India offers open skies pact for SAARC
UNI, Sunday, 13 November , 2005, 11:57
Dhaka: Pleading with SAARC countries not to allow their territories to be used against the interests of other member nations, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today offered to a virtual open sky policy and unveiled a slew of other far-reaching initiatives to promote peace and trade in a big way in the South Asian region.
Following are the highlights of his address at the inaugural function of the 13th SAARC summit which was attended by heads of state or government from all the seven-member nations -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives: * Daily air services by designated airlines to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata and unrestricted services to 18 other destinations on reciprocal basis.
Reciprocal transit facilities to promote intra and inter-SAARC trade.
India wants to host a South Asian University.
Establishment of a Regional Food Bank.
South Asian Car Rally ahead of SAARC summit in Delhi in Jan 2007.
Launch of South Asian Energy Dialogue.
Establishment of SAARC High Economic Council.
SAARC Museum of Textiles and Handicrafts.
Retail outlets for SAARC artisans.
Read the full article at : India offers open skies pact for SAARC - Sify.com
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam trial lawyer is shot deadTead
Saddam trial lawyer is shot dead
Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 14:57 GMT
A lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants has been shot dead in the Iraqi capital Baghdad while another has been injured.
Gunmen are said to have opened fire on a car carrying both men, killing Adel al-Zubeidi and wounding Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie.
The attack follows the killing of another defence lawyer last month.
Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants are on trial over the killing of more than 140 Shia men in Iraq in 1982.
The two lawyers shot on Tuesday were defending Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, members of the defence team said.
They were caught in an ambush in the Adil neighbourhood, said fellow lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi.
On 20 October, the day after the start of the high-profile trial in Baghdad, Sadoun Nasouaf al-Janabi was kidnapped by gunmen from his office in Baghdad and later found dead.
The defence team has called for the trial to be moved abroad because of the dangers to those involved.
They also complain Saddam and other defendants can not expect a fair trial when witnesses will be too scared to testify.
'Doing their job'
After Tuesday's attack, Mr Obeidi said: "The government bears the responsibility because it is supposed to protect the citizens.
"If there were a serious investigation into the previous murder of Janabi and the perpetrators had been arrested, we would not see today's crime.
"We demand a thorough investigation and severe punishment for the criminals behind today's terrorist crime against lawyers who were only doing their job."
The defence team had already threatened not to turn up for the next stage of the trial on 28 November, unless they are given much greater security.
The trial concerns the massacre of Shia villagers from Dujail, 60km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, following an assassination attempt there against Saddam Hussein.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty. If convicted they could be executed.
Read the full article at : BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam trial lawyer is shot dead
Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 14:57 GMT
A lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants has been shot dead in the Iraqi capital Baghdad while another has been injured.
Gunmen are said to have opened fire on a car carrying both men, killing Adel al-Zubeidi and wounding Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie.
The attack follows the killing of another defence lawyer last month.
Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants are on trial over the killing of more than 140 Shia men in Iraq in 1982.
The two lawyers shot on Tuesday were defending Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, members of the defence team said.
They were caught in an ambush in the Adil neighbourhood, said fellow lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi.
On 20 October, the day after the start of the high-profile trial in Baghdad, Sadoun Nasouaf al-Janabi was kidnapped by gunmen from his office in Baghdad and later found dead.
The defence team has called for the trial to be moved abroad because of the dangers to those involved.
They also complain Saddam and other defendants can not expect a fair trial when witnesses will be too scared to testify.
'Doing their job'
After Tuesday's attack, Mr Obeidi said: "The government bears the responsibility because it is supposed to protect the citizens.
"If there were a serious investigation into the previous murder of Janabi and the perpetrators had been arrested, we would not see today's crime.
"We demand a thorough investigation and severe punishment for the criminals behind today's terrorist crime against lawyers who were only doing their job."
The defence team had already threatened not to turn up for the next stage of the trial on 28 November, unless they are given much greater security.
The trial concerns the massacre of Shia villagers from Dujail, 60km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, following an assassination attempt there against Saddam Hussein.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty. If convicted they could be executed.
