Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Zardari leaves for 15-day foreign tour
The first leg of the tour is in the UAE from where he would leave for the UK on September 17. During his three day stay in UK, he would hold talks with British authorities and it is expected that he would meet Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) Chief Altaf Hussain.
On September 20, the president would arrive in New York where he would co-chair the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) summit on September 24 with US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The date and President Barack Obama’s participation were confirmed recently after Pakistan’s Ambassador to United States Husain Haqqani’s visit to the White House. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had originally mooted the idea of the summit.
According to the sources, the summit will affirm international support for Pakistan at a time when Pakistan is facing grave challenges of rooting out terrorism and extremism.
‘The extremism problem that we face was created in the 1980s when the whole world collaborated to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, so it is natural that the whole world should cooperate in dealing with the consequences,’ said a Pakistani official.
Several heads of state, who will be attending the United Nations General Assembly, are likely to attend the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Summit.
Those who have already confirmed their participation include the French president, the prime ministers of Turkey and Sweden and the crown prince of United Arab Emirates.
The summit will consider ways of bolstering the Pakistani government and ensuring stability in the region surrounding the country. It is also likely to signal international support for continuity of the democratic process in Pakistan under the current elected leadership.
Sources in economic and statistic affairs division said it is unexpected that Pakistan would get cash aid at the summit. However, Pakistan would table the Malakand development projects worth $2 billion in the meeting, sources added.
President Zardari would also meet US President Barack Obama during his stay in New York and hold talks with the Turkish prime minister on the sidelines of the FoDP meeting, sources added.
In his meeting with US President Barack Obama, President Zardari would discuss bilateral issues, demand transfer of drone technology and urge the US to ensure the establishment of economic opportunity zones in tribal areas, sources said. The war on terror and the recent operation Rahe-e-Rast against militants would also came under discussion during the meeting.—Online
Key Taliban Commander Arrested in Swat Valley
Security forces said Wednesday they captured Taliban commander Sher Mohammad Qasab in the Swat Valley.
Qasab is known for his brutality among locals in the valley.
A military spokesman said Qasab was wounded and three of his sons died during an exchange of fire before his arrest.
Pakistani forces have arrested key Taliban commanders recently in the valley, including Muslim Khan, the central spokesman for the militants.
Authorities say the arrests have weakened the Taliban and are helping security forces conduct successful raids against other militants in the area.
Indian Intelligence asks government to block VoIP calls
The IB opines that presently India does not have the capabilities to track internet telephony calls from both domestic and international callers and has asked the DoT find an early solution to the issue, which is in the interest of national security.
"In the absence of Caller Line Identification (CLI) parameters of calls landing from abroad, it's next to impossible to identify the country of location of the caller. Also, a number of service providers in India have started providing VoIP solutions for making calls both domestics as well as foreign. The calls passing through the VoIP/IP route contain inadequate parameters making it impossible to trace the actual callers. As DoT had conveyed that it is not possible to mandate transmission of CLI from abroad, we had approached DoT to block such calls till a technical solution is found," said the Intelligence Bureau.
If the DoT implements the IB directive, it will impact thousands of consumers who use the internet to make low cost phone calls and free computer calls across the globe. The MTNL in Delhi and Mumbai as well as many leading ISPs offer internet telephony services. Skype, Google, Yahoo and Windows Live also provide such services to the customers.
TRAI's latest performance indicators report defines that there were over 130 million minutes of internet telephony recorded in the January-March quarter 2009. This report also adds that 34 Internet Service Provider (ISPs) offer net telephony services in India legally.
"The terrorists used net telephony as they were aware that India did not have the technological capabilities to do a live trace of such calls. In the U.S. and Europe, all players who offer VoIP services have provisions that allow governments to track these calls. Many of them have also installed equipment at their premises to monitor VoIP calls upon orders from governments," said Vijay Mukhi, Cyber Security Expert.
The IB's communication to the DoT also covers many other security related issues including the presence of Chinese equipment vendors like Huawei and ZTE providing equipment such as routers and switches to private operators and state owned BSNL.
IB has pointed out that Huawei is using state-owned Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) to manufacture equipment in India, but did not actually transfer the technology, thus posing a security threat to the country.
