith was 21 when she was found the afternoon of Nov. 2 sprawled naked on the floor of her locked bedroom, throat slashed, body covered in a blanket.

Prosecutors claim that she was murdered when a drug-fueled sexual encounter with the two defendants and a third man went awry. Rudy Guede, an Ivorian who lived in Perugia from age 5, is serving a 16-year sentence for his role in the murder.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years, Sollecito to 25. All three proclaim innocence.

Meredith's father John Kercher, a freelance journalist, has said he refused to view her body, so he could remember as she was in life.

"I had last seen her a couple of weeks before, when she flew home to buy winter clothes. We met for a coffee and she showed me some boots she had bought," John Kercher wrote in the Britain's Daily Mirror tabloid. "I want that to be the one memory of my daughter I hold in my mind forever."

She was the baby of the family, with three older siblings — two brothers and a sister.

She loved ballet and gymnastics, and had an orange belt in karate. She wrote poetry and stories. People remembered her as being warm and generous, full of hugs, lending class notes to anyone who asked, and always rushing to help anyone who needed it.

After arriving in Perugia, she kept a cell phone with a British number to stay in close contact with her mother, who was in poor health.

Only one vice is ever mentioned. "She was always late, always running," her mother Arline said on the RAI TV interview. "She was a girl full of life. She loved music, she loved to dance. She was full of joy in her heart."

The degree the quietly studious Kercher would have been awarded in 2009 was granted posthumously. It was accepted by her sister Stephanie to a standing ovation at Leeds.

During rebuttals on Friday, the Kerchers' lawyer, Francesco Maresca, urged the jury to "confirm the truth" in front of the victim's mother, sister and a brother, who would make the journey to Italy for the verdict.

"You will look Meredith's family in the eyes only once," Maresca said. "They could not always be here in court due to the mother's health problems and siblings' economic problems."

In fact, he said, they had trouble finding airline tickets for the verdict, which the lawyer contrasted with reports that the Knox family had a private jet ready to whisk the American student out of the country in the case of a not guilty finding. Knox's family has denied the existence of such a plan.

Earlier, prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said acquitting Knox would mean forever losing a chance at justice.

"We know what an acquittal means — a swift escape abroad," he told the appeals court. "Escape we could no longer remedy."

The prosecution detailed DNA evidence and other circumstantial clues as they had their last chance to talk to the jury.

While they cling to their memories, the Kercher family says it will continue to fight for justice — even as it delays their own process of healing.

The Kerchers have no doubts about whether Knox is guilty — and express rage that she's garnering most of the attention.

"As a journalist myself, I know the reason why. Knox is young, attractive and female. To many, she seems an unlikely killer," John Kercher wrote in The Daily Mail tabloid in December as the appeals trial got under way. "Yet to my family she is, unequivocally, culpable."

Source: AP News

Kindle Fire vs iPad

2011-10-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

AP Photo: Amazon's Kindle Fire

A look at some of the major differences between Amazon's just-announced tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, and Apple's populariPad:

Price: The Kindle Fire, which connects to the Web over Wi-Fi networks, will cost $199 when it begins selling on Nov. 15. The iPad costs $499-$829, depending on storage capacity and its wireless capabilities.

Screen size: The Kindle Fire's display measures 7 inches at the diagonal, while the iPad has a 9.7-inch display.

Software: The Kindle Fire runs Google Inc.'s Android software. The iPad uses Apple's iOS software.

Storage: The Kindle Fire includes 8 gigabytes of internal storage, and free web-based storage for any digital content you get from Amazon, such as Kindle e-books, movies or music. The iPad includes between 16 gigabytes and 64 GB of storage space, depending on price.

Thickness: The Kindle Fire is 0.45 inches thick; the iPad is 0.34 inches thick.

Weight: The Kindle Fire tips the scales at 14.6 ounces — slightly less than a pound — while the iPad weighs about 1.3 pounds.

Apps: Kindle Fire users will have built-in access to the Amazon Appstore, which includes thousands of free and paid games and apps. Apple currently offers more than 425,000 free and paid games and apps in its online App Store — more than 100,000 of which are tailored specifically for the iPad — including apps for Amazon.com and the Kindle.

Camera: While the iPad has front and rear cameras for taking photos and video chatting, the Kindle Fire does not include a camera.

Featured Technology: AMR/AMI Technologies for the Utilities Space

2011-09-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Image Courtesy: iFusionIT

iFusionIT, LLC, a Bellevue, Washington based multinational technology company, has launched itself into building applications and expertise in the Utilities domain with the launch of three customer funded projects in the space of AMR/AMI technologies. ZCON (Zero Consumption), ReX Relationship Exceptions) are built as part of the MPA (Meter Performance Analytics) initiative and the last one being the TAT (Technology Assessment Tool).

On many occasions a meter transmitting read over the network could go faulty and report NO USAGE or sometimes a perfect meter reports NO USAGE. Utilities spend huge amount of resources, and money to investigate such meters. Most of the time such meters are either seasonal (Ex: Agriculture Meters), Vacation Homes and many other possible situations. ZCON (Zero Consumption) is a .NET, WCF, WPF based application with Oracle and SQL Server as the backend.

The system tracks every meter reporting zero usage using batch, real-time interfaces and a web front-end from the start to finish (meters start consuming or are replaced). This tool has allowed our clients to have visibility, monitor all ZERO CONSUMPTION meters and allowed for proper tracking of every meter reporting ZERO CONSUMPTION.

Built using latest Microsoft Technologies, this tool enhances the user’s ability to report vintage dates and resolution of meters. Reporting features were built using SSRS and SSIS to report on different categories and irregular use codes. Various levels of reports from operations to Analytical Reports were custom built. The data structures and design is architected to produce auto tracking and progression of meters over a period of time from a NEW and UNKNOWN category to a Service Order Creation and resolution of the meter.

The middle tier Web services focused to provide smooth integration between various systems within the organization is built on a solid foundation from Microsoft’s WCF platform. Webservice’s defined and developed follow CIM compliance models with a message envelope and a Payload. These web services are built as listeners and provide data outputs and data validations for various systems integrating within ZCON called the ReX (Relationship Experience) modules. The services connect to SQL and Oracle databases with calls to stored procedures and functions to display customer history, customer power usage patterns and seasonal analysis. Our later version will include Silverlight features and a complete SSIS integration into the current software design.

The System exposes 20 services to add meter exceptions, to add events, to add new exceptions and admin functionality.

For more information about iFusionIT, LLC and its technological initiatives, you may contact them at Contactus@ifusionit.com .

Source: iFusionIT.com

Amazon's tablet to seriously challenge Apple's iPad

2011-09-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com Inc, which revolutionized reading with its Kindle e-reader, is expected to unveil a tablet computer this week that analysts say will seriously challenge Apple's market dominating iPad.

Amazon on Friday invited media to a press conference to be held in New York on Wednesday, declining to provide further details.

But analysts were confident that the world's largest Internet retailer will introduce its long-awaited tablet computer this year to expand in mobile commerce and sell more digital goods and services.

"Wednesday is tablet day," BGC partners analyst Colin Gillis told Reuters.

The tablet has been awaited as a strong competitor to Apple Inc's iPad. Apple has sold about 29 million of the devices since its launch in April 2010.

"The real issue here is that, you know, it is likely going to be good for consumers; is this going to be good for shareholders?," Gillis said. He wondered whether Amazon would price the tablet below those of rivals -- and thereby do little to boost margins.

"Knowing Amazon, it is likely to be a very aggressive price," Gillis said.

In much the same way Amazon's Kindle e-reader was priced low to quickly get traction among readers the company is likely to keep the price of its tablet low to attract users and sell other content and services, one analyst said.

"It's a marketing tool to build a relationship with customers and sell them cloud (computing) services," said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

While Amazon has remained tight lipped even about the device's existence, the TechCrunch blog earlier this month said the Amazon tablet also will be called Kindle.

It will be a 7 inch device with a full color, touch screen, run on Google's Android software and cost $250, the blog said, well below the price of the least expensive iPad.

