World news overnight online 01-13-2014 | Sci

It is nearly 25 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote his initial proposal for a distributed information system based on hypertext, in March 1989. "Vague, but exciting," was how supervisor Mike Sendall greeted the idea, proposed to help connect the work of several thousand atom-smashing scientists, researchers and administrators at Cern – the European home of nuclear research and the large hadron collider.

The plan was a non-linear organisation system based on hypertext –quite the hot topic in late 80s computing circles – that would improve on the previous system that let documents be stored and printed. "A linked system," wrote Berners-Lee, "would allow one to browse through concepts, documents, systems and authors, also allowing references between documents to be stored."

"The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness of the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use."

Berners-Lee, with the help of colleague Robert Cailliau, later formalised the proposal and extended its ambitions to be a network for the world – the world wide web. By the end of 1990 Berners-Lee had put together the first server and web pages, and the first web browser for the NeXT operating system – this was the computer company founded by Steve Jobs during his interregnum from Apple. Another Cern colleague Nicola Pellow wrote a generic browser for other operating systems, and the first public page was published on 6 August 1991 at info.cern.ch.

Quite what scale of "critical threshold" Berners-Lee had in mind for the nascent project was not clear, but he could never have imagined the diversity, the ubiquity and the functionality of the web today in all the myriad forms we know.

CGI Federal, a subsidiary of CGI Group, built the website, HealthCare.gov, which was plagued by error messages and slow speeds for weeks after the launch. The glitches created a political crisis for President Barack Obama, threatening the roll-out of his signature healthcare law and emboldening Republican foes to call for its repeal.

"As CMS moves forward in our efforts to help consumers access quality, affordable health coverage, we have selected Accenture to become the lead contractor for the HealthCare.gov portal and to prepare for next year's open enrollment period," the agency said in a statement.

CGI Federal said on Friday that its contract, which was originally awarded in 2011 and is scheduled to end February 28, would not be renewed.

Accenture said the contract was worth $45 million for the initial phase of the project, and the Washington Post reported that the final value of the one-year contract would be about $90 million.

"Accenture will bring deep healthcare industry insight as well as proven experience building large-scale, public-facing websites to continue improving HealthCare.gov," David Moskovitz, chief executive of Accenture Federal Services, said in a statement.

Obama has said the fiasco with the website has made him want to overhaul the way the federal government buys technology services. Critics say the system favors large, established contractors such as CGI.

Although the site is vastly improved, technical glitches continue to bedevil enrollment. The improvements allowed more than 1.1 million people to shop for and enroll in insurance on HealthCare.gov by the end of 2013, far short of original hopes.

After months of aggressive moves by T-Mobile US to lure customers from other carriers, No. 2 operator AT&T Inc counter-attacked on January 3 by offering to pay consumers to switch from T-Mobile.

Days later, No. 3 ranked Sprint Corp promised big discounts for family and friend groups. On Wednesday, T-Mobile upped the ante, saying it would pay hefty exit costs for converts.

The moves by Sprint and AT&T come after No. 4 U.S. operator T-Mobile, a long-time industry straggler, was able to report three full quarters of customer growth after four years of losses.

While discounts are always welcomed by consumers, the intensifying competition is a new challenge to a U.S. industry long used to imposing its will on consumers, and analysts fear it could result in the loss of billions of dollars of revenue.

Investors had hoped AT&T and market leader Verizon Wireless would be able to shrug off T-Mobile's moves, since they already control about two-thirds of the market.

AT&T had previously said that T-Mobile's efforts only concerned the most cost-conscious customers, who are not its or Verizon's primary targets.

AT&T stayed on the sidelines for months in the face of public criticism of its services from T-Mobile's outspoken chief executive officer, John Legere. Now that the company is fighting back, even industry leaders could face tighter margins, say analysts.

"The most disappointing thing is that AT&T is reacting to T-Mobile," said Jefferies analyst Michael McCormack. "How long is it before Verizon reacts?"

While AT&T did not change its service rates, it is offering customers a $200 credit to switch to its network.

The company is the easiest target for T-Mobile, which it tried to buy in 2011, since they use the same technology, so it is simple for customers to switch between services. T-Mobile U.S. is 67 percent owned by Deutsche Telekom.

Their battle got more personal at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas when AT&T kicked Legere out of its party, a concert featuring rapper Macklemore.

At T-Mobile's own event, Legere, sporting his customary pink company tee-shirt under a leather jacket, took to the stage to make fun of AT&T and its executives in a profanity-sprinkled speech.

Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe sees the "unhealthy market dynamic" getting worse, since he is not convinced AT&T's incentives to T-Mobile switchers will end there.

The company, founded in 2009 by Mike McCue, former chief executive of telephone app specialist Tellme, and Evan Doll, once senior iPhone engineer at Apple, launched "the world's first social magazine" for iPad in 2010. The app allowed users to create digital magazines, which mimic the experience of a print publication, from updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Flipboard immediately began to pivot towards more traditional media, however. In December 2010 it created a framework for publishers to "iPadify" their work, enabling readers to "flip" selected magazine content from publishers' Twitter and Facebook feeds into Flipboard pages. Then in March 2013 it launched Flipboard 2.0, which included an open curation platform that allowed users to create their own Flipboard magazines by adding content from across the web at the touch of a button.

At the time, Flipboard had 50 million users. This had risen to 100 million by December 2013, when the company closed a $100m funding round that valued Flipboard at $800m. McCue anticipates an even stronger performance this year. "Do I think we can pass 150 million users in 2014? Oh yeah," he says. And 200 million? "I hate to be quoted on specific projections. But I think that the growth will continue and the pace will accelerate."

Key to this is Flipboard 2.0, which McCue says has been a huge success, up from the 3m personal magazines created by September 2013 to the present figure of more than 5m. "This has taken off like wildfire," McCue says, highlighting the "incredibly deep and broad" range of topics these magazines cover. "If you are into cartography, map-making, for example, there are a whole load of magazines about that. This is just the beginning. As we further enhance the curation abilities you are going to get higher and higher quality magazines."

"Capitals have confirmed the result of the talks in Geneva ... the Geneva deal will be implemented from January 20," Marzieh Afkham, spokeswoman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Tehran, the semi-official Mehr news agency said.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also confirmed the date, and said the sides would now ask the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to verify the deal's implementation.

"We will ask the IAEA to undertake the necessary nuclear-related monitoring and verification activities," she said in a statement.

Ashton represents the six powers - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - in contacts with Iran related to its controversial nuclear program.

Senior officials from the European Union and Iran met in Geneva on Thursday and Friday to iron out remaining practical questions related to the implementation of the November 24 deal, under which Iran agreed to curb its most sensitive nuclear work in return for some relief from Western economic sanctions.

EU spokesman Michael Mann said on Friday that any agreements would need to be validated by the governments of Iran and the six powers.

The accord is designed to last six months and the parties hope to use the time to negotiate a final, broad settlement governing the scope of Iran's nuclear program.

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the security breaches.

Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.

Only one well-known retailer, Neiman Marcus, has said that they too have been victim of a cyber attack since Target's December 19 disclosure that some 40 million payment card numbers had been stolen in a cyber attack. On Friday, Target said the data breach was worse than initially thought.

An investigation found that hackers stole the personal information of at least 70 million customers, including names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses. Neiman Marcus said it was not sure if the breach was related to the Target incident.

Most states have laws that require companies to contact customers when certain personal information is compromised. In many cases the task of notification falls on the credit card issuer.

Merchants are required to report breaches of personal information including social security numbers. It was not immediately clear if that was the case with the retailers who were attacked around the same time as Target.

The Secret Service and Department of Justice, which are investigating the Target breach, declined to comment on Saturday.

SCRAPING MEMORY

Target has not disclosed how the attackers managed to breach its network or siphon off some of its most sensitive data.

The sources who spoke to Reuters about the breaches said that investigators believe the attackers used similar techniques and pieces of malicious software to steal data from Target and other retailers.

A defiant Rodriguez said he would take the fight to clear his name all the way to federal court and according to reports has plans to take part in the Yankees' spring training next month.

Arbitrator Fredric Horowitz notified both MLB and the Players Association that Rodriguez, who is baseball's best paid player, "will be suspended for a period that includes 162 regular season games in the 2014 regular season as well as the entire 2014 post season", the league said in a statement.

The ban, the longest ever in baseball but reduced from his original 211-game suspension, will cost the 14-time All-Star $25 million in salary and cast an even darker shadow over his bid to claim MLB's home run throne.

The 38-year-old slugger currently sits fifth on the all-time home run list with 654. Barry Bonds, who was under investigation for performance-enhancing drugs during his career, tops the list with 762.

Rodriguez was handed the 211-game ban by the league last season after he was implicated in an investigation into the now shuttered Florida anti-aging clinic Biogenesis that is alleged to have distributed performance enhancing drugs.

He appealed the ruling and later sued both MLB and Commissioner Bud Selig, accusing them of trying to destroy his reputation and career.

