GEO HEADLINES-Latest news and politics updates

Manmohan has changed millions of lives: Time magazine

2009-07-12T23:18:00.002+06:00

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speeches may not be winning him followers but his works do and his actions have "changed tens of millions of lives for the better", Time magazine has said.

The American publication has said that Dr. Singh first as Finance Minister and then as Prime Minister since 2004 has made the world's largest democracy one of the fastest growing economies through radical economic reforms.

"... he won the vote and then a sweeping victory in India's general elections this year. It is not Singh's speeches that win him followers; it's the fact that first as Finance Minister and since 2004 as Prime Minister, he has led India through a series of radical economic reforms that have made the world's largest democracy also one of its fastest-growing economies -- and protected the poor too.

"It is Singh's actions that have changed tens of millions of lives for the better, not his words," Time said in an article published online.

Singh-led United Progressive Alliance was voted back to power in the general elections earlier this year. Singh is also credited with the economic reforms which he kicked off as Finance Minister in the early 1990s.

Manmohan has changed millions of lives: Time magazine

2009-07-12T23:18:00.001+06:00

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speeches may not be winning him followers but his works do and his actions have "changed tens of millions of lives for the better", Time magazine has said.

AI plane rams into Aerobridge at Mumbai Airport

2009-05-05T22:51:00.000+06:00

A Mangalore-bound Air India aircraft, with 172 passengers and six crew onboard, hit the aerobridge here while taxiing on Tuesday, delaying the flight by almost one-and-a-half hour.

All passengers are safe, Air India spokesperson said, adding "the passengers were transferred to another aircraft and flight took off at 12.20 pm."

"The incident is being looked into to fix responsibility," the spokesperson added.

The incident occurred at around 11.00 am when the aircraft hit the aerobridge while taxiing and resulted in

damaging its door, airport sources said.

All 172 passengers onboard were deboarded and another aircraft was arranged to facilitate their journey to Mangalore, the sources said.

source: ibnlive.com

15 killed in Lahore police training school Attack

2009-03-30T09:24:00.001+05:00

LAHORE(Nasrullah Malik): At least 12 persons were killed and dozens were wounded Monday morning in terrorists attack on Police Training Centre in Manawan area of Lahore.

The armed men assaulted Police Training Centre in Manawan area of Lahore on Monday morning killing at least 12 persons and wounding several others.

The contingents of Elite Police have cordoned off the premises.

According to earlier reports the terrorists attacked the police training centre in Lahore in the morning and taken control of the building after grenade attacks. At least four persons were killed in the terrorist attack.

The stand off between the police and militants continued with exchange of heavy fire. The terrorists were holding positions within the police training centre building while the policemen have cordoned off the premises.

The wounded were being transferred to hospitals while some dead bodies and injured were laid near the police training centre.

Heavy contingents of police have cordoned off the centre with the help of the armored carriers.

CCPO Lahore has said that at least 12 terrorists were holding positions inside Manawan police training school building.

According to some media reports at least 15 persons were killed in the shoot out. A police official talking to OneWorld said around 12 to 13 persons were killed in the attack.

Video: Sri Lankan Team Attacked in Lahore

2009-03-03T10:48:00.002+05:00

Video: Sri Lankan Team Attacked in Lahore

Eight Sri Lankan players wounded in Lahore attack!

2009-03-03T10:31:00.001+05:00

LAHORE (Shahid Hashmi/Nasrullah Malik):Unknown gunmen fired over the Sri Lankan cricket team in Liberty area of Lahore, at least five persons were reported killed and five to eight Lankan players were wounded in the incident.

The attackers wearing bulletproof jackets fired over the team van when it was turning towards Gaddafi Stadium from Liberty Chowk of Lahore.

Sri Lankan team manager Brendon Cruppo has said that six Sri Lankan players have been injured in the firing.

Sri Lankan Minister of Sports has confirmed that two players were injured in the attack.

According to officials five to eight Sri Lankan players were wounded in the attack including wicketkeeper batsman Kumara Sangakkara, Samaraweera and Tharanga Pranahitana.

According to the security sources the attackers were in bullet proof jackets.

CCPO Lahore said that 12 masked men were involved in the terror attack. An unknown person had thrown a bag with weapons and ammunition near a shop in the area, witnesses said.

The attackers had lobbed bombs before opening fire, reports said.

A rocket launcher has also been found from the place of the incident.

Federal Minister of Sports Pir Aftab Jeelani has condemned the incident and regretted with Sri Lankan authorities, which sent their team in difficult time of Pakistan cricket.

Selection committee member Salim Jaffar leaving for Sri Lanka to meet the team high ups.

According to reports the injured Sri Lankan players Samaraweera and Tharanga were given first aid at the hospital and they were out of danger.

Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer visited the place of attack and inspected the place.

Talking to the media, Taseer said it was a planned terrorist attack committed by the trained terrorists.

The Lahore second test between Sri Lanka and hosts Pakistan has been called off after a gun attack on the touring team bus injuring players, a Sri Lankan cricket board official told foreign news agency.

"We are trying to bring the team back as quickly as possible. The test match has been cancelled," the official said on Tuesday.

US unveils $250bn banking rescue

2008-10-15T12:45:00.000+06:00

US unveils $250bn banking rescue

President Bush on US government plans to buy shares in banks

The US government has announced a $250bn (£143bn) plan to purchase stakes in a wide variety of banks in an effort to restore confidence in the sector.

President George W Bush said the move would help to return stability to the US banking sector and ultimately help preserve free markets.

US federal authorities will also temporarily insure most new debt issued by US banks.

The moves echo similar steps taken by the UK and other European countries.

"This is an essential short-term measure to ensure the viability of America's banking system," Mr Bush said.

"This is not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it."

Mr Bush also said that the Federal Reserve would finalise work on a new programme that would make it the buyer of last resort for companies' short-term debt, known as commercial paper.

Furthermore, government deposit insurance is being expanded to cover accounts used by small businesses.

'Objectionable'

The money will come from the $700bn bail-out package approved by US lawmakers earlier this month.

The US plan - effectively part-nationalisation - comes after the bosses of the country's largest banks were summoned to a special meeting at the US Treasury on Monday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that the lack of confidence in the financial system was a threat to the US economy.

He said that taking equity stakes in banks "was objectionable to most Americans, including myself".

"We regret taking these actions," Mr Paulson said.

"But we must do this to restore confidence in the financial system."

Mr Paulson said the government would buy stakes in a "wide variety" of banks and thrifts - financial institutions similar to building societies in the UK.

Nine banks, which Mr Paulson described as "healthy institutions", have so far signed up to the deal.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that the US strategy would evolve and adapt to new developments:

"We will not stand down until we have achieved our goals of repairing and reforming our financial system," he said.

Share surges

The US announcement - and its anticipation earlier in the day - has had a major impact on global shares:

Wall Street's main Dow Jones index opens up 376 points or 4%. However it subsequently falls back, closing down 76.62 points, or 0.82%, at 9,310.99 amid profit-taking
The UK's FTSE 100 closes up 137 points or 3.3% at 4,394
France's Cac 40 ended up 97 points or 2.75% to 3,629, while Germany's Dax adds 137 points or 2.7% to 5,199
Japan's main Nikkei index ended up 1,171 points, or 14%, at 9,448, the biggest one-day rise in its history

Restrictions

The US government said it would buy preference shares in the banks.

Preference shares pay a fixed rate of interest instead of a dividend, which has to be paid before other shareholders receive anything, but they do not carry voting rights.

Banks that receive the cash injections will be subject to restrictions on executive pay.

US taxpayers may even end up making a profit from the shares if the rescue packages work and the banks recover, but that is not guaranteed.

European lead

The US move comes a day after the UK said it would inject up to £37bn of taxpayers cash into British banks Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

And European governments that share the euro are putting aside more than 1 trillion euros to protect banks through guarantees and other emergency measures.

The bulk of the money will be used to guarantee lending between banks.

The cash will also be used to take stakes in ailing banks.

Software can hold drivers' cell-phone calls

2008-10-15T12:36:00.001+06:00

When David Teater's 12-year-old son, Joe, was killed in 2004 by a driver who was talking on a cell phone, he tried to cut back on his own habit of driving and talking. It turned out to be very difficult.

New software can detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds and hold calls until the drive is over.

"You have to remember to turn the phone off ... which you never remember to do. Or you have to ignore a ringing phone, which is incredibly hard," Teater said. "We've been conditioned our entire lives to answer ringing phones."

Teater became an advocate for curbing what he calls "driving while distracted," and now, he's part of a company with a technology that can help.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, announced Monday that it has developed software called DriveAssistT that will detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds. When that happens, the software will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over.

The software doesn't completely block incoming calls. Callers will hear a message saying the person they're calling appears to be driving. They can hit a button to leave an emergency voice mail, which is put through immediately.

Several states, including New York and California, have introduced laws against talking on a cell phone while driving, but they still allow the use of hands-free devices like Bluetooth headsets. However, studies have shown that hands-free devices may not help. It appears that it is the distraction of dialing or talking that is dangerous, rather than the act of taking a hand off the wheel.

A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2006 found that dialing or talking on the phone was the cause in 7 percent of crashes and near-crashes. For the study, drivers had onboard "black boxes" that recorded their actions.

Last year, 41,059 people died in traffic accidents.

Aegis' software will work on phones with Windows Mobile software, popular for "smart" phones, or Symbian software, used in phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. It uses the phone's Global Positioning System chip to detect motion, aided by the cell-tower signal. If the phone has a Wi-Fi antenna, that can be used as well, said Dave Hattey, Aegis' CEO.

To work, the software has to be supported by the cellular carrier. Aegis has no deals in place yet, but is in discussions with the big U.S. networks, said Teater, who is a vice president at Aegis. The company hopes to be able to announce early next year that the software is available through a carrier, probably for $10 to $20 per month for a family.

The software can be managed remotely through a Web site. For instance, parents will get alerts if their kids override the motion-sensing feature to indicate that they're riding in car rather than driving. A corporation that buys the software for their employees can do the same.

Unusually for the world of cell phone software, Aegis is bringing out DriveAssistT in partnership with an insurance company. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. said it plans to offer a discount of 3 percent to 10 percent on family policies for people who use DriveAssistT

Parkinson's linked to vitamin D

2008-10-14T10:18:00.000+06:00

Scientists are testing whether vitamin D supplements can ease symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

A US team found 55% of Parkinson's patients had insufficient levels of vitamin D, compared to 36% of healthy elderly people.

However, the Emory University researchers do not yet know if the vitamin deficiency is a cause or the result of having Parkinson's.

The study appears in the journal Archives of Neurology.

Parkinson's disease affects nerve cells in several parts of the brain, particularly those that use the chemical messenger dopamine to control movement.

The most common symptoms are tremor, stiffness and slowness of movement. These can be treated with oral replacement of dopamine.

Previous studies have shown that the part of the brain affected most by Parkinson's, the substantia nigra, has high levels of the vitamin D receptor, which suggests vitamin D may be important for normal functions of these cells.

Sunlight

Vitamin D is found in the diet, but is primarily formed in the skin by exposure to sunlight.

However, the body's ability to produce the vitamin decreases with age, making older people more prone to deficiency.

One theory is that people with Parkinson's may be particularly vulnerable because their condition limits the amount of time they spend out of doors.

However, scientists say it may also be possible that low vitamin D levels are in some way related to the genesis and origin of the disease.

The researchers examined vitamin D levels in 100 people with Parkinson's, 100 with Alzheimer's disease and 100 who were healthy. The groups were matched for age, and economic circumstance.

Among the Parkinson's group 23% of patients had vitamin D levels so low that they could be described as deficient. In the Alzheimer's group the figure was 16%, and in the healthy group 10%.

The researchers said the findings were striking because the study group came from the South West of the US, where sunny weather is the norm.

'Intriguing finding'

Researcher Dr Marian Evatt said: "We found that vitamin D insufficiency may have a unique association with Parkinson's, which is intriguing and warrants further investigation."

Dr Kieran Breen, director of research, Parkinson’s Disease Society said: "Further research is required to determine at what stage the deficiency in vitamin levels occur in the brains of people with Parkinson's and whether the provision of a dietary supplement, or increased exposure to sunlight may help alleviate symptoms or have an affect on the rate of the condition's progression.

"This would help us answer the question as to whether the decrease in vitamin D levels in Parkinson’s is a cause or effect of the condition."

Doctors have known for decades that vitamin D plays a role in bone formation.

More recently, scientists have been uncovering its effects elsewhere, including producing peptides that fight microbes in the skin, regulating blood pressure and insulin levels, and maintaining the nervous system.

Low vitamin D levels also appear to increase the risk of several cancers and auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes.

Asian stocks repeat US successes

2008-10-14T10:14:00.001+06:00

Financial markets in Asia have risen sharply, with the Nikkei gaining 13% in morning trading, and Sydney up 5%.

New York had good news at last

The gains came after Wall Street shares rocketed 11% on Monday as investors welcomed fresh moves to deal with the worldwide financial crisis.

Investors were helped by news the US government wanted to put in place its $700bn bank bail-out quickly.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has now announced a A$10.4bn ($7.3bn) economic stimulus package.

It will allow for one-off payments to the country's low-wage earners and pensioners and follows earlier announcements of guarantees of bank deposits for three years.

According to Mr Rudd, the strategy "will strengthen the national economy and support Australian households".

Australian PM Kevin Rudd announces a A$10.4bn economic stimulus package

By lunchtime, Sydney's S&P/ASX200 was up 219 points at 4399.7, and the Australian dollar had strengthened against the US dollar, trading four cents higher than on Monday.

In New Zealand, the stock market rose 6.7% by early afternoon.

In the US, President George W Bush is due to make a statement shortly before markets open there later on Tuesday.

He will speak after meeting his working group on financial markets.

Rescue plans

On Monday US Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank officials met the chief executives of some of America's biggest banks, to work out details of the US government's $700bn (£400bn) bail-out package.

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The US has said it was also getting ready to follow in Europe's footsteps and purchase stakes in financial institutions.

On Monday the US Treasury announced it was set to buy stakes in a "broad array" of financial firms.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will give further details of the plan on Tuesday morning, with an expectation that funds will be injected into such major banks as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

European governments have said they are putting up to 1.7 trillion euros ($2.3 trillion; £1.3 trillion) to protect the continent's banks through guarantees and other emergency measures.

The sums are a maximum, and might not all be spent if the financial crisis eases.

So far Germany has approved a bank rescue plan worth up to 500bn euros, France will spend about 350bn euros, the Netherlands has pledged 200bn euros, Spain 100bn euros, and Austria 85bn euros.

Italy said it would spend as much as was needed, without giving any exact figures.

The bulk of the European money will be used to guarantee lending between banks - part of a plan agreed this weekend by the 15 nations that use the euro.

The cash will also be used to take stakes in ailing banks, with the UK government saying it would inject up to £36bn of taxpayers cash into Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

City hopes to shuttle people in futuristic 'podcars'

2008-10-14T10:07:00.001+06:00

The thought of a driverless, computer-guided car transporting people where they want to go on demand is a futuristic notion to some.

Computer-guided electric podcars like these carry small groups of people on their own networks.

To Jacob Roberts, podcars -- or PRTs, for personal rapid transit -- represent an important component in the here-and-now of transportation.

"It's time we design cities for the human, not for the automobile," said Roberts, president of Connect Ithaca, a group of planning and building professionals, activists and students committed to making this upstate New York college town the first podcar community in the United States.

"In the podcar ... it creates the perfect blend between the privacy and autonomy of the automobile with the public transportation aspect and, of course, it uses clean energy," Roberts said.

With the oil crisis reaching a zenith and federal lawmakers ready to begin fashioning a new national transportation bill for 2010, Roberts and his colleagues think the future is now for podcars -- electric, automated, lightweight vehicles that ride on their own network separate from other traffic.

Unlike mass transit, podcars carry two to 10 passengers, giving travelers the freedom and privacy of their own car while reducing the use of fossil fuels, reducing traffic congestion and freeing up space now monopolized by parking.

At stations located every block or every half-mile, depending on the need, a rider enters a destination on a computerized pad, and a car would take the person nonstop to the location. Stations would have slanted pull-in bays so that some cars could stop for passengers, while others could continue unimpeded on the main course.

"It works almost like an elevator, but horizontally," said Roberts, adding podcar travel would be safer than automobile travel.

The podcar is not entirely new. A limited version with larger cars carrying up to 15 passengers was built in 1975 in Morgantown, West Virginia, and still transports West Virginia University students.

Next year, Heathrow Airport outside London will unveil a pilot podcar system to ferry air travelers on the ground. Companies in Sweden, Poland and Korea are already operating full-scale test tracks to demonstrate the feasibility. Designers are planning a podcar network for Masdar City, outside Abu Dhabi, which is being built as the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen cities in Sweden are planning podcar systems as part of the country's commitment to be fossil-fuel-free by 2020, said Hans Lindqvist, a councilman from Varmdo, Sweden, and chairman of Kompass, an association of groups and municipalities behind the Swedish initiative.

"Today's transportation system is reaching a dead end," said Lindqvist, a former member of the European parliament.

Cars have dominated the cityscape for nearly a century, taking up valuable space while polluting the air, said Magnus Hunhammar, chief executive officer of the Stockholm-based Institute for Sustainable Transportation, the world's leading center on podcar technology.

"Something has to change," he said. "We aren't talking about replacing the automobile entirely. We are adding something else into the transportation strategy."

Skeptics, however, question whether podcars can ever be more than a novelty mode of transportation, suitable only for limited-area operations, such as airports, colleges and corporate campuses. Detractors, mainly light-rail advocates, say a podcar system would be too complex and expensive.

"It is operationally and economically unfeasible," said Vukan Vuchic, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on urban transportation.

"In the city, if you have that much demand, you could build these guideways and afford the millions it would take, but you wouldn't have capacity. In the suburbs, you would have capacity, but the demand would be so thin you couldn't possibly pay for those guideways, elevated stations, control systems and everything else," Vuchic said.

Podcars typically run on an elevated guideway or rails, but they also can run at street level. As a starting point, pilot podcar networks can be built along existing infrastructure, supporters say.

Ithaca Mayor Carol Peterson said a podcar network could be part of her upstate city's long-range transportation plans and its mission of developing urban neighborhoods that are environmentally sustainable and pedestrian-friendly. Ithaca has a long history of progressive achievements -- this summer, it began the first community-wide car sharing program in upstate New York.

In Ithaca, a network could connect the downtown business district and main business boulevard with the campuses of Cornell University and Ithaca College, which sit on hillsides flanking the city. When the two colleges are in session, Ithaca's population balloons from about 30,000 to about 80,000, causing big-city congestion on the city's roads.

Santa Cruz, California, recently hired a contractor to design a small solar-powered podcar system that would loop through the city's downtown and along its beach front.

The Institute for Sustainable Transportation predicts a podcar system will be installed in an American city within the next five years, although it is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars. Because of the huge initial investment, funding would have to come from both public and private sectors, IST officials said.

The capital cost is about $25 million to $40 million per mile, which includes guideways, vehicles and stations, compared with $100 million to $300 million a mile for light-rail or subway systems, according to the IST.

Although the plan for Ithaca is only in the conceptual stages, Roberts sees the city as a logical place for the country's first community-wide podcar network, noting that construction of the Erie Canal across upstate New York in the early 1800s revolutionized commercial transportation in a young America.

"Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany are connected along a single line, the Erie Canal. Now, they are connected by the (New York State) Thruway. It would be easy to adapt. You could have a high-speed rail line, or even buses, deliver travelers to the podcar stations, and the podcars take them wherever they want to go in the city," he said.

But podcar developers say they have overcome most technological obstacles and now must overcome the political and cultural barriers that lie ahead, equating it to the mind-set revolution that occurred when Americans hitched up their horses for good to become a nation of motorists.

"We are introducing an alternative to the automobile for the first time in 100 years," said Christopher Perkins, chief executive officer of Unimodal Transport Solutions, a California company that builds podcars that operate on magnetic levitation instead of wheels.

The Hubble Space Telescope gleams after a servicing mission in 2002.

2008-10-10T10:02:00.001+06:00

NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope gleams after a servicing mission in 2002.

The Hubble Space Telescope's handlers are weighing a plan to turn on a never-used backup system to restore communications as early as next week. If it works, the world's favorite orbiting observatory could be back in business just a couple of days later. If it doesn't, Hubble could conceivably be worse off than it was before.

The space telescope has been out of commission since Sept. 27, when its command and data-handling system abruptly failed. That forced a postponement of NASA's final Hubble servicing mission, which was due to begin this week with the launch of the shuttle Atlantis. The launch has been put off until next year - to give mission planners time to figure out how to make a fix, and to give Atlantis' crew time to practice the operation.

In the meantime, engineers have a devised a plan to switch Hubble's data-handling functions from the primary system, known as Side A, to the Side B backup system. Side B hasn't been put to the test since Hubble went into orbit in 1990.

"The transition to Side B operations is complex," Hubble's managers explained in a mission update released after the breakdown. "It requires that five other modules used in managing data also be switched to their B-side systems."

All the reconfigurations would be made remotely, by beaming commands to Hubble from the ground.

Sources familiar with the plans for the switchover note that there's some risk that the Side B systems won't work. There's even a chance that if the A-to-B switch doesn't work, Hubble wouldn't be able to switch back from B to A. That scenario would complicate plans for the eventual repair mission, and thus provides an argument for leaving things alone until Atlantis arrives.

A spare data-handling unit is being tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the Hubble operations team is based. Engineers are also analyzing diagnostic data, according to NASASpaceflight.com, an independent Web site that closely follows the space program.

Hubble's managers reviewed the plans for the A-to-B switch today during a round of meetings at Goddard. More meetings are planned on Friday, and NASA Headquarters would review the recommendations on Tuesday, after the federal Columbus Day holiday.

If NASA's top officials give the go-ahead, the switchover could take place as early as Wednesday. Science operations could resume a couple of days after the switch has been made.

"If Side B goes up, and it's successful, we're looking forward to resuming science observations and coming up with clever programs to fill the time," said Ray Villard, a spokesman for the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute.

He said the first of Hubble's instruments to be brought back up would be the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2. He said reviving Hubble's other working camera, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS, would be "trickier" because of the camera system's cryogenics. Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensors could conceivably be used for science as well.

Hubble's other two science instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, are currently out of commission and have been slated for repair during Atlantis' visit. Two more instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, are ready for installation.

NASA was already planning to have Atlantis' astronauts do all those upgrades, and change out Hubble's worn-out batteries and gyroscopes as well. Now more complications lie ahead. Will Hubble's handlers go through with the temporary switchover? How will they adjust the spacewalk schedule and the cargo manifest to accommodate the definitive fix for the data-handling system? Stay tuned for next week's episode of "Hubble's Troubles."

Testicles Could Be New Source Of Stem Cells

2008-10-10T09:51:00.000+06:00

Scientists from Germany and the UK have found a new source of stem cells that could be as good as embryonic stem cells for researching and developing treatments for a range of serious diseases, but without the ethical problems of embryonic stem cells; the source is routine biopsies of men's testicles.

The discovery was the work of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen and Cologne in Germany, and King's College, London, and was published on 8th October in the online issue of Nature. The lead author was Professor Thomas Skutella, who leads an experimental embryology group at Tübingen University.

Stem cells from embryos have the potential to become any cell in the body, after all, a whole person grows from a single fertilized egg. But getting stem cells from embryos is fraught with ethical problems since it involves the destruction of embryos.

For some time now scientists have been working to find alternative ways to make stem cells with the same ability to become any cell in the body as the embryonic stem cell. One such method that has been showing great promise recently is the induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPS cell. By taking a normal cell, such as a skin cell and inserting certain genes into its DNA, scientists have been able to reprogram the cell to regress to an earlier form when it still had the potential to become virtually any other cell of the body.

However, Skutella and colleagues had a hunch that there was another source of stem cells, ones that did not need to have genes inserted into their DNA to make them into cells that produce other cells, because they do that already: the sperm producing cells inside adult male testicles.

They succeeded in harvesting stable stem cells from spermatogonial (sperm producing) cells taken from routine tissue biopsies of the testes of 22 adult male humans. They showed that the cells could be coaxed into regressing to become cells from all three germ layers that form in the very early stages of a new human embryo. This was done by culturing them in the same way used to make embryonic stem cells differentiate.

The researchers concluded that:

"The generation of human adult germline stem cells from testicular biopsies may provide simple and non-controversial access to individual cell-based therapy without the ethical and immunological problems associated with human embryonic stem cells."

Stem cells are the new hope for treatment development because they carry the potential of personalized therapy - using a person's own cells to create stem cells that can then repair and replace damaged tissue, such as in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and cancers. This way the big problem of immune system rejection is overcome because the implants have the same DNA as the host.

In this case however, using stem cells from male testes, the treatment would only work on men.

Many scientists are of the view that regardless of the alternatives that are found, embryonic stem cells are still the best, they are the "gold standard" of pluripotency, and we will need them for research and treatment development for some time to come.

Obama: McCain's mortgage plan shows 'erratic' leadership

2008-10-10T09:43:00.001+06:00

Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday slammed Sen. John McCain's new mortgage plan as "the latest in a series of shifting positions" and evidence of "erratic and uncertain leadership."
Sen. Barack Obama is saying Sen. John McCain has "shifting positions" and shows "erratic" leadership.

Sen. Barack Obama is saying Sen. John McCain has "shifting positions" and shows "erratic" leadership.
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"He's ended up with a plan that punishes taxpayers, rewards banks, and won't solve our housing crisis," Obama said at an event in Dayton, Ohio.

At the second presidential debate Tuesday, McCain suggested that the government buy up bad home loan mortgages and renegotiate at the new diminished value of those homes.

Under McCain's proposed $300 billion mortgage rescue plan, much of the burden of paying to keep troubled borrowers in their homes would shift to taxpayers.

McCain's original plan called for lenders to write down the value of these mortgages and take those losses.

Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain's economic adviser, said Wednesday that the McCain plan could be put into place quickly because the groundwork and the authority for it already have been provided by last week's $700 billion bailout bill; the Hope for Homeowners program authorized by the housing rescue bill passed in July; and the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Read the details of McCain's proposal

In an e-mail to supporters, McCain said his plan would address "the very root of the failing housing market."

Obama charged that McCain's latest plan is "risky."

"I don't think we can afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times. We need steady leadership in the White House. We need a president we can trust in times of crisis," Obama said.

n response to Obama's remarks in Dayton, the McCain campaign said Obama was "putting politics above the national interest."

"John McCain's home ownership resurgence plan represents absolutely no new expense to the taxpayer, but simply refocuses priorities to more directly assist the homeowners who are hurting instead of greed on Wall Street," spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement.

Earlier Wednesday, Obama's campaign launched a television ad that takes aim at McCain's proposal, saying "the same lenders that caused the crisis in the first place" would benefit from the plan.

As the candidates enter the final weeks of campaigning, they have been attacking each other more aggressively.

McCain's campaign has launched a string of new ads that question Obama's judgment and character.

The McCain campaign calls Obama "too risky for America" in a new Web ad that focuses on his political relationship with Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical Weather Underground.

"Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They've worked together for years. But Obama tries to hide it," the announcer says in the 90-second ad.

"But Obama's friendship with terrorist Ayers isn't the issue. The issue is Barack Obama's judgment and candor," the announcer says. Watch analysts weigh in on the McCain attacks »

At a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin, angry voters pleaded with McCain to get tougher on Obama.

One voter suggested that McCain bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.

"I am begging you, sir, take it to him," the voter said.

McCain did not specifically address the comment about Wright, Obama's former pastor who came under scrutiny during the primaries after clips of his sermons circulated on the Internet.

On Ayers, the Arizona senator said he doesn't care about a "washed-up former terrorist," but vowed to press Obama on his candor and judgment.

"We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not. That's the question," McCain said.

Weather Underground was involved in bombings in the early 1970s, including attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama was a young child at the time of the bombings.

Obama and Ayers, now a university professor, met in 1995, when both worked with a nonprofit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved. Fact check: How close are Obama and Ayers?

Quoted in The New York Times, Obama called Ayers "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

Michelle Obama brushed off the latest round of attacks in an interview with CNN's Larry King on Wednesday.

"I don't know anyone in Chicago who's heavily involved in education policy who doesn't know Bill Ayers. But, again, I go back to the point that the American people aren't asking these questions," she said. Watch Michelle Obama's interview »

Obama said her husband has been "thoroughly vetted" and said the Ayers allegations are a "part of politics."

The McCain campaign started pushing hard on the Ayers connection this past weekend when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Obama campaign retaliated Monday with a 13-minute documentary Web video detailing the Arizona senator's involvement in the Keating Five scandal in the 1980s.

US rivals back on campaign trail

2008-10-09T07:41:00.000+06:00

Barack Obama's campaign has dismissed a $300bn plan by John McCain to help struggling homeowners for being "costly and out of touch".

Both men were back on the campaign trail after a TV debate on Tuesday.

With the ailing US economy a key issue for voters, Mr McCain fleshed out his plan for the government to buy up loans from troubled homeowners.

Mr Obama accused his rival of copying Bush administration policies that "led us into this mess in the first place".

The candidates swiftly endorsed a coordinated action by the Federal Reserve and central banks in other countries to cut in interest rates by 0.5% to stimulate world growth.

Senator Obama called for Congress to pass another economic stimulus package, and was boosted by a new poll showing him ahead on all main topics, with a substantial 13% lead on the key issue of the economy.

See full list of issues being tracked

Senator McCain urged the adoption of the plan to help home-owners that he proposed during the second of three debates in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday.

Economic focus

On Wednesday, the Arizona senator held joint campaign appearances with running mate Sarah Palin in the key northern swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The dream of owning a home should not be crushed under the weight of bad mortgages

John McCain
Republican presidential candidate

At a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Mr McCain called his home ownership resurgence plan "a critical first step our country must take to get through this time of crisis".

He said the loans of homeowners who had seen their home's value fall below their debt would be structured into affordable mortgages.

Mrs Palin, meanwhile, said Mr Obama's efforts to tie Mr McCain to Mr Bush were "starting to wear pretty darn thin".

"Last night Senator McCain talked about real and pragmatic solutions," said Mrs Palin. "Barack Obama talked about why he'd rather run against George Bush."

The Obama campaign dismissed Mr McCain's financial proposal as "more costly and out-of-touch than we ever imagined".

"John McCain wants the government to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money," said Jason Furman, Mr Obama's senior economic advisor.

'No bamboozling'

Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate focused on his healthcare plans during a rally in Indiana, a state once regarded as safely Republican but which now seems within his reach as polls swing in the Democrats' favour.

Polls suggest the Illinois senator has a bigger lead on health care than on any other issue.

Linking the economic proposals of Mr McCain to those of President George W Bush, Mr Obama said it was "a time for resolve and steady leadership".

Palin's criticism of Obama was blunter than her running partner's

He added that his rival thought Americans would not notice the downsides of the McCain campaign health-care proposals.

"We're not going to be hoodwinked," said Mr Obama. "We're not going to be bamboozled. We're not going to let him get away with it."

A new monthly poll from Rasmussen suggested that the Democrats were now more trusted than the Republicans on all 10 issues that they have been tracking for the past year.

The Democrats have the biggest lead on domestic issues, such as health care, education and social security, but they are also now more trusted on foreign policy issues such as the War on Terror, immigration and Iraq.

In earlier polls, Republicans had led on these issues.

A new Gallup poll also suggests that more voters are likely to vote for Mr Obama because of his economic tax plans, while on balance more voters have an unfavourable view of Mr McCain's economic policies.

Polls suggest most Americans thought Mr Obama came out on top after the Nashville debate, with Mr McCain failing to land a knock-out punch.

Attack ads

With the 4 November election nearing, the campaigns have become more aggressive, launching new television adverts attacking their opponent's credentials.

Joe Biden criticised attacks on Obama, his running partner

Mr McCain's team released an advertisement attacking Mr Obama's character and suggesting he is simply not presidential.

For its part, the Obama camp's new advertisement attacks the Republican's health care proposal for taxing employer-based insurance plans, the type held by the majority of US workers.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden, Senator Obama's running mate, has attacked the negative tone of the McCain campaign.

He said that attempts by his vice-presidential rival, Sarah Palin, to link Mr Obama to a former domestic terrorist was an effort to inject fear and loathing into the campaign.

Mr Biden - who was on Wednesday campaigning in Florida, another key swing state that has been hard-hit by the economic crisis - called the Republican effort to tie Senator Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers, now a Chicago professor, "mildly dangerous".

German doing well after 1st double arm transplant

2008-10-09T07:33:00.000+06:00

MUNICH, Germany - A German farmer who received the world's first complete double arm transplant said Wednesday that incredulity gave way to joy when he woke from surgery to discover he had arms again.

Karl Merk, who lost his arms in a farming accident six years ago, said he at first could not believe that the transplant appeared to have been succesful.

"It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again," said the 54-year-old, who wore a sleeveless black shirt showing clearly where his new arms had been grafted.

"These are my arms, and I'm not giving them away again," he told reporters at the Munich University Clinic where he remains nearly three months after the 15-hour operation.

Merk is recovering well and can perform simple tasks such as opening doors and turning lights on and off. His ultimate goals are to eat and dress himself — and ride a motorcycle.

"All in all, our wildest expectations have pretty much been fulfilled," said Christoph Hoehnke, one of the lead doctors.

A total of 40 surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other support staff carried out the 15-hour operation on July 25-26 to graft the donor's arms on to the body of Merk, who lost his own just below the shoulder in a combine harvester accident.

Doctors said there were good indications of nerve growth in the arms but it could take up to two years before he relearns how to use his hands.

Merk appeared at the news conference Wednesday with lower arms bandaged and supported with a series of straps attached to shoulder pads.

Merk said he was looking forward to going home after four to six more weeks of an intensive program of physiotherapy, electric stimulation and psychological counseling.

There is also still a risk that Merk's immune system will react, though doctors said so far there was no sign of them being rejected.

Future of flagship Mars mission up in the air

2008-10-09T07:30:00.001+06:00

Will Nasa 's flagship mission to Mars fly next year? The space agency could decide as early as Friday whether to cancel, delay or proceed with plans to launch a nuclear-powered, SUV-size rover to the red planet.

Nasa has already sunk $1.5 billion into the Mars Science Laboratory, which is pricier than expected. The mega-rover will roam the surface and drill into rocks for clues to whether the planet ever possessed an environment capable of supporting primitive life.

Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at Nasa headquarters, told scientists in recent public meetings that he expects the mission's total cost to run over by more than 30 percent. If it goes over that threshold, Congress would have the right to intervene and use its power to end the project on its own.

Managed by Nasa 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the project has been plagued by development problems and ballooning costs that caught headquarters' attention. McCuistion told a gathering of Mars scientists last month that Nasa was keeping a close eye on the project's progress and costs and participating in weekly reviews with JPL.

From the outset, the Mars Science Lab proved to be an engineering challenge due to its size and capability. The 9-foot-long robot geologist is bigger and can drive farther than its twin predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, which are still alive after four years. It also carries some of the most sophisticated instruments, including a laser that can zap rocks from afar.

The mission's financial woes took many in the science community by surprise who fear that other projects will suffer to pay for the mega-rover.

"The magnitude of the increases has been mind-boggling," said geologist John Mustard of Brown University. "It has sent a shock wave to the Mars program and beyond to the planetary community."

If Nasa pushes to launch in 2009 as planned, it will have to find the money to get the rover ready. Any delay until 2010 or 2011 will add at least $300 million to the mission's price tag.

Alex Dery Snider, a spokeswoman for the House Science Committee, said members were concerned about the extra cost and want to know how Nasa will solve the problem.

Some scientists outside the Mars research community said canceling the project does not make sense since so much money has already been invested.

"We've got to continue our exploration of Mars, but in a way that's rational and sensible," said Frances Bagenal of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Adults Should Exercise Aerobically For At Least 2.5 Hours A Week Says US Government

2008-10-09T07:27:00.000+06:00

The US government's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced its first ever guidelines for physical activity for Americans that say adults should have 2.5 hours of moderate physical aerobic exercise a week, and children should have an hour or more of physical activity a day.

The new HHS publication is titled "2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans"; it covers all ages, and it can be downloaded from the HHS website.

The guidelines emphasize that physical activity benefits everyone regardless of age or ethnic group and are designed so that people can easily incorporate physical activities that they enjoy into their daily lives.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said:

"It's important for all Americans to be active, and the guidelines are a roadmap to include physical activity in their daily routine."

Leavitt said the evidence about the long term benefits of regular exercise is clear: it promotes health and reduces disease.

"The more physically active you are, the more health benefits you gain," said Leavitt.

Some of the benefits of regular physical activity listed in the guidelines include:

Reduced risk of premature death, coronary heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure.

Lower risk of depression, type 2 diabetes, colon and breast cancer.

Improved ability to think and get on with the tasks of daily living in older adults.

At the levels recommended, adolescents and children can expect improved cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, bone health and body composition.

Described by the HHS as the "most comprehensive of their kind", the new Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans were drafted by an advisory panel of 13 experts appointed by Leavitt over 2 years ago. They conducted the "first thorough review of scientific research about physical activity and health in more than a decade".

The guidelines include the following advice:

For Children and Adolescents

At least one hour a day of moderate or vigorous aeorbic physical activity.
At least three days a week of vigorous physical activity.
Moderate physical activity includes: brisk walking, hiking, skateboarding and cycling.
Vigorous physical activity includes: cycling, jumping rope, running, soccer, basketball, ice hockey, field hockey and similar intensive sports.
Muscle-strengthening exercise is also recommended for this group, including rope climbing, doing sit-ups, tug of war, at least three days a week.
And for strengthening bone, this group should also do things like skipping, jumping rope and running.

Adults

At least 2.5 hours a week of moderate aerobic exercise, or 1 hour 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity.
Moderate exercise includes: brisk walking, aqua aerobics, dancing, and general gardening.
Vigorous physical activity includes: race or power walking, jogging, running, lap swimming, hiking uphill and jumping rope.
Aerobic exercise should last a minimum of 10 minutes each time.
For added benefit, the HHS recommends adults do aerobic exercise moderately for a minimum of 5 hours a week or vigorously for 2.5 hours a week.
And for muscle-strengthening they should do weight training, push-ups, sit-ups, heavy gardening or carry heavy loads on two days a week at least.

Older Adults

This group should be doing the same as adults, if they can. If they have a chronic condition that stops them, they should be as close to the adult guideline as their condition allows.
Older adults at risk of falling should also do exercises to help maintain balance.