Robert Baird & Co analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note last month than an Amazon tablet would be a "game-changer." Sebastian forecast the device could sell 3 million units in its first year.

The tablet could pose a major threat to Apple because of the Kindle's popularity and the movie and music services Amazon sells.

Forrester's McQuivey said the device also takes aim at Barnes & Noble Inc's NookColor device, which hit the market last year and features tablet functionalities.

Several technology companies like Research In Motion and Samsung have introduced tablets that sold poorly. Hewlett Packard Co announced recently it would abandon its tablet.

Amazon shares finished the day up 0.2 percent at $223.61 on Friday on Nasdaq. The stock had traded as low as $219.06, but rallied as invitations to the media event began arriving.

Source: Reuters

Saudi King okays women to vote... but still can't drive

2011-09-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia's king announced on Sunday women would be given the right to vote and stand in elections, a bold shift in the ultra-conservative absolute monarchy as pressure for social and democratic reform sweeps the Middle East.

It was by far the biggest change in Saudi Arabia's tightly-controlled society yet ordered by the 88-year-old Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who took power six years ago with a reformer's reputation but has ruled as a cautious conservative.

In practice, the measure will do little to change how the country is run: Saudi Arabia's rulers allow elections only for half of the seats on municipal councils which have few powers. Only men will vote at the next elections which will take place next week; women will be allowed to vote in 2015.

The king did not address broader issues of women's rights in a country where women are not allowed to drive and require a male relative's permission to work or leave the country.

But the announcement was hailed by liberals and activists who said it raised hopes that other demands for greater democratic and social rights might one day be met.

"This is great news," said Saudi writer and women's rights activist Wajeha al-Huwaider. "Women's voices will finally be heard. Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians."

In his five-minute speech, Abdullah said women would be permitted join the unelected advisory Shura Council, which vets legislation although it has no binding powers.

"Because we refuse to marginalize women in society in all roles that comply with sharia (Islamic law), we have decided, after deliberation with our senior ulama (clerics) and others... to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from the next term," he said.

"Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election and will even have a right to vote."

In a country where even cautious change is bitterly opposed by conservative clerics and some members of the ruling family, women's rights have drawn scrutiny at home and from abroad.

Washington, Saudi Arabia's ally, praised the measures, saying they offered women "new ways to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and communities."

"The announcements made today represent an important step forward in expanding the rights of women in Saudi Arabia," said a White House statement. "We support King Abdullah and the people of Saudi Arabia as they undertake these and other reforms."

Robert Lacey, author of two books about the kingdom, described the change as the first positive response to a pent-up demand for reform that has begun to emerge in Saudi Arabia as popular democracy movements spread elsewhere in the Middle East.

During the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests, Saudi activists called for demonstrations, but only tiny numbers of people responded by taking to the streets, apart from members of the Shi'ite minority in the country's Eastern Province.

Saudi Arabia responded by barring demonstrations and by announcing nearly $130 billion in social spending in March.

"This is the first positive, progressive speech out of the government since the Arab Spring," said Lacey. "First the warnings, then the payments, now the beginnings of solid reform."

The king did not address broader issues of women's social rights, such as the ban on issuing driving licenses to women, which prompted small protests this summer by women who defied the authorities and drove.

Women in Saudi Arabia must also have written approval from a male guardian -- a father, husband, brother or son -- to leave the country, work or even undergo certain medical operations.

In 2002, the Saudi religious police shocked the nation and the world when they prevented schoolgirls from evacuating a burning building because they were not wearing full Islamic attire. Fifteen died.

King Abdullah has earned a reputation as a cautious reformer since he started to run the kingdom as de facto regent during the illness of his predecessor, King Fahd.

He built a new university for students of both sexes and encouraged women to participate more in the labor market. But he did little to alter the political system, which placed absolute power in the hands of a single generation of brothers since his father, state founder Abdulaziz, died in 1953.

After entering the Shura Council chamber leaning heavily on a cane on Sunday, Abdullah read only a section of a prepared statement that was later released in full by the authorities.

Tarek Fadaak, a member of the Shura Council and former chairman of the Jeddah city council, said: "The royal decision will not be challenged... but what remains to be seen is how these directives will be applied."

Naila Attar, who organized a campaign for women to be allowed to participate in the municipal council elections, said the move marked the beginning of progress.

"Despite the issue of the effectiveness of these councils, women's involvement in them was necessary. Maybe after women join there will be other changes," she said. "It is the top of the pyramid and a step in the direction for more decisions regarding women."

Source: Reuters

Nigeria to abstain in Palestine UN vote

2011-09-22T04:17:00.000-07:00

Nigeria's President G. Ebele Jonathan, has said that the West African nation will abstain from the United Nations Security Council vote on Palestinian statehood. This decision represents a diplomatic success for Israel who want to prevent a Palestinian state attaining UN membership.

The office of the Isreali Defense Minister, Ehud Barak made this known to the press yesterday. According to Barak, Jonathan’s decision followed a meeting that was held in New York. Before the meeting, Nigeria was one of the Security Council members who was against passing the resolution, but was yet to take a decision on how to vote.

Barak had earlier updated his Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of his plan to meet with Jonathan as well as United States government officials who were also working against the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid from passing in the Security Council.

The office further revealed that the meeting was held last week, adding that they also discuss other pressing matters, regarding the wave of international terrorism, which, the two countries worked out modalities on how to tackle.

The United States has the veto power to over rule whatever decision taken in respect of the passing, and has made it clear that it will not hesitate to make use of it as they also are against the bid.

The Security Council members that are against Palestine's UN membership are are the U.S, Germany and Colombia while China,India, Lebanon, Russia, and South Africa are in favour.

Early hours of yesterday revealed that many of the Security Council member states were still confused about the vote, includingGabon who made it known yesterday they are yet to make a decision.

Source: Daily Times of Nigeria

A war on Africa

2011-09-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

Touted as part of a war of liberation, NATOs intervention in Libya aims to stymie moves to strengthen African unity and independence, writes Dan Glazebrook from London....