"For more than five decades, the arbitration process under the Basic Agreement has been a fair and effective mechanism for resolving disputes and protecting player rights," MLB said in a statement.

"While we believe the original 211-game suspension was appropriate, we respect the decision rendered by the panel and will focus on our continuing efforts on eliminating performance-enhancing substances from our game."

The Yankees, who will still owe Rodriguez a total of $61 million for three more seasons plus bonuses for reaching home run milestones after he returns from his suspension, said in a statement that they accepted the arbitrator's decision.

"The New York Yankees respect Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, the arbitration process, as well as the decision released today by the arbitration panel," said the Yankees.

Rodriguez, who has never failed a drug test but admitted using performance-enhancing drugs early in his career, issued a lengthy statement maintaining his position that he has been the victim of an MLB witch hunt.

Loathed by many Arabs and a divisive figure within Israel, Sharon left his mark on the region as perhaps no other through military invasion, Jewish settlement building on captured land and a shock decision to pull out of Gaza.

A commander in the army from the birth of Israel in 1948, he went on to hold many of the top offices of state, surviving fierce debate over his role in refugee camp massacres in the 1982 Lebanon war to be elected prime minister in 2001.

Famously overweight, he suffered a stroke that put him into a coma in 2006, when he was at the height of his power, and died on Saturday without ever apparently regaining consciousness.

Some diplomats believed that had he remained in good health, he would have secured peace with the Palestinians after overcoming domestic critics to force through the withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

"As one who fought in all of Israel's wars, and learned from personal experience that without proper force, we do not have a chance of surviving in this region ... I have also learned from experience that the sword alone cannot decide this bitter dispute in this land," Sharon said in 2004, explaining his move.

But critics said the unilateralism he favored helped discredit diplomacy and embolden ideological hardliners.

As prime minister, Sharon presided over some of the most turbulent times in Israeli-Palestinian history, a Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000 and an Israeli military crackdown after peace talks collapsed. As Israel's leader, he besieged his arch-nemesis Yasser Arafat with tanks after suicide bombers flooded Israel from the occupied West Bank.

Long a champion of Jewish settlement on land Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war, Sharon, serving in 1998 as foreign minister, urged settlers in the West Bank to "run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours".

He said the contested decision to quit the Gaza Strip, which pulled apart his Likud party and persuaded him to form a new political force, would enable Israel to strengthen its hold over "territory which is essential to our existence".

The change, which Google announced on Thursday, broadens the list of contacts available to Gmail users so it includes both the email addresses of their existing contacts, as well as the names of people on the Google+ social network. As a result, a person can send an email directly to friends, and strangers, who use Google+.

Google is increasingly trying to integrate its Google+, a two-and-a-half-year old social network that has 540 million active users, with its other services. When consumers sign up for Gmail, the company's Web-based email service, they are now automatically given a Google+ account.

Google said the new feature will make it easier for people who use both services to communicate with their friends.

"Have you ever started typing an email to someone only to realize halfway through the draft that you haven't actually exchanged email addresses?" the company said in a blog post announcing the feature. "You're in luck, because now it's easier for people using Gmail and Google+ to connect over email."

Google said that users who did not wish to receive email messages from other people on Google+ could switch the settings so that they receive messages only from people they have added to their networks of friends or from no one at all.

Some privacy advocates said Google should have made the new feature "opt-in," meaning that users should explicitly agree to receive messages from other Google+ users, rather than being required to manually change the setting.

Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the new feature "troubling."

"There is a strong echo of the Google Buzz snafu," he said, referring to a social networking service that Google launched in 2010. Buzz initially used its Gmail users' contact lists to create social networks that the rest of the world could see, leading to an uproar and ultimately a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Google said the new feature would not expose the email addresses of any Google+ users to strangers. Emails from strangers on Google+ will be routed to a special section within the recipients mailbox that is separate from messages from friends and other contacts. If the recipient does not reply to the message, Gmail will block any future messages from that person.

A Google spokeswoman said the company planned to send an email to all Google+ users during the next two days alerting them to the change and explaining how to change their settings.

Elliptic Vault uses "deep cold storage", where private encrypted keys to bitcoins are stored on offline servers and in a secure location.

The facility's founders say they are the "first in the world" to offer insurance for Bitcoin owners.

Stolen bitcoins cannot be recovered as all transactions are irreversible.

Online wallets used to store bitcoins have been subject to a number of cyber-attacks and some users have also suffered from accidental loss.

James Howells lost about £4.6m when he threw away his hard drive, forgetting that he had bitcoins stored on it.

Unlike money stored in a conventional bank, bitcoins are not insured and there is no way of retrieving them once they are gone.

