Lawmaker seeks cooperation from Google, Facebook

WASHINGTON: The head of the House Judiciary Committee is asking Google Inc. and Facebook to cooperate with any government inquiries into privacy practices at both companies.

Michigan Democrat John Conyers sent letters to Google and Facebook on Friday amid mounting concern in Congress that the two online companies are not adequately protecting personal privacy on the Internet.

Facebook has come under fire for sharing user information with a handful of other online services as part of its new “instant personalization” program, which is intended to let Facebook members share their interests in everything from music to restaurants with others in their social network. The program draws information from a member’s profile to customize several other sites, including the music service Pandora.

Facebook simplified its privacy controls this week in response to the backlash among users. As part of the changes, it added a tool to make it easier for members to turn off the instant personalization service.

Conyers asked Facebook on Friday to provide details about its sharing of member information with third parties and about its privacy policies. Several privacy watchdog groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have already filed a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has been reviewing the privacy policies of Facebook and other social networks.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company looks forward to meeting with Conyers’ staff to explain its privacy practices and policies.

Conyers stopped short of saying the Judiciary Committee will begin its own investigations into Facebook and Google.

Google recently admitted that it had sucked up fragments of e-mails, Web surfing behavior and other online activities over public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries while it was photographing neighborhoods for its ''Street View'' mapping feature. The company said it discovered the problem following an inquiry by German regulators.

Conyers is asking Google to retain the data collected by its Street View cars along with related records until any federal and state inquiries are complete. At least two House members, Republican Rep. Joe Barton and Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, have already asked the FTC to look into the matter and are seeking more information from Google about the incident.

Google said it is not deleting US data. The FTC has yet to say whether it is investigating Google.

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McDonald's pulls 12M cadmium-tainted glasses

LOS ANGELES – Cadmium has been discovered in the painted design on "Shrek"-themed drinking glasses being sold across the US at McDonald's, forcing the burger giant to recall 12 million of the cheap US-made collectibles.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which announced the voluntary recall early Friday, warned consumers to immediately stop using the glasses; McDonald's said it would post instructions on its website next week regarding refunds.

The 16-ounce glasses, being sold for about $2 each as part of a promotional campaign for the movie "Shrek Forever After," were available in four designs depicting the characters Shrek, Princess Fiona, Puss in Boots and Donkey.

The CPSC noted in its recall notice that "long-term exposure to cadmium can cause adverse health effects." Cadmium is a known carcinogen that research shows also can cause bone softening and severe kidney problems.

In the case of the Shrek-themed glassware, the potential danger would be long-term exposure to low levels of cadmium, which could leach from the paint onto a child's hand, then enter the body if the child puts that unwashed hand to his or her mouth.

Cadmium can be used to create reds and yellows in paint. McDonald's USA spokesman Bill Whitman said a pigment in paint on the glasses contained cadmium.

"A very small amount of cadmium can come to the surface of the glass, and in order to be as protective as possible of children, CPSC and McDonald's worked together on this recall," said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson.

He would not specify the amounts of cadmium that leached from the paint in tests, but said the amounts were "slightly above the protective level currently being developed by the agency."

Wolfson said the glasses have "far less cadmium than the children's metal jewelry that CPSC has previously recalled."

Concerns about cadmium exposure emerged in January, when The Associated Press reported that some items of children's jewelry sold at major national chains contained up to 91 percent of the metal. Federal regulators worry that kids could ingest cadmium by biting, sucking or even swallowing contaminated pendants and bracelets.

The consumer protection agency has issued three recalls this spring for jewelry highlighted in the AP stories, including products sold at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer; at Claire's, a major jewelry and accessories chain in North America and Europe; and at discount and dollar stores.

Those recalls all involved children's metal jewelry — and all of that jewelry was made in China.

Manufactured by ARC International of Millville, N.J., the glasses were to be sold from May 21 into June. Roughly seven million of the glasses had been sold; another approximately five million are in stores or have not yet been shipped, said Whitman.

Associated Press reporters tried unsuccessfully to buy the glasses late Thursday at McDonald's in New York, Los Angeles and northern New Jersey but were alternately told the merchandise was sold out, no longer available or "there'll be more tomorrow."

E-mails sent after business hours to two spokesmen for ARC International seeking comment were not immediately returned.

McDonald's said it was asking customers to stop using the glasses "out of an abundance of caution."

"We believe the Shrek glassware is safe for consumer use," Whitman said. "However, again to ensure that our customers receive safe products from us, we made the decision to stop selling them and voluntarily recall these products effective immediately."

Whitman said that as the CPSC develops new protocols and standards for cadmium in consumer products, "we adjust as necessary to ensure that our customers can continue to trust what they receive from McDonald's."

"Our children's health should not depend on the consciences of anonymous sources," Speier said in a statement Friday.

"Although McDonald's did the right thing by recalling these products, we need stronger testing standards to ensure that all children's products are proven safe before they hit the shelves."