Africa the key to global economic growth: this was a refreshingly honest recent headline from the Washington Post, but hardly one that qualifies as news. African labour and resources, as any decent economic historian will tell you, have been the key to global economic growth for centuries.
When the Europeans discovered America 500 years ago, their economic system went viral. Increasingly, European powers realised that the balance of power at home would be dictated by the strength they were able to draw from their colonies abroad. Imperialism (aka capitalism) has been the fundamental hallmark of the worlds economic structure ever since.
For Africa, this has meant non-stop subjection to an increasingly systematic plunder of people and resources that has been unrelenting to this day. First was the brutal kidnapping of tens of millions of Africans to replace the indigenous American workforce that had been wiped out by the Europeans. The slave trade was devastating for African economies, which were rarely able to withstand the population collapse; but the capital it created for plantation owners in the Caribbean laid the foundations for Europes industrial revolution.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as more and more precious raw materials were found in Africa (especially tin, rubber, gold and silver), the theft of land and resources ultimately resulted in the so-called Scramble for Africa of the 1870s, when, over the course of a few years, Europeans divided up the entire continent (with the exception of Ethiopia) amongst themselves. By this point, the worlds economy was increasingly becoming an integrated whole, with Africa continuing to provide the basis for European industrial development as Africans were stripped of their land and forced down gold mines and onto rubber plantations.
After World War II, the European powers, weakened by years of unremitting industrial slaughter of each other, contrived to adapt colonialism to the new conditions in which they found themselves. As national liberation movements grew in strength, the European powers confronted a new economic reality the cost of subduing the restless natives was starting to near the level of wealth they were able to extract from them.
Their favoured solution was what former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah termed neo-colonialism handing over the formal attributes of political sovereignty to a trusted bunch of hand-picked cronies who would allow the economic exploitation of their countries to continue unabated. In other words, the idea was to adapt colonialism so that Africans themselves would be forced to shoulder the burden and cost of policing their own populations.
In practice, it wasnt that simple. All across Asia, Africa and Latin America, mass movements began to demand control of their own resources, and in many places these movements managed to gain power sometimes through guerrilla struggle, sometimes through the ballot box. This led to vicious wars by the European powers now under the leadership of their upstart protégé, the USA to destroy such movements. This struggle, not the so- called Cold War, is what defined the history of post-war international relations.
So far, neo-colonialism has largely been a successful project for the Europeans and the US. Africas role as a provider of cheap, often slave, labour and minerals has largely continued unabated. Poverty and disunity have been the essential ingredients that have allowed this exploitation to continue. However, both are now under serious threat.
Chinese investment in Africa over the past ten years has been building up African industry and infrastructure in a way that may begin to tackle the continents poverty. In China, these policies have brought about unprecedented reductions in poverty and have helped to lift the country into the position it will shortly hold as the worlds leading economic power. If Africa follows this model, or anything like it, the Wests 500-year plunder of Africas wealth may be nearing a close.
To prevent this threat of African development, the Europeans and the USA have responded in the only way they know how militarily. Four years ago, the US set up a new command and control centre for the military subjugation of Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US was that no African country wanted to host them; indeed, until very recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without a US military base. And this fact is in no small part thanks to the efforts of the Libyan government.
Before Gaddafis revolution deposed the British-backed King Idris in 1969, Libya had hosted one of the worlds biggest US airbases, the Wheelus Air Base; but within a year of the revolution, it had been closed down and all foreign military personnel expelled.
More recently, Gaddafi had been actively working to scupper AFRICOM. African governments that were offered money by the US to host a base were typically offered double by Gaddafi to refuse it, and in 2008 this ad hoc opposition crystallised in a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union (AU).
Perhaps even more worrying for US and European domination of the continent were the huge resources that Gaddafi was channelling into African development. The Libyan government was by far the largest investor in Africas first-ever satellite, launched in 2007, which freed Africa from $500 million per year in payments to European satellite companies.
Even worse for the colonial powers, Libya had allocated $30 billion for the African Unions three big financial projects, aimed at ending African dependence on western finance. The African Investment Bank, with its headquarters in Libya, was to invest in African development without charging interest, which would have seriously threatened the International Monetary Funds domination of Africa a crucial pillar for keeping Africa in its impoverished position.
Gaddafi was also leading the AUs development of a new gold-backed African currency, which would have cut yet another of the strings that keep Africa at the mercy of the West, with $42 billion already allocated to this project again, much of it by Libya.
NATOs war is aimed at ending Libyas trajectory as a socialist, anti- imperialist, pan-Africanist nation in the forefront of moves to strengthen African unity and independence. The rebels have made clear their virulent racism from the very start of their insurrection, rounding up or executing thousands of black African workers and students. All the African development funds for the projects described above have been frozen by the NATO countries and are to be handed over to their hand-picked buddies in the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) to spend instead on weapons to facilitate their war.
For Africa, the war is far from over. The African continent must recognise that NATOs lashing out is a sign of desperation, of impotence, of its inability to stop the inevitable rise of Africa onto the world stage. Africa must learn lessons from Libya, continue the drive towards pan-African unity, and continue to resist AFRICOM. Plenty of Libyans will still be with them when they do so.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly

Carol Bartz finally resigns from Yahoo board of directors

2011-09-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

Carol Bartz, whose role as Yahoo CEO ended abruptly last Tuesday, has resigned from the Yahoo board.

Having been abruptly ousted from the position she had held for less than three years, Bartz had initially stated that she would not step down from the Yahoo board, but now she seems to have changed her mind.... and rightly so.

There is no question in the minds of many neutral industry watchers that Bartz was treated unfairly (she was more graphic in her own assessment).

After all, we are talking about the same Yahoo board that blew a Microsoft acquisition deal of $40+ billion dollars.

That was obviously not Carol Bartz's fault and the fact that the same incompetent board has now set-up an "Executive Leadership Council" to replace Bartz, again shows the board itself ought to be fired.

As would be the norm, in terms of making sound business sense, a succession mechanism should have been in place to ensure a smooth transition, as we've seen with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple, more recently.

Yahoo has indeed become a dinosaur in its space and the bitter truth may indeed surface sooner rather than later.... that Carol Bartz was not the problem.

In closing, I only have one small issue with Bartz; she should have taken the high road as her behavior in the after-math of her firing, may have doomed her career as a Chief Executive in the industry.

But then again, you never know.

Cloud Security Is Looking Overcast

2011-09-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

By Aaron Ricadela

Eran Feigenbaum knows a thing or two about risk. He moonlights as the TV and stage magician “Eran Raven,” known for stunts involving snakes, scorpions, and razor blades. He once played Russian roulette with nail guns on the NBC show Phenomenon, and in August he did a five-day run at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. That pedigree serves him well in his day job as director of security for Google’s (GOOG) business applications, where he’s responsible for convincing corporate risk managers of the safety of cloud computing. Working in computer security requires “a hyperawareness” of risk, he says, “the same as when you’re on stage performing with nail guns.”

Cloud computing has become one of tech’s biggest buzzwords. These services, offered by Google, Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon.com (AMZN), and dozens of others, offer computing power over the Internet as an alternative for companies that have traditionally bought their own fleets of giant server computers. The approach has won fans among corporate software developers and rank-and-file employees who like having access to documents and programs from any device at any time.

Corporate policymakers, though, have yet to fully embrace the cloud, fearing that the services may compromise proprietary data. A survey by researcher IDC found that fewer than a third of IT executives feel the benefits of cloud computing outweigh its risks. Nearly a quarter of the 500 executives surveyed said they don’t fully understand the regulatory and compliance issues in cloud computing, and 47 percent say cloud services present a security threat. Companies that don’t understand the risks “just shouldn’t use cloud computing,” says IDC analyst Phil Hochmuth. “The potential for a security breach or a compliance violation can be high.”

David Bodnick is seeing the change firsthand. “The risks of the cloud have been particularly salient for a few of our clients,” says Bodnick, president of WebIntensive Software, a New York company that develops online applications for dozens of customers such as LexisNexis, the United Nations, and Columbia University. One WebIntensive client, a search engine called Startpage, didn’t want to use a cloud service because it feared its data might remain on remote servers, and Startpage promises customers that it won’t store their Web-search history. A health-care information company let WebIntensive incorporate cloud storage into its application, but only if patient information were encrypted, which boosted the cost by 15 percent. “We are now getting questions that we didn’t before about the safety of hosting applications in the cloud,” says Bodnick.

Information technology managers say cloud computing lets employees skirt policies meant to keep viruses and hackers out of corporate systems and ensure compliance with regulations governing e-mail communications. At SF Bay Pediatrics in San Francisco and Mill Valley, Calif., doctors can collaborate on informational pamphlets for patients using Google Apps and online file storage service Dropbox, and can e-mail photos of conditions taken with their iPhones, says Chief Information Officer Andrew Johnson. But they’re forbidden from recording diagnoses or other information about patients because online services can’t guarantee adherence to federal privacy regulations. “We don’t store any of that in the cloud,” Johnson says.

Some managers who have tentatively adopted cloud computing fret that it may not be as reliable as their own systems. In April and in August, Amazon Web Services suffered crashes that took down sites including Netflix (NFLX) and smartphone app developer Foursquare. Online services from Microsoft and Google have had similar disruptions, cutting off users of Web-based e-mail, document sharing, and other applications. That has led to fears about buying too many essential programs from cloud services, says Sanjay Poonen, president of global solutions at business software maker SAP (SAP). Although SAP in May struck a deal to run some of its applications on Amazon’s service, Poonen says, “Nobody’s ready to move their entire business process, end-to-end, to the cloud.”

Cloud companies say they understand the worries. “When enterprises move to the cloud they are embarking on a fundamentally different way of doing computing,” says Adam Selipsky, vice-president of Amazon Web Services. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all say they undergo a battery of risk audits of a host of factors such as access to data centers, safeguards on personal information in credit-card transactions, and firewalls to ward off hackers. Furthermore, they say, their services can be more reliable than many corporate systems. Gmail, for instance, was operational 99.984 percent of the time in 2010, and is at 99.99 percent uptime so far this year, Feigenbaum says. “That’s less than five minutes of downtime a month. Not too many organizations can do that internally.”