Read the full article at : BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam trial lawyer is shot dead
Wired News: History's Worst Software Bugs
History's Worst Software Bugs
By Simson Garfinkel, 02:00 AM Nov. 08, 2005 PT
Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars' gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn't a hardware problem -- it was a programming error in the smart car's embedded code. The Prius had a software bug.
With that recall, the Prius joined the ranks of the buggy computer -- a club that began in 1947 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark 1 system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer's logbook with the words: "first actual case of a bug being found."
Sixty years later, computer bugs are still with us, and show no sign of going extinct. As the line between software and hardware blurs, coding errors are increasingly playing tricks on our daily lives. Bugs don't just inhabit our operating systems and applications -- today they lurk within our cell phones and our pacemakers, our power plants and medical equipment. And now, in our cars.
But which are the worst?
It's all too easy to come up with a list of bugs that have wreaked havoc. It's harder to rate their severity. Which is worse -- a security vulnerability that's exploited by a computer worm to shut down the internet for a few days or a typo that triggers a day-long crash of the nation's phone system? The answer depends on whether you want to make a phone call or check your e-mail.
Many people believe the worst bugs are those that cause fatalities. To be sure, there haven't been many, but cases like the Therac-25 are widely seen as warnings against the widespread deployment of software in safety critical applications. Experts who study such systems, though, warn that even though the software might kill a few people, focusing on these fatalities risks inhibiting the migration of technology into areas where smarter processing is sorely needed. In the end, they say, the lack of software might kill more people than the inevitable bugs.
What seems certain is that bugs are here to stay. Here, in chronological order, is the Wired News list of the 10 worst software bugs of all time ? so far.
July 28, 1962 -- Mariner I space probe. A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.
1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.
1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable.
What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured.
1988 -- Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon. The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.
Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.
1988-1996 -- Kerberos Random Number Generator. The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.
January 15, 1990 -- AT&T Network Outage. A bug in a new release of the software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors send out when they recover from a crash.
One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.
1993 -- Intel Pentium floating point divide. A silicon error causes Intel's highly promoted Pentium chip to make mistakes when dividing floating-point numbers that occur within a specific range. For example, dividing 4195835.0/3145727.0 yields 1.33374 instead of 1.33382, an error of 0.006 percent. Although the bug affects few users, it becomes a public relations nightmare. With an estimated 3 million to 5 million defective chips in circulation, at first Intel only offers to replace Pentium chips for consumers who can prove that they need high accuracy; eventually the company relents and agrees to replace the chips for anyone who complains. The bug ultimately costs Intel $475 million.
1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.
June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing.
First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch.
November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy.
Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five.
The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure.
At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder.
Read the whole article at : Wired News: History's Worst Software Bugs
By Simson Garfinkel, 02:00 AM Nov. 08, 2005 PT
Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars' gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn't a hardware problem -- it was a programming error in the smart car's embedded code. The Prius had a software bug.
With that recall, the Prius joined the ranks of the buggy computer -- a club that began in 1947 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark 1 system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer's logbook with the words: "first actual case of a bug being found."
Sixty years later, computer bugs are still with us, and show no sign of going extinct. As the line between software and hardware blurs, coding errors are increasingly playing tricks on our daily lives. Bugs don't just inhabit our operating systems and applications -- today they lurk within our cell phones and our pacemakers, our power plants and medical equipment. And now, in our cars.
But which are the worst?
It's all too easy to come up with a list of bugs that have wreaked havoc. It's harder to rate their severity. Which is worse -- a security vulnerability that's exploited by a computer worm to shut down the internet for a few days or a typo that triggers a day-long crash of the nation's phone system? The answer depends on whether you want to make a phone call or check your e-mail.
Many people believe the worst bugs are those that cause fatalities. To be sure, there haven't been many, but cases like the Therac-25 are widely seen as warnings against the widespread deployment of software in safety critical applications. Experts who study such systems, though, warn that even though the software might kill a few people, focusing on these fatalities risks inhibiting the migration of technology into areas where smarter processing is sorely needed. In the end, they say, the lack of software might kill more people than the inevitable bugs.
What seems certain is that bugs are here to stay. Here, in chronological order, is the Wired News list of the 10 worst software bugs of all time ? so far.
July 28, 1962 -- Mariner I space probe. A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.
1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.
1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable.
What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured.
1988 -- Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon. The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.
Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.