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Facebook looking to buy Twitter – FT

Social networking company Facebook recently held acquisition talks with Twitter, the micro-blogging company. The negotiations put a valuation of as much as dollar 500 million on Twitter,which has become one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched start-ups. Facebook offered to pay for the acquisition in stock. Putting a value on Twitter's shares proved controversial. If it used the dollar 15 billion valuation at which Microsoft Corp bought a stake in Facebook last year, it would have valued the Twitter purchase at dollar 500 million, though that investment was seen as a high-water mark for Web 2.0.

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IBM and academia work on human brain simulation

Boffins at IBM have teamed up with five universities to use the human brain as a template to buildfaster, smaller computer systems that benefit decision making. Working with experts at Columbia University Medical Centre, Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of California-Merced and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, IBM Research plans to design and develop computers that simulate and emulate how the brain acts, interacts, perceives and senses things, in addition to mirroring its cognition, lower power usage and size. In doing so, it is hoped that business and consumer users alike will be able to make decisions much more quickly as well as helping them to deal with the ever-increasing glut of digital data heading their way each year.

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Blackberry Javelin gets release date

Following the high profile launches of the Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Storm, RIM continuesits assault on the smartphone market with Javelin. Carphone Warehouse has said that the Blackberry Javelin will be released exclusively in its stores just in time for Christmas on 20 December 2008, with the moniker 'Curve 8900'. Carphone Warehouse could not confirm to IT PRO anything regarding pricing or the network carrier, but did say that the Javelin will have the, "sharpest screen, for the brightest, sharpest icons". At first glance the Javelin looks similar to RIM's Blackberry Bold, featuring a Qwerty keyboard and a trackball. It also has GPS with Blackberry Maps and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the rear. However, it is intended as an entry-level product and lacks 3G connectivity

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Online fraudsters steal billions

All the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be 'cashed out' in their home nation - necessitating contact across borders

Hi-tech thieves who specialise in card fraud have a credit line in excess of $5bn, research suggests.

Security firm Symantec calculated the figure to quantify the scale of fraud it found during a year-long look at the net's underground economy.
Credit card numbers are the most popular item on sale and made up 31 percent of all the goods on offer.

Coming in second are bank details which made up 20 percent of the items being offered on criminal chat channels.

The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a stolen card, $350 by the many millions Symantec observed being offered for sale.

Similarly, the report said, "if hi-tech thieves plundered all the bank accounts offered for sale they could net up to $1.7bn."

Symantec said, "these figures are indicative of the value of the underground economy and the potential worth of the market."

"Credit card numbers have proved so popular among hi-tech thieves because they are easy to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes," it added.

Many of the methods favoured by cyber criminals, such as database attacks and magnetic strip skimmers, are designed to steal credit card information.

The existence of a ready market for any stolen data and the growing use of credit cards also helped maintain their popularity, it said.

"High frequency use and the range of available methods for capturing credit card data would generate more opportunities for theft and compromise and, thus, lead to an increased supply on underground economy servers," said the report.

The price card thieves can expect for the numbers they offer for sale also varied by the country of origin. US card numbers are the cheapest because they are so ubiquitous – 74 percent of all cards offered for sale were from the US.

By contrast numbers from cards issued in Europe and the Middle East commanded a premium because they were relatively rare.

The year-long look at the underground economy confirmed to Symantec how serious and organised cyber thieves have become.

Via the covert chat channels and invitation-only discussion forums hi-tech thieves form loose alliances, contact those who specialise in one technique or find individuals who can extract cash from particular credit cards .

Russian and Eastern European gangs seem to be among the most well-organised, said the report. But, it said, all the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be 'cashed out' in their home nation - necessitating contact across borders.

"Symantec research indicates that there is a certain amount of collaboration and organisation occurring on these forums, especially at the administrative level," it said.

"Moreover, considerable evidence exists that organised crime is involved in many cases."

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Nokia launches bike-powered handset

HELSINKI: Want to talk more? Keep pedaling, says Nokia. The world's largest mobile phone maker on Thursday launched four low-priced handsets and a recharger that can be connected to a bicycle's dynamo which charges when the wheels turn.

The bicycle charger kit and handsets —some with a standby battery time of up to six weeks, FM radio and flashlights —are aimed at users with limited access to electricity.

The new devices will be available during the second half of the year, priced at between euro30 and euro45 ($36-$55).

The bike kit has a charger, dynamo and a holder to secure the phone to the bicycle. The dynamo _ a small electrical generator _ uses the movement of the wheels to charge the handset through a standard 2mm charging jack used in most Nokia handsets.

It cuts off at speeds lower than 3 mph (5 kph) and higher than 30 kph (50 kph).

The price of the kit in emerging markets starts at euro15 ($18), and likely will cost more in other markets, Nokia said.

The cheapest of the new handsets —the Nokia C series —is the C1-00, expected to retail for around euro30 ($36). It is also the firm's first model with a 2-in-1 double SIM card solution.

''By simply holding down a key people are able to switch between SIM cards,'' vice president Alex Lambeek said. ''This enables them to take advantage of reduced call rates, flexibility when traveling from one country to another or helps with sharing a phone within a family and still use their own SIM card.''

The C1 has a standby battery time of up to six weeks and features a flashlight and radio, both aimed at regions where electricity is scarce.

The Nokia C2, with an expected price tag of euro45 ($55), has dual SIM standby capability that keeps both SIM cards active, meaning that calls and text messages can come to either number while the handset is on.