The bottomline: Tech companies want corporations to adopt cloud computing, but nearly half of CIOs view such services as a security threat.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Nigeria to diversify up-to 10% of its foreign reserves into Chinese yuan

2011-09-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is diversifying its foreign exchange reserves away from the U.S. dollar and will hold between 5 to 10 per cent of them in Chinese yuan.
CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi, stated this on Monday while on a visit to China. “We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 per cent of our reserves,” he said.
However, Sanusi added that the bulk of the country’s reserves would remain in dollars. “The dollar and the euro are not going to disappear,” he said. “They are going to remain an important part of our holdings.”

Nigeria's satellites return first pictures

2011-09-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

Nigeria's latest Earth observation satellites have returned their first pictures.

The spacecraft, launched on 17 August, give the African nation a powerful new capability to map its own lands and other parts of the globe.

NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X will also assist the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.

This UK-managed fleet of spacecraft is used to picture regions of the Earth gripped by natural calamities.

These might be catastrophic floods or a big earthquake. Images sent down from space will often be critical to organising an effective emergency response.

The first picture released from the Nigerian pair is of New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

It was acquired by NigeriaSat-X, and reveals the buildings and the landscape surrounding this major urban centre.

It is just possible to see the wakes of ships passing under the harbour bridge that joins downtown Auckland with North Shore City.

The satellite is equipped with a multi-spectral imager for general mapping, agricultural monitoring and disaster relief work.

The resolution in this picture is 22m per pixel. Vegetation is picked out in red.

Both NigeriaSat-X and NigeriaSat-2 were designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford, UK.

What is interesting about NigeriaSat-X is that the work was undertaken by Nigerian engineers themselves. The skills they have learnt will now be taken home so that they can build future spacecraft in their own country.

It is a model previously followed by Turkey. Its engineers received their education at SSTL as well, and the same rocket that launched the Nigerian platforms also launched Rasat.

This remote sensing satellite (7.5m resolution) is the first to have been developed and manufactured in Turkey by Turkish engineers.

SSTL Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, commented: "NigeriaSat-X is the product of Nigeria's training and development programme here at Surrey.

"It is a great credit to NASRDA (National Space Research and Development Agency) and their engineers that this satellite is performing well and its operations are progressing so quickly.

"These highly skilled engineers will not only help Nigeria to manage its resources, but also bootstrap its fledgling high-tech economy alongside a growing nucleus of highly trained people."

A first picture should be released from NigeriaSat-2 in the coming days. This is a much more powerful platform, able to resolve details on the Earth's surface just 2.5m across.

Few countries in the world have access to such a capability.

Source: BBC Science & Technology News

Apple shares fall as Jobs quits

2011-08-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has resigned as chief executive of the technology giant and will be replaced by chief operating officer Tim Cook.

Mr Jobs, who underwent a liver transplant following pancreatic cancer, said he could no longer meet his chief executive's duties and expectations.

The Silicon Valley legend will become chairman of the firm.

The 56-year-old has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since 17 January.

In a short letter to the board of Apple, Mr Jobs wrote: "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's chief executive, I would be the first to let you know.

"Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as chief executive of Apple.

"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

"I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you."

Apple board member Art Levinson paid tribute to Mr Jobs' contribution to the company: "Steve's extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company."

Apple shares have fallen 4.1% in the secondary listing in Frankfurt, having dropped more than 5% in after-market trading on New York's Nasdaq.

Analysts said the resignation was not unexpected, and would have little impact on the day-to-day running of the company.

"Steve is [still] going to be able to provide the input he would do as a chief executive," said Colin Gillis at BGC Financial.

"But Tim has been de facto chief executive for some time and the company has been hugely successful. The vision and the roadmap is intact."

Nor will customers see any real difference, analysts said.

"At the end of the day, consumers don't buy products from Apple because they're from Steve Jobs, they buy them because they meet their needs and they're good products, and they'll continue to do that," Michael Gartenberg from Gartner reiterated.

The company has some big products on the horizon such as the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3.

But while Apple shares slid, shares in two of Apple's main Asian rivals gained. Taiwan-based phone maker HTC rose 4.1%, while South Korea's Samsung Electronics gained 3.2%.

The firms compete with Apple in the smartphone and tablet-PC sector, and have been involved in legal battles with Apple over patent rights.

The boss of another rival in the phone market paid tribute to Mr Jobs' work.

"Steve Jobs is a visionary in the computing industry," said Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia.

"We look forward to both Steve and his team having a positive impact on our industry for many years to come."

Mr Jobs is widely seen as the creative force that has driven Apple to become one of the world's biggest companies.

Thanks to innovative and hugely popular products such as the iPod, the iPhone and more recently the iPad, Apple has become one of the most sought after brands in the world.

In the three months to the end of June, the company made a profit of $7.3bn on revenues of $28.6bn. It sold more than 20 million iPhones in the period and 9.25 million iPads.

The company recently became the most valuable US firm after its market capitalisation overtook that of oil company Exxon Mobil.

Mr Jobs co-founded Apple in the 1970s with Steve Wozniak, and its Macintosh computers became hugely popular in the 1980s.

In 1985, Mr Jobs left the company after falling out with colleagues, only to return in 1997 and begin Apple's transformation by launching the colourful iMac computer.

The iPod, which revolutionised the personal music-player market and spawned myriad copycat devices, was launched in 2002 and laid the foundations for the company's success over the past decade.

Next came the iPhone, which similarly revolutionised the smartphone market, while the iPad confounded some initial scepticism to prove hugely popular.

Many versions of these products have been launched while Mr Jobs has been on medical leave, and new versions that have been planned for months will not be affected by his departure, analysts said.

Source: BBC Business News

Oil prices should fall with Gadhafi overthrow

2011-08-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

Oil prices are expected to fall, with the potential overthrow of Libyan strongman, Muammar Gadhafi, looming.

As the rather undisciplined rebels launch an offensive within the Libyan capital, Tripoli, even with the expected ressistance of pocket forces of the Libyan dictator, the overwhelming force of NATO's air support should aid the rebels in finally breaking the back of Gadhafi's ressistance.

Gadhafi's overthrow is virtually now a matter of when, not if, particularly in light of the news that his son Saif al-Islam, who was widely viewed as his heir-apparent, has been captured and is currently being held by the rebels.

Saif al-Islam was educated in the West (has a doctorate from the London School of Economics) and has been the de-facto face of the Libyan government all through the six-month civil war.

Prosecutor Louis Moreno-Ocampo of the much maligned International Criminal Court (ICC), confirmed that Saif al-Islam was in custody of the Libyan rebels.

The rebels also stated earlier today, that another of Col. Gadhafi's sons, Mohammed Al-Gadhafi, had been captured and was also in their custody. Col. Gadhafi's whereabouts are however unknown and it has been reported that he may have fled into neigbouring Algeria.

The immediate impact of the fall in global oil prices may not be felt for months, particularly with the uncertainty that still surrounds the identity of the rebels and the expected chaos, that is sure to follow their overthrow of Gadhafi.

Independent analysts expect oil markets to respond by Monday, with oil prices trending downwards in anticipation of an end to the Libyan crisis.

Although Libya traditionally contributes less than 2% of the world's oil supply, much of which has been cut-off since the conflict started, its loss affected prices due to its high quality and its apparent suitability for European refineries.

If the expected overthrow of Gadhafi is followed by a smooth transitional period, then we may see oil production resume sooner from the Libyan oil reserves and that should help stabilize the markets, beginning with the European markets, analysts say.

NATO, the United States and indeed the international community, can however help in the process of ensuring that Libya does not become another IRAQ.

This is where the leadership of the United States will be paramount and one can only expect that the White House will not cede this role to either France or Great Britain, two nations (France in particular) that are deeply mistrusted in that part of the world.

Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks to massive crowd at "The Response....."

2011-08-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

Could he be the next President of the United States....?

Look out! Here comes Rick Perry....