1988-1996 -- Kerberos Random Number Generator. The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.
January 15, 1990 -- AT&T Network Outage. A bug in a new release of the software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors send out when they recover from a crash.
One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.
1993 -- Intel Pentium floating point divide. A silicon error causes Intel's highly promoted Pentium chip to make mistakes when dividing floating-point numbers that occur within a specific range. For example, dividing 4195835.0/3145727.0 yields 1.33374 instead of 1.33382, an error of 0.006 percent. Although the bug affects few users, it becomes a public relations nightmare. With an estimated 3 million to 5 million defective chips in circulation, at first Intel only offers to replace Pentium chips for consumers who can prove that they need high accuracy; eventually the company relents and agrees to replace the chips for anyone who complains. The bug ultimately costs Intel $475 million.
1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.
June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing.
First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch.
November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy.
Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five.
The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure.
At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder.
Read the whole article at : Wired News: History's Worst Software Bugs
U.N. launches 'school in box' in devastated Kashmir
U.N. launches 'school in box' in devastated Kashmir
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, Tue Nov 8, 2005 6:43 PM IST165
Kashmiri earthquake survivors attend a class at the Government Girls High School in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, about 130 km north of Islamabad, November 8, 2005. REUTERS/Kimimasa Mayama
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters - The United Nations launched a "school in a box" project on Tuesday to help restart classes in earthquake-devastated Pakistan, where thousands of children died when their schools were destroyed last month.
The government says 73,276 people died in the Oct. 8 quake in Pakistani Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province. The U.N. Children's Fund says about half the victims were children.
UNICEF estimates 17,000 were killed when hundreds of schools collapsed when the disaster struck during morning classes.
It plans to distribute 2,000 boxes in the earthquake zone containing slates, pencils, chalk, coloured pencils and notebooks to help efforts to restart classes.
At least 10,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in the quake, UNICEF said.
Each box can accommodate 40 students for about three months, said UNICEF's Claudia Hudspeth at a ceremony in which she handed one over to the headmistress of a government school in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
The Narol Government High School is one of only 10 in Muzaffarabad that have restarted classes since the disaster. They are being held in tents in the ruins of the school building.
"It was one of the best schools of Muzaffarabad," said new headmistress Khalida Khaliq, who was appointed last week after her predecessor was killed in the earthquake.
Eighty-four children and two teachers died when the school collapsed. Khaliq said more than 100 children had returned to the school since it reopened last week.
QUAKE LESSON
Children sat in the new tent classroom separated by grade.
On Tuesday, they had only one lesson: "Write something about the earthquake."
"We were studying in school when the earthquake stuck on Oct. 8," Naila Siddiqe, nine-year-old fourth grade pupil, wrote in a notebook provided by UNICEF.
One of Naila's sisters was badly injured in the disaster, her back broken when the school collapsed. She is being treated in a hospital in Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
"I do come to school, but I am scared there may be another hit," Naila said shyly while covering her face with her hands.
Local government officials say up to 600 teachers were killed in the earthquake across Pakistani Kashmir.
Mohammad Arif, the region's education secretary, said all 1,500 schools and colleges in Muzaffarabad district were damaged or destroyed, along with 85 percent of those in neighbouring Bagh district and half of those in Poonch.
Farmooda Abbas, a teacher at Naila, lost two of her children at the school in the earthquake but she said she had not lost hope.
"These are my children. I will educate them," she said gesturing to the class.
"I will never leave Muzaffarabad. Two of my children are studying here while my two other children are sleeping here," Farmooda said, sobbing quietly, referring to the two who died.
Khalida, the headmistress, said she needed everything from pencils to a new school building.
"We don't have anything and we need everything," she said.
Read the full article at : U.N. launches 'school in box' in devastated Kashmir
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, Tue Nov 8, 2005 6:43 PM IST165
Kashmiri earthquake survivors attend a class at the Government Girls High School in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, about 130 km north of Islamabad, November 8, 2005. REUTERS/Kimimasa Mayama
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters - The United Nations launched a "school in a box" project on Tuesday to help restart classes in earthquake-devastated Pakistan, where thousands of children died when their schools were destroyed last month.
The government says 73,276 people died in the Oct. 8 quake in Pakistani Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province. The U.N. Children's Fund says about half the victims were children.