One of the cards sit under the battery while the other SIM card is removable without turning off the phone.

The C2 also has the possibility of storing micro-SD cards with 32 gigabytes of memory for music, photos and other data.

Nokia has recently been faced by strong competition in the high-end smart phone market, particularly from RIM's Blackberry, Apple's iPhone and Google's Android, but has maintained its leading global position.

In another strong move to grab new customers in emerging markets it launched three less-expensive smart phones in April, including its first model expected to sell for under euro100 ($125).

Nokia has been the top handset maker since 1998. Last year, it sold 432 million handsets.

It is based in Espoo, near Helsinki, and employs around 126,000 people worldwide.

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'Mars crew' locked up for 520 days of isolation

MOSCOW: Six men from Europe, Russia and China were Thursday locked away from the outside world for the next one-and-a-half years, in an unprecedented experiment to simulate the effects of a mission to Mars.

One Chinese man, one Italian, one Frenchman and three Russians will spend the next 520 days in a 550 cubic metre facility at a Moscow research institute to test how their bodies and minds react to prolonged isolation.

Dressed in blue overalls, the six gave the thumbs-up sign and smiled for the cameras as loved ones and well-wishers gave them an emotional send-off before they entered the facility.

“See you in 520 days,” shouted one of the Russian participants, Sukhrob Kamolov, just before a scientist shut the door on the facility and sealed it shut at around 1000 GMT.

Like in a real Mars mission, the crew will have to survive on limited food rations like those used by real astronauts and their only communication with the outside world will be by email, with a delay of up to 40 minutes.

The hatch will only re-open when the experiment is over or if one of the all-male participants is forced to pull out. Controversially, no women have been selected for the experiment, called Mars 500.

“I am already missing him. I am crying right now,” said Irene Urbina, sister of Italian participant Diego Urbina.

The volunteers are aged between 27 and 38 and include a member of a real-life space programme and a civil engineer. But scientists bristle at the idea that the experiment is an elaborate version of television's “Big Brother”.

“It is not like 'Big Brother'. We do not have surveillance, video cameras everywhere. We hope there will be no fights or scandals,” said Jennifer Ngo-Anh, Mars 500 programme manager.

The volunteers will have their days in the module at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) divided into eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work and eight hours of leisure.

A team of three will spend one month aboard a special module meant to represent the Mars landing craft, while two will also spend time exploring a reconstruction of Mars itself.

Chinese member Wang Yue, 27, a candidate astronaut of China's space programme, told reporters before entering the capsule: “It is just a simulation. It is not a matter of life and death.”

“But I think it is very much more than that as it aims at the future of humanity.”

The idea is to exactly mimic the timescale of a Mars mission - 250 days for the trip to Mars, 30 days on the surface and 240 days for the return journey, totalling 520 days.

“You cannot simulate everything. That is obvious,” said Christer Fuglesang, head of science at the directorate for human spaceflight for the European Space Agency, a co-organiser of the project with the IBMP.

“The scare factor cannot be simulated. It's true we don't have this aspect they may not come back.”

The crew also conspicuously lacks women, meaning the experiment will not examine the possible sexual tensions that could arise on a trip to Mars for a mixed-gender crew.

Yury Karash, a Russian space policy expert, said the gender composition of the crew would allow the participants to focus on their professional duties instead of unwittingly competing for attention of female crew members.

“It is better for the crew to be same-sex,” he said on Russian television.

“No one has abolished the basic instinct yet.”

Their diet will be no different to that enjoyed by real-life astronauts on the International Space Station. The crew will be given all the food at the beginning of the experiment, forcing them to ration out their supplies.

The diet will include cereals, bread or pancakes for breakfast and soup, pasta and fish or meat dishes for main meals. Unlike real-life astronauts, the packaging will not have to account for zero gravity.

The ESA and the US space agency NASA have separately sketched dates in around three decades from now for a manned flight to Mars.

The project, the first full-duration simulated mission to Mars, follows a similar experiment in Moscow last year which saw six volunteers shut away for a mere 105 days.

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Pakistanis create rival Muslim Facebook

ISLAMABAD: Pakistanis outraged with Facebook over “blasphemous” caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have created a spin-off networking site that they dream can connect the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, reports AFP.

A group of six young IT professionals from Lahore, the cultural and entertainment capital of Pakistan, Launched www.millatfacebook.com on Tuesday for Muslims to interact online and protest against blasphemy.

The private venture came after a Pakistani court ordered a block on Facebook until May 31, following deep offence over an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” page considered “blasphemous” and “sacrilegious”.

“Millatfacebook is Pakistan's very own, first social networking site. A site for Muslims by Muslims where sweet people of other religions are also welcome,” the website tells people interested in signing up.

Dubbed MFB, after Facebook's moniker FB, its founder says professionals are working around the clock to offer features similar to those pioneered by the wildly popular California-based prototype.

Each member has a “wall” for friends to comment on. The site offers email, photo, video, chat and discussion board facilities.

The Urdu word “Millat” is used by Muslims to refer to their nation. The website claims to have attracted 4,300 members in the last three days — mostly English-speaking Pakistanis in their 20s.