2011-08-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

By Michael Tomasky | The Daily Beast
Now comes Rick Perry into the crowded GOP White House race. He will surely be an instant co-front-runner along with Mitt Romney. In fact I would argue, and will one paragraph down, that he’s basically the instant front-runner So for the sake of argument, let’s go ahead and think about a Perry-Obama race. Such a race would be about, yes, the economy first and foremost, and deficits and health care and all the rest. But an Obama-Perry race would be something else, too: a war between the two Americas, each side represented by its respective cultural standard-bearer, each side’s foot soldiers absolutely smoldering with contempt for everything the other guy stands for and indeed the way he looks. We’ve never quite had that before, not in this way, so it’s worth thinking about.

First, I think Perry becomes the frontrunner, even ahead of Mitt Romney, for three main reasons. No. 1, he fires up large chunks of the base in a way Romney does not. Romney has “default candidate” written all over him, but evangelicals and other hard-shell conservatives are never going to love a Massachusetts Mormon. They’ll love Perry. No. 2, Perry can quickly become the “establishment” candidate because the establishment of today’s GOP is not based on Wall Street or the heartland but in Texas—Karl Rove, the oilmen, the various billionaires who prime those GOP pumps. No. 3 is speculation rather than fact, but I believe Perry will demonstrate pretty quickly that he’s a better campaigner than Romney. It won’t be hard.

It will take some time, probably, for the polls to reflect all this, but they will. Republicans don’t want a posh, well-spoken Yankee who works at a place with a name like Bain Capital. In their deepest souls, they want a Texas governor. They want a shit-kicker. And here, we circle back to culture.

When my friends and I looked at George W. Bush in 1999, we shuddered like people who’d turned a street corner and stumbled across a dog’s corpse. We knew and had contempt for his beliefs, but it had nothing to do with them, really. It was just the way he presented himself. That puffed-out chest. That self-satisfied smirk. All that Jesus talk—even in the event that it was sincere, which we never quite bought, it was to a liberal deeply inappropriate to haul it into the public square like that. He represented Southern country clubs and Dodge Durangos and Browning bolt-actions and homes with no books in them (putting Laura to the side, since she wasn’t the candidate). He was the kind of man who, if I ran into him at a hospitality tent at a tailgate party, I’d make an effort to avoid. Liberals just couldn’t stand the sight of the guy. And that was before he ruined the country.

I understand that conservatives feel similarly about Obama. They look at him and see wine-and-cheese parties where people have jazz playing in the background and where talk turns to the merits and demerits of Jonathan Franzen, who drive Priuses (or is it Prii?) and buy espresso machines and live in homes with far too many books in them. And worse than that: for much of Red America, Dr. Frankenstein himself could not have stitched together a more perfect Other: urban, urbane, sophisticated, intellectual. “Black,” of course, may no longer be a deal breaker in this day and age, but it doesn’t help. Many conservatives clearly can’t stand the sight of him.

Perry, on this scale, is chillingly Bush-like. I saw a clip the other day of him saluting—an off-screen soldier, perhaps, or a flag. It was a small thing. But he looked exactly like Bush. The chest pumped up with self-regard. The overly aggressive way he thrust his saluting hand out from his forehead. He even, I swear, was smirking. I shuddered all over again.

During an Obama-Perry contest, millions of Americans on both sides would be shuddering constantly for four months. We’ve never had quite this kind of showdown culturally. Our present Kulturkampf dates only to the 1980s. There’s never been a cultural showdown of the sort Obama v. Perry would represent. Yes, Republicans hated Clinton, but he was Southern and enough of a good old boy that he cut across those lines to some extent. Gore was painted as an egghead, and was, but again Southern-ness diluted the cocktail a bit. Bush versus John Kerry is probably as close as we’ve come, but Kerry was never really quite threatening enough to Bush America to merit serious hatred. And John McCain, mostly because he was not Southern and partly because he was so old, was not nearly as perfect a foil for Obama as Perry would be.

I don’t relish this. We’re divided enough, thanks. To invoke one of Bush’s most degrading moments of smirky chest-puffery, I say don’t bring it on.

Security expert warns hackers can attack Android

2011-08-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

BOSTON, MA - A mobile security expert says he has found new ways for hackers to attack phones running Google Inc's Android operating system.

Riley Hassell, who caused a stir when he called off an appearance at a hacker's conference last week, told Reuters he and colleague Shane Macaulay decided not to lay out their research at the gathering for fear criminals would use it attack Android phones.

He said in an interview he identified more than a dozen widely used Android applications that make the phones vulnerable to attack.

"App developers frequently fail to follow security guidelines and write applications properly," he said.

"Some apps expose themselves to outside contact. If these apps are vulnerable, then an attacker can remotely compromise that app and potentially the phone using something as simple as a text message."

He declined to identify those apps, saying he fears hackers might exploit the vulnerabilities.

"When you release a threat and there's no patch ready, then there is mayhem," said Hassell, founder of boutique security firm Privateer Labs.

Hassell said he and Macaulay alerted Google to the software shortcomings they unearthed.

Google spokesman Jay Nancarrow said Android security experts discussed the research with Hassell and did not believe he had uncovered problems with Android.

"The identified bugs are not present in Android," he said, declining to elaborate.

It was the first public explanation for the failure of Hassell and Macaulay to make a scheduled presentation at the annual Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, the hacking community's largest annual gathering.

They had been scheduled to talk about "Hacking Androids for Profit." Hundreds of people waited for them to show up at a crowded conference room.

Hassell said in an interview late on Thursday the pair also learned -- at the last minute -- that some of their work may have replicated previously published research and they wanted to make sure they properly acknowledged that work.

"This was a choice we made, to prevent an unacceptable window of risk to consumers worldwide and to guarantee credit where it was due," he said.

A mobile security researcher familiar with the work of Hassell and Macaulay said he understood why the pair decided not to disclose their findings.

"When something can be used for exploitation and there is no way to fix it, it is very dangerous to go out publicly with that information," the researcher said. "When there is not a lot that people can do to protect themselves, disclosure is sometimes not the best policy."

Hassell said he plans to give his talk at the Hack in The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur in October.

Source: Reuters

The real meaning of cloud computing

2011-08-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

By Eric Knorr, Galen Gruman - InfoWorld

Cloud computing is all the rage. "It's become the phrase du jour," says Gartner senior analyst Ben Pring, echoing many of his peers. The problem is that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a different definition.

As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud" is a familiar cliché, but when combined with "computing," the meaning gets bigger and fuzzier. Some analysts and vendors define cloud computing narrowly as an updated version of utility computing: basically virtual servers available over the Internet. Others go very broad, arguing anything you consume outside the firewall is "in the cloud," including conventional outsourcing.

Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities.

Cloud computing is at an early stage, with a motley crew of providers large and small delivering a slew of cloud-based services, from full-blown applications to storage services to spam filtering. Yes, utility-style infrastructure providers are part of the mix, but so are SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Salesforce.com. Today, for the most part, IT must plug into cloud-based services individually, but cloud computing aggregators and integrators are already emerging.

InfoWorld talked to dozens of vendors, analysts, and IT customers to tease out the various components of cloud computing. Based on those discussions, here's a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all about:

1. SaaS

This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday. And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS "desktop" applications, such as Google Apps and Zoho Office?

2. Utility computing

The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is getting new life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. Other providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual datacenters from commodity servers, such as 3Tera's AppLogic and Cohesive Flexible Technologies' Elastic Server on Demand. Liquid Computing's LiquidQ offers similar capabilities, enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, and computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network.

3. Web services in the cloud

Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable developers to exploit functionality over the Internet, rather than delivering full-blown applications. They range from providers offering discrete business services -- such as Strike Iron and Xignite -- to the full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, ADP payroll processing, the U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg, and even conventional credit card processing services.

4. Platform as a service

Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider's servers. Like Legos, these services are constrained by the vendor's design and capabilities, so you don't get complete freedom, but you do get predictability and pre-integration. Prime examples include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Coghead and the new Google App Engine. For extremely lightweight development, cloud-based mashup platforms abound, such as Yahoo Pipes or Dapper.net.