UNICEF estimates 17,000 were killed when hundreds of schools collapsed when the disaster struck during morning classes.
It plans to distribute 2,000 boxes in the earthquake zone containing slates, pencils, chalk, coloured pencils and notebooks to help efforts to restart classes.
At least 10,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in the quake, UNICEF said.
Each box can accommodate 40 students for about three months, said UNICEF's Claudia Hudspeth at a ceremony in which she handed one over to the headmistress of a government school in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
The Narol Government High School is one of only 10 in Muzaffarabad that have restarted classes since the disaster. They are being held in tents in the ruins of the school building.
"It was one of the best schools of Muzaffarabad," said new headmistress Khalida Khaliq, who was appointed last week after her predecessor was killed in the earthquake.
Eighty-four children and two teachers died when the school collapsed. Khaliq said more than 100 children had returned to the school since it reopened last week.
QUAKE LESSON
Children sat in the new tent classroom separated by grade.
On Tuesday, they had only one lesson: "Write something about the earthquake."
"We were studying in school when the earthquake stuck on Oct. 8," Naila Siddiqe, nine-year-old fourth grade pupil, wrote in a notebook provided by UNICEF.
One of Naila's sisters was badly injured in the disaster, her back broken when the school collapsed. She is being treated in a hospital in Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
"I do come to school, but I am scared there may be another hit," Naila said shyly while covering her face with her hands.
Local government officials say up to 600 teachers were killed in the earthquake across Pakistani Kashmir.
Mohammad Arif, the region's education secretary, said all 1,500 schools and colleges in Muzaffarabad district were damaged or destroyed, along with 85 percent of those in neighbouring Bagh district and half of those in Poonch.
Farmooda Abbas, a teacher at Naila, lost two of her children at the school in the earthquake but she said she had not lost hope.
"These are my children. I will educate them," she said gesturing to the class.
"I will never leave Muzaffarabad. Two of my children are studying here while my two other children are sleeping here," Farmooda said, sobbing quietly, referring to the two who died.
Khalida, the headmistress, said she needed everything from pencils to a new school building.
"We don't have anything and we need everything," she said.
Read the full article at : U.N. launches 'school in box' in devastated Kashmir
Actress Hudson heads for court over weight jibes
Actress Hudson heads for court over weight jibes
Mon Nov 7, 2005 4:57 PM IST11
File photo of actress Kate Hudson arriving at the worldwide premiere of Universal Pictures' 'The Skeleton Key' at the Universal Studios cinema in the Universal City area of Los Angeles, August 2, 2005. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
LONDON (Reuters) - Hollywood actress Kate Hudson, star of "The Skeleton Key," instructed lawyers to begin action on Monday against several publications for printing pictures which she said falsely implied she had an eating disorder.
Hudson, daughter of actress Goldie Hawn, claims the pictures "suggested that she had an eating disorder that was so grave and serious that she was wasting away, to the extreme concern of her mother and family," her lawyers said.
The images, and the articles that accompanied them, could also prove damaging to her career as it might raise concern amongst casting agents, London law firm Schillings added.
The publications included U.S. tabloid The National Enquirer for its article last month titled "Goldie tells Kate: Eat Something! And She Listens!"
British magazine Heat and the Daily Mail UK newspaper are also cited.
"Ms Hudson will argue in the courts that the images in question gave a seriously false and misleading impression as to her true physical condition, in that she was portrayed as being dangerously thin with an eating disorder," Schillings said in a statement.
It added the case was expected to go for trial at London's High Court in 2006 if not settled beforehand.
Read the full article at : http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2005-11-07T165030Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-222451-1.xml
Mon Nov 7, 2005 4:57 PM IST11
File photo of actress Kate Hudson arriving at the worldwide premiere of Universal Pictures' 'The Skeleton Key' at the Universal Studios cinema in the Universal City area of Los Angeles, August 2, 2005. REUTERS/Mario AnzuoniLONDON (Reuters) - Hollywood actress Kate Hudson, star of "The Skeleton Key," instructed lawyers to begin action on Monday against several publications for printing pictures which she said falsely implied she had an eating disorder.
Hudson, daughter of actress Goldie Hawn, claims the pictures "suggested that she had an eating disorder that was so grave and serious that she was wasting away, to the extreme concern of her mother and family," her lawyers said.