Pregnant Women

Expectant mothers should do at least 2.5 hours of moderate physical exercise a week while pregnant: and after delivery too, perhaps spread out during the week a bit more.
Pregnant women should talk to their doctor about how to adjust their regimen and stay healthy in their pregnancy and after delivery if they are used to doing vigorous exercise regularly and wish to continue.

Disabled Adults

where possible, adults with disabilities should do at least 2.5 hours of moderate, or 1 hour 15 minutes of vigorous, aerobic exercise a week.
They should also do muscle-strengthening exercises that involve all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, preferably more.
It is important for this group to avoid inactivity and to keep exercising regularly, even if not able to meet the guidelines.

McCain, Obama Jockey for Voters' Trust on Economy

2008-10-09T07:15:00.000+06:00

John McCain accused his rival of being untested and untruthful when it comes to the economic crisis, as the McCain campaign attempted Wednesday to sow doubts about Barack Obama's ability to lead the nation through turbulent times.

John McCain gives a thumbs-up before giving a speech at a rally, Wednesday, in Strongsville, Ohio. (AP Photo)

Obama earlier accused the Republican ticket of recycling "Bush economics" on health care and other critical issues, as his campaign ridiculed the plan McCain pitched at Tuesday night's debate for the Treasury Department to spend billions buying up bad mortgages.

The sharp exchanges were just the latest set of pleas from the presidential candidates to trust them with the daunting task of veering the nation away from recession. They came after the Federal Reserve joined other global central banks Wednesday in announcing an emergency rate cut.

"What was my opponent's actual record in the years before the greatest economic crisis of our lifetimes?" McCain asked at a rally in Strongsville, Ohio, accusing Obama of abetting the runaway behavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "Senator Obama was silent. He was dead silent. ... There's absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did anything."

While Obama promises he will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, McCain all but called Obama a liar.

"If he's such a defender of the middle class, why did he vote to raise their taxes?" he said. "Why should middle-class Americans trust him to keep promises that he's already broken?"

Earlier at a rally in Bethlehem, Pa., with his running mate, Sarah Palin, and wife, Cindy, in Bethlehem, Pa., McCain repeated his call for a government plan to buy up bad mortgages directly from Americans.

He said the country's economic woes call for "decisive" action and questioned whether his opponent had the record of taking such action.

"In a time of trouble and danger for our country, who will put our country first?" he said. "We've all heard what he's said, but it's less clear what he's done or what he will do."

But Obama's campaign rejected McCain's call to spend $300 billion on distressed mortgages.

The plan would cause the government "to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don't recover," Obama economic adviser Jason Furman said in a written statement. "The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud."

Speaking to several thousand people earlier in Indianapolis, Obama acknowledged public anxiety over the financial crisis in starker terms than usual. He called it a "moment of great uncertainty for America."

"But this isn't a time for fear or panic," Obama said. "This is a time for resolve and leadership. I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis."

Obama repeated his claims that McCain's proposals would cause many Americans to lose their employer-provided health insurance because McCain would tax those benefits. He said the $5,000 tax credit McCain would give people would not be enough for them to buy private insurance, a claim McCain disputes.

"All we heard from Senator McCain was more of the same Bush economics that led us into this mess," Obama said in Indianapolis the day after their second debate. "He thinks we won't notice" downsides of his health care proposals, but "we're not going to be hoodwinked. We're not going to be bamboozled. We're not going to let him get away with it."

After McCain's campaign spent the weekend drawing attention to Obama's personal ties to figures like 1960s radical William Ayers, on Wednesday McCain attempted to balance that criticism with a renewed focus on the economy.

Although the campaign circulated a statement critical of Obama's ties to Ayers, neither McCain nor Palin mentioned the Ayers connection on the stump in Pennsylvania.

Instead, they questioned Obama's veracity and tied questions over character and judgment to the current economic turmoil.

"What Senator Obama says today and what he has done in the past are often two different things," McCain said. "Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. He has even questioned my truthfulness."

McCain continued by saying he didn't "need lessons about telling the truth to American people."
"And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn't seek advice from a Chicago politician," he said.

Palin said Obama's attempts to link McCain to Bush are "starting to wear pretty darn thin."

But Ayers is not off the table. Palin criticized Obama in an interview with FOX News for giving "conflicting stories" over his relationship with Ayers.

Obama continues to enjoy a healthy lead in the polls as the economy dominates the campaign conversation. The Gallup daily tracking poll Wednesday showed Obama with an 11-point lead over McCain -- his highest ever lead in the national survey.

Suicide Attack! Tense stand-off in Thai capital

2008-10-08T07:50:00.001+06:00

Troops are on the streets of Bangkok after its worst anti-government protests for 16 years left at least two dead and hundreds injured.

Demonstrators had set up a blockade outside the parliament building, which Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat escaped by climbing over a fence.

The activists were trying to stop the inauguration of a government they say is run by ousted PM Thaksin Shinawatra.

But as troops moved in, protesters pulled back from the blockade.

The appearance of troops outside parliament is a clear sign that the government is struggling to maintain its authority, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok.

Parliament blockade

The demonstrators - from the staunchly royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) - have been occupying the grounds of government buildings for weeks, but until Tuesday their demonstration had been largely peaceful.

An alliance of conservative and staunchly royalist academics, activists and business people, the PAD has proved to be a well organised and tactically savvy movement, our correspondent adds.

Clashes in the streets of the Thai capital Bangkok

Several thousand PAD protesters broke out of the compound where they had been staying and marched to the parliament.

They tried to seal off the building by putting up barriers of old tyres and barbed wire.

Police fired volleys of tear gas in an unsuccessful attempt to disperse the demonstrators and around 380 people - including eight police officers who were reportedly shot or stabbed - were injured in ensuing clashes.

The protesters later regrouped, locking some lawmakers inside the building and cutting off the power supply.

Amid the worst street violence since pro-democracy activists challenged Thailand's army in 1992, one person was killed when a suspected car bomb exploded outside the building. A woman also later died, reportedly of chest wounds.

Troops were eventually brought in to help the police and, as army commanders took pains to ensure the public there would be no coup, most protesters pulled back to their camp in Government House.

Forced to flee

The violence prompted the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the government's chief negotiator with the PAD, who said police had failed to exercise the restraint he had requested.

Anti-government protesters were involved in clashes with police

Enlarge Image

Mr Somchai had been holding talks with military commanders on how to end the weeks-long stand-off, before he was forced to flee the parliament building.

The protesters accuse him and his recently ousted predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, of simply being proxies for Mr Thaksin.

The PAD wants to replace the one-man, one-vote system with one in which some representatives are chosen by professions and social groups rather than the general electorate.

Mr Thaksin, Mr Somchai's brother-in-law, was forced from office in a military coup in 2006.

The new government says it wants to start negotiations with the PAD.

However, it is also pushing ahead with controversial plans to amend the constitution - a key grievance of the protesters who see it as part of a plan to rehabilitate Mr Thaksin.

The alliance says the government must resign because of its links to Mr Thaksin, who lives in the UK and has requested political asylum there.

It accuses him of corruption and abuse of power while he was in office.

It has also suggested that Mr Thaksin and his allies have a hidden republican agenda, a serious charge at a time when the country is beset by anxiety over the future of the monarchy.

HIV: Circumcision HIV impact doubted

2008-10-08T07:48:00.001+06:00

There is no hard evidence that circumcision protects gay men from HIV, research shows.

Condoms are seen as offering the best protection

African trials have shown circumcision cuts the likelihood of male to female HIV transmission by up to 60%.

But a US analysis of data on 53,567 men who have sex with other men found HIV rates were not significantly lower among those who were circumcised.

The Journal of the American Medical Association study stressed more work was needed to draw firm conclusions.

This research adds weight to the evidence that circumcision isn't an effective method of HIV prevention for men who have sex with men

Will Nutland
Terrence Higgins Trust

The US team, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta examined data on 53,567 men who have sex with men, of which 52% were circumcised.

HIV levels among those who were circumcised were lower - but not significantly so.

However, there was evidence that circumcision may have had a protective effect in studies carried out before the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1996.

The researchers said one possible explanation was that the advent of these more effective HIV drugs had encouraged higher levels of risk taking sexual behaviour, wiping out any marginal protective effect from circumcision.

Alternatively, the drugs may have helped lower the risk of transmission to the point where circumcision had no further benefit.

A third possibility is that there may have been a smaller proportion of men in the pre-HAART trials who primarily engaged in receptive anal sex, which carries the greatest risk for HIV infection among gay men.

Prevention

Michael Carter, of the HIV information service NAM, said: "It's my sense that there has been a tempering of the excitement about circumcision, and researchers are now favouring a 'combination prevention' approach.

"Circumcision may have a place in this in some settings, but so too do good sexual health, consistent condom use, and there's real excitement and debate about the role of HIV treatment in prevention."

Will Nutland, of the HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "This research adds weight to the evidence that circumcision isn't an effective method of HIV prevention for men who have sex with men.

"The majority of HIV infections in men who have sex with men are as a result of receptive anal intercourse and circumcision would make no difference in these cases.

"Rather than encouraging gay men to be circumcised, investment in prevention in the UK should focus on targeted education programmes, condom provision and easy access to testing."

Cars set to get parental controls

2008-10-08T07:47:00.000+06:00

Footage of the car in action - courtesy Ford.com

Cars could soon come with parental controls that limit what younger drivers can do with a vehicle.

Developed by Ford, the MyKey system limits a car's top speed, how loud its stereo can be and sounds warnings if seatbelts are not being worn.

Ford will introduce the controls on some US makes of car that are due to debut in 2009 but go on sale in 2010.

The Ford Focus will be the first to have MyKey, but the car maker said it would become a standard feature.

Warning tones

The main element of the MyKey system is to limit the top speed of a car to 80mph.

Ford says other options allow parents to limit the volume on the car stereo and make the car sound a continuous alert if drivers and passengers are not wearing a seatbelt.

Other options will let parents decide if warning tones should sound if a car goes faster than 45, 55 or 65 mph.

The car giant said the system built on the ID chips it already used in car keys to hamper car theft.

"It's making use of existing technology, and through the magic of software, we're able to build features on top of the features we already have," sad Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electronic and electrical systems engineering.

Ford's compact version of the Focus, which is due to go on sale in 2010, will be the first to sport MyKey. But a spokesman said it would spread to all cars in the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury range as models are updated.

"Research we've done has shown that speeding is a major factor in teen crashes, especially novice teen drivers," Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told the AP news agency.

"So I think a system that tries to correct the speeding behaviour has the potential to improve safety," she added.

living fish filmed 'Deepest ever'

2008-10-08T07:45:00.000+06:00

The fish were caught on camera

The "deepest ever" living fish have been discovered, scientists believe.

A UK-Japan team found the 17-strong shoal at depths of 7.7km (4.8 miles) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific - and captured the deep sea animals on film.

The scientists have been using remote-operated landers designed to withstand immense pressures to comb the world's deepest depths for marine life.

Monty Priede from the University of Aberdeen said the 30cm-long (12in), deep-sea fish were surprisingly "cute".

Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - and I think we will see fish living much deeper

Alan Jamieson, Oceanlab

The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, can be seen darting about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps.

Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, said: "It was an honour to see these fish.

"No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before - you just never know what you are going to see when you get down there."

The deepest record for any fish is Abyssobrotula galatheae, which was dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of more than 8km (5 miles) in 1970. However, it was dead by the time it reached the surface.

The previous record for any fish to have been spotted alive was thought to have stood at about 7km (4 miles).

Pressure points

The Hadeep project, which began in 2007, is a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo's Ocean Research Institute (Ori) and aims to expand our knowledge of biology in the deepest depths of the ocean.

It is funded by the Nippon Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).

DEEP SEA DIVISIONS

Bathyal zone: 1,000-3,000m (3,000-10,000ft)

Abyss: 3,000-6,000m (10,000-20,000ft)

Hadal: 6,000m-11,000m (20,000-36,000ft)

The researchers have been looking at the Hadal zone - the area of ocean that sits between 6,000 and 11,000m (20,000-36,000ft). It consists of very narrow trench systems, most of which are found around the Pacific Rim.

The researchers are able to explore them using specially designed remote operated vehicles that are fitted out with cameras.

Professor Priede, director of Oceanlab, said: "There is the question of how do animals live at all at these kinds of depths.

"There are three problems: the first is food supply, which is very remote and has to come from 8km (5 miles) above.

"There is very high pressure - they have to have all sorts of physiological modifications, mainly at the molecular level.

The lander was designed to withstand immense pressure

"And the third problem is that these deep trenches are in effect small islands in the wide abyss and there is a question of whether these trenches are big enough to support thriving endemic populations."

But this species appears to have overcome these issues, added Professor Priede.

"We have spotted these creatures at depths of 7,703m (25,272ft) - and we have actually found a massive group of them.

"And this video is pretty tantalising - the fact that there are 17 of them implies that they could well be a family group, begging the question of whether some form of parental care exists for these fish."

Vibration sensors

The researchers said they were surprised by the fish's behaviour.

"We certainly thought, deep down, fish would be relatively inactive, saving energy as much as possible, and so on," Professor Priede told BBC News.

The fish were surprisingly active

"But when you see the video, the fish are rushing around, feeding accurately, snapping at prey coming past."

Because the fish live in complete darkness, they use vibration receptors on their snouts to navigate the ocean depths and to locate food.

Professor Priede added: "Nobody has seen fish alive before at these depths - only pickled in museums - and by the time they come up from the depths they look in a pretty sorry state.

"But these fish are actually very cute."

Alan Jamieson added that he believed the team would find more fish during their next expedition in March 2009, which would probe the ocean between depths of 6,000m and 9,000m.

He told BBC News: "Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - I think we will see some fish living much deeper."

Obama's & Mackain Crucial TV Debate!

2008-10-08T07:41:00.002+06:00

John McCain and Barack Obama will answer questions from voters

The US presidential candidates have begun their second TV debate amid wide public fears over the financial crisis.

The first question focused on the difficulties facing US homeowners.

Democrat Barack Obama said the US faced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and that more had to be done to help the middle class.

Mr McCain said that, if elected, he would order the US Treasury Secretary to buy up "bad" mortgage loans, helping to create jobs and revive the economy.

"We are going to have to stabilise home values and that way people can realise the American dream and stay in their home," Mr McCain said.

Mr Obama said the political process in Washington would have to change to prioritise the interests of ordinary Americans and ensure they were able to remain in their homes.

Ahead of the debate, campaigning took on an increasingly bitter tone, with Senator Obama accusing Senator McCain of "smear tactics" and not paying attention enough to the economy.

Mr McCain said Mr Obama was "lying" about his ties to the home loan industry and asked what his rival had ever accomplished in government.

Recent opinion polls have shown Mr Obama taking a widening lead.

'Town Hall' debate

The second presidential debate, taking place less than a month before the 4 November election, has generated intense interest among the public.

Following personal attacks from both sides in recent days, there could be fireworks tonight

LIVE McCain/Obama debate

More than six million people e-mailed questions to the moderator, NBC news presenter Tom Brokaw, who is presiding over the town hall-style debate in Nashville, Tennessee.

He was to select only six or seven e-mailed questions, as well as about a dozen from the studio audience of 80 uncommitted voters. They will cover domestic and foreign policy.

Mr McCain, who was widely viewed to have lost the first debate, has vowed to take the gloves off for this encounter.

The town hall format is his preferred style of campaigning and may work in his favour, analysts say.

Mr Obama, meanwhile, has promised to fight back.

"We don't throw the first punch, but we'll throw the last," he told a syndicated radio show.

Earlier in the day, Mr Obama's senior strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters that Mr McCain had indicated he was "going to be very aggressive in this debate".

A new ad released by the Obama campaign attacks Mr McCain's record on the economy.

"As Americans lose their jobs, homes and savings, it's time for a president who'll change the economy, not change the subject," it says.

Polling numbers

The latest Gallup daily tracking poll puts Mr Obama at 50% and Mr McCain at 42%, while a new CNN poll put Mr Obama ahead by 53% to 45%.

We don't throw the first punch, but we'll throw the last

Barack Obama

The shifting election battleground

Crucial debate

Send us your comments

Mr Obama, the Democratic candidate, is still gaining in some of the key swing states as well. A new Washington Post poll puts him 6% ahead of Mr McCain in Ohio, a state the Republican candidate probably needs to take if he is to win the presidency.

And another poll, by Rasmussen, also puts Mr Obama ahead in Missouri, which had previously been seen as safely Republican.

In recent days both camps have launched fresh assaults on the character of their opponent.

Mr McCain's running mate Sarah Palin posed further questions about Mr Obama's "truthfulness and judgement".

Both campaigns have ratcheted up the rhetoric with one month to go

Governor Palin had accused Mr Obama of "palling around" with a "domestic terrorist" - Bill Ayers.

Mr Ayers belonged to the US militant group Weather Underground, which opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

Mr Obama once served on a charity board with Mr Ayers but has denounced his radical past.

In an interview with the New York Times newspaper on Monday, Mrs Palin also suggested that voters should pay more attention to Mr Obama's relationship with his former church pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Mr McCain had previously indicated that he did not want Rev Wright's inflammatory sermons, which Mr Obama has repudiated, to form part of his campaign.

Judgement claim

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has been highlighting Mr McCain's involvement in a financial scandal 20 years ago.

It e-mailed supporters an internet video about Mr McCain's connections to Arizona tycoon Charles Keating, who was convicted of securities fraud after his savings and loan bank collapsed.

Mr McCain was one of five senators - known as the Keating Five - to be investigated by a Senate ethics panel over their intervention with banking regulators on behalf of Keating.

He was found to be less involved with Keating than the other senators but was criticised for "poor judgement".

Mr McCain has himself described the affair as "the worst mistake of my life", and one which led him to sponsor legislation on campaign finance reform.

Watch the second US presidential debate live from Nashville, Tennessee from 0100 GMT, with full analysis, running commentary and voter reaction.

2008-09-30T13:34:00.001+06:00

Seven Maj. Gen. promoted to rank of Lt.General

2008-09-30T10:25:00.000+06:00

RAWALPINDI : Seven Major Generals of Pakistan Army have been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General said an ISPR press release here on Monday.

The names are Major General Tahir Mahmood, Infantry, Major General Shahid Iqbal, Infantry, Major General Tanvir Tahir, EME, Major General Zahid Hussain, Artillery, Major General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Infantry, Major General Mohammad Mustafa Khan, Armoured Corps and Major General Ayaz Saleem Rana, Armoured Corps.

Lieutenantt General Raza Muhammad Corps Commander Bahwalpur has been appointed DG JS at JSHQ. Lieutenant General Muhammad Yousaf has been appointed Corps Commander Bahwalpur. Lt General Ahsan Azhar Hyat, Corps Commander Karachi has been appointed IGT&E at GHQ.

Lt Gen Shahid Iqbal has been appointed Corps Commander Karachi. Lt Gen Muhammad Zaki has been appointed IG Arms at GHQ. Lt Gen Javed Zia has been appointed QMG at GHQ.

Lt Gen Nadeem Taj has been appointed Corps Commander Gujranwala. Lt Gen Mohsin Kamal has been appointed MS at GHQ. Lt General Tahir Mahmud Corps Commander Rawalpindi Lt Gen Muhammad Zahid has been appointed Adjutant General at GHQ.

Lt Gen Ahmed Shujaa Pasha has been appointed as DG ISI Lt Gen Muhammad Mustafa has been appointed CGS at GHQ.