The number of aficionados may be growing, but the community is a drop in the ocean of the 2.5 million Facebook fans in Pakistan and there have been some scathing early reviews of the start-up.

Neither has Facebook been immediately reachable for comment.

“We want to tell Facebook people 'if they mess with us they have to face the consequences',” said Usman Zaheer, the 24-year-old chief operating officer of the software house that hosts the new site.

“If someone commits blasphemy against our Prophet Mohammed then we will become his competitor and give him immense business loss,” he told AFP, dreaming of making “the largest Muslim social networking website”.

Once signed up, members are a click away from debate on the bulletin board.

For example, “Enticing Fury” wrote: “The reason is that this forum must be reserved for ALL MUSLIMS OF THE WORLD and not only Pakistan. So using the word MILLAT is very good!

“Well done guys. You have made a great alternative for the whole Muslim ummah (nation)!”

But the nascent quality of the work-in-progress website has preoccupied and dismayed some, as well as drawn at least one damning newspaper review.

One member wrote: “they need 2 have more info”.

Another posted a mournful: “need games here as well. I miss cafe world” referring to the popular Facebook page where members can run their own virtual cafe.

“It was a good idea... as it can give us a forum to connect, but its reach is too limited,” Mohammad Adeel, a 31-year-old pharmacist told AFP in Karachi, who joined to keep up with friends he missed due to the Facebook ban.

Local newspaper was crushing. “The quality of user experience is so abysmal that it does not merit the humble title, 'Facebook clone',” it wrote online.

“To sum up, MillatFacebook is a bold effort... but it is unlikely to capture a large audience, judging by the online experience it offers currently.”

But Zaheer is pleased with his handiwork, saying the site has already attracted members living in Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Pakistani law student Rana Adeel, 21, signed up to MillatFB in Lahore after receiving invites through SMS and email from friends.

“In two days, I got more than seven friends. If the Facebook ban is lifted, I'll keep networking on both,” he told AFP.

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Text messages save pregnant Rwandan women

KIGALI:  At midnight Valentine Uwingabire's back began to hurt. Her husband ran to tell Germaine Uwera, a community health worker in their village in the fertile foothills of Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park.

 

Equipped with a mobile phone from the local health center, Uwera sent an urgent SMS text message and within a quarter of an hour, an ambulance had whisked Valentine to hospital. Minutes later Uwingabire's third child was born.

"We called our child Manirakoze, which means 'Thank God'," she told reporters, sitting outside her mud and bamboo house pitched in the shadow of Karisimbi volcano, home to some of the world's few remaining highland mountain gorillas.

Had it not been for Rwanda's new Rapid SMS service, Valentine would have been carried in agony, down the hill to the nearest town on an improvised stretcher.

As is the case in much of Africa, fixed-line telephone networks are virtually non-existent outside of the capital and major cities.

The Rapid SMS scheme - a joint initiative between three U.N. organizations - is being tested in the Musanze District where 432 health workers have received mobile phones.

Health workers register pregnant women in their village via free SMS text messages and send regular updates to a central server in the capital, Kigali. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk brought in for check-ups.

Rwanda, Africa's most densely populated nation, is ranked among the world's worst for maternal mortality, according to U.N. data, and it is an important target for the global body's goal to reduce maternal deaths by 75 per cent globally by 2015.

"No Maternal Deaths"

John Kalach, director of the nearest hospital in Ruhengeri, says since Rapid SMS launched in August 2009, his hospital has had no maternal deaths, compared to 10 the previous year.

"We used to get ladies coming here with serious complications just because they delayed the decision because the journey was very long," he says.

Kalach says authorities can use the data to work out which diseases affect women during pregnancy, the causes of death for children below five years, the volume and type of drugs required, and to monitor population growth rates.

Friday Nwaigwe, UNICEF's country head of child health and nutrition, says the next step is to give mobile phones to 17,500 maternal health workers across the country and eventually to all 50,000 community health workers.

"In Rwanda we have 750 out of every 100,000 pregnant women die every year. It's a very big problem," Nwaigwe says.

Still, in a nation where only six percent of its 10 million-strong population has access to electricity, a country-wide expansion of the scheme may run into problems.

Germaine says to charge her phone she has to walk 20 minutes to the nearest charging booth, and Kalach says some remote areas of the hilly country do not yet have network coverage.

But surrounded by trees heaving with chandeliers of green bananas and fields bursting with beans, Uwera and Uwingabire agree a simple text message has had a big impact on their lives.

"We used to use a traditional ambulance made of mats, like a stretcher made of papyrus and sticks. It takes one hour by walking - or five minutes in a car," Germaine says, cradling baby Manirakoze and proudly brandishing her mobile telephone.

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iPad-mania as thousands queue for global roll-out

PARIS: Thousands of die-hard Apple fans mobbed shops in parts of Europe and Asia on Friday after the iPad, touted as a revolution in personal computing, began its global launch.

Long queues of customers snaked outside Apple shops in Australia and Japan hours before the opening and similar huddled masses of gadget lovers turned out at stores in six European countries including Britain and France.