The images, and the articles that accompanied them, could also prove damaging to her career as it might raise concern amongst casting agents, London law firm Schillings added.
The publications included U.S. tabloid The National Enquirer for its article last month titled "Goldie tells Kate: Eat Something! And She Listens!"
British magazine Heat and the Daily Mail UK newspaper are also cited.
"Ms Hudson will argue in the courts that the images in question gave a seriously false and misleading impression as to her true physical condition, in that she was portrayed as being dangerously thin with an eating disorder," Schillings said in a statement.
It added the case was expected to go for trial at London's High Court in 2006 if not settled beforehand.
Read the full article at : http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2005-11-07T165030Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-222451-1.xml
Fireballs seen over Germany spark UFO speculation
An undated file photo shows a green meteor tail visible in the desert sky over Israel. Numerous sightings of massive fireballs in the skies over Germany this week have led to an upsurge in reports of UFOs, but scientists believe the cause could be a bizarre annual meteor blitz. REUTERS/Jim HollanderBERLIN (Reuters) - Numerous sightings of massive fireballs in the skies over Germany this week have led to an upsurge in reports of UFOs, but scientists believe the cause could be a bizarre annual meteor blitz.
According to the Web site of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such fireballs have been reported elsewhere in the world and may also be due to the fact that the Earth is now orbiting through a swarm of space debris.
Many people in Germany have noticed the fireballs, said Werner Walter, an amateur astronomer in Mannheim who runs a Web site on unexplained astronomical phenomena and a hotline for reports on unidentified flying objects (UFO).
"The last reported sighting was yesterday at 7:30 p.m. in a corridor near the border of the Netherlands," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "This week we have had at least 15 emails and phone calls from people reporting these fireballs," he said. "Some people said it looks like something out of a science fiction horror film."
In addition to a possible meteor streak, Walter said amateur and professional astronomers were considering the possibility that the blitz was the result of a "falling satellite or UFOs." "It is possible that they are UFOs, which are after all things which we cannot explain," he said.
NASA's science Web site (http://science.nasa.gov) mentions reports of recent fireball sightings in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, North Ireland and Japan. It includes images of the fireballs, which one man likened to a spotlight.
Walter described them as "super-large, colored fireballs that shoot with the speed of lightning through the sky."
However, the NASA Web site quotes meteor expert David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland as saying that people "are probably seeing the Taurid meteor shower."
Taurids are meteors that shoot out of the constellation Taurus, which peaks at the end of October and early November.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies - New York Times
Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies
By STEVE LOHR, November 6, 2005
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, often intimidates its competitors and suppliers. Makers of goods from diapers to DVD's must cater to its whims. But there is one company that even Wal-Mart eyes warily these days: Google, a seven-year-old business in a seemingly distant industry.
"We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board.
In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.
Wal-Mart is scarcely alone in its concern. As Google increasingly becomes the starting point for finding information and buying products and services, companies that even a year ago did not see themselves as competing with Google are beginning to view the company with some angst - mixed with admiration.
Google's recent moves have stirred concern in industries from book publishing to telecommunications. Businesses already feeling the Google effect include advertising, software and the news media. Apart from retailing, Google's disruptive presence may soon be felt in real estate and auto sales.
Google, the reigning giant of Web search, could extend its economic reach in the next few years as more people get high-speed Internet service and cellphones become full-fledged search tools, according to analysts. And ever-smarter software, they say, will cull and organize larger and larger digital storehouses of news, images, real estate listings and traffic reports, delivering results that are more like the advice of a trusted human expert.
Such advances, predicts Esther Dyson, a technology consultant, will bring "a huge reduction in inefficiency everywhere." That, in turn, would be an unsettling force for all sorts of industries and workers. But it would also reward consumers with lower prices and open up opportunities for new companies.
Google, then, may turn out to have a more far-reaching impact than earlier Web winners like Amazon and eBay. "Google is the realization of everything that we thought the Internet was going to be about but really wasn't until Google," said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Google, to be sure, is but one company at the forefront of the continuing spread of Internet technology. It has many competitors, and it could stumble. In the search market alone, Google faces formidable rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft, in particular, is pushing hard to catch Google in Internet search. "This is hyper-competition, make no mistake," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chief executive. "The magic moment will come when our search is demonstrably better than Google's," he said, suggesting that this could happen in a year or so.