Lt Gen Tanvir Tahir has been appointed at IG Communication and IT at GHQ. Lt Gen Ayyaz Salim Rana has been appointed Chairman HIT.

Aussies concerned at Delhi bomb blasts

2008-09-30T10:24:00.000+06:00

NEW DELHI: Australian players are concerned about the recent bombings in Delhi, where the third Test will be held, according to the fast bowler Stuart Clark.

However, the team's travelling security consultant Frank Dimasi will not make a final recommendation on whether the squad should play in Delhi until closer to the match.

The latest attack came on Saturday when a low-grade bomb went off in a crowded marketplace, killing three people. That blast came a fortnight after a series of five synchronised bomb attacks which killed at least 30 people around Delhi.

"It is pretty fresh in everyone's mind at the moment," Clark said on the Sydney radio station 2KY. "We are still hanging out and waiting to see what will happen.

"But there is some sort of concern that we are going to somewhere where an explosion has just been. I would be lying if I said there wasn't concern and that we are going to Delhi and there is that sort of thing going on."

After spending a week in Jaipur the Australians have arrived in Hyderabad, where they will have their most testing hit-out to date with a first-class tour match. The Test series begins in Bangalore and then moves on to Mohali, before the third Test starts in Delhi on October 29.

The Age reported that the squad is receiving regular updates from Dimasi, the security consultant who is travelling with the group and who has prepared a report for Cricket Australia.

Peter Young, the Cricket Australia spokesman, said that following a briefing from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, it was decided that no further restrictions would be placed on the players' movements for the time being.

"The protocols haven't changed," Young told the Australian. "They're doing things like avoiding major markets and avoiding religious gatherings on public holidays. The sorts of things that tourists are advised to avoid as well."

Black men in raised prostate risk

2008-09-30T10:23:00.000+06:00

Black men living in England have a three times higher risk of prostate cancer than white men, figures show.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in UK men

They also tend to be diagnosed five years younger, a study of all cases in London and Bristol found.

The results cannot be explained by access to diagnostic tests, awareness of the condition or screening, the British Journal of Cancer reported.

Cancer charities said the finding may lead to better care for men at higher risk of the disease.

Researchers at the University of Bristol said the US had already reported a higher rate of prostate cancer in black men.

There's very few known risk factors for prostate cancer but it's starting to look like being of black race is a risk factor

Dr Chris Metcalfe

In the UK study, it was initially unclear whether there was a "genuinely" higher rate of prostate cancer in these groups or whether they were more likely to be diagnosed.

But when they looked in detail at hospital records they found black and white men had similar levels of knowledge about prostate cancer, similar symptoms and similar delays before they went to their GP.

However, there was some evidence that black men were more likely to have had a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test before they had any symptoms.

Susceptibility

On why black men could be being diagnosed earlier, the researchers said prostate cancer at a younger age was more likely to be due to greater biological susceptibility to the disease.

The researchers are now doing further work to see if there are any differences in survival between the two groups.

Studies looking at whether PSA should be used as a routine screening test are also being done and it may be that it is recommended for some high risk groups but not everyone.

Study leader Dr Chris Metcalfe said this was the first evidence from the UK on differences between black and white men in rates of prostate cancer.

"One of the possibilities based on anecdote was that black men may delay presentation - so the cancer gets to a later stage.

"If anything the evidence showed black men were presenting sooner."

He added: "There's very few known risk factors for prostate cancer but it's starting to look like being of black race is a risk factor."

Dr Joanna Peak, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said prostate cancer was the most common cancer in UK men.

"The study indicates that there is a true biological difference between ethnic groups and this knowledge could potentially lead to improved care for men at higher risk of developing prostate cancer."

Anna Jewell, from The Prostate Cancer Charity, said: "We would encourage all men to visit their GP if they are experiencing any possible symptoms of prostate cancer such as problems when urinating.

"This strongly demonstrates the need for continuing work to raise awareness of the higher risk of prostate cancer in black men.

"We would like to see further research investigating whether there are any differences in access to treatment or care for prostate cancer between black and white men to help us understand how we can meet the needs of those most at risk from the disease."

Fast forward for mobile broadband

2008-09-30T10:21:00.000+06:00

Phone firms, chip makers and PC manufacturers are uniting to push mobile broadband on laptop computers.

Laptops have become the most popular form of personal computer

The alliance will build wireless modules into laptops to make it much easier to use the gadgets on future high-speed services.

Laptops with the wireless chips built-in will bear a service mark which shows they will work with the third and fourth generation wireless technology.

The branded laptops should be on shop shelves in 91 nations by Christmas.

Fast forward

Laptops and notebook computers bearing the "Mobile Broadband" logo will have on-board modules that will boost current third generation speeds and work with future fourth generation technologies.

At their fastest, these technologies - which include High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Long Term Evolution - support web browsing speeds of up to 7 megabits per second (Mbps).

"It's comparable to fixed broadband services and close to what you get in a wi-fi hot spot," said Mike O'Hara, a spokesman for the GSM Alliance which has brokered the tie-up on Mobile Broadband.

Mr O'Hara said the laptops would eventually be available where people now buy mobile phones.

...it's not really necessary for what they are trying to achieve

Steven Hartley, Ovum

"You can go to an operator's store, buy a laptop and it will be already fitted so you can go online instantly.

"That's a powerful proposition.

"There's a natural evolution such as we saw with wi-fi which at first used to need an external card and became embedded."

Hugh Padfield, principal manager for PC connectivity at Vodafone, said: "The important thing for us is to make it as easy for customers to buy mobile broadband."

He said the logo and branding scheme would help reassure customers about the laptops that will work with future fast net services.

"It will help to create even more momentum than what we have already seen with mobile broadband," he said.

"It's reached something of a tipping point even before it's been built in."

This logo denotes a laptop fitted with high-speed wireless

The deal to produce the modules, build them in to laptops and the campaign around the Mobile Broadband log has been brokered by the GSM Alliance - the trade body that represents 80% of the world's mobile phone firms.

The 16 firms in the Mobile Broadband alliance have pledged to spend about £554m ($1bn) to promote the logo and inform customers about laptops fitted with the technology.

Laptop makers Dell, Toshiba and Lenovo have signed up to the alliance along with 3, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Ericsson, Orange, Qualcomm and Vodafone.

It is not yet clear when mobile operators will roll out the wireless technologies that will help buyers of the branded laptops use the high-speed services.

Mr O'Hara from the GSMA said laptops were just the start of the process of connecting more devices with mobile broadband technologies. The wireless modules would soon crop up in digital cameras, music players, cars and phones.

But Steven Hartley, senior analyst at consultancy Ovum, expressed scepticism about the deal.

"My feeling is that it's not really necessary for what they are trying to achieve," he said.

"If you look at the uptake of mobile broadband services do they really need an initiative like this?

"The operators and vendors are working together anyway to ensure these things are interoperable."

Given that mobile broadband was already catching on, Mr Hartley also wondered how the success of the initiative would be measured.

"It's going to be interesting to see how it's going to be implemented and what's included in the package," he said.

Freighter destroyed over Pacific

2008-09-30T10:20:00.000+06:00

Science reporter, BBC News

An image of the fragmenting ship taken from a chase plane

Europe's "Jules Verne" space freighter has destroyed itself in a controlled burn-up over the southern Pacific.

The 13.5-tonne cargo ship had completed a six-month mission to the space station and was packed with the orbiting platform's rubbish.

Two engine firings were required to slow the freighter sufficiently to pull it into the atmosphere.

The European and US space agencies had chase planes in the air to try to capture the fireball on video.

Astronauts on the space station reported seeing the light from the falling freighter.

It's been a fantastic ride

John Ellwood, ATV project manager

"Everything went correctly, nominally, smoothly. This was the last section of the chain," said Simonetta di Pippo, head of human spaceflight at the European Space Agency (Esa).

Most of the vehicle was expected to burn up in the descent; only fragments should have made it down to the ocean water. Computer modelling of the re-entry had put the impact time at 1346 GMT.

Events were overseen from Esa's freighter control centre in Toulouse, France.

John Ellwood, the agency's vehicle project manager, said all the data would need to be assessed before it was known conclusively how the re-entry went; but the early indications were that everything had proceeded as expected.

And summing up the past six months, he told BBC News: "It's been a fantastic ride; everything has worked nominally. Although there are mixed emotions at the end, there is a lot of satisfaction after having had such a fantastic mission."

Jules Verne - also known by the generic name Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) - cost about 1.3bn euros to develop.

Although Esa has produced many complex scientific satellites, none match the scale of the freighter.

JULES VERNE - THE FIRSTS

The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS

The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life

It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station

It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired

Berlin unveils 'crewed spaceship'

Manned spaceship design unveiled

Key moment for Europe

After launch, the space truck can work out where it needs to go in space, and then makes a fully automatic docking once it arrives at its destination.

It was developed as part of Esa's ISS membership agreement, to haul cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the space station; and also to provide propulsion capacity at the station.

But such has been the performance of Jules Verne that Esa officials and industry chiefs are already talking about upgrading the ship's design - potentially to carry astronauts.

The first step, however, would be to develop technologies that enable the safe return of cargo to Earth.

European space ministers will discuss the issue at their meeting in The Hague in November.

Cost: Total bill was 1.3bn euros (at least 4 more ATVs will be built)

Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission flew lighter

Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest

Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide - the size of a large bus

Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m

Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters

Mission timeline: Launch - 9 March; Docking - 3 April;
Undocking - 5 September; De-orbit - 29 September

Mission Guide: Jules Verne

Under the agreement Esa has with its international partners, at least four more ATVs will be flown to the space station in the coming years. The next is due to launch in 2010.

And, ultimately, it is likely that an ATV will be tasked with destroying the space station when the partners have decided the platform is beyond servicing, perhaps towards the end of the next decade.

A freighter will be commanded to drive the whole structure into a similar region of the south Pacific.

Animation of Jules Verne's final voyage

US rivals claim TV debate victory

2008-09-30T10:17:00.001+06:00

he first presidential debate in full

The rivals for the US presidential election have taken part in the first of a series of debates ahead of the vote in November.

America has a terrible headache

2008-09-30T10:16:00.000+06:00

There is common sense; and there is good sense. Common sense represents the received wisdom of years and the widespread opinion of the day. It may be rooted in fact, fiction, rumour or reality. On one level it doesn't matter. So long as it is commonly held, then, in essence, common sense becomes a fact of life.

Good sense, on the other hand, represents those durable truths and stubborn facts that outlive their unpopularity. The fact that it is right does not necessarily mean that it is not marginal. It persists for the simple reason that prevailing conditions underpin its relevance even when prevailing opinion ignores it.

At times the two coincide, at others they collide. At different moments in different places, burning witches, a flat earth, eugenics, slavery, smoking in restaurants and corporal punishment in schools were all common sense. But they were never good sense.

"Common sense is not something rigid and stationary," wrote the late Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who crafted the distinction from Mussolini's prison. "It creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place." Good sense, he argued, was often concealed in common sense, but emerged primarily in times of crisis and transformation.

We find ourselves in one such crisis now. As markets plunge, banks fail and traders panic, the core principles that have underpinned western economic and political culture for a generation have been thoroughly discredited.

Less than a month ago the invulnerability and inviolability of unregulated global capitalism was common sense. The system that leaves half of the world living on less than a dollar a day, with some so impoverished that they are eating mud cakes and selling their children into bondage, was apparently working well. To suggest otherwise was to be dismissed as extreme.

But such orthodoxies can collapse even faster than markets. By the end of last week the US treasury secretary Henry Paulson was literally on one knee before Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the House, begging her to save the bailout deal.

Later George W Bush warned of the entire American economy: "This sucker could go down." Suddenly, government intervention in markets, reining in executive pay and placing controls on the flow of capital are good sense.

While the gravity of the crisis is clear, the prospects for transformation remain remote. The fact that this meltdown took place during a presidential election should be fortuitous. It ought to provide the two candidates with an opportunity to lay out different visions of how they would tackle the situation at a moment when the nation is intently focused on politics.

If ever the country needed leadership, it is right now. And here are two men vying for it.

Yet the financial crisis has, for the most part, made the presidential campaign seem less relevant, not more. The credit crunch and the election are taking place as though on a split screen. There is a connection between the two - Barack Obama has bounced back as a result of people's attention being refocused away from lipstick and pigs and back on to their mortgages, retirement accounts and jobs.

But it is not a substantive one. For while the crisis has changed the electoral conversation, nobody is seriously looking to this conversation for new ideas, let alone a solution.

The notion that there might be alternatives to rapacious capitalism has been all but banished from the public square. That limited discourse leaves us with limited options. Those who claimed that the government was the problem now cast it as not just the ultimate, but the sole solution.

Good sense demands a thoroughgoing reappraisal of a system that's in a state of collapse; common sense requires we subsidise it in perpetuity for fear that it breaks down. That sounds like nonsense.

"If you beat your head against the wall," Gramsci once wrote, "it is your head which breaks, and not the wall." Right now the American public has a terrible headache. And it doesn't seem as if this presidential race is going to cure it.

For this election to make any sense at this juncture it must challenge the assumptions of the past 30 years that have led America to this place. They are assumptions that have been aggressively promoted by the Republicans in general, and George Bush in particular.

But to gain traction they had to be first conceded and then embraced by the Democrats. The result is an American self-image rooted in unrivalled military superiority and economic might now stands in stark contradiction to a more tawdry and tattered reality. Add the credit crisis to defeat in Iraq and problems in Afghanistan and what you are left with is a sub-prime nation - overextended both militarily and economically, living large and beyond its means.

It will be the task of whoever wins on November 4 to manage America's decline in status and power and a consequent further deterioration in Americans' standard of living. This process will be painful and could be protracted. Little wonder, then, that nobody wants to talk about it. Instead they keep talking of America as the shining city on the hill, without realising that the city they are referring to is bankrupt and the lights are about to be cut off.

It was clear from Friday night's debate that neither John McCain nor Obama really know what to do. The little that they will commit to are things they agree on. Both stand at the mercy of events and the market.

That does not mean it is irrelevant who wins. The difference between them on this issue may be marginal, but for now they are the margins within which we live, and in which many will have to survive. Back in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, many commentators lamented the lack of difference between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.

One satirist wrote a searing piece about an imaginary match-up between Franklin Hoover and Herbert Roosevelt. "Given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines," wrote Federal Reserve chair, Marriner Eccles.

Whatever slight difference there was rhetorically would prove to make a huge difference in reality during a vital period. It makes as much sense to elect McCain as it would have done to re-elect Hoover.

McCain's response to government coffers depleted by the bailout isn't to rescind his tax cut but to freeze spending on everything but defence, veterans and entitlements - a military financial complex. Obama has conceded that his plans to expand access to healthcare, education and to make America energy-independent will have to be trimmed.

Finally, the American political class has embraced a redistributive agenda. The trouble is they are about to divert public money from the poor to the bankers and financiers.

"Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay," said Lenin. It is rarely regarded as common sense to quote him in polite company. Yet as a description of what is taking place right now, it is the most sense I've heard in a long time.

Top Afghan policewoman shot dead

2008-09-29T10:14:00.001+06:00

Gunmen in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar have killed the country's most prominent policewoman, officials say.

Malalai Kakar was not allowed to work as a police officer under the Taleban

Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, head of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, was shot in her car as she was about to leave for work.

Her son was also wounded in the attack, and is said to be seriously injured.

Taleban rebels, who banned women from joining the police when they were in power, said they had carried out the shooting.

"We killed Malalai Kakar," a Taleban spokesman told AFP news agency.

"She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target."

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says Ms Kakar was one of only a few hundred female police officers in Afghanistan and that she had previously received death threats.

Prominent

Ms Kakar, who was reported to be in her early 40s and had six children, was one of the most high-profile women in the country.

She has figured prominently in the national and international media, partly due to a famous episode in which she killed three would-be assassins in a shoot-out - although she said her everyday life involved tackling theft, fights and murders.

Ms Kakar joined Kandahar's police force in 1982, after her father and brothers were also police officers.

But when the hard-line Taleban regime took over Afghanistan she was prevented from working.

Working in the police force in Afghanistan has become an increasingly dangerous occupation, says our correspondent.

According to the Ministry of Interior, more than 700 police officers were killed in the first six months of 2008.

The majority of the casualties were killed in suicide attacks and roadside bombings.

In June, another woman police officer was gunned down in Herat province in a killing believed to have been the first of its kind.

Kandahar is a key battleground of the Taleban insurgency, where Afghan and foreign troops are fighting the rebels.

Freighter to end life in fireball

2008-09-29T10:12:00.002+06:00

Europe's biggest, most sophisticated spaceship is about to bring its six-month mission to an end by plunging into the Pacific in a ball of flames.

Jules Verne's re-entry mass is about six tonnes lighter than at launch

The "Jules Verne" freighter undocked from the space station three weeks ago packed with rubbish and will take its unwanted cargo into a destructive dive.

Most of vehicle is expected to burn up in the atmosphere; only fragments will make it down to the ocean water.

Two engine firings should bring the ship out of the sky on Monday.

Events will be overseen from the European Space Agency's (Esa) freighter control centre in Toulouse, France.

Mike Steinkopf, the mission director for re-entry, says a "safety zone" has been drawn in the south Pacific some 2,700km long by 200km wide.

We will see what appears to be a very bright meteor

Jason Hatton
Esa-Nasa re-entry observing team

"We issue a notification to the air traffic and maritime authorities to make sure there are no planes or boats going through that zone during our re-entry time," he told BBC News.

Astronauts on the overflying International Space Station (ISS) and scientists in two chase planes will take pictures as the disintegrating mass of metal streaks through the morning Pacific darkness.

"Visually, we will see what appears to be a very bright meteor," explained Jason Hatton from the chase team set by Esa and the US space agency (Nasa). "It will start as a point of light with a trail, and then as it comes apart, we will see fragments."

Jules Verne - also known by the generic name Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) - cost about 1.3bn euros to develop.

Although Esa has produced many complex scientific satellites, none match the scale of the freighter.

After launch, the space truck can work out where it needs to go in space, and then makes a fully automatic docking once it arrives at its destination.

JULES VERNE - THE FIRSTS

The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS

The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life

It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station

It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired

Berlin unveils 'crewed spaceship'

Manned spaceship design unveiled

Key moment for Europe

It was developed as part of Esa's ISS membership agreement, to haul cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the space station; and also to provide propulsion capacity at the station.

But such has been the performance of Jules Verne that Esa officials and industry chiefs are already talking about upgrading the ship's design - potentially to carry astronauts.

The first step, however, would be to develop technologies that enable the safe return of cargo to Earth.

European space ministers will discuss the issue at their meeting in The Hague in November.

Jules Verne is currently orbiting the Earth just below the space station at an altitude of about 330km.

Taking the freighter out of the sky involves turning it to face the direction of flight so that its rear engines are then facing forward and can be fired to slow the ship's velocity.

The first burn, which will be initiated at about 1000 GMT and last roughly six minutes, will put the 13.5-tonne spacecraft on a sharp elliptical orbit.

Cost: Total bill was 1.3bn euros (at least 4 more ATVs will be built)

Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission flew lighter

Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest

Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide - the size of a large bus

Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m

Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters

Mission timeline: Launch - 9 March; Docking - 3 April;
Undocking - 5 September; De-orbit - 29 September

Mission Guide: Jules Verne

Approximately two hours later, the engines will be fired again, this time for some 15 minutes. This should take the ATV on its final trajectory and a steep dive towards the Pacific.