The iPad - a flat, 10-inch (25-centimetre) black tablet - was also going on sale in Canada as part of a global roll-out that was pushed back by a month due to huge demand in the United States.

One million iPads were sold in 28 days after the product's US debut in early April, forcing the firm to delay its foreign launch.

At Apple's flagship store in Paris, set in the prestigious underground mall of the Louvre museum, 24-year-old engineer Audrey Sobgou beamed as she walked away with one of the prized tablets.

Sobgou travelled 205 kilometres (127 miles) from her home town in Lille, northern France, and waited nearly two hours before stepping inside the busy Apple store to make her purchase.

“I'm not a victim of hype,” she insisted. “I know Apple products and it's about the quality, the interface, how it's designed and what it can do. With elegance and style.”

Hundreds of people had already queued outside of the Paris Apple store hours before it opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) and the launch made the front page of major newspapers.

The free-sheet Metro daily in Paris showed a full-page picture of the tablet under the polemical question “iPad: gadget or revolution?”

About 40 enthusiasts were already waiting outside the flagship Apple store in central London, at 3:00 am (0200 GMT) Friday to get their hands on the iPad when the store opened at 8:00 am.

Most of them were sitting on deck chairs and some were wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets.

Staff escorted the first group of customers one by one up to buy their iPad after they opened the doors, whooping, chanting and cheering.

“I queued overnight for about 20 hours since midday yesterday but it was very, very worth it,” Jake Lee, a 17-year-old student from Essex, told AFP, clutching his treasured iPad.

“I wanted the iPad since it was announced, I'm just really excited about it,” he told AFP.

The iPad also went on sale in Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland and will be followed in July by a launch in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

About 30 people waited under a driving rain in Frankfurt outside the Apple store while 19-year-old student Claudio Roccario was among some one hundred customers waiting to buy his iPad in Milan.

“I wanted to be among the first,” he said, echoing the sentiment of most die-hard Apple fans who turned out for the first day of the launch.

Many Apple aficionados in Zurich camped out overnight in front of the store to be among the first to buy the tablet and download some of the 5,000 available apps.

Prices in Japan and Australia for the basic 16GB iPad are comparable to US prices, once sales tax is included, although a significant markup by Apple in Britain and continental Europe has triggered some grumbling.

In France, wifi models sell for between 499 and 699 euros (620 and 969 dollars) with the 3G models going for between 599 and 799 euros.

The multi-functional device is tipped by some pundits to revitalise media and publishing, with many major newspapers and broadcasters launching applications.

Newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch has said the iPad has the potential to save the newspaper industry but in France, that enthusiasm is not shared by President Nicolas Sarkozy's minister for the digital economy.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet last month dismissed the “marketing frenzy” surrounding the iPad launch and declared that it was “a bit heavy” compared to the Archos tablet, made in France.

Other than the five other European countries, California-based Apple plans to bring the iPad to Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore in July.

Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky estimated that Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads a week - more than estimated Mac computer sales of 110,000 a week, and vying with iPhone 3GS sales of 246,000 a week.

Apple has declined to reveal the number of pre-orders received for the iPad internationally, but Abramsky put it at around 600,000.

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Face-off with Facebook

Of late, Facebook, the global social networking site, has been experiencing a series of glitches on its path to world conquest. With over 400 million users, and revenues in excess of a billion dollars, it is one of the Internet’s biggest success stories. And no, Pakistan’s decision to impose a ban on the site has nothing to do with Facebook’s current woes.

The big story is about the site’s privacy policy, and it is scrambling to undo the harm it did to its reputation by making data about its users widely accessible. Pakistan, with around 2.5 million users, is a drop in the ocean for Facebook. The people inconvenienced by the ban are the Pakistanis who were able to keep in touch with their family members and friends around the world. While younger, tech-savvy users can easily circumvent this ban with a few clicks on their computers, people of my generation will struggle to connect with their children or friends living and working abroad.

Frankly, I have never got into the whole social networking scene because I already spend too much time on my computer, writing, reading newspapers and researching articles, as well as replying to emails from friends and readers. Every once in a while, I log on to Facebook to see pictures of my grandson Danyaal posted by my son. But other than that, I generally avoid opening my Facebook page, so the ban has not affected me in the least.

In an excess of regulatory zeal, the Pakistan Telecom Authority has also slapped a ban on YouTube, Flickr, and several chunks of Wikipedia, the universal encyclopaedia. Is a total ban on the Internet next? All these childish measures only serve to remind us how out of step we are with the rest of the world. The truth is that it would have been a simple matter to block the offending Facebook page that was carrying the blasphemous drawings of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. For PTA to take such an extreme step, there is something more to it than a desire to protect Pakistanis from sacrilegious Internet content. I suspect this decision echoes a controversy that took place last year when legislation was going to be moved to ban the use of cellphones and the Internet to spread jokes and allegations against the president and the government. The proposal became a joke itself around the world, and was quietly shelved. To my cynical eyes, PTA has used the indignation whipped up against the offending Facebook page to slap a total ban.