Still, apart from its front-runner status, Google is also remarkable for its pace of innovation and for how broadly it seems to interpret its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
The company's current lineup of offerings includes: software for searching personal computer files; an e-mail service; maps; satellite images; instant messaging; blogging tools; a service for posting and sharing digital photos; and specialized searches for news, video, shopping and local information. Google's most controversial venture, Google Print, is a project to copy and catalog millions of books; it faces lawsuits by some publishers and authors who say it violates copyright law.
Google, which tends to keep its plans secret, certainly has the wealth to fund ambitious ventures. Its revenues are growing by nearly 100 percent a year, and its profits are rising even faster. Its executives speak of the company's outlook only in broad strokes, but they suggest all but unlimited horizons. "We believe that search networks as industries remain in their nascent stages of growth with great forward potential," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, told analysts last month.
Among the many projects being developed and debated inside Google is a real estate service, according to a person who has attended meetings on the proposal. The concept, the person said, would be to improve the capabilities of its satellite imaging, maps and local search and combine them with property listings.
The service, this person said, could make house hunting far more efficient, requiring potential buyers to visit fewer real estate agents and houses. If successful, it would be another magnet for the text ads that appear next to search results, the source of most of Google's revenue.
In telecommunications, the company has made a number of moves that have grabbed the attention of industry executives. It has been buying fiber-optic cable capacity in the United States and has invested in a company delivering high-speed Internet access over power lines. And it is participating in an experiment to provide free wireless Internet access in San Francisco.
That has led to speculation that the company wants to build a national free GoogleNet, paid for mostly by advertising. And Google executives seem to delight in dropping tantalizing, if vague, hints. "We focus on access to the information as much as the search itself because you need both," Mr. Schmidt said in an analysts' conference call last month.
Telecommunications executives are skeptical that Google could seriously eat into their business anytime soon. For one thing, they say, it will be difficult and expensive to build a national network. Still, they monitor Google's every move. "Google is certainly a potential competitor," said Bill Smith, the chief technology officer of BellSouth, the Atlanta-based regional phone company.
The No. 1 rival to phone companies in the Internet access business, Mr. Smith noted, is the cable television operators. "But do I discount Google? Absolutely not," he said. "You'd be a fool to do that these days."
In retailing, Google has no interest in stocking and selling merchandise. Its potential impact is more subtle, yet still significant. Every store is a collection of goods, some items more profitable than others. But the less-profitable items may bring people into stores, where they also buy the high-margin offerings - one shelf, in effect, subsidizes another.
Search engines, combined with other technologies, have the potential to drive comparison shopping down to the shelf-by-shelf level. Cellphone makers, for example, are looking at the concept of a "shopping phone" with a camera that can read product bar codes. The phone could connect to databases and search services and, aided by satellite technology, reveal that the flat-screen TV model in front of you is $200 cheaper at a store five miles away.
"We see this huge power moving to the edge - to consumers - in this Google environment," said Lou Steinberg, chief technology officer of Symbol Technologies, which supplies bar-code scanners to retailers.
Such services could lead to lower prices for consumers, but also relentless competition that threatens to break up existing businesses.
A newspaper or a magazine can be seen as a media store - a collection of news, entertainment and advertising delivered in a package. A tool like Google News allows a reader or an advertiser to pick and choose, breaking up the package by splitting the articles from the ads. And Google's ads, tucked to the side of its search-engine results, are often a more efficient sales generator than print ads.
"Google represents a challenge to newspapers, to be sure," said Gary B. Pruitt, chief executive of the McClatchy Company, a chain of 12 newspapers including The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. "Google is attacking the advertising base of newspapers."
At the same time, Google and search technology are becoming crucial to the health of newspapers as more readers migrate to the Web. As one path to the future, Mr. Pruitt speaks of his newspapers prospering by tailoring search for local businesses, but also partnering with search engines to attract readers.
Within industries, the influence of Internet search is often uneven. For example, search engines are being embraced by car companies, yet they pose a challenge to car dealers.