The freighter is expected to be moving at some 7.6km/s as it meets significant atmosphere at 120km. As the plunge continues and temperatures rise, Jules Verne will be torn part.

"We expect the solar panels to break just two-and-a-half-minutes after the entry into the atmosphere; and then we will have fragmentation of the docking adaptor, protective shields and other structural elements," explained Mr Steinkopf.

Animation of Jules Verne's final voyage

"Nevertheless, statistically speaking, there will be about 30% of the overall vehicle that may reach the ocean, but only in bits and pieces."

The final moments will be witnessed in the Pacific by two chase planes. The jets, a Gulfstream-V and a DC8, will carry an observation team equipped with a range of spectroscopic imagers and conventional video and stills cameras.

The team wants to establish in detail how the different components of Jules Verne, such as its fuel tanks, come apart.

The information will inform the computer models used by space agencies to plan the safe re-entries of future spacecraft.

"We expect to see signatures associated with the fuel in the wake of the vehicle because you have this trail behind it," Mr Hatton told BBC News from the team's campaign base in Tahiti.

"That's where the spectroscopy comes in. You have a range of different spectrographs all the way from the near-ultraviolet, through the visible to the near-infra-red. In the different colours, we'll probably see what materials are being released from the vehicle, maybe what some of the fragments are - aluminium, for example."

Under the agreement Esa has with its international partners, at least four more ATVs will be flown to the space station in the coming years. The next is due to launch in 2010.

And, ultimately, it is likely that an ATV will be tasked with destroying the space station when the partners have decided the platform is beyond servicing, perhaps towards the end of the next decade.

A freighter will be commanded to drive the whole structure into a similar region of the south Pacific.

French to fight police database

2008-09-29T10:12:00.001+06:00

Lord Erroll is quizzed over governments' access to personal data

David Reid reports on a storm brewing in France over plans to build a database to hold details of people considered likely to breach public order.

Civil liberties groups fear that the new police database, called Edvige, would significantly erode rights to privacy.

Although governments regularly gather and store data about citizens, Edvige would include information about the youngest members of society.

"These people could be filed starting from the age of thirteen with a very large amount of data on their life, on their relatives, on their friends, acquaintance…everything," says Meryem Marzouki from the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS).

Children at risk

Justifying the creation of Edvige, Gerard Gachet, a spokesperson for the French Ministry of the Interior, says: "Unfortunately we have been confronted by an explosion in juvenile crime."

"If you want to put into force a preventative measure, you have to be able to list these young people in a dossier, and be able to go and see them. Or go and see their parents and say 'watch out', your son or daughter is at risk of falling into juvenile crime," he says.

Gérard Gachet says the system would be a "preventative" measure

The row over Edvige led thousands of French people to sign an online petition which forced the French president Nicolas Sarkozy to revise plans.

Among the changes were the withdrawal of the proposal to include political activists, union leaders and religious leaders in the same dossier as potential delinquent youngsters.

Jean-Claude Vitran, from the human rights group Ligue des droits de l'Homme, fears what the data in Edvige will be used for.

"We could well imagine that the one day the extreme left could take power in a democratic country like ours. Then what happens to this information? What do we do? What we'll have is what happened in Eastern Europe 40 or 30 years ago. We'll have police files like the Stasi's," says Mr Vitran. "We don't want that."

Civil rights groups are continuing their fight against Edvige claiming that it will turn France into a Big Brother State. A ruling on the database is expected by the end of the year.

Loss leader

The fears many people have about the personal information filed away in databases goes further than worries about civil liberties or being bothered by junk mail.

Increasingly people are wondering if the organisations gathering sensitive personal information can be trusted to keep it safe.

In Europe the UK has taken the lead on losing data starting with the disappearance of discs containing the personal details of 25 million people in November 2007.

Jean-Claude Vitran has fears over the future use of stored data

The latest lapse took place in early September when a Home Office contractor lost a USB stick containing a variety of details about many of the UK's prisoners.

In response to the growing links between different public services in the late 70s, France created a national data protection authority CNIL to oversee how officials use and pass data.

Yann Padova, secretary general of CNIL, said stipulates that centralised data must be broken up into storage systems and access only allowed to those strictly authorised.

He added that bodies should avoid putting data on laptops or memory sticks because these can easily be lost.

"The more you centralise data, the more value it has," says Mr Padova, "and if someone cracks it, the more damaging it will be."

Data sharing between government departments can threaten its security. But the sharing of individuals' details between official bodies has also come under the spotlight.

Unlike the UK, every time information is shared between different parts of the French government, these need to permission from CNIL.

"The connection of many different public services can be a danger in itself," he says. "We are very strict in this data crossing from different public services."

US lawmakers publish rescue deal

2008-09-29T10:06:00.002+06:00

US politicians have announced a $700bn deal to rescue America's financial system and end the credit crunch.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces bail-out package

The move, backed by both Republican and Democratic leaders, allows the Treasury to spend up to $700bn (£380bn) buying bad debts from ailing banks in the US.

President George W Bush announced his support of the bill. Both houses of Congress are expected to vote on it in the coming days.

Stock markets in Asia rose following the announcement.

The announcement came after days of high-level wrangling between Republicans and Democrats in Congress over the content of the bill.

Both parties had vigorous objections to a proposal submitted last week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that would have given him sweeping powers over how the money was spent.

Every American has an interest in fixing this crisis - inaction would paralyse the economy

Harry Reid
Senate majority leader

Announcement in quotes

Santander to buy parts of B&B

Q&A: Bail-out plan

His plan was prompted by a string of failures in large US financial institutions, including the government bail-out of insurance giant AIG.

If approved by the Senate and House, the revised plan will led to the biggest intervention in the markets since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, said the agreement was "not a bailout of Wall Street", but designed to ensure pensions, savings and jobs would be safe.

Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid said the deal was a big improvement on the initial proposal.

"They wanted a blank cheque and we couldn't give them one... Now we have to get the votes."

'Necessary tools'

The negotiations had lasted all weekend and were so intense that at one point Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson suffered what was described as a "woozy spell".

Now that agreement has been reached on the so-called Act of Emergency Economic Stabilization 2008, both the House of Representatives and the Senate are expected to vote on it as early as Monday.

READ THE BAIL-OUT BILL

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act[189KB]

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The US administration had wanted a deal to be announced before markets open in Asia.

After senior members of Congress announced the agreement, President Bush gave his backing to the draft legislation.

He said the bill would send a strong message that the US was serious about restoring confidence in its financial markets.

"This bill provides the necessary tools and funding to help protect our economy against a system-wide breakdown," he said in a statement.

The first stock markets to open after the news broke reacted positively, with Tokyo's Nikkei index and Seoul's Kospi registering gains.

No golden parachutes

The deal addresses several of the key concerns raised by both Democrats and Republicans:

The government will get the money in tranches - $250bn straight away, and $100bn at the request of the White House; Congress can veto the release of the remaining $350bn
Banks that accept bail-out money will have to hand over shares in return, which allows tax payers to benefit from the banks' recovery
Top bankers, meanwhile, will see their pay limited, and "golden parachutes" - huge payments when they leave the firm - will be banned
The banking industry will have to help finance the bail-out if the money can not be recovered from the struggling banks themselves
Four agencies will monitor the deal, including an independent Inspector General and a bipartisan oversight board
Banks will be obliged to join an insurance programme to protect them against the losses of mortgage-backed securities

The proposed legislation was now "frozen", said Ms Pelosi, which means critics can not strike out individual provisions that they do not like.

However, several key critics of the deal called on their fellow legislators to block it.

Financial woes

The Bush administration submitted its initial proposal after several financial institutions got into trouble - unable to free up the money to keep their daily business going.

The liquidity problems have not been limited to the US.

In the United States' largest bank failure, Washington Mutual was taken over by regulators and sold on to JPMorgan Chase
Lehman Brothers collapsed, Merrill Lynch sought refuge in a takeover by Bank of America and Morgan Stanley secured a large capital injection from a Japanese rival
US insurance giant AIG had to be bailed out by the US government, which in effect took an 80% stake in the firm
In the UK, meanwhile, mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley is set to be nationalised, with the savings part of the business to be sold to Spanish banking group Santander
The governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands agreed late on Sunday evening to invest 11.2bn euro in huge financial services group Fortis, in effect nationalising it.

US rivals in economy crisis talks

2008-09-28T10:26:00.000+06:00

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are preparing to meet President George W Bush amid hopes of an emergency deal on the economy.

The two presidential candidates have called for bipartisan action

The White House says lawmakers are making progress on a proposed $700bn (£378bn) plan to aid failing firms - Mr Bush is pushing for a quick agreement.

He has said the whole US economy is in peril and urged Congress to act.

Mr McCain has suspended his campaign over the crisis, but Mr Obama says voters should hear from the candidates.

The two men are scheduled to attend a meeting with the president and congressional leaders at 1600 local time (2000 GMT).

Reports from Washington suggested both Republican and Democratic members of Congress were closing in on a deal acceptable to all sides throughout during a series of meetings on Thursday morning.

The two parties were hoping for a bipartisan consensus to emerge in time for the candidates and president to rubber-stamp a deal at the White House in the afternoon, the New York Times reported.

On Wall Street, shares rose on the news of a possible agreement.

Key figures on each side suggested on Thursday that compromise was being reached on a number of contentious issues, among them the issue of limiting the pay of executives whose companies are given government help.

Lawmakers say the proposal is proving unpopular with voters, many of whom are concerned about the use of public funds to fix problems caused by bad corporate practice on Wall Street.

Debate concern

In a joint statement late on Wednesday, the two presidential candidates described the Bush administration's planned bail-out plan as "flawed", but said efforts to protect the economy must not fail.

The economy is now dominating the presidential campaign

"This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe," they said.

Meanwhile, the two rivals have disagreed on delaying a TV debate over the economic turmoil.

Mr McCain said he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to help agree a deal, saying he feared the rescue package would not pass "as it currently stands".

He also called for his first presidential debate with Mr Obama on Friday to be suspended - something Mr Obama did not support.

Americans needed to "hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess", Mr Obama told journalists.

The American taxpayer should not be expected to pick up the tab for every giant, greedy corporate misfortune

Richard Savary
Pasadena, California

Bail-out plan: Views from the US

Bail-out debate: For and against

Mr McCain stressed his desire to help Congress agree a viable deal in a speech on Thursday to the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference headed by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Mr McCain insisted on clear oversight of any plan, and said no Wall Street executives should profit from the injection of public cash.

But he made no mention of Friday's planned presidential debate, instead praising Mr Obama's decision to join him in Washington to broker a deal.

"Poor decisions made in haste can turn a crisis into a far-reaching disaster," he said.

'Excesses on Wall Street'

Mr Bush made his grave pronouncement on the crisis during a televised address to the nation on the economy on Wednesday evening.

JUSTIN WEBB'S AMERICA

Mr Bush's presidency ends now in calamity - only the death of Osama Bin Laden before January can rescue it

Read Justin's thoughts in full

Major sectors of America's financial system were at risk of shutting down, he said, and without action a "distressing scenario" would unfold.

His administration is calling on Congress to approve the proposed bail-out - under which the Treasury would use public money to buy bad debt from troubled financial institutions - as soon as possible.

The fund would aim to sell off these mortgage-related debts in the future when, the Treasury says, their value might have risen.

Lawmakers want assurances that it will benefit home-owners as well as Wall Street, and be subject to adequate oversight.

Mr Bush said he understood the frustration of "responsible Americans" who "are reluctant to pay the costs of excesses on Wall Street".

"But given the situation we're facing, not passing a bill now will cost these Americans much more later," he said, calling for a bipartisan commission to oversee the plan.

Bomb hits India market shoppers

2008-09-28T10:25:00.000+06:00

A bomb blast at a market in India's capital has killed one person and injured at least 15 others.

India blames Islamist militants for the attacks

The market, in the Mehrauli area, was packed with shoppers when, according to eyewitnesses, two men drove up in a motorcycle and dropped a package.

Police have described it as a low intensity explosive device.

Two weeks ago, five bombs ripped through busy shopping areas in Delhi, killing at least 20 people. Nearly 50 were killed in Ahmadabad in July.

Police say they have arrested the head of a group claiming the attacks.

Mohammed Arif Sheikh, described as the founder of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), was arrested along with four others, Mumbai (Bombay) police said on Thursday.

Blood and glass

Television footage showed shards of glass in the market area, with people walking about in blood-stained shirts.

The site has been cordoned off and fire fighters have rushed to the area.

BOMB ATTACKS IN INDIA IN 2008

27 September: Bomb blasts kills one in Delhi

13 September: Five bomb blasts kill 18 in Delhi

26 July: At least 22 small bombs kill 49 in Ahmedabad

25 July: Seven bombs go off in Bangalore killing two people

13 May: Seven bomb hit markets and crowded streets in Jaipur killing 63

Delhi bombs follow haunting script

Ambulances are ferrying the injured to hospital. Some are said to be in a serious condition.

The brother of the 13-year-old boy who died said he had sent his brother to buy eggs when the blast went off.

"He had barely entered the shop to buy the crate (of eggs), smoke started coming out of a tiffin and suddenly there was a blast and he died on the spot," he said.

Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said they were questioning eyewitnesses who saw two men throw something from a passing motorcycle.

Chinese astronaut walks in space

2008-09-28T10:22:00.000+06:00

China astronaut's space walk

A Chinese astronaut has become the first in his country's history to take a walk in space.

In an operation broadcast live on national TV, fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang emerged from the capsule orbiting the Earth to wave a Chinese flag.

Mr Zhai, 42, stayed outside the capsule for 15 minutes while his two fellow astronauts stayed in the spacecraft.

The exercise is seen as key to China's ambition to build an orbiting station in the next few years.

Mr Zhai began the manoeuvre just after 1630 Beijing Time (0830 GMT) on Saturday, and completed it about 15 minutes later.

"I'm feeling quite well. I greet the Chinese people and the people of the world," he said as he climbed out of the Shenzhou VII capsule.

For China this mission is as much about national pride as anything else

James Reynolds' blog

His colleague, Liu Boming, also briefly got his head out of the capsule to hand him the flag.

Mr Zhai wore a Chinese-made spacesuit thought to have cost between £5m and £20m ($10m-$40m) for the space walk.

The "yuhangyuan" (astronaut) was tethered to the capsule with an umbilical cable.

Mr Zhai retrieved an externally mounted experiment.

The third yuhangyuan on the mission is Jing Haipeng.

Leap

The Shenzhou VII capsule soared into orbit on a Long March II-F rocket from Jiuquan spaceport in north-west China on 25 September.

1958: Base for spaceflights built at Jiuquan, in Gobi desert

April 1970: China launches its first satellite into space

1990-2002: Shenzhou I-IV are launched to develop systems

Oct 2003: The first manned space mission launches on Shenzhou V

Oct 2005: The Shenzhou VI mission takes two men into space

Oct 2007: Chang'e-1 orbiter sent on unmanned mission to the Moon

The rocket put the Shenzhou capsule in a near-circular orbit more than 300km above the Earth.

Earlier, Zhang Jianqi, one of the chief engineers for China's space programme, said keeping three men in the spacecraft, and then sending one outside, would be a "big test".

"This is a big technological leap," he told state-run news agency Xinhua.

"The risks are quite high. Sending up three astronauts is a jump both in quantity and quality."

The ship is to release a 40kg (90lb) satellite which will circle the orbiter and beam back images to mission control.

At the end of the mission, the Shenzhou re-entry capsule will target a landing in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

China became only the third nation after the United States and Russia to independently put a man in space when Yang Liwei, another fighter pilot, went into orbit on the Shenzhou V mission in October 2003.

Two years later, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng completed a five-day flight on Shenzhou VI.

According to the Associated Press news agency, Xinhua posted an article on its website prior to the lift-off that was written as if Shenzhou VII had already been launched into space.

China's Shenzhou VII rocket blasts off

The article reportedly carried a date of 27 September and came complete with a dialogue between the astronauts.

Chinese media report that this latest mission is the "most critical step" in the country's "three-step" space programme.

These stages are: sending a human into orbit, docking spacecraft together to form a small laboratory and, ultimately, building a large space station.

The Shenzhou VIII and IX missions are expected to help set up a space laboratory complex in 2010.

China launched an unmanned Moon probe last year about one month after rival Japan blasted its own lunar orbiter into space.

SHENZHOU VII SPACECRAFT

1. Forward orbital module - crew live and work in this section, which contains scientific equipment. In future missions, this module may remain in orbit as part of a Chinese space station

2. Re-entry capsule - contains seats for three crew

3. Propulsion module - contains spacecraft's power unit and liquid fuel rocket system

4. Solar panels - spacecraft carries one pair of solar panels

5. Spacewalk - One yuhangyuan (astronaut) exits the orbital module on a tether. Another crew member stands just inside to assist in case of an emergency

US rivals claim TV debate victory

2008-09-28T10:20:00.001+06:00

US presidential hopefuls Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have both claimed to have come out on top in their first televised debate.

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain in their first presidential debate

Mr McCain's campaign said he had shown a "mastery on national security issues", while Mr Obama's aides said he had passed the commander-in-chief test.

Correspondents say the debate ended with no clear winner, but TV polls on their performances put Mr Obama ahead.

During the event, the two men sparred over foreign policy and the economy.

Mr McCain accused his rival of naivety over Iran, while Mr Obama said Mr McCain had wrongly thought the Iraq war would be over quickly.

They also attacked each other's position on the US financial crisis.

All things considered, it's about a draw

Matthew Yglesias, Think Progress

First presidential debate scorecard

Analysis: McCain wins on points

Send us your comments

US voters' views

Mr Obama said a $700bn (£380bn) package to rescue the US economy was the "final verdict" on eight years of Republican rule.

Mr McCain responded by accusing Mr Obama over his record on finance, saying he had asked for millions of dollars in so-called "earmarks" - money for pet projects - as an Illinois senator.

But both agreed the rescue deal would put massive pressure on the budget of the next president and mean spending cuts.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid said on Saturday morning that members of Congress had made significant progress in their negotiations on the bail-out plan and hoped to be able to announce an agreement in principle on Sunday.

'Piece in the puzzle'

Tens of millions of Americans watched the debate in Oxford, Mississippi, on TV, with only about five weeks to go before the 4 November election.

Last night, John McCain's silence on the middle class was deafening

Sen Joe Biden, Democratic vice-presidential candidate

A telephone poll by CNN and Opinion Research Corp afterwards found 51% said Mr Obama had won, to 38% for Mr McCain.

Obama was widely considered more intelligent, likable and in touch with peoples' problems, and by a slight margin was seen as the stronger leader and more sincere.

A CBS News poll of uncommitted voters meanwhile found that 39% gave Mr Obama victory, 24% thought John McCain had won, and 37% thought it was a dead heat.

Correspondents say this will be seen as an achievement by Mr Obama's team, as foreign policy and national security are considered his rival's strongest topics.

The Illinois senator's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that the polls showed him making important gains with undecided voters.

Mr Obama was greeted by cheering supporters in Greensboro on Saturday

"We think it's another piece in the puzzle to Senator Obama winning the election," he said.

In a speech on Saturday in Greensboro, North Carolina, Mr Obama said the Republican candidate had proved he was out of touch with the middle class by never once uttering the words during their first debate.