Interestingly, no other Muslim country has taken a similar measure, indicating that Pakistanis are more easily upset by any hint of blasphemy than our brethren elsewhere. And yet, according to Google, the popular search engine, the word ‘sex’ is typed in more often by Pakistanis than by Internet users in any other country. Clearly, we are not entirely consistent in our attachment to religious edicts.

Some five years ago, the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten caused a worldwide furore by publishing a dozen cartoons of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. Buildings were torched in riots and many lost their lives. The Danish embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a suicide bomber who killed several Pakistanis. Those who were so worked up at the time will no doubt be distressed to learn that the price of one of the offending images drawn by Kurt Westergaard has gone up to $150,000 for the original, while 870 copies have sold for $250 each.

TV coverage of the recent demonstrations in Pakistan against Facebook showed angry, bearded faces of men who, it must be said, would be hard pressed to describe what the social networking phenomenon is about. In their ignorance, they were similar to the mobs who rioted, burned and killed to protest against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. In both cases, the protesters had no clue what they were so worked about, excepting that they had been told that somebody somewhere had blasphemed against the Holy Prophet [PBUH].

Such knee-jerk reactions actually boomerang against protesters. Rushdie’s book sales rocketed, while lots of people were driven by curiosity to check out the offending Facebook page after being alerted to its contents. Had Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry passed a less draconian order, it would have met the fate it deserved: complete indifference from the vast Internet community. As it is, the page is getting far more hits for its crude drawings than its creators could have dreamed of.

We all need to realise that the Internet is an unregulated and largely uncharted universe with literally billions of pages, and it is growing larger by the day. Among this enormous body of material, there are bound to be bits that offend somebody or the other. Equally, there is much of value on the Web. This is true of all media: while books, films and television all contain entertainment and information, they also carry pornography and other offensive material. Should we then ban libraries, cinema houses and TV broadcasts?

Within the last two decades, the Internet has transformed our lives in ways that were unthinkable before its advent, and the world is a far richer place as a result. Patterns of work, communication and entertainment have been altered forever, usually for the good. Those who set up the Internet and those who maintain it are determined to keep it as regulation-free as possible. Thus far, they have resisted attempts by governments to control how it is used, and to my view, this free-wheeling philosophy is to be welcomed and supported.

Once regulators step in to avoid offending one section of users or another, there is no telling where political correctness ends and censorship begins. The Chinese government has tried to censor and control the Internet, to little avail. In the aftermath of the Iranian elections, Tehran attempted to curb access to Twitter and many Internet sites following the protests, but again failed to block news from spreading.

Governments need to understand that their monopoly over news and information is now a thing of the past. In Pakistan, when both radio and TV were tightly controlled by the government, news could be twisted in a way that is no longer possible. We really need to grow up and understand that knee-jerk bans and restrictions end up only harming ourselves and nobody else.

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Facebook founder out to fix "a bunch of mistakes"

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday said the social networking service has made blunders that it hopes to fix with coming changes to its privacy controls.

Zuckerberg issued a mea culpa in an email exchange with popular technology blogger Robert Scoble, who shared it at his website after purportedly getting Zuckerberg's permission.

“I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time,” said a message attributed to Zuckerberg.

“I know we've made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.”

Zuckerberg, who turned 26 years old on May 14, said Facebook would start talking publicly this week about privacy control modifications.

“We've been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“We're going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we've built this week.”

Facebook on Saturday said it plans to simplify privacy controls at the popular social-networking service to appease critics.

Facebook contended that members like new programs rolled out at the California-based Internet hotspot but want easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information with third-party applications or websites.

Features introduced last month include the ability for partner websites to incorporate Facebook data, a move that would further expand the social network's presence on the Internet.

Facebook has been under fire from US privacy and consumer groups, US lawmakers and the European Union over new features that critics claim compromise the privacy of its more than 400 million members.

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Facebook ban drives Rehman Malik to Twitter

ISLAMABAD: After Pakistan banned Facebook in a bid to stop it hosting “blasphemous” pictures of Prophet Mohammad, the country's interior minister found a new way to get his online fix. He jumped on Twitter.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said his son told him that if he couldn't get on Facebook, where he has his own page which hosts pictures of dignitaries and has 691 fans, he should Tweet.

“Only a few days back I came in (as a Twitter user). I like it,” Malik told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “There are lots of questions, are you real, are you fake?”

Malik already has more than 270 followers, according to his page (including this correspondent), far less than the “countless” ones he said he had after only a few days.

Many people writing to him question if indeed the account is real (it is) or complain that he should be governing instead of tweeting. Malik's tweets give no hint the digital hecklers bother him. He calls for unity in the face of violence in Karachi and comments on how nice it is to meet so many women parliamentarians from around Asia. He also freely engages with his followers, an unusual practice in Pakistan's stratified political culture.

“Thank you for your appreciation,” Malik wrote to one well-wisher. “I will hunt the terrorists to their demise.”

“I do not devise economic or monetary policy,” he replied to another, questioning an increase in fees and taxes.

While he declined to criticise the decision to ban Facebook and other websites, he said he hoped that a solution could be worked out soon that pleased most people. “I think we should be open-minded,” he said.

Pakistan last week blocked the popular social networking site Facebook indefinitely because of an online competition to draw Prophet Mohammad. Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

YouTube and about 1,000 other sites have been blocked for the same reason.