George E. Murphy, senior vice president of global marketing for Chrysler, said Chrysler buys ads on 3,000 keywords a day on the big search sites: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and AOL, whose search is supplied by Google. If a person types in one of those keywords, the search results are accompanied by a sponsored link to a Chrysler site.
Chrysler refines its approach based on what search words attract clicks, and studies its site traffic for clues on converting browsers to buyers. "We've got Ph.D.'s working on this," Mr. Murphy said. "The great thing about search is that you can do the math and follow the trail."
After following a link to a Chrysler Web site, a prospective buyer can configure a model, find a dealer and get a preliminary price. Only dealers can make final price quotes. Yet with more information on the Web, the direction of things is clear, in Mr. Murphy's view. "It will fundamentally change what the dealer does, because telling people about the vehicle won't add value for the customer anymore," he said. "If dealers don't change, they'll be dinosaurs."
Mr. Breyer, the Wal-Mart board member, watches Google closely in his job as managing partner of Accel Partners, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. These days, he advises startups to avoid a "collision course" with Google, just as he has long counseled fledgling companies to steer clear of Microsoft's stronghold in desktop software.
Internet search, like personal computing in its heyday, is a disruptive technology, he said, threatening traditional industries and opening the door to new ones. "We think there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in the Google economy," Mr. Breyer said.
Read the full article at : Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies - New York Times
By STEVE LOHR, November 6, 2005
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, often intimidates its competitors and suppliers. Makers of goods from diapers to DVD's must cater to its whims. But there is one company that even Wal-Mart eyes warily these days: Google, a seven-year-old business in a seemingly distant industry.
"We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board.
In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.
Wal-Mart is scarcely alone in its concern. As Google increasingly becomes the starting point for finding information and buying products and services, companies that even a year ago did not see themselves as competing with Google are beginning to view the company with some angst - mixed with admiration.
Google's recent moves have stirred concern in industries from book publishing to telecommunications. Businesses already feeling the Google effect include advertising, software and the news media. Apart from retailing, Google's disruptive presence may soon be felt in real estate and auto sales.
Google, the reigning giant of Web search, could extend its economic reach in the next few years as more people get high-speed Internet service and cellphones become full-fledged search tools, according to analysts. And ever-smarter software, they say, will cull and organize larger and larger digital storehouses of news, images, real estate listings and traffic reports, delivering results that are more like the advice of a trusted human expert.
Such advances, predicts Esther Dyson, a technology consultant, will bring "a huge reduction in inefficiency everywhere." That, in turn, would be an unsettling force for all sorts of industries and workers. But it would also reward consumers with lower prices and open up opportunities for new companies.
Google, then, may turn out to have a more far-reaching impact than earlier Web winners like Amazon and eBay. "Google is the realization of everything that we thought the Internet was going to be about but really wasn't until Google," said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Google, to be sure, is but one company at the forefront of the continuing spread of Internet technology. It has many competitors, and it could stumble. In the search market alone, Google faces formidable rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft, in particular, is pushing hard to catch Google in Internet search. "This is hyper-competition, make no mistake," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chief executive. "The magic moment will come when our search is demonstrably better than Google's," he said, suggesting that this could happen in a year or so.
Still, apart from its front-runner status, Google is also remarkable for its pace of innovation and for how broadly it seems to interpret its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
The company's current lineup of offerings includes: software for searching personal computer files; an e-mail service; maps; satellite images; instant messaging; blogging tools; a service for posting and sharing digital photos; and specialized searches for news, video, shopping and local information. Google's most controversial venture, Google Print, is a project to copy and catalog millions of books; it faces lawsuits by some publishers and authors who say it violates copyright law.
Google, which tends to keep its plans secret, certainly has the wealth to fund ambitious ventures. Its revenues are growing by nearly 100 percent a year, and its profits are rising even faster. Its executives speak of the company's outlook only in broad strokes, but they suggest all but unlimited horizons. "We believe that search networks as industries remain in their nascent stages of growth with great forward potential," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, told analysts last month.
Among the many projects being developed and debated inside Google is a real estate service, according to a person who has attended meetings on the proposal. The concept, the person said, would be to improve the capabilities of its satellite imaging, maps and local search and combine them with property listings.