"Through 90 minutes of debate, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he didn't have anything to say about you," he said. "He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' He didn't even say the words 'working people."'

Mr Obama's running mate, Sen Joe Biden, echoed the comments, saying Mr McCain's judgement on every issue was "wrong".

"Last night, John McCain's silence on the middle class was deafening," he said. "We need more than a brave soldier. We need a wise leader."

The Republican governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, said Mr McCain's experience had shone through during the debate.

NEXT DEBATES

2 Oct - vice-presidential rivals. Topic: Domestic and foreign policy

7 Oct - presidential contenders. Topic: Any issues raised by members of the audience

15 Oct - presidential contenders. Topic: Domestic and economic policy

The BBC has full and extensive coverage of the debates

"This was real experience. This was someone talking about war, not what they read in a book, what they heard in a lecture," she told the BBC.

In its first post-debate advert, Mr McCain accused his rival of "playing politics, risking lives" when he voted against an Iraq war spending bill in May 2007.

On Friday, the Wall Street journal accidentally ran an advert from the McCain campaign before the debate - and even before he had said he would actually attend - declaring: "McCain wins debate".

The BBC's Allan Little in Oxford says both performances seemed to be sure footed, polished, coherent, focused, meticulously researched.

No-one rambled, nor repeated himself, our correspondent says. Both argued points of policy in detail and with mutual civility, he adds.

'Serious threat'

During Friday's debate, Sen McCain said he did not need "any on-the-job training".

"I'm ready to go at it right now," he added.

I have a long record and the American people know me very well

Sen John McCain

But Sen Obama said his rival had been "wrong" about invading Iraq and that the war had led the US to take its eye off the ball in Afghanistan, where it should have been pursuing al-Qaeda.

Mr McCain argued that as a result of the "surge" - which involved sending some 30,000 extra US troops to Iraq - US military strategy was succeeding.

"We are winning in Iraq and we will come home with victory and with honour," he said.

Asked about Iran, Mr McCain stressed that Tehran was a threat to the region and, through its interference in Iraq, to US troops deployed there.

He outlined a proposal for a "league of democracies" to push through painful sanctions against Tehran that were presently being blocked in bodies like the United Nations because of opposition from Russia.

Mr McCain also criticised Mr Obama for his previously stated willingness to hold talks with the leaders of Iran without preconditions.

John McCain and Barack Obama on dealing with Iran

Mr Obama rejected that criticism, saying he would reserve the right as president "to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe".

However, he said he agreed with his Republican rival that "we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran" and the threat that that would pose to Israel, a staunch US ally.

Speaking about the so-called war on terror, Mr McCain said he believed the nation was safer than it had been the day after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks but there was still a long way to go.

Mr Obama pointed to the spread of al-Qaeda to some 60 countries and said that the US had to do more to combat that, including improving its own image as a "beacon of light" on rights.

"One of the things I intend to do as president is restore America's standing in the world," Mr Obama said.

Hollywood mourns star Paul Newman

2008-09-28T10:14:00.000+06:00

Hollywood has been mourning the death of Oscar-winning film legend Paul Newman, who died of cancer aged 83.

Paul Newman's career spanned six decades and some 60 films

Tributes have been pouring in for the star of movies such as Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and The Sting.

His co-star in both films, Robert Redford, said "I have lost a real friend" while Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey said Newman was a "great humble giant".

Former actor California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called him "a generous but modest philanthropist".

Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary described him as "an American icon, philanthropist and champion for children," in a statement.

Newman died at his Connecticut home on Friday.

A statement from Newman's family said: "His death was as private and discreet as the way he had lived his life."

SELECT FILMOGRAPHY

The Silver Chalice, 1955

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1958

The Hustler, 1961

Hud, 1963

Cool Hand Luke, 1967 (pictured)

Rachel Rachel (director), 1968

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969

The Sting, 1973

The Towering Inferno, 1974

Absence of Malice, 1981

The Verdict, 1982

The Color of Money, 1986

Nobody's Fool, 1994

Road to Perdition, 2002

Cars (voice), 2006

The star's five daughters praised their father's "selfless humility and generosity" in a statement released to the press.

"Paul Newman played many unforgettable roles," they said.

"But the ones for which he was proudest never had top billing on the marquee: Devoted husband, loving father, adoring grandfather, dedicated philanthropist."

In Los Angeles, flowers were placed on Newman's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as the Motion Picture Association of America hailed his "extraordinary career."

The actor starred in some 60 films in a career that spanned five decades.

He was nominated for an Academy Award 10 times - but it took him 33 years to win one, picking up the best actor trophy for The Color Of Money in 1987.

In May 2007, Newman said he was giving up acting because he could no longer perform to the best of his ability.

"I'm not able to work any more... at the level that I would want to," he told US broadcaster ABC.

"You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention.

Earlier this year, he pulled out of directing a stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in Connecticut because of unspecified health problems.

'Ego removed'

Eulogies for the star have poured in from friends and colleagues around the world.

Sam Mendes, who directed Newman in 2002's Road To Perdition, said the actor was "an extraordinary man in every respect".

The thing I remember the most about him is his total lack of ego and his lack of entourage and his lack of hangers-on."

Some of Paul Newman's iconic performances - courtesy 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros

Film star George Clooney said: "He set the bar too high for the rest of us. Not just actors, but all of us."

Kevin Spacey added: "He used his success to help others and did it without wanting a lot of credit.

"He should be an example to everyone in the acting profession because he seemed to have had his ego surgically removed."

Hit films

Although his handsome looks and piercing blue eyes made him an ideal romantic lead, Newman often played rebels, tough guys and losers.

"I was always a character actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

His movies included Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, The Sting and Hud.

More tributes to Paul Newman

Along the way, he worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood - including Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall and Tom Hanks.

He also appeared with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in several films including Long Hot Summer and Paris Blues. The star later directed his wife in movies such as Rachel, Rachel and The Glass Menagerie.

But his most famous screen partner was undoubtedly Robert Redford, his sidekick in both Butch Cassidy and The Sting.

In addition to his Academy Award for best actor, he was given an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft".

YOUR MEMORIES

His humour, charm, cleverness and above all his humanity could never be copied

Felicity Wood, London, UK

Send your tributes to Paul Newman

In 1994, he picked up a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.

His philanthropic efforts included the establishment of summer camps for children who suffered from life-threatening illnesses.

He also donated profits from his Newman's Own food range to a number of charitable organisations.

Newman's last film role was as the voice of Doc Hudson, one of the most famous racing cars in history, in the Pixar animation Cars.

It was perhaps a fitting epitaph for the actor, who had a lifelong fascination with the sport - and put his film career on hold in the 1970s to become a professional racing driver.

He is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.

Contador issues warning to Astana

2008-09-27T10:37:00.000+06:00

Astana team leader Alberto Contador has admitted Lance Armstrong's arrival may force him to move to a rival outfit.

Contador is among an elite group to win all three major tours

Armstrong came out of retirement to work with Johan Bruyneel, the man who coached him to his record seven Tour de France victories, at Astana.

But neither Armstrong nor Contador, who won the 2007 Tour, are likely to be happy for anything other than team leader status.

"If I am not happy I will change teams," said Contador.

When news of Armstrong's surprise return to the sport broke earlier this month, Contador said he would "welcome him with open arms".

But that stance seems to have changed after Armstrong officially signed with Astana.

"The team has said it has complete confidence in me, but this is a particular situation and I will have to see what happens in the coming weeks to then decide what is best for my future," said Contador.

"Four weeks from now the situation could be completely different.

"I spoke with Johan about the Tour next year and he said there is no problem and that I will be the leader, but Lance Armstrong is a champion and I think he will want to race to win.

"I am sure that he also wants to be the leader of the team."

The 25-year-old, who won the Tour of Spain and the Giro d'Italia this year, is contracted to Astana until 2010.

"I respect Armstrong. He has done incredible things, but I don't think that I have to prove to anybody that I should be the leader," said Contador.

"I want to be sure the team guarantees that I will be in the Tour as the team leader."

Armstrong has acknowledged Contador as "the best rider on the planet right now".

"We have to understand that and respect that," said Armstrong.

"I'm not sure I can ride that fast right now. I hope it works out."

One rider who believes there could be problems for the Astana team is the Republic of Ireland's 1987 Tour winner Stephen Roche.

"I could see (Contador) walking away. He's finally getting credibility and now next year everybody will be talking about Armstrong," Roche told BBC Radio 5 Live.

China's astronauts spend first day in orbit

2008-09-27T10:33:00.001+06:00

:China's three astronauts spent their first day in orbit on Friday spoilt with a spicy 80-dish menu as they prepared for the most dangerous part of their mission -- the nation's first space walk.

The voyage of the Shenzhou VII, China's third manned foray into space, has proceeded without a glitch since it blasted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China late Thursday, state media said.

"We feel physically sound," the trio, led by Zhai Zhigang, reported back to ground control after blast-off, Xinhua news agency reported.

At 4:04 am (2004 GMT Thursday) the Shenzhou VII entered into a round orbit around Earth from its initial oval orbit, a complicated manoeuvre which makes it possible for the three to get down to the real business of the journey.

The three spent most of the day assembling and testing the space suit that one of the astronauts -- most likely 41-year-old Zhai -- was to put on for an unprecedented walk in space scheduled for Saturday, Xinhua said.

Zhang Jianqi, one of the chief engineers for China's space programme, said keeping three men in the spacecraft, and then sending one outside, would be a "big test".

"This is a big technological leap," he told Xinhua. "The risks are quite high. Sending up three astronauts is a jump both in quantity and quality."

Space motion sickness can cause dizziness, vomiting and nausea, and in severe cases, astronauts might feel severe pain in the joints, have breathing difficulty or could even lose consciousness.

"Some of these can be life-threatening," said Li Yongzhi, director of the medical department of the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, according to the China Daily newspaper.

While crammed into a tiny living space, the three astronauts will at least be able to enjoy a hitherto unseen choice of food.

The menu includes spicy chicken with peanuts, shrimps and dry fruits -- 80 items in all, up from only 50-odd in China's last mission in space three years ago.

"We have tried to make them taste like stir-fried dishes they have on Earth," Chen Bin, who is in charge of food for the astronauts, told Xinhua.

In choosing food fit for space, Chen said he had avoided ingredients that produce gas after being digested, such as milk and soybean. "Meat and egg are better," he said.

The astronauts will also take a traditional Chinese medicine -- "taikong yangxin", or "space heart-nourisher" -- during their time in orbit to treat space motion sickness, Xinhua said.

"It is made of more than ten types of Chinese herbs, and has proven to be effective in improving the astronauts' cardiovascular conditions," the medical department's Li said.

Chinese state media has treated the journey as a major national triumph, coming just a month after the Olympics, but in at least one case got ahead of itself.

On Thursday morning -- hours ahead of blast-off -- Xinhua posted a story on its website reporting how the Shenzhou capsule was being successfully tracked high over the Pacific Ocean.

The story, dated September 27 and including supposed dialogue, was written from one of the numerous tracking ships China's space programme sends around the world to follow space flights.

It described in a vivid, blow-by-blow account how the spacecraft's signals were being monitored.

"Pressure in the cabin is normal. Oxygen pressure in the cabin is normal," an astronaut was quoted as reporting.

"There was a technical problem. We dealt with it after we had found it," an editor at Xinhua told AFP when asked about the story.

China sent its first man into space in 2003, followed by a two-man mission in 2005.

The Shenzhou VII is scheduled to land in the northern Inner Mongolia region after the 68-hour mission is completed.

Pakistan 'kills 1,000 militants'

2008-09-27T10:32:00.000+06:00

Pakistani troops have killed 1,000 Islamist militants in a huge offensive in the Bajaur tribal district over the last month, the army says.

Pakistani troops have been battling Taleban fighters near the border

It says that it will regain control of the region from Taleban and al-Qaeda militants within the next three months.

The army says that five top militants were among those killed in the Bajaur operation. The area is one of the most unstable of Pakistan's tribal areas.

There has been no word from militants in relation to the army's claims.

"This is one area that, if you are controlling, can create a much greater effect on the entire region," Maj-Gen Tariq Khan told reporters on a visit to the area arranged by the army.

He estimated that 65% of the militant problem would be eliminated if militants were defeated in Bajaur.

"If they lose here, they've lost almost everything," he added.

"If we do not take any action it will become an independent agency spreading out terror in all directions."

'Al-Qaeda sanctuary'

Maj-Gen Khan said that 27 soldiers had been killed and 111 wounded in the operation, launched last month at the same time as Pakistan's new government was coming under increasing pressure from the US to take action against militants in its border regions.

The army says that many suspected militants have been captured

Correspondents say that there is no way independently to verify the army's claims.

However the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Pakistan says that troops are barely making progress against militants and thousands of people have been displaced.

Our correspondent says that soldiers in Bajaur are not confronted with guerrilla-type attacks or suicide bombings but a situation of conventional warfare in which the militants continue to hold a large swathe of territory.

Maj-Gen Khan said the dead militant commanders were from Egypt, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Another was described as an Arab while the fifth was a Pakistani commander named only as Abdullah.

Bajaur is long believed to have been the most likely al-Qaeda sanctuary inside the Pakistani border region, and has been the target of several suspected US missile attacks since 2006.

It borders the troubled Afghan province of Kunar, scene of some of the fiercest fighting between Pakistani forces and Islamist militants since Islamabad joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001.

It was also the scene of a missile strike that is believed narrowly to have missed Osama bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in January 2006.

Mega-bird had a five-metre wingspan and teeth: study

2008-09-27T10:27:00.002+06:00

A bird that swooped over the waters covering what is now southeast England had wings that spanned five metres (16.25 feet) tip to tip and had bony teeth with which to grab its food, a study published on Friday said.

The extraordinary beast has been identified thanks to a well-preserved skull unearthed on the Isle of Sheppey, east of London. Named Dasornis emuinus, it has been dated to 50 million years ago.

Gerald Mayr of Germany's Senckenberg Research Institute said Dasornis was "like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane."

"By today's standards, these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak," he said.

Like all birds, Dasornis did not have real teeth, which are made of enamel and dentine.

Instead, it had bony "pseudo-teeth," a feature unique to a group of now-extinct giant birds called Pelagornithids.

The spikes were handy for Dasornis, enabling it to snap up fish and squid while it swooped over the sea, suggests Mayr.

"With only an ordinary beak, these would have been difficult to keep hold of, and the pseudo-teeth evolved to prevent meals slipping away."

The find is reported in a British journal, Palaeontology, published by the Palaeontological Association.

EC call for 'universal' broadband

2008-09-27T10:26:00.000+06:00

Brussels is considering making broadband access available for all.

The fast growth of broadband has led the European Commission to bring forward a review of the basic telecoms services Europeans can expect.

Current statistics suggest about 36% of households in EU member nations have high-speed net access.

When a majority of EU citizens are using a telecoms service, EC rules dictate that it becomes one every European should be able to enjoy.

Basic access

"High-speed internet is the passport to the Information Society and an essential condition for economic growth," said Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner in a statement announcing the review.

"This is why it is this Commission's policy to make broadband internet for all Europeans happen by 2010."

The EC's Universal Service Obligations (USO) demand that all citizens who want them should be able to get access to basic telephone services.

It covers the production of a telephone directory, availability of payphones, specific measures for people with disabilities or those on low incomes and fixed phone access for local, national and international voice calls.

The obligations also include a clause demanding that the fixed line be of sufficient quality to "permit functional internet access". In the UK this has been interpreted to mean a line that can support a dial-up speed of 28.8 kilobits per second.

Broadband speeds around the world

The EC reviews the USO every three years and in its report kicking off the latest overhaul, it said broadband was growing at a pace that would mean more Europeans were using it than not.

Figures from the EC suggest that from 2003-2007 broadband use in member nations tripled to 36% of households and had an annual growth rate of 20%.

Despite this, said the EC, there were "striking gaps" among member states and the coverage their citizens enjoyed.

In nations such as Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, 100% of the population can get broadband if they want it. By contrast, 60% of Romanians cannot get broadband access.

Even in nations such as Germany and Italy, which have booming broadband sectors, about 12% of the population is not covered by high-speed access.

The review aims to find out if the USO needs to be re-written to force telecoms firms to extend broadband to those areas competition will leave bereft of it.

It will also find out if a narrow-band access, aka dial-up, is sufficient to "permit functional internet access" or if the pace of change online means higher speeds are the minimum needed.

The EC is inviting submissions from telecoms firms, governments and citizens with the aim of producing a communique in 2009 and perhaps legislation in 2010.

McCain and Obama spar in first debate

2008-09-27T10:22:00.000+06:00

US presidential rivals Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have attacked each other over foreign policy and the economy in their first debate.

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain in their first presidential debate

Asked about a proposed $700bn (£380bn) bail-out of the US economy, Mr Obama said it was the "final verdict" on eight years of Republican policies.

On Iraq, Mr McCain praised the "surge" strategy, while Mr Obama said the US military had not been "used wisely".

Senator McCain said he did not believe his rival had the experience to lead.

"I don't think I need any on-the-job training. I'm ready to go at it right now," he added.

Senator Obama said Mr McCain had been "wrong" about invading Iraq and that the US to take its eye off the ball in Afghanistan, where it should have been pursuing al-Qaeda.

"We don't have enough troops to deal with Afghanistan," he said.

Mr McCain argued that as a result of the surge - which involved sending some 30,000 extra US troops to Iraq - US military strategy was succeeding.

"We are winning in Iraq and we will come home with victory and with honour," he said.

Mr McCain said there was "a lot of work to do in Afghanistan" but that he was confident that the top US commander, General David Petraeus, would succeed there.

The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington says early reactions from commentators and viewers suggest there was no clear winner in the debate.

Although Mr McCain appeared to be on more comfortable footing, polls suggest Mr Obama impressed some undecided voters with his performance, our correspondent says.

The televised debate in Oxford, Mississippi, focused largely on foreign policy but began with discussion of the economic crisis gripping the US.

Speaking about the financial bail-out plan under discussion by the US Congress, Mr Obama said: "We have to move swiftly and we have to move wisely."

Mr McCain said that while he felt happier now Congress was closer to reaching a deal on the bail-out, it would be a long time before the situation was resolved.

"This isn't the beginning of the end of this crisis," he said. "This is the end of the beginning if we come out with a package that will keep these institutions stable and we've got a lot of work to do."

Mr McCain attacked Mr Obama over his record on finance, saying he had asked for millions of dollars in so-called "earmarks" - money for pet projects - as senator for the state of Illinois. Mr Obama rejected that charge.

Both candidates agreed that the bail-out plan would put massive pressure on the budget of the next president and mean cuts in government spending.

Tens of millions of Americans were expected to watch the debate on TV, with only about five weeks to go before the 4 November elections.

'Serious threat'

Asked about Iran, Mr McCain stressed that Tehran was a threat to the region and, through its interference in Iraq, to US troops deployed there.

John McCain and Barack Obama on dealing with Iran

He criticised Mr Obama for his previously stated willingness to hold talks with the leaders of Iran without preconditions.

Mr Obama rejected that criticism, saying he would reserve the right as president "to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe".

However, he said he agreed with his Republican rival that "we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran" and the threat that that would pose to Israel, a staunch US ally.

'Safer today'

Mr McCain accused Mr Obama of "a little bit of naivete" in his initial response to the conflict between Georgia and Russia.