5. MSP (managed service providers)

One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service (which Mercury, among others, provides). Managed security services delivered by SecureWorks, IBM, and Verizon fall into this category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini, recently acquired by Google. Other offerings include desktop management services, such as those offered by CenterBeam or Everdream.

6. Service commerce platforms

A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with. They're most common in trading environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications set by the user. Think of it as an automated service bureau. Well-known examples include Rearden Commerce and Ariba.

7. Internet integration

The integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource, which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud integration technology from a little startup called Boomi. SaaS provider Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central -- which wanted to be a universal "bus in the cloud" to connect SaaS providers and provide integrated solutions to customers -- flamed out in 2005.

Today, with such cloud-based interconnection seldom in evidence, cloud computing might be more accurately described as "sky computing," with many isolated clouds of services which IT customers must plug into individually. On the other hand, as virtualization and SOA permeate the enterprise, the idea of loosely coupled services running on an agile, scalable infrastructure should eventually make every enterprise a node in the cloud. It's a long-running trend with a far-out horizon. But among big metatrends, cloud computing is the hardest one to argue with in the long term.

This article, "What cloud computing really means," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in cloud computing at InfoWorld.com.

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Consolidation in Telecommunications space may present opportunities

2011-08-10T03:20:00.000-07:00

By the Editor-in-Chief

With the recent acquisition of Qwest Communications Inc. by Centurylink™, the Monroe, Louisiana based Telecommunications outfit, it brought to a rather historic close, an unforgettable run by one of the most storied organizations in the history of the Pacific Northwest and indeed American Telecommunications.

Qwest, formely US West, has been a standard feature in the Telco space for more than three decades. But the company had struggled for the last ten years as the pace of technological advancements and innovation simply left the company behind.

Ironically though, Qwest had been at the forefront of creative marketing and innovation at the start of the last decade, having pioneered the 'one-stop-shop' model with its bundling of services for its consumer and small business market segments.

Qwest also became the first RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) to provide Standalone DSL (also known as Naked DSL), which was a Digital Subscriber Line internet service that did not require that the customer have a landline phone service.

So what went wrong? Well, simply put, the boom of the late '90s simply engendered a sense of corporate entitlement in the early 2000s (2001-2004) as profits soared while over time, companies (most of them in the Telco space at least) simply forgot to build on the best practices that got them in the black, in the first place.

As we have witnessed the recent mergers (mostly not of equals, hence for all intents and purposes, acquisitions) of some notable companies in the Telco space such as Nextel, Qwest and Cingular, to name a few, the convergence/consolidation in that space (Telco) may in fact present great opportunities for the technology sector, as companies with expertise in management and implementation of M&As from a corporate infrastructure (platform convergence to include ERP, CRM and other architecture) and business intelligence (strategy and innovation) perspective, may be counted on to provide invaluable intellectual and other capital, as needed, to ensure a much softer landing for the new reality.

These sure are changing times and in my next piece, I will be delving into some of the challenges and opportunities that are sure to emanate from the pervading 'spatial turbulence' in the Telco space and its adjacencies.

Will Conservatives Elect Obama Again?

2011-08-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

By Michael Medved | The Daily Beast

After President Obama's faltering, uncertain performance in the recent debt-ceiling crisis, and with new polling showing self-described “conservatives” outnumbering “liberals” by crushing, consistent margins, Republicans ought to face the upcoming presidential race with eagerness and confidence.

Nevertheless, political professionals uniformly predict that the president could easily cruise to re-election and will, at the very least, wage a close, hard-fought campaign against even the most formidable Republican opponent.

This glaring contradiction between the nation’s ideological tilt to the right and President Obama’s continued status as front runner for 2012 exposes two important secrets about voting patterns of the American electorate.

First, ideological orientation seldom determines the success or failure of presidential contenders. And, second, race remains a decisive factor for enough US voters to dictate the outcome of close national elections.

On ideology, Republicans felt powerfully encouraged by results of an Aug. 1 Gallup poll showing nearly twice as many American adults calling themselves “conservative” (41 percent) as those who see themselves as “liberal” (only 21 percent). The survey reports that these numbers have remained surprisingly constant since 2009, and that liberals have languished below 25 percent for nearly twenty years.

Similar numbers in all major surveys show that the president would have to do far more than rally his liberal base to earn victory in 2012. If both Democrats and Republicans drew 90 percent support from liberals and conservatives respectively, Barack Obama would need to carry a far-fetched 85 percent of self-described moderates in order to reach a bare majority of 51 percent—a dramatic improvement of the 60 percent of moderates he won in 2008, according to exit polls.

No candidate, not even landslide victors like Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson, has ever managed to prevail among middle-of-the-roaders by the unimaginable 6 to 1 margin Barack Obama would, theoretically, need.

How, then, could the president plausibly win re-election?

By concentrating on one of the most significant but frequently overlooked aspects of electoral behavior: in presidential contests, voters seldom (or never) make final decisions based on ideology.

Consider, for instance, the strikingly different outcomes of the last two races for the White House. In 2004, conservative incumbent George W. Bush became the first candidate of either party in 16 years to win a clear majority of the popular vote. Four years later, outspokenly liberal challenger Barack Obama won by a decisive margin of nearly 7 percent.

Did this switch mean that a big chunk of voters shifted their ideology in the course of four years, rejecting conservatism and embracing liberalism?

Absolutely not. In fact, exit polls show that in both 2004 and 2008, precisely the same portion of voters identified themselves as conservative (34 percent), while liberal voters represented a slightly higher proportion of the electorate (22 percent) for Kerry’s losing contest than for Obama’s historic victory (21 percent).

In other words, Obama didn’t win because he persuaded more Americans to describe themselves as liberals, or drew more previously committed liberals to the polls. He won based on a general yearning for a fresh face, vague promises of hope-and-change, and disgust with President Bush, not because voters made an ideological left turn. His candidacy scrupulously avoided ideological labels, and even drew a surprisingly big slice of conservative citizens, winning a full 20 percent of their votes.

What’s more, he’s maintained (or even bettered) that level of support among conservatives in every approval rating poll of his presidency. The most recent Gallup pulse-taking at the end of July found 22 percent of conservatives who approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president.

Considering the strident, hyper-partisan polarization in Washington, it may come as a shock that more than one out-of-five Americans who use the word “conservative” to define their ideology still think Obama does a fine job as president.

Who are these conservative Obama lovers?

The answer to that question points toward the second revelation that helps explain how an unequivocally liberal president maintains a chance to prevail in an increasingly conservative nation. The voters who support Obama in spite of ideology are to a great extent black, Hispanic, and Asian conservatives who feel drawn to right wing ideas but remain allergic to the Republican Party.

This phenomenon became painfully obvious in California in 2008, when hefty majorities of both African Americans and Latinos voted to defend traditional male-female marriage in the bitter Proposition 8 fight.

On the same ballot, Barack Obama carried the state in a landslide, powered largely by the same black and Latino voters who disagreed with Democrats on Proposition 8 (known to liberals as “Proposition Hate”).

These black, Hispanic and Asian conservatives aren’t just expressing solidarity with the nation’s first non-white president. In the Republican sweep of 2010, with Obama’s name nowhere on the ballot, Republican candidates struck out once again with voters of color, barely improving their feeble performance in minority communities of two years before.

In national balloting for House seats only 9 percent of black voters backed GOP candidates, along with 38 percent of Latinos, and 40 percent of Asians. Despite the successful GOP campaigns of new Latino governors in New Mexico and Nevada, new Hispanic House members from Idaho, Washington and Texas, and the emergence of dynamic black GOP congressmen in Florida and South Carolina, the reluctance to vote Republican barely budged from 2008.

Depressed turnout among minorities pushed the white percentage of the 2010 electorate to 77 percent. But there’s no chance that the GOP could—or should—rely on a similar victory formula in the upcoming presidential race, when participation is always higher across the board.