'Obvious step' "One of the main concerns people have with Bitcoin is that it's quite difficult to store securely," Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson told the BBC.

"Offering people insurance seemed an obvious step." But convincing an insurance firm to trust the nascent currency was not an easy task. "It was very difficult to find an insurer," said Mr Robinson, an Oxford graduate with a PhD in physics who started the company with two friends. "The industry is very conservative and they did not understand Bitcoin.

"They were also influenced by the negative publicity Bitcoin received, although this has improved since Silk Road [an online marketplace] was taken down and stopped dominating the Bitcoin agenda."

Layers of security The company is underwritten by Lloyd's of London, which will give people "more faith in the Bitcoin system", according to Emily Spaven, managing editor of CoinDesk, a digital currency news site.

Insurance payouts will be calculated using the Bitcoin to US dollar exchange rate at the time a claim is made. Elliptic's focus is on storing bitcoins as securely as possible, using what Mr Robinson calls "deep cold storage" techniques.

Bitcoin keys are encrypted and stored offline. There are multiple copies, protected by layers of cryptographic and physical security.

The copies are accessible only via a quorum of Elliptic's directors.

What may sound like a shortcoming is in fact a deliberate strategy by manufacturer Daimler, and a sign of things to come for the global luxury car industry.

Owners of the upscale Mercedes compact will be able to add new functions such as predictive cruise control - which lets the car drive itself in some situations - by updating the car's operating system when the technology becomes available.

Taking their cue from gadget makers such as Apple, Daimler and rivals are developing cars to receive software updates that include new tools or even improve fuel efficiency, much in the way an iPad gets new capabilities with each successive operating system.

That is a big change - and a potential saving - for an industry used to spending heavily to revamp ageing models.

"We are entering a new era," Mercedes-Benz development chief Thomas Weber told Reuters. "Until now, cars retained the properties they had on the day they were purchased."

Daimler's push shows software is emerging as a new battleground among carmakers seeking to use technology to make cars safer, more entertaining, and better at solving problems such as locating a parking space or the nearest hospital.

While the aircraft industry has long relied on computers to fly planes, cars have been held back by insufficient broadband telecoms infrastructure, the price of computing power and regulatory limits to automation.

But software is now set to become as important to carmakers as traditional engineering, according to Thilo Koslowski, an analyst with IT and research group Gartner Inc.

"What we are witnessing is a change that will impact the industry for decades to come," said Koslowski, who used to work at German luxury carmaker Audi. "The next venue of competitive differentiation will come from software."

SMART CAR

While some drivers remain skeptical about surrendering control, many are ready to embrace functions which let them access information, make calls, e-mail or listen to music in traffic, according to auto supplier Continental, which interviewed 4,000 car owners in Germany, Japan, U.S. and China.

"What a customer knows from his smartphone, he will also expect from his car," Mercedes' Weber said in an interview.

With less than two weeks to go before what is hoped will be the first peace talks between the opposition and Assad's government, disparate opposition groups met for the first time in the Spanish city of Cordoba. They agreed to work together but did not agree who, if any of them, should attend the peace talks.

Nearly three years into a conflict that has driven a quarter of Syrians from their homes and killed more than 130,000 people, the opposition to Assad is fragmenting.

In rebel-held areas, other groups have turned against the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which aims to construct an Islamist caliphate straddling the border separating Syria and Iraq.

In a coordinated offensive, rival armed groups have seized several ISIL strongholds in Aleppo, on the border with Turkey, and further east in Raqqa, the only city fully under control of Assad's foes.

But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIL fighters pushed back the rival rebels on the eastern approaches of Raqqa on Friday. They also killed 20 fighters in the town of al-Bab, northeast of Aleppo, the UK-based monitoring group said.

Prospects for progress at the peace talks in Switzerland appear dim. Assad, buttressed by recent military gains and the worst rebel infighting since the civil war began, has ruled out demands from the weakened opposition that he stand aside.

Most rebels are opposed to the negotiations, known as Geneva 2, and the main opposition group in exile, the National Coalition, has delayed a final decision on whether to attend the talks until just days before their January 22 start date.

Members of the Coalition met for the first time on Friday with members of the Damascus-based opposition tolerated by Assad. Islamist rebel figures were also present at the meeting in Cordoba, Spain, part of an effort by Western backers to unify the opposition ahead of the Geneva talks.

The various groups agreed to set up a committee to coordinate Assad's opponents but did not reach conclusions about whether to attend the peace talks. Their final communiqué repeated the demand Assad be excluded from any transition. Major Islamist and internal opposition groups did not attend.