Mr Obama said that recent events meant "our entire Russian approach has to be evaluated because a resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region".

Speaking about the so-called war on terror, Mr McCain said he believed the nation was safer than it had been the day after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

But, he said, there was still a long way to go to make the American people secure.

Mr Obama pointed to the spread of al-Qaeda to some 60 countries and said that the US had to do more to combat that, including improving its own image as a "beacon of light" on rights.

"One of the things I intend to do as president is restore America's standing in the world," Mr Obama said.

Mr McCain sought to distance himself from President George W Bush's administration, which has very low public approval ratings.

"I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoners, on Guantanamo Bay, on the way that the Iraq war was conducted," he said.

"I have a long record and the American people know me very well... a maverick of the Senate."

Significant progress

Mr McCain had earlier vowed not to attend the forum in Mississippi until Congress approved the bail-out plan, but he reversed his decision after some progress was made towards a deal.

Talks between Congressional leaders and President George W Bush on a proposed $700bn (£380bn) package resumed on Friday morning after ending in deadlock on Thursday evening.

The proposal ran into renewed difficulties when some Republican congressmen withheld their approval, offering an alternative scheme.

In a statement on Friday, Mr Bush conceded that there were disagreements over aspects of the plan, but stressed everyone agreed something substantial had to be done.

India-US in last nuclear push

2008-09-26T13:42:00.000+06:00

Indian PM Manmohan Singh has met US President George W Bush amid frantic efforts to win US Congressional support for the two countries' nuclear deal.

PM Manmohan Singh has described the nuclear deal as "momentous"

The controversial accord needs to be pushed through Congress before lawmakers conclude this year's session to campaign for November's elections.

Correspondents say its ratification will be a complicated process.

Reports say the Senate or the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the deal later on Friday in Washington.

During the meeting, Mr Bush reportedly told Mr Singh that the US was "working hard" to complete the nuclear agreement as fast as possible.

Congress is due to go into recess at the end of this week.

Time running out

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the bill on Tuesday, but there are still several steps to be taken before it can be passed and signed.

The bill has not so far been presented on the floor of the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The deal would give India access to US civilian nuclear technology

Last-minute attempts to ratify the bill have been made more complicated because it was presented late to Congress, which is also debating a critical $700bn bank bailout plan, in addition to numerous other important measures before it shuts down for the year.

Correspondents say that the Bush administration needs the help of the Democrats - who control both houses of Congress - to over-ride a law that says Congress must wait 30 working days after receiving a bill before it can ratify it.

The House and the Senate must pass and send identical bills to President Bush for the deal to go through before a new administration takes office in January.

The Bush administration submitted the deal to Congress on 10 September, but that did not leave enough time for its ratification before the election break without a change in the law.

Correspondents say it will be a race against time if Prime Minister Singh and President Bush sign the deal - first agreed three years ago - and regarded as a key foreign policy priority for both the Indian and US governments.

Precedent

American lawmakers are now reported to be looking at "all options" to get Congressional approval for the accord, perhaps as part of another bill.

Earlier this month, the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifted a ban that had stopped India from getting access to the global nuclear market.

India says the deal with the US is vital for it to meet its civil energy demands.

But critics say it creates a dangerous precedent - effectively allowing India to expand its nuclear power industry without requiring it to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as other nations must.

They say the deal would undermine the arguments for isolating Iran over its nuclear programme and be a disaster for international non-proliferation efforts.

The agreement is the centrepiece of US efforts to bolster ties with India.

The US restricted nuclear co-operation with India after it tested a nuclear weapon in 1974.

Shots fired in US-Pakistan clash

2008-09-26T13:40:00.000+06:00

The United States military says US and Afghan forces have exchanged gunfire with Pakistani troops across the border with Afghanistan.

US action along the Pakistan border has raised tensions

A senior US military official says a five-minute skirmish broke out after Pakistani soldiers fired warning shots near two US helicopters.

No one was hurt in the incidents and the US maintains its troops did not cross the border from Afghanistan.

Cross-border action by US-led forces has angered Pakistan in recent weeks.

The latest incident took place along the Pakistani border with the eastern Afghan region of Khost, an area which is a hotbed of militant groups.

Forces from the US-led coalition and the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) patrol the frontier, but Pakistan has been angered by reported US operations across the border in pursuit of insurgents.

A BBC correspondent says the border between the two countries is very unclear and in effect is marked by a 3km-4km (2-2.5 mile) stretch of no-man's land.

Escorting troops

Nato said the helicopters - which belong to its Isaf mission - came under fire from a Pakistani checkpoint.

A US Central Command spokesman, Rear Admiral Greg Smith, said Pakistani soldiers at the checkpoint were observed firing on two US OH-58 Kiowa helicopters that had been covering a patrol of Afghan and US troops about a mile (1.6km) inside Afghanistan.

"The ground forces then fired into the hillside nearby that checkpoint, gained their attention, which worked," he said.

"Unfortunately, though, the [Pakistani] unit decided to shoot down a hillside at our ground forces. Our ground forces returned fire."

However, the Pakistani military gave a different account.

In a statement, commanders said troops fired warning shots at the helicopters when they strayed over the Pakistan border.

"When the helicopters passed over our border post and were well within Pakistani territory, our own security forces fired anticipatory warning shots," a statement said.

"On this, the helicopters returned fire and flew back."

In New York, Pakistan's new president gave another version of events when he said that Pakistan forces had fired "flares" to warn the helicopters they were near the border.

Later, in an address to the UN General Assembly, President Asif Ali Zardari referred to the cross-border tension when he said that his country could not allow its territory to "be violated by our friends".

An Isaf spokesman said he believed the incident was a misunderstanding, but he was certain the helicopters had been operating on the Afghan side of the border.

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan, in Islamabad, says that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is very unclear.

BORDER TENSIONS

3 Sept: First reported ground assault by US troops in Pakistan - Islamabad responds furiously

15 Sept: Pakistani troops reportedly fire in air to stop US troops crossing in S Waziristan

17 Sept: Top US military chief Adm Mike Mullen visits Pakistan to calm tensions

16 Sept: Pakistan says it was not told of fresh US missile strike

22 Sept: Pakistani troops in fresh firing to deter US incursion into N Waziristan, officials say

25 Sept: Pakistani troops fire warning shots at Nato helicopters on border with Khost

The Afghan-Pakistan militant nexus

US attacks raise stakes in Pakistan

There is an imaginary border called the Durand line which each side marks differently.

Pakistan says that the area of no-man's land along the border is its territory and Afghanistan makes similar claims.

Tension between Washington and Islamabad has risen since 3 September, when the US conducted a ground assault in Pakistani territory, its first, targeting what it said was a militant target in the tribal region of South Waziristan.

Pakistan reacted angrily to the action, saying 20 innocent villagers had been killed by US troops.

Local officials have said that on two occasions since then Pakistani troops or tribesmen have opened fire to stop US forces crossing the border. The claims were not officially confirmed.

On Wednesday, a drone believed to be operated by the CIA crashed inside Pakistan.

The US and Nato have called on Pakistan to do more to curb militants operating in the border area.

New step in mobile phone banking

2008-09-26T13:38:00.000+06:00

New technology allowing customers of UK banks to manage their accounts through their mobile phone is being introduced.

Mobile technology has been developing rapidly in recent years

Lloyds TSB will next month be the first to allow customers to transfer funds between accounts within the same bank via their mobile.

The software already exists which would allow people to make payments to other people's accounts, but the banks have chosen to bring in this system slowly.

Industry representatives say security must be ensured before it comes in.

Mobile move

Customers of a number of High Street banks can already use their mobile phones to check their account balance and check the details of their last six transactions

The system, run by a mobile money network called Monilink, also allows parents to top up the credit on their children's pay-as-you-go mobile phones via their own.

A text alert service for when customers are within £50 of their balance limit is also in place.

This new development will allow consumers to download some simple software to phones with internet access and a colour screen. They will then enter a six-digit security code before they can view their balance or transfer money between their own Lloyds TSB accounts.

It will cost £2.50 a month, although it will be free to some premium banking customers, as well as being free to student account holders until October 2009.

"Just as internet banking has taken the country by storm over the past decade, mobile banking is now set to change the way we manage our money," said Catherine McGrath, director of current accounts at Lloyds TSB.

Changing times

With 95% of the UK population owning a mobile phone this was expected to become a "key channel" for people to manage their money, according to Ben Evetts, spokesman for Monitise which created the Monilink system.

Traditional cheques are gradually being phased out

He said the technology was already in place to offer a bank account to bank account mobile phone service.

He expected this to primarily be used for basic payments, with consumers preferring to set up more long-term standing orders or complicated transactions via their computers.

But the implementation of such a scheme will be gradual, and as yet not entirely certain.

The UK Payments Service invited offers earlier this year from companies willing to provide the technology.

Sandra Quinn, of UK payments association Apacs, said that industry agreement would come at the start of 2009 at the earliest. It would take a further 18 months for it to come into force.

The main reasons for the timescale were the banks' insistence on watertight security for the system, which would effectively use a mobile number as proxy for a bank account number.

The system would also have to be easier for customers to use than anything provided at present.

But she stressed that the recent global turmoil within the banking sector meant they currently had other pressing priorities.

"Industry innovation is unlikely to be at the top of banks' agendas at the moment," she said.

Uefa to expand Euro Championship

2008-09-26T13:34:00.000+06:00

The European Championship is set to be expanded to feature 24 teams from 2016 instead of the current 16, according to Franz Beckenbauer.

Spain claimed victory at Euro 2008

A Uefa executive committee meeting on Thursday discussed the issue and will rubber-stamp the decision on Friday.

"Yes for sure it's going to be 24 teams," said Beckenbauer, who is vice-chairman of Uefa's development and technical assistance committee.

"The European Championships will not lose any quality by that."

Former German international Beckenbauer is not a Uefa executive committee member but is a European Fifa executive member who sits in on the meetings as a non-voting observer.

The proposal to expand the competition was put forward by the Scottish Football Association and Football Association of Ireland last year.

The new format will mean fewer countries will have the capacity to host the tournament but it is believed the 53 member nations are unanimously in favour of the change.

"I think the expansion will be better for the game - more teams will have the chance of qualifying and the excitement of the groups will go on for longer," said Scottish FA chief executive Gordon Smith.

"It is disappointing in that it means we will not be able to stage the tournament in the future, and we recognise that will be the case.

"It was a trade-off between trying to stage it or open up the qualification process and we have decided to look at something that helps everybody."

Spain emerged victorious at Euro 2008 earlier this year at a tournament where there was no presence from the home nations.

The expanded version should mean it is easier for Scotland and other home nations to qualify but Smith added: "It will make it easier for other countries such as England who failed to qualify for Euro 2008.

"We didn't do it specifically for that purpose however."

A link to eternity

2008-09-26T13:33:00.000+06:00

Google's smart searching is likely to find you even after you end up here

Search results give us all a form of immortality, says Bill Thompson

While Google is as secretive about its internal processes and systems as Apple is about product development, every now and then senior people post articles on the official Google blog and offer their thoughts on the development of the web.

In the latest posting two Google engineers, Alfred Spector and Franz Och, look at how search strategies will benefit from the faster computers, greater volumes of data and better algorithms we are likely to see in the next decade, speculating that "we could train our systems to discern not only the characters or place names in a YouTube video or a book, for example, but also to recognise the plot or the symbolism."

Instead of just analysing hypertext links, they say, the systems would observe, record and learn from all sorts of behaviour and interpret "objects, nuances, intentions, meanings, and other deep conceptual information."

They foresee better search and seamless translation between languages, which will benefit Google. It will also, Spector and Och are keen to point out, help the rest of us too by improving the quality of scientific research and analysis of large data sets.

Conceptual search sounds particularly appealing at the moment as I am spending almost every waking moment working on the Cambridge Film Festival, where I am a trustee.

Being able to find "Polish films about an ice skater with a body double and a sad ending" with a single search would be a real boon (and yes, it's a real question), even if the price is letting Google rifle through every bit of digitised data for all eternity.

Father Google

While I am not as sanguine as Google's engineers about the prospects of solving many of the fundamental problems that have faced the artificial intelligence community for almost half a century simply by throwing faster hardware and bigger disks at them, the blog post reveals something of the unbounded optimism that Google still possesses.

These stored interactions and connections carve out a Bill-shaped space on the network, and this space will only slowly fade away after I die.

Bill Thompson

Give us enough data, they seem to be saying, and we will show you your deepest desires and make them real. Google does not ask for belief in an unseen deity or faith in the supernatural, but it does want to be trusted like a priest, or a parent.

Google and other search engines have developed vast data stores that can keep track of the contents of a significant part of the whole web and store most of the transaction data too. Each year the Google Zeitgeist shows how search trends change, because they can look at every query we make and analyse what web search expert and blogger John Battelle calls "the database of intentions".

They also keep this data for a long time, sometimes in anonymised form but still there, and as we saw when AOL released what they thought was anonymous data on people's searches, it is easier than it looks to link a person to a pattern of behaviour.

It will get a lot easier if there is some form of 'intelligent' or concept-based search, too. 'Find me someone who likes Derek Jarman films, lives in Cambridge and shows an obsessive interest in Google', would probably nail me, I suspect.

The acquisition and analysis of data is a continuing project, but this has significant implications in a changing world populated by mortal humans, because Google won't lose interest in me when I'm dead.

Social networks of the dead

At the recent dConstruct conference in Brighton author Steven Johnson talked about his book The Ghost Map, an exploration of the way that John Snow and Henry Whitehead discovered the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London and prompted the building of modern sewerage systems.

The breakthrough came when Snow plotted the deaths from cholera on a map of the area and drew a line around the homes that took water from the pump on Broad Street and the correlation became obvious.

In his talk Johnson joked that the people shown on the map were a 'social network of dead people' and that he should have called his book The Wisdom of Dead Crowds in homage to James Surowiecki.

1850's Soho: an early incarnation of the geographic web

The people on Snow's maps were just dots, but today's social networks have far richer portraits of the dead who populate them.

My friend Anne was slightly freaked out when she got a note on Facebook to tell her that the online status of a friend who had died recently had been updated. It turned out that her friend's brother has taken over the profile as an online memorial.

Last.fm and Apple know what music I listen to, Facebook knows who my friends are, Dopplr knows where I'm going and Brightkite knows where I am. And of course Twitter knows what I'm thinking.

At the same time I am leaving a mark with every link I have made from my blog to someone else's writing and every time I have clicked on one item from a page of search results to find a video or book or song, because it affects the rankings those pages get in other people's search results.

Taken as a whole these stored interactions and connections carve out a Bill-shaped space on the network, and this space will only slowly fade away after I die.

If Google and the other search engines index it more fully, as they plan to do, then it could last a very long time and my ghost will haunt the network for many years.

Of course I won't be alone. Not only my friends, but my ancestors will be joining me. We are rapidly reaching the point where information that is not digitised - and therefore searchable - simply stops being useful or used. Fortunately more and more old books, newspapers and other paper records are scanned and digitised and made available online.

Mormons believe that the dead can be baptised into their religion and that doing so removes an obstacle to their salvation. Perhaps the search engines can perform a similar service for reputations rather than souls.

The hi-tech green museum tour

2008-09-26T13:31:00.000+06:00

A planetarium, aquarium and a roof sprouting plants are at the world's 'biggest green museum'.

Maggie Shiels has taken a tour around the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, ahead of its opening this weekend.

MySpace launches net music store

2008-09-26T13:27:00.000+06:00

MySpace has unveiled an online music store that lets its US members listen for free but pay for downloads.

The ad-funded service is free to listen on a computer.

The ad-funded service lets MySpace members listen to streamed tracks on their PC for free and build up long playlists of their favourite tracks.

Users must buy a copy of a track from the music store of partner Amazon to enjoy it on a portable player.

The service hopes to cash in on the long-standing link between MySpace and new and established bands.

Cash call

The service has been launched with backing from the big four music labels - Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI - plus independent music group The Orchard.

The move is widely being seen as a snub to Apples' iTunes, which is the dominant player in the online music market.

It is known that record labels are frustrated with Apple's refusal to charge higher prices for more popular tracks. On Amazon's music store, which is only available in the US, tracks start at $0.79 (£0.42)

At launch MySpace Music only has a few thousand tracks available but said this will grow to many millions as the partner labels open up their archives to it.

All the tracks sold will be free of copyright protection mechanisms known as Digital Rights Management software.

News that MySpace was working on a music store leaked in April 2007 and the launch was delayed as negotiations with record label EMI dragged on.

It is estimated that about five million bands and artists have a profile page on MySpace and the site has helped launch the career of many up and coming musicians and help them stay in touch with fans.

As well as making cash from adverts running on the page through which people choose the music they listen to the service will also generate revenue from ringtones, concert tickets and merchandise.

"The big question is whether they can change their environment so people will want to do their shopping as well as their gossiping [at MySpace]," said James McQuivey, research analyst at Forrester.

Mr McQuivey doubted whether the site would become a big source of revenue for MySpace as studies suggest that people do not watch their computer when using it to stream music.

The opening of the store won criticism from Charles Caldas, head of independent rights body Merlin.

Mr Caldas said it was "incredibly disappointing" that the service launched without finalising a deal with the biggest independent labels and artists.

Merlin's members, which includes Koch, Beggars Group and Domino, have a 9% share of the US music market - roughly equivalent to EMI's market share.

Wall St rescue plan 'needs work'

2008-09-26T13:16:00.000+06:00

Talks in Washington have so far failed to reach agreement on a massive $700bn (£380bn) government proposal to bail out the troubled US finance sector.

After several hours of talks with President George W Bush, Republican members of Congress remained sceptical.

The proposal would see the government buy bad debts from US banks.

There are fears that without a swift rescue package more finance companies will collapse, choking the flow of funds to the economy.

Bank failure

Congressional leaders are to meet again on Friday morning to try to hammer out an agreement.

For House Republicans to take a walk is just appalling

Barney Frank
Democratic Representative

Democrat and Republican legislators seemed to have struck a deal earlier on Thursday, before senior members of Congress met Mr Bush at the White House.

The agreement unravelled over fears among some Republicans over the cost of the proposal, and concern that it would involve the government too much in the financial sector.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase has announced that it will take over the ailing Washington Mutual at a cost of $1.9bn.

Washington Mutual, one of the largest savings and loan institution in the US, has seen its share price drop by more than 80% this year, after suffering considerable losses due to failed mortgages.

It had been closed down by federal regulators, after it lost $16.7bn in the past 10 days.

"With insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations, WaMu was in an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business," said the Office of Thrift Supervision.

'Bad plan'

Emerging from the talks at the White House, legislators said more work was needed on the Bush administration proposal to help get bad debt off the books of finance firms - a situation that has triggered a global credit crisis.

Members of Congress were "working on it," said a spokesman for Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid after the talks.

"Still have a lot of issues to be worked on. Making progress. A lot more to discuss," said the spokesman, Jim Manley.

After the talks with President Bush, a leading Democratic senator said it could take beyond Friday's original target date to finish work on the plan before it can go to a vote in Congress.

Earlier, Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, had said they had reached "fundamental agreement" on the principles of a deal.

But after the White House meeting, the top Republican on the committee, Richard Shelby, told reporters: "I don't believe we have an agreement."

Senator Obama spoke of progress being made "on all fronts"

He pointed to a letter from leading economists saying the Paulson plan was a "bad plan" and that alternatives should be looked at.