Conservatives in the black, Hispanic, and growing Asian communities should therefore become a special target for any GOP challenger to Barack Obama. In every ethnic enclave in America, a significant percentage of the population (many of them loyal church-goers) espouses right-leaning values but currently feels uncomfortable with the Republican Party. Part of this unease stems from multi-generational family traditions, or from the GOP’s long-standing reputation as a closed country club welcoming only elderly, white, Christian males, or from cynical Democratic efforts to suggest that any criticism of Obama proves the presence of deep-seated Republican racism.

GOP candidates and operatives must do more than dismiss such allegations; they should spare no effort in countering and disproving them. The polling numbers indicate that it’s imperative to intensify Republican outreach efforts aimed squarely at conservatives in minority communities.

If the GOP candidate can unite conservatives of every heritage and skin color, he (or she) can hardly lose in 2012. Recent surveys show that if conservatives stick together, they need to supplement their numbers with a mere one-fourth of so-called moderates in order to assemble a majority. If, on the other hand, many non-white (and even Jewish) voters once again allow ethnic instinct to overcome core conservative values, then it may allow Barack Obama another term as the anomalous left wing president of an increasingly center-right nation.

Michael Medved is an author, political commentator and conservative talk-show host on radio.

Nigeria, Shell 'indicted' after UN details oil devastation

2011-08-07T05:57:00.000-07:00

Nigeria's government and oil giant Shell Friday came under heavy pressure following the release of a landmark UN report detailing oil pollution that may require the world's biggest ever clean-up.

The report set out scientific evidence for the first time of devastating pollution in Ogoniland, part of the country's main oil-producing Niger Delta region where Shell and the state petroleum company have operated.

"UNEP believes that oil contamination in Ogoniland has created an environmental crisis of unprecedented proportions," Joseph Alcamo, UN Environment Programme chief scientist, told journalists in London.

"The problem is quite clear and now the question is what's the way out."

Anglo-Dutch Shell was forced to pull out of Ogoniland amid unrest in 1993, though pipelines for its Nigerian joint venture, which includes the state oil company, and other facilities remain there.

The UNEP report, which details urgent health risks such as badlycontaminated drinking water, led some to raise the possibility of lawsuits that could now be brought against Shell or others with scientific evidence to back them.

"This is a wonderful intervention on the part of the United Nations, and this has also in a way confirmed the cries of the Ogoni people over the years," said prominent Nigerian rights lawyer Femi Falana.

"There is now a scientific basis backed by the UN.... I think this now provides an opportunity for people to make legitimate demands."

Shell faced criticism from UNEP, which said "control and maintenance of oil field infrastructure in Ogoniland has been and remains inadequate: the Shell Petroleum Development Company's own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues."

UNEP also called for the oil industry and the Nigerian government to contribute $1 billion to a clean-up fund for the region, adding that restoration could take up to 30 years.

"The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world's most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken", it said.

Shell maintained its stance that most environmental damage has been caused by oil theft, sabotageand illegal refining.

The managing director for its Nigerian joint venture, Mutiu Sunmonu, says in a Shell video posted on YouTube that until illegal activity is brought under control, "there is little that can be done to bring an end to the problem of spills."

A UNEP spokesman told journalists Friday that the agency could not support Shell's assertion.

"UNEP would challenge that," said Nick Nuttall. "We don't have the data to say where the oil came from in any kind of comprehensive way, either historically or currently.

"... The fact is that the assertion of SPDC yesterday that it's largely or mainly from illegal activities, well, we can't support that statement."

SPDC is Shell's Nigerian joint venture, the Shell Petroleum Development Company.

The study of the effects of pollution in Ogoniland follows a two-year assessment by UNEP in the region of mainly farmers and fishermen.

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, which has long pushed for action in the region, said it was not nearly enough.

It said in a statement that "what is needed and the Ogoni expectation is the cleanup of our devastated environment and not a mere study to tell us what we know."

The group also called for Shell's licence in Nigeria to be revoked.

Ogoniland was the native region of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the renowned environmental activist who was executed by a Nigerian military government in 1995 after what was widely considered a show trial, drawing global condemnation.

His activism and execution drew the world's attention to Ogoniland.

His son, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr, now works as an adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, the first head of state from the Niger Delta.

He called the report a "vindication" and expressed confidence the government would take action.

"I think he is looking down on the whole thing and smiling widely to himself," Saro-Wiwa Jr told AFP, speaking of his father.

Source: AFP

Boeing unveils first Dreamliner for delivery to ANA

2011-08-07T04:05:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE, WA - Boeing Co on Saturday afternoon rolled out the first 787 Dreamliner to be delivered to launch customer All Nippon Airways <9202.T>, decked out with the blue and white colors of the Japanese airline.

Boeing presented the plane to ANA executives and crew under clear skies at its Everett factory north of Seattle. The first domestic flights are set to start in Japan in September.

"The plane is being certified to the highest FAA standards," said Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager, 787 program. "But the real focus of the traveling public will likely be on customer satisfaction and the elegance of the flight."

The 787 Dreamliner is a lightweight airplane that promises 20 percent greater fuel efficiency to operators than similarly sized planes. Boeing says as much as 50 percent of the primary structure will be made of composite materials instead of aluminum.

Aviation experts expect Boeing to apply the technology to future airplanes.

The interior of the first aircraft includes 264 seats -- 12 business and 252 economy -- with personal television sets, roomier seats, an automatic toilet with a wash function, more storage, an arched entry way with a beverage bar, dimmable windows and larger lavatories.

Boeing, the world's second-largest plane maker after Airbus EADS , is about three years behind schedule in delivering the first 787 largely because of snags in the unusually complex global supply chain.

The 787 is almost finished with flight tests and is set for delivery to ANA in September.

Boeing has taken 827 orders for the Dreamliner, a record number for a Boeing plane still in development. ANA has ordered 55 Dreamliners. The planes list for about $200 million.

Boeing is developing two versions of the Dreamliner. The first version, the 787-8, will carry 210 to 250 passengers on routes of 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles. A second version, the 787-9, will carry 250 to 290 passengers on routes of 8,000 to 8,500 nautical miles.

Boeing also has been talking about a third, larger variant, the 787-10, and says it is seeing strong airline interest in the plane.

Source: Reuters

After the debt deal: 5 strategic money moves to make now

2011-08-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Now what? If you're confused by the debt deal and what it means for your own wallet, you're not alone.

The fine print in the deal raises more questions than it answers. Almost all discretionary federal spending will face some cuts over the next 10 years, with defense spending taking a comparatively heavy hit. The bill calls for $917 billion in initial cuts over 10 years, with roughly $350 billion of that in defense and security spending.

Perhaps more significantly, the deal sets up a bipartisan 12-member congressional committee to find another $1.5 trillion in cuts. That group's menu is wide open and could include Social Securityreductions or tax increases. If that committee fails to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in savings - or Congress doesn't approve its recommendations by December 23 - automated cuts begin to get triggered. Those cuts would be deep, hitting Medicare and the military but sparing Social Security, Medicaid and a handful of other programs.

So, everything's been decided and nothing's been resolved. That doesn't mean that individual savers and investors shouldn't continue to try and protect themselves from the fallout. Here are some moves to make or avoid now.

* Play defense on defense stocks, and all government contractors. "Stock investors who have companies that depend on government financing should monitor their holdings carefully," said Charles Rotblut of the American Association of Individual Investors. Defense contractors are likely to lose business as these cuts work their way through the system, but so will other government contractors, and state contractors too, as already recession-pinched states will lose some federal funding.

"Infrastructure is at particular risk, because it's going to be a lot harder for states to work on bridges, roads and highways," Rotblut said.

He suggested that investors dig into the 10K annual reports of companies to see how dependent they are on government work.

* Relax a little about your bonds. "Bonds are not as scary as before," said Don Martin of Mayflower Capital in Los Altos, California. Conventional wisdom still holds that long-term bonds will take a hit as interest rates rise, but this debt deal may defer that day for a number of reasons. With Congress making good on U.S. obligations, that diminishes the possibility of a ratings downgrade pushing Treasury rates up. And the bill's budget cuts, which mainly don't go into effect until 2013 at the earliest, could crimp economic growth, delaying the rise of interest rates.