The publications of cartoons of the prophet in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries.

About 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

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Pakistan blocks YouTube over “blasphemous” material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network site Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” block of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he told Reuters.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a day for what it called un-Islamic videos.

PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.

“Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down,” he said.

He regretted that the administrators at the Facebook and YouTube had not taken the content off despite Pakistan's protests.

“Their attitude was in contravention to international resolutions and their own policies advertised on the Web for the general public,” Mehran said.

The PTA issued a statement Thursday saying, “PTA would welcome the concerned authorities of Facebook and YouTube to contact the PTA for resolving the issue at the earliest which ensures religious harmony and respect.”

The PTA decision to block all of Facebook also cut Pakistanis off from groups and pages dedicated to opposing the competition, which have thousands more supporters than the competition does.

Along with the ban, some popular websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan since Wednesday night. But the spokesman said it happened purely due to a technical reason and no orders were passed against them.

He said the authority was monitoring other websites as well.

“BLACKBERRY SERVICES”

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to a quarter of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

After the PTA's directives against Facebook and YouTube, Pakistani mobile companies blocked all Blackberry services on Wednesday night but restored services used by non-corporate users later on Thursday.

“We have intimated to the Blackberry service administrators in Canada to block them and once it's done, the service will be restored fully,” said Farhan Butt, an official at Pakistan's biggest cellular company, Mobilink.

The closure of services worried Blackberry users.

“The biggest concern for us ... is the delay in decision making,” said Zahid Sheikh, head of information technology department at National Foods Limited in Karachi city.

“Our top officials and senior management are not always in office. They do travel and work from remote locations, and with this shut down, they can't access emails.”

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

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Science to turn deserts into farms

This is apropos of the news item, ‘Gulf states look to science to turn deserts into farms’ (May 18).

Farming in semi-arid and arid zones with little water supply, high soil salinity and in extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in sustaining agricultural productivity in Sindh and Balochistan.

Dr Rajindra Pachuri, Director-General, Energy and Resource Institute, India, said that Qatar and Quwait have been trying to increase their domestic agricultural supplies through the use of selected types of fungus that enhance the growth of plants in arid areas.

By mixing these special groups of fungi (mycorrhizas) in soil farmland they were able to convert 40,000 square metres in hyper saline wasteland into productive areas where vegetables and grain plants can now grow. Similar projects in Kuwait, India, Oman and the UAE are in progress.

In this regard, I would like to point out that the application of mycorrhizas in soil was carried out by us through a research project. The results of the research work submitted as thesis earned a PhD degree for the research officer in 1992 under the supervision of the scribe.

Another research project, funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan on the application of mycorrhizal biotechnology in sunflower (2007-2010) showed an increase in yield, in resisting roof rot attack and in drought mitigation by inoculating the compatible mycorrhizas in soil before sowing sunflower seeds.

On a global basis, more than 90 per cent plants are mycorrhizal. In order to draw benefits accruing from the symbiotic association of mycorrhizas with food, fodder, fibre, horticultural and medicinal plants; the status of mycorrhizal propagules in soil should be enhanced.

There is a good scope for the betterment of sustainable agricultural system in semi-arid and arid regions of Pakistan on the application of mycorrhizal biotechnology.

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Facebook furore

There is no doubt that a Facebook member’s invitation to users on the social networking site to draw the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was in poor taste and deserving of strong condemnation. It is debatable whether freedom of expression should extend to material that is offensive to the sensibilities, traditions and beliefs of religious, ethnic or other communities.



Nevertheless, the Lahore High Court’s instructions to the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to block Facebook constituted an example of Pakistan’s tendency for knee-jerk reactions. Soon after the judgment, users found that PTA had blocked the entire site and later resorted to shutting down other popular sites as well. If the authorities feared a violent public reaction, would it not have been enough to block just the offending section, rather than depriving millions of Internet surfers in Pakistan of the use of one of the most popular sites on the web? In fact, many users have been able to circumvent the restrictions by accessing the blocked material through proxy servers. After all, many users feel, and rightly so, that they can decide for themselves what is or is not offensive, and choose not to access material that is repugnant to their beliefs.

Meanwhile, we must ask ourselves why Pakistanis have reached a juncture where they have played right into the hands of those who think nothing of displaying or publishing material that denigrates their beliefs. By reacting the way we do we only harm ourselves and, in the process, even become a subject of derision. The irony was evident in the protests over the Danish newspaper caricatures some years ago. The fallout was arson and looting of our own assets. In the present case, while other Muslim countries, Egypt, Bangladesh and Turkey among them, have witnessed resentment against the Facebook competition the site was not blocked, nor were there reports of violence. The war on terror has divided the world, and the misuse of technology to deride beliefs and hurt feelings will not stop. Pakistanis should learn to protest peacefully, and in a manner that does not deprive other Pakistanis of their rights.

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Google teams with Sony, Intel on 'smart' Web TV

SAN FRANCISCO: Google believes it has come up with the technology to unite Web surfing with channel surfing on televisions.

To reach the long-elusive goal, Google has joined forces with Sony, Intel and Logitech.