One such alternative has been put forward by a group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives that would offer insurance to companies that hold some of the bad assets - instead of the government buying them.

Some Democrats were scathing about the lack of support for the Paulson plan.

"For House Republicans to take a walk is just appalling," said Democrat Barney Frank.

"Secretary Paulson has told us several times that the number one plank of the House Republican plan, an insurance scheme, will not work," Mr Frank added.

The bail-out plan, as it was first proposed last week, would broadly help relieve finance firms of their "toxic" bad debt which is in the form of complex financial instruments backed by sub-prime mortgages that many holders can no longer pay off.

Details of the Bush administration proposal were not immediately available but it is tipped to include restrictions on executives' pay as well as oversight requirements.

While the benchmark Dow Jones index rose after Senator Dodd's initial comments, to close 198.09 points, or 1.83%, up at 11,023.26, there were fears that markets would react negatively to the fresh uncertainty when they opened on Friday.

Accusations

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain interrupted their campaigning to go to Washington for the talks.

The pair are due to hold a presidential campaign debate on Friday, which Mr McCain earlier said should be called off because of the pressing financial crisis.

Christopher Dodd on the bail-out

However, on Thursday evening Mr McCain's campaign team said the Republican senator had not yet decided whether to attend the debate in Oxford, Mississippi.

Speaking after the White House talks, Mr Obama said he expected to "eventually" get Congressional agreement on the government's bail-out proposal, but that there was still work to do.

He blamed the financial troubles on "reckless behaviour" on Wall Street and a lack of oversight because regulators were "asleep at the switch".

Concerns

Mr McCain had earlier said he was suspending his election campaigning to help deal with the financial crisis.

His move raised criticisms of political posturing.

"The concern that I have... is that when you start injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations, then you can actually create more problems rather than less," Mr Obama told a news conference.

The bail-out has been under scrutiny with politicians on both sides nervous about the deal being rushed through too quickly.

Of particular concern has been the issue of pay for the bosses of the firms in question, as well as concerns over the cost of the plan to the US taxpayer.

But both US Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke and Mr Bush have warned that the lack of a deal would cause a significant set-back to the economy as a whole.

Shorter breast cancer therapy effective: researchers

2008-09-25T10:29:00.001+06:00

Brief and intensive radiation therapy for early stage breast cancer is equally as effective as the current five-to-seven week treatments, according to medical research presented on Monday.

The new procedure takes three weeks and is cheaper than the standard treatment, announced the Canada-based medical team at the annual conference of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Boston, Massachusetts.

Researchers tested the new treatment, called accelerated irradiation, on 1,234 women with early stage breast cancer between April 1993 and September 1996, and followed the women for 12 years to determine the rate of recurrence.

here has been renewed interest in the new treatment "due to the potential radiation advantages, patient convenience, quality of life and lower costs," said Timothy Whelan, lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at the Juravinski Cancer Centre at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Long-term effects were a potential concern for the team, Whelan said, but researchers were "surprised that the risk of local recurrence and side effects (...) was so low even at 12 years."

The study shows that at 10 years after treatment, cancer returned locally in 6.2 percent of patients treated with the new accelerated therapy, compared to 6.7 percent for patients treated with standard therapy.

"Our study shows that this treatment should be offered to select women treated with early stage breast cancer," said Whelan.

The study confirmed findings of a similar British study published in March.

A second study by Peter Beitsch at the Medical Center in Dallas, Texas has also found a one-week treatment that is less invasive and more economical than conventional therapies.

The Texas study's clinical trials involved 400 women with early-stage breast cancer, half of whom were given the standard treatment of radiation for the entire breast.

The other 200 women had cancerous tumors removed and received treatment through a single balloon catheter that delivered the radiation through tiny radioactive seeds.

The study, which followed the women for four years after initial treatment, found that the recurrence rate is similar to that seen with conventional procedures.

"Some women live hundreds of miles from a radiation center or they feel they can't take seven weeks off from their jobs," said Breitsch. "These women often end up having mastectomies."

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide, with around 465,000 deaths in 2007, according to estimates from the American Cancer Society.

Users fail to spot fake pop-ups

2008-09-25T10:28:00.000+06:00

Internet users are unable to distinguish between genuine pop-up warnings messages and false ones, a study at North Carolina State University has found.

Pop-ups can be annoying but tend to be ignored

The study examined the responses of undergraduates to messages which popped up while they did other tasks on a PC.

Seeing the pop-ups as a mere annoyance the majority clicked 'OK'.

Fake pop-ups are a well-known vehicle for cyber-criminals to install harmful software on PCs.

"This study demonstrates how easy it is to fool people on the web," said co-author Michael Wogalter, professor of psychology at North Carolina State University.

"Be suspicious when things pop up. Don't click OK - close the box instead," said Dr Wogalter."

Legitimate message

It is easy to block pop-ups

Participants were fooled by the fake messages 63% of the time, even when warned that some of what they would be seeing would be false.

It suggests that the wording on genuine messages needs to be rethought, said Dr Wogalter.

"I don't know if you could develop a legitimate message that could not be duplicated and used illegitimately," he said.

Tony Neate, managing director of the UK's Get Safe Online campaign advised users to install a pop-up blocker.

"Browsers and most anti-virus software offers them. Pop-ups are either downloading something malicious or trying to sell me something so I just don't want them there at all," he said.

Early study touts honey as antibiotics substitute

2008-09-25T10:24:00.000+06:00

Honey, used in tea or hot water in Canada for generations to soothe sore throats, could soon be substituted for antibiotics in fighting stubborn ear, nose and throat infections, according to a new study.

Ottawa University doctors found in tests that ordinary honey kills bacteria that cause sinus infections, and does it better in most cases than antibiotics.

"It's astonishing," researcher Joseph Marson said of bees' unexplained ability to combine the nectar of flowers into a seemingly potent medicine.

The preliminary tests were conducted in laboratory dishes, not in live patients, but included the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, which is highly resistant to antibiotics.

In upcoming human trials, a "honey rinse" would be used to "flush out the goo from sinus cavities," said Marson in an interview with AFP.

The researchers have so far tested manuka honey from New Zealand, and sidr honey from Yemen.

The two killed all floating bacteria in liquid, and 63-91 percent of biofilms -- microorganisms that sometimes form a protective layer in sinus cavities, urinary tracts, catheters, and heart valves, protecting bacteria from normal drug treatments and often leading to chronic infections.

The most effective antibiotic, rifampin, killed just 18 percent of the biofilm samples in the tests.

"As of today, nobody is sure what in the honey kills the bacteria," Marson said, noting that "not all honeys have the same potency" and calling for more research to determine the mechanism behind the healing.

Canada's clover and buckwheat honey did not work at all.

Previous studies have shown honey's healing properties on infected wounds.

The results of the study were presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, in Chicago.

Making money from blogging

2008-09-25T10:21:00.000+06:00

The advertising slogan says that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But at Blogworld Expo it was more likely to appear online, either written up on a website, as a photo on image sharing sites such as Flickr, or as a video clip uploaded to YouTube.

People from all walks of life are blogging

Blogging has continued to grow in the last few years, and organiser of the Expo, Rick Calvert, was delighted at the diversity of those attending.

"Look at the topics that people here are covering - sports, politics, religion, technology, finance and military bloggers to name just a few. We have had attendees flying in from around the world, but the one thing that links them all is their passion for this new media."

It is the connections between these groups, and the spirit of sharing that was on show both at the conference and online every day, that drives the rich and diverse modern internet.

Both the individual blogger and the larger media companies are looking for ways to make the business of blogging profitable.

One of the rules of thumb that came up on the panel discussions at BlogWorld was that there is still the same amount of advertising money out there, but rather than be restricted to a few media conglomerates, it is being shared out a lot more.

Sharing culture

Larger companies are seeing advertising revenue drop, while bloggers are seeing their incomes rise.

What seems to be working well at the moment for the full-time bloggers at the Expo is affiliate marketing.

Rather than being paid to display an advert on their site, affiliate marketing only pays the blogger when their reader acts on the displayed advert.

This could be as simple a goal as clicking on the advert, through to receiving a percentage of any item the reader buys via an advert.

Amazon offers a large affiliate program, where people can receive up to 15% of the sale price of an item as commission by referring their readers to the site.

Some bloggers are keen to make money from their efforts

How well these techniques would translate to the larger sites of traditional media companies remains to be seen, but there are a number of profitable new media companies, such as b5media, that not only show that it can be done, but are actively sharing how they have achieved their success and are more than happy to help others to do the same.

This culture of sharing that runs through the blogging scene is one reason that this new medium is such a breath of fresh air to many.

Social experience

The idea of small connections building up to create something of value was illustrated by Laura Fitton, of Pistachio Consulting.

Explaining her first moments on Twitter (a micro-blogging service where people can post messages that are a maximum of 140 characters in length), she saw the initial view that presented the messages of everyone on the site - a rather overwhelming moment that caused her, and others, to come away with a poor first impression.

But once she started to tell Twitter who her friends were, and those people she wanted to follow that were in her field of expertise, then Twitter became a much more social experience with conversations between old and new friends, and it became much more useful to her.

In a short space of time, she started a new business helping companies make the best use of services like Twitter to build up their own online connections.

Making these connections is one of the hidden secrets of the internet.

Relevant media

With more sites out there providing rich media on pretty much any topic, building this web of connections can take time.

Europe-based start-up Zemanta had one of the more impressive software demonstrations at the expo.

The blog by advertisers for bloggers who advertise

Their code, which can be plugged into the popular blogging system WordPress, will automatically seek out relevant media to any post that you are writing on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and many others.

These links are then posted on your site alongside each story, making your posts part of the ongoing and continuing conversations.

Blogging is still a nascent industry but on the strength of the BlogWorld Expo, the pioneers have put down not only a strong groundwork for those that are following them, but have also put in place a rich ecosystem that rewards openness and sharing.

There may be a wide choice of tools, all being used by disparate groups with distinct aims, but the result is the same.

Blogs help people around the world to communicate their interests and passion with others and allows people to find this information with ease.

The early years of blogging are coming to a close, and while they have been very successful, the feeling from the BlogWorld Expo is that blogging is going to continue to grow and mature into a powerful communications channel for everyone.

Solar wind blows at 50-year low

2008-09-25T10:19:00.000+06:00

The solar wind - the stream of charged particles billowing away from the Sun - is at its weakest for 50 years.

Scientists made the assessment after studying 18 years of data from the Ulysses satellite which has sampled the space environment all around our star.

They expect the reduced output to have effects right across the Solar System.

Indeed, one impact is to diminish slightly the influence the Sun has over its local environment which extends billions of kilometres into space.
Confirmation of that prediction should come from the far-distant Voyager spacecraft which were launched in the 1970s and are now bearing down on the edge of the heliosphere - the great "bubble" of wind material that surrounds the Sun.

Scientists now predict the Voyagers will hit the edge and cross over into interstellar space - that region considered to be "between the stars" - sooner than anticipated.

Space age

The solar wind, which originates in the Sun's hot outer atmosphere known as the corona, gusts and calms with the star's familiar 11-year cycle of activity (but also over its less well known longer cycles, too).

Calmer wind conditions would be expected to prevail right now, but the Ulysses data indicates circumstances unprecedented in recent times.

The Sun is a variable star; activity rises and falls in cycles

"This is a whole Sun phenomenon," said Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator, from Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, US.

"The entire Sun is blowing significantly less hard - about 20-25% less hard - than it was during the last solar minimum 10-15 years ago.

"That's a very significant change. In fact, the solar wind we're seeing now is blowing the least hard we've see it for a prolonged time, since the start of those observations in the 1960s at the start of the space age."

In addition to being calmer, the wind measured at Ulysses is 13% cooler.

However, judging from Sun activity data collected by non-satellite methods over the past 200 years, the current behaviour is thought to be well within the long-term norm.

Nonetheless, scientists expect the weakened wind to have a wide range of impacts.

Energetic rays

The charged wind particles also carry with them the Sun's magnetic field, and this has a protective role in limiting the number of high-energy cosmic rays that can enter the Solar System.

More of them will probably now make their way through.

Many of these rays, which include electrons and atomic nuclei, originate in exploding stars and at black holes, and move at colossal speeds.

The Voyager spacecraft will move beyond the solar wind's influence

They pose no major risk to people on Earth because our atmosphere also works to reduce their intensity; but they are a consideration for space operations.

The rays can damage satellite electronics, and if current solar wind conditions persist, engineers would have to take this into account when deciding how to "harden" their spacecraft. Astronauts, too, are at risk from the higher doses of radiation associated with cosmic rays.

"The Sun also puts out cosmic rays in the form of bursts and these bursts are much less frequent at solar minimum. However, when they do occur at solar minimum, they are more lethal, so this is not a good time to be travelling in space owing to both kinds of cosmic rays," explained Professor Nancy Crooker, from Boston University, Massachusetts, US.

"Reduced solar activity also leads to the cooling of Earth's upper atmosphere and if Earth's upper atmosphere is cooler then there is less drag up there on satellites and this means we are left with much more debris up there - which is also something astronauts have to look out for."

Some researchers have attempted to link the intensity of cosmic rays at Earth to cloudiness and climate change. Current conditions may be a good opportunity to test these ideas further.

Artist's impression: The wind forms a bubble of material around the Sun

The Ulysses mission is a co-operative venture between the US space agency and the European Space Agency (Esa). Launched by the shuttle in 1990, it was the first satellite to study the space environment above and below the Sun's poles.

It samples the solar wind and solar magnetic field as it circles the star in a six-year orbit that also carries it out to Jupiter and back.

But the harsh conditions of space are now slowly taking their toll on the spacecraft.

Ulysses' main transmitter no longer works and it is struggling to put enough power into its heating systems. With the satellite currently moving away from the Sun, it is gradually getting colder; and engineers expect the hydrazine fuel used in its thrusters to freeze very soon.

When this happens, Ulysses will no longer be able to orientate itself and its antenna, and contact will be lost with Earth.

"Even though the end is now in sight, every day's worth of new data is adding to our knowledge of the Sun and its environment; and it's been a great and exciting mission," said Richard Marsden, Esa's Ulysses project scientist and mission manager.

Bush defends US debt rescue plan

2008-09-25T10:15:00.002+06:00

US President George W Bush has defended a rescue package to tackle the worst financial markets crisis for decades.

President Bush says a big package is needed to deal with a big problem

The cost to taxpayers of shoring up markets was better than the alternative of job losses and diminished pensions, he said in his weekly radio address.

The US Treasury is proposing a fund worth up to $700bn (£382bn) to buy back much of the bad debt held by banks and other financial institutions.

The fund would aim to sell off these mortgage-related debts in the future.

Mr Bush said the measures required the US "to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line".

"But I'm convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative," he said.

"Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values, and dry up new loans for homes, cars and college tuitions."

'Devil in the detail'

Congressional and Treasury officials have been meeting over the weekend and the package is expected to be signed into law within days.

Share prices rallied after days of turmoil

The US Treasury has revealed little detail of its ambitious package, other than the estimated cost of buying these bad debts and who is eligible for the scheme.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has asked for congressional approval to raise the amount the government can borrow to $11.3 trillion (from $10.6 trillion) to cover that cost.

The bailout is only open to financial institutions with "significant operations in the US", unless the Mr Paulson's team decides otherwise, according to the Treasury's draft plan.

The BBC's business editor Robert Peston said the devil will be in the detail, for example, how much the Treasury will pay for the banks' toxic assets.

"There is an argument that Paulson should pay a discount to the market price, to protect US taxpayers and soundly spank the banks and their owners," our correspondent says.

But such a move would further deplete banks' resources and "further undermine their ability to lend to the rest of us", he adds.

It is believed the intention is to find a way of bringing all the bad debts into one organisation whose task will be to hold them on behalf of the taxpayer until they can be sold off at some point in the distant future, says the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington.

'Queasy Congress'

There are some members of Congress who are queasy at the thought of the taxpayer taking on hundreds of billions of dollars of currently worthless debt, he says.

But the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Steney Hoyer, said he expected quick action.

After a week of turmoil, stock markets around the world rallied on news of the rescue plan, with the UK's FTSE 100 closing on Friday with its biggest one-day gain.

Earlier, Mr Bush said swift, politically bipartisan action was needed to keep the US economy from grinding to a halt as problems sparked by the credit crisis had begun to spread through the entire financial system.

The US Treasury Secretary said a "bold" move was needed to restore the financial system's health.

The programme, he said, must be "large enough to have maximum impact".

In the meantime, he said that the government would be stepping up action to increase the availability of capital for new home loans.

Once this difficult period was over, Mr Paulson said, the government's next task would be to overhaul bank regulations.

'New economy'

The UK Prime Minister said one of the lessons that of the global financial crisis is the need for international regulation to be brought up to date.

Gordon Brown, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, said: "We're in a new economy, a global financial economy, the world is changing very fast, but the governance of the global financial system has not caught up with it and that's what's got to change."

On Friday, the US government announced plans to guarantee US money market funds - mutual funds that typically invest in low-risk credit such as government bonds and are often used by pension funds - up to a value of $50bn, in a move to further restore confidence.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned "short-selling" in the stocks of 799 companies. Short-selling is a form of trading which effectively bets that the value of a company's shares will fall.

"The Treasury and the Fed have finally realised the depth and systemic nature of the crisis," said John Ryding, an economist at RDQ Economics

"We believe that these actions will constitute the wider firebreak that will contain the crisis."

Mounting fears that the credit crisis is beginning to spread out through the financial system have rocked shares and companies recently.

Investment giant Lehman Brothers collapsed this week, rival Merrill Lynch was bought out by Bank of America, and the US government has bailed out insurer AIG with an $85bn rescue package and state-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Google's Android mobile unveiled

2008-09-25T10:13:00.000+06:00

Rory Cellan-Jones takes a look at Android, the new mobile phone platform launched by Google.

The first mobile telephone using Google's Android software has been unveiled.

The T-Mobile G1 handset will be available in the UK in time for Christmas.

The first device to run the search giant's operating system will feature a touch screen as well as a Qwerty keyboard.

It will be available for free on T-Mobile tariffs of over £40 a month and includes unlimited net browsing.

Other features include a three megapixel camera, a 'one click' contextual search and a browser that users can zoom in on by tapping the screen.

The handset will be wi-fi and 3G enabled and has built-in support for YouTube.

Users will also have access the so-called Android Market, where they will be able to download a variety of applications.

Prototypes

The T-Mobile G1 is the first phone to use Android

Google announced its plans for the Android phone software in November 2007 with a declared aim of making it easier to get at the web while on the move.

To help develop Android, Google also unveiled the Open Handset Alliance - a partnership of more than 30 firms that would work to make phone software easier to work with.

The group includes operators such as Telefonica, handset makers such as HTC and Motorola as well as chip makers such as Intel and Qualcomm.

Many of the partners demonstrated early prototype Android phones at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona in mid-February.

The idea behind Android is to do for phone software what the open source Linux software has done for PCs. Developers of phone software can get at most of the core elements of the Android software to help them write better applications.

Smartphones

However, in launching Android, Google faces stiff competition from established players such as Nokia with its Symbian software and Microsoft with its Mobile operating system.

More recently Apple has been gaining customers with its much hyped iPhone.

The Android software is squarely aimed at the smartphone segment of the handset market which adds sophisticated functions to the basic calling and texting capabilities of most phones.

Current estimates suggest that only 12-13% of the all handsets can be considered smartphones.

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