"The economy has hit stall speed and is beginning to slip back into a recession, so with the reduction of government stimulus caused by austerity this means that stocks will go down and bonds will go up," said Martin. Investors still may want to move their bond holdings to a less-concentrated, shorter-term or more cautious approach, but there's less need to panic about them.

* Put your student loans on autopilot. The debt bill will eliminate the rebate that education borrowers get when they make a year's worth of loan payments on time. But they still may be able to get an interest-rate discount if they arrange to make their payments automatically through a bank account debit - that's worth doing.

Many graduate students will have to pay more for loans, as this deal eliminates the federal subsidies that paid interest costs on some of their loans while they were in school. Grad students may find it worthwhile to pay the interest themselves while they are in school, if they can, to avoid those costs compounding until after they graduate.

* Defer your Social Security benefits. That's been bedrock retirement advice for a while, but that new bipartisan congressional committee could make it more true than before. Here's why: Every year that you defer starting your Social Security retirement benefits, they rise by almost 8 percent. But there's a lot of talk about tinkering with the cost-of -living adjustments that apply to benefits once they've started flowing, and the bipartisan committee may do that in their next round of cuts.

If Congress shifts to a different inflation measure that moves up less quickly than the currently-used Consumer Price Index, it would limit upward adjustments on benefits. Starting benefits early means you relinquish that 8 percent a year increase and, should the COLA be nipped, start giving up buying power sooner. "That would be a significant problem for clients who rely on Social Security," said Mark Berg, of Timothy Financial Counsel, a fee-only financial planning firm. "We would encourage a wait approach on Social Security if the client can afford it."

* Expect more tumult, so, as always, save more. "If we have learned anything from this crisis, it's not to depend on the government for anything," said Bedda D'Angelo, president of Fiduciary Solutions, a Durham, North Carolina, financial -planning firm. "Entitlements change with the wind. Since pensions are being phased out too, the only sane thing to do is max out your tax-deferred retirement savings accounts."

Advisers have been telling their clients to get defensive for some time: Investors who pay down their debts, move more of their bond money to shorter-term instruments and their stock money to defensive dividend-earning stocks will be better prepared for whatever the government throws at them next, suggested money manager Daniel Romero, of Romery & Levin Wealth Management in Santa Ana, California.

"This is the fourth or fifth Armageddon situation that's come across our desk in recent years," commented Romero, who's had his clients building reserves, paying down debts and diversifying broadly into commodities, Japanese stocks, natural resources stocks and more. "Just put yourself in a situation where it won't affect you so much." At least until the next crisis.

Analysis by Linda Stern

Key elements of the debt deal

2011-08-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

By Andy Sullivan | Reuters

President Barack Obama announced on Sunday that Republican and Democratic leaders had agreed on a last-ditch deal to raise the U.S. borrowing limit and avoid a catastrophic default, and he urged lawmakers to "do the right thing" and approve the agreement.

Here is a summary of the deal, based on documents provided by both parties, as well as interviews with lawmakers and aides:

* The deal would allow Obama to raise the debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion in three steps. Congresswould get a chance to register its disapproval on two of these, but would not be able to block them unless it musters a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate -- an unlikely prospect.

* It envisions spending cuts of roughly $2.4 trillion over 10 years, which Congress would approve in two steps -- an initial $917 billion when the deal passes Congress and another $1.5 trillion by the end of the year.

* The first group of spending cuts would apply to the discretionary programs that Congress approves annually, covering everything from the military to food inspection.

* Those programs would be capped each year for 10 years. The caps would be relatively modest at first to avoid stifling the shaky economy -- spending for the fiscal year that begins October 1 would be only $6 billion below the current level of $1.049 trillion. The caps would have a greater impact in later years, when it is hoped that the economy will have recovered.

* Some $350 billion of the $917 billion total would come from defense and other security programs which now account for more than half of all discretionary spending. Republicans are resisting this idea and it is one of the few areas of dispute left.

* Automatic across-the-board spending cuts would kick in if Congress does not observe the caps in coming years.

* A 12-member congressional committee, made up equally of Republicans and Democrats from each chamber, would be tasked with finding a further $1.5 trillion in budget savings.

* That committee could find savings from an overhaul of the tax code and restructuring benefit programs like the Medicare elderly health program -- the politically risky decisions that lawmakers have not been able to agree on so far.

* The committee would have to complete its work by November 23. Congress would have an up-or-down vote, with no modifications, on the committee's recommendations by December 23.

* If the committee cannot agree on at least $1.2 trillion in savings, or Congress rejects its findings, automatic spending cuts totaling that amount would kick in starting in 2013.

* Those cuts would fall equally on domestic and military programs. Medicare would face automatic cuts as well, but they would be capped and fall entirely on medical providers. Social Security,Medicaid, federal employee pay, and benefits for veterans and the poor would be exempt.

* The plan also calls for both the House and the Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution by the end of the year. This measure is not likely to receive the two-thirds vote in each chamber needed for passage, but its inclusion will make it easier for conservatives to back the overall deal.

Apple has more cash-on-hand than the US government

2011-08-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

Here’s a frightening statistic: Apple Inc. now has more cash on hand than the entire United States federal government. As of Wednesday, July 27, the balance sheet for the US Treasury dipped down do $73.768 billion. That compares to the $76.156 billion Apple has in its deep coffers — a difference of $2.388 billion.

So, how in the name of all that’s good and fiscally responsible in this world did such a thing happen? A wide variety of individual factors are at play, here, of course. But it comes down to one basic fact: Apple makes more money than it spends while the US government spends more than it generates in tax revenue. In other words, Apple is doing a really good job at running itself, while the federal government is not.

As you all surely know by now, Washington is stuck in a relentless gridlock over how to raise the national debt ceiling. If you haven’t yet grasped the debt ceiling debate is, it works something like this: Imagine the entire US government pays its bills with a single credit card. Right now, that credit card is nearly maxed out. If the debt ceiling — the limit on our national credit card — isn’t raised by August 2, then the US won’t have enough incoming revenue to pay all of its bills.

The politicians disagree on how to go about fixing this problem, so they’re let our cash coffers dwindle perilously low, which is basically how we got to the $73.768 billion number.

On the flip side, Apple is doing extraordinarily well. The iPhone maker brought in record profits in the third quarter of this year, about $5.5 billion, which has possibly set the Cupertino, California-based electronics giant on a path towards soon overtaking Exxon Mobile to become the largest corporation on the planet.

Unfortunately, we can’t ask Steve Jobs for a bailout — according to Fortune, the federal government blows through about $10 billion every day, so even Apple’s fat bank account would only last us about a week before we’d be back to square one.

Still, we can’t help but wish Jobs would consider a run for public office.

Source: Digital Trends

Alibaba to challenge Google and Apple in mobile OS space?

2011-07-29T03:30:00.001-07:00

China's Alibaba has taken on established players such as Google and Apple in the mobile operating system market.

It has launched its own operating system, Alyun OS, in a bid to capture the fast-growing Chinese market.

The launch comes as sales of smartphones in China, the world's largest mobile handset market, are expected to grow rapidly.

Alibaba is one the world's biggest internet conglomerates.

The company said the operating system will feature services such as email, internet search and support web-based applications.

"Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile operating system (OS), one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the internet has to offer, right in the palm of their hand," said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing.

"The cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that," he added.

Alibaba also launched K-Touch, the first smartphone to run the OS. The phone will be manufactured by handset maker Tianyu.

The company said it was also in talks to with phone manufacturers to develop low-end mobile phones that will run the operating system.

However, Alibaba said it has no plans to enter the phone manufacturing sector on its own.

"We shouldn't make a phone. We're not in that ecosystem," said Mr Wang.

He also added that the company is concentrating only on developing the operating system and was not focussing too much on the sales of mobile phones that will use the software.

"We are not responsible for selling the phone, we just provide the system, so there is no hard number," he said.

Alibaba said it plans to launch a tablet PC running on the software by the end of this year