The companies were unveiling their much-anticipated plan for a ''smart'' TV on Thursday during a Google conference for about 5,000 software programmers.

The TVs are expected to go on sale in the fall. Pricing wasn't immediately announced.

Sony will make the TVs, which will rely on an Intel microprocessor. Google will provide the software, including its Android operating system and Chrome Web browser. Logitech will supply a special remote control and wireless keyboard.

Other companies have tried to turn televisions into Internet gateways with little success during the past decade. — AP

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Pakistan blocks YouTube over “blasphemous” material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network site Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” block of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he told Reuters.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a day for what it called un-Islamic videos.

PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.

“Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down,” he said.

He regretted that the administrators at the Facebook and YouTube had not taken the content off despite Pakistan's protests.

“Their attitude was in contravention to international resolutions and their own policies advertised on the Web for the general public,” Mehran said.

The PTA issued a statement Thursday saying, “PTA would welcome the concerned authorities of Facebook and YouTube to contact the PTA for resolving the issue at the earliest which ensures religious harmony and respect.”

The PTA decision to block all of Facebook also cut Pakistanis off from groups and pages dedicated to opposing the competition, which have thousands more supporters than the competition does.

Along with the ban, some popular websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan since Wednesday night. But the spokesman said it happened purely due to a technical reason and no orders were passed against them.

He said the authority was monitoring other websites as well.

“BLACKBERRY SERVICES”

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to a quarter of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

After the PTA's directives against Facebook and YouTube, Pakistani mobile companies blocked all Blackberry services on Wednesday night but restored services used by non-corporate users later on Thursday.

“We have intimated to the Blackberry service administrators in Canada to block them and once it's done, the service will be restored fully,” said Farhan Butt, an official at Pakistan's biggest cellular company, Mobilink.

The closure of services worried Blackberry users.

“The biggest concern for us ... is the delay in decision making,” said Zahid Sheikh, head of information technology department at National Foods Limited in Karachi city.

“Our top officials and senior management are not always in office. They do travel and work from remote locations, and with this shut down, they can't access emails.”

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

Read more...

Facebook access blocked on LHC order

LAHORE: The government blocked on Wednesday access to Facebook after the Lahore High Court ordered closure of the social networking website until May 31 for holding a competition of blasphemous drawings. Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry asked Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Director Mudassar Husain to file a detailed report on the matter.

The judge also sought assistance of petitioner Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ahmed and other lawyers on relevant international laws.

The PTA director told the court that the closure of the website would damage the national economy. He said the country could lose the internet facility after blocking access to the website.

He said the PTA had already blocked links to the controversial webpage which had hosted the competition, instead of blocking the whole website. He said the link had been blocked on Tuesday evening.

The official’s remarks infuriated many lawyers present in the courtroom and Advocate Mohammad Azhar Siddique said that Muslims were ready to suffer any loss to curb blasphemy.

The judge asked both parties to sit together, find a solution to the dispute and return to the court after break.

Consultations held in the deputy attorney general’s office remained inconclusive and the matter was left for the court to decide.

When the hearing resumed, the judge ordered that the website be blocked till May 31, the next date of hearing.

Chaudhry Zulfiqar of the Islamic Lawyers’ Forum had said that Article 2-A of the Constitution envisaged that no practice against religion could be allowed in the country. He said the website having various features against the injunctions of Islam was banned in a number of Muslim countries.

After the court’s decision, the PTA ordered all the operators in the country to block the website, www.facebook.com, until further orders. It said the directives had been issued by the ministry of information technology and telecommunication in view of the LHC’s order.

On Tuesday, the PTA had instructed all concerned to block the objectionable link/URL on Facebook which was immediately blocked.

The authority has set up a crisis cell to monitor such contents and announced that toll free number 0800-55055 and email address complaint@pta.gov.pk can be used to notify it of URLs where objectionable material is available.

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Facebook may make disputed page inaccessible in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: Facebook is disappointed at being blocked in Pakistan over a contest that encourages users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and may make the offending page inaccessible to users there, the social network said late Wednesday.

“We are very disappointed with the Pakistani courts’ decision to block Facebook without warning, and suspect our users there feel the same way,” Facebook said in a statement to AFP.

“We are analyzing the situation and the legal considerations, and will take appropriate action, which may include making this content inaccessible to users in Pakistan,” it said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook on a court order over a competition created by a Facebook user who set up a page called “Draw Mohammed Day,” inviting people to send in caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) on May 20.

Islam strictly prohibits depictions of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) as blasphemous and Muslims around the world staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of the prophet in European newspapers in 2006.

The statement from the Palo Alto, California-based social network said “we want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights and feelings of others.

“With now more than 400 million users from around the world, we sometimes find people discussing and posting about topics that others may find controversial, inaccurate, or offensive,” it said.

“While some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone — criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle, or political ideology, for example — that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion,” it said.

“We strongly believe that Facebook users have the freedom to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content, groups or pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas.”

The statement noted that “Nazi content is illegal in some countries” but said “that does not mean it should be removed entirely from Facebook.”

“Most companies approach this issue by preventing certain content from being shown to users in the countries where it is illegal and that is our approach as well,” it added.

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