Swine flu: Karnataka blames IT professionals
"Pollution and less precaution on the part of IT people have worsened the situation. IT people travel a lot and during the initial days they hardly took any precaution," said Perumal.
In terms of swine flu fatalities, Karnataka is second only to Maharashtra, which has seen 72 deaths from the disease so far. The health secretary said even companies like Infosys had failed to do their duty in helping people take precaution against the disease, which has affected nearly 700 people in the state.
"They have become conscious, but initially none of these IT guys, even Infosys, took the required precaution. I have information that now they have started conducting regular health checkups of employees," he added.
He said pollution in Bangalore is making respiratory diseases intensify and there are hundreds of cases of pneumonia in the state. Health experts have said people with respiratory problems and pneumonia are at high risk at a time when the H1N1 infection is spreading fast.
"Pneumonia is affecting the swine flu situation. We have experienced some 200-300 pneumonia cases in the last couple of months in Bangalore alone. What can I do? The pollution is so heavy here," the secretary said.
Last year too the IT capital had reported over 300 cases of pneumonia in this season, he said.
Statistics show that the ambient air quality in the Karnataka capital is deteriorating rapidly. The amount of nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide and suspended particulate matter is much higher in the air and is leading to respiratory problems among people.
With over 2.5 million vehicles plying on the narrow roads of Bangalore, the air quality is definitely worsening gradually.
"Look at the number of vehicles," Perumal said. The health secretary said he had asked all hospitals and IT firms to report to swine flu screening centres if any of their employees was suffering from pneumonia or swine flu symptoms.
"Now, we have roped in 90 private hospitals across the state for the job. As you know, the government has made swine flu treatment free even in private hospitals. We pay Rs 2,000 to these hospitals for treating each swine flu patient and Rs 3,000 extra for conducting the test," Perumal added.
He also said the state government is distributing ayurvedic medicines to help people improve their immune system. "We are trying our best. The chief minister is taking extra care and has asked us to work hard to curb the virus."
Three die as container falls on car in Karachi
KARACHI: At least three including two children were killed when a container fell on a car at a Quaidabad Bridge here, Geo News reported Wednesday.
According to Chhipa sources, at least two children have reportedly been killed in the incident.
Heavy machinery was called to cut the car so that the bodies could be taken out from the vehicle. A five-year old child has been recovered from the car
According to eyewitness, the container turned over the car while overtaking the car on the bridge.
Facebook grows and makes money
The world's largest social networking site just got bigger with the announcement it has 300 million active monthly users from around the globe.
Facebook also revealed that it had started making money ahead of schedule.
The company had not expected to start turning a profit until sometime in 2010.
"This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"We are succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. We are just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone.
"We face a lot of fun and important challenges that require rethinking the current systems for enabling information flow across the web," Mr Zuckerberg said in a blog post.
'Milestones'
The news that Facebook had passed these two benchmarks was made at TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco, a conference for start ups.
Facebook hit the 250 million user mark back in July. It is estimated that the site is gaining about five million new users a week, or 50 million in the last 75 days.
"Passing these milestones to me means we can continue to fund our development and our innovation and be self sustaining as we grow this network," Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's vice-president of engineering, told BBC News.
"We think 300 million is a just a step on the way to get as much of the entire world on the social network communicating with the friends and family and the people they want to communicate with."
"That Facebook is able to continue this growth and build a "cash-flow positive" business is an impressive feat," said Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook.com.
"If the company can cover the cost of scaling to one billion users and still manage to break even, there's no doubt that the company will have a great opportunity to rake in billions," added Mr O'Neill.
Facebook's Mr Schroepfer said the company had worked hard to get more money flowing in than out.
"The growth of the network has certainly helped us go cash-positive and the engineering team has done a lot of innovation on our ad products, as our business is primarily advertising-funded.
"As more and more of the world gets on the network, people and advertisers realise the power of sharing information, whether it's about a movie preview or a car," said Mr Schroepfer.
Look out Twitter, said Ben Parr, who is associate editor at the social media blog Mashable.com.
"If Facebook continues to open up its platform and adopt Twitter's best features, it could spell trouble for the Twitterverse. The world's largest social network is on the warpath," warned Mr Parr.