The service, this person said, could make house hunting far more efficient, requiring potential buyers to visit fewer real estate agents and houses. If successful, it would be another magnet for the text ads that appear next to search results, the source of most of Google's revenue.
In telecommunications, the company has made a number of moves that have grabbed the attention of industry executives. It has been buying fiber-optic cable capacity in the United States and has invested in a company delivering high-speed Internet access over power lines. And it is participating in an experiment to provide free wireless Internet access in San Francisco.
That has led to speculation that the company wants to build a national free GoogleNet, paid for mostly by advertising. And Google executives seem to delight in dropping tantalizing, if vague, hints. "We focus on access to the information as much as the search itself because you need both," Mr. Schmidt said in an analysts' conference call last month.
Telecommunications executives are skeptical that Google could seriously eat into their business anytime soon. For one thing, they say, it will be difficult and expensive to build a national network. Still, they monitor Google's every move. "Google is certainly a potential competitor," said Bill Smith, the chief technology officer of BellSouth, the Atlanta-based regional phone company.
The No. 1 rival to phone companies in the Internet access business, Mr. Smith noted, is the cable television operators. "But do I discount Google? Absolutely not," he said. "You'd be a fool to do that these days."
In retailing, Google has no interest in stocking and selling merchandise. Its potential impact is more subtle, yet still significant. Every store is a collection of goods, some items more profitable than others. But the less-profitable items may bring people into stores, where they also buy the high-margin offerings - one shelf, in effect, subsidizes another.
Search engines, combined with other technologies, have the potential to drive comparison shopping down to the shelf-by-shelf level. Cellphone makers, for example, are looking at the concept of a "shopping phone" with a camera that can read product bar codes. The phone could connect to databases and search services and, aided by satellite technology, reveal that the flat-screen TV model in front of you is $200 cheaper at a store five miles away.
"We see this huge power moving to the edge - to consumers - in this Google environment," said Lou Steinberg, chief technology officer of Symbol Technologies, which supplies bar-code scanners to retailers.
Such services could lead to lower prices for consumers, but also relentless competition that threatens to break up existing businesses.
A newspaper or a magazine can be seen as a media store - a collection of news, entertainment and advertising delivered in a package. A tool like Google News allows a reader or an advertiser to pick and choose, breaking up the package by splitting the articles from the ads. And Google's ads, tucked to the side of its search-engine results, are often a more efficient sales generator than print ads.
"Google represents a challenge to newspapers, to be sure," said Gary B. Pruitt, chief executive of the McClatchy Company, a chain of 12 newspapers including The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. "Google is attacking the advertising base of newspapers."
At the same time, Google and search technology are becoming crucial to the health of newspapers as more readers migrate to the Web. As one path to the future, Mr. Pruitt speaks of his newspapers prospering by tailoring search for local businesses, but also partnering with search engines to attract readers.
Within industries, the influence of Internet search is often uneven. For example, search engines are being embraced by car companies, yet they pose a challenge to car dealers.
George E. Murphy, senior vice president of global marketing for Chrysler, said Chrysler buys ads on 3,000 keywords a day on the big search sites: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and AOL, whose search is supplied by Google. If a person types in one of those keywords, the search results are accompanied by a sponsored link to a Chrysler site.
Chrysler refines its approach based on what search words attract clicks, and studies its site traffic for clues on converting browsers to buyers. "We've got Ph.D.'s working on this," Mr. Murphy said. "The great thing about search is that you can do the math and follow the trail."
After following a link to a Chrysler Web site, a prospective buyer can configure a model, find a dealer and get a preliminary price. Only dealers can make final price quotes. Yet with more information on the Web, the direction of things is clear, in Mr. Murphy's view. "It will fundamentally change what the dealer does, because telling people about the vehicle won't add value for the customer anymore," he said. "If dealers don't change, they'll be dinosaurs."
Mr. Breyer, the Wal-Mart board member, watches Google closely in his job as managing partner of Accel Partners, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. These days, he advises startups to avoid a "collision course" with Google, just as he has long counseled fledgling companies to steer clear of Microsoft's stronghold in desktop software.
Internet search, like personal computing in its heyday, is a disruptive technology, he said, threatening traditional industries and opening the door to new ones. "We think there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in the Google economy," Mr. Breyer said.
Read the full article at : Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies - New York Times
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
