World news. 06-10-2013 ScienceTechnology Google

The report on the website of financial newspaper Globes did not cite sources or provide further details.

Last month sources told Reuters the Internet search giant was in talks to acquire Waze, while a second Israeli newspaper reported Facebook was willing to pay up to $1 billion for the firm.

Facebook is delving deeper into mobile technology as it tries to expand its user base.

He gave no details on the number of attacks but said "vital national systems" had been targeted. Water, power and banking sites were also under threat, he added.

"In the past few months, we have identified a significant increase in the scope of cyber attacks on Israel by Iran. These attacks are carried out directly by Iran and through its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah," he told a conference on cyber warfare in his country's commercial hub Tel Aviv.

"Despite the non-stop attacks on us, you hear only about a few of them because we thwart most of them," he added.

Netanyahu established a national cyber directorate in 2011 charged with protecting Israel's computer systems from disruption.

Israel and the United States are widely believed to be behind a series of cyber attacks in recent years against an Iranian nuclear program they say is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful.

Google Inc, Facebook Inc and Microsoft Corp are among the big U.S. technology companies that were outed this week as key sources of data for the National Security Agency (NSA), under a surveillance program referred to inside the spy agency as Prism.

While the companies have uniformly denied knowledge of Prism and said they had not given the NSA direct access to their servers, U.S. officials have confirmed the existence of the program, which President Barack Obama defended as "a modest encroachment" on privacy that was necessary to protect national security.

The program relies on section 702 of the 2008 amended version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lets the government collect electronic communications for the purpose of acquiring intelligence on non-U.S. targets that pose a threat to national security.

For electronic service providers, the law says the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington can authorize a company to provide "all information, facilities, or assistance necessary." In return for compliance, the company is compensated for its work and receives immunity from potential lawsuits.

Section 702 is a "broad tool to get the information they are looking for," said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco civil liberties group critical of the law.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court overwhelmingly approves FISA requests from the NSA, according to Justice Department reports. In 2012, the court received 1,856 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches. All were approved except for one, which the government withdrew before the court could rule.

All of the court's cases are kept secret, including rulings, and companies are not given details about the investigations they have been asked to provide information for, legal experts familiar with the process say. That encourages compliance as corporate lawyers do not want to hinder probes that may help prevent a terrorist attack, for example.

Any company that objects to a judge's order can appeal to the entire Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but there is no public data on whether they have ever done so. The law allows for further appeals to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court.

Writing in Nature Neuroscience, they said further research into the Arc protein's role could help in finding new ways to fight neurological diseases.

The same protein may also be a factor in autism, the study said.

Recent research found Arc lacking in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

Dr Steve Finkbeiner, professor of neurology and physiology at the University of California, who led the research at Gladstone Institutes, said lab work showed that the role of the Arc protein was crucial.

"Scientists knew that Arc was involved in long-term memory, because mice lacking the Arc protein could learn new tasks, but failed to remember them the next day," he said.

Further experiments revealed that Arc acted as a "master regulator" of the neurons during the process of long-term memory formation.

Continue reading the main story

The study explained that during memory formation, certain genes must be switched on and off at very specific times in order to generate proteins that help neurons lay down new memories.

The authors found that it was Arc that directed this process, from inside the nucleus.

Dr Finkbeiner said people who lack the protein could have memory problems.

"Scientists recently discovered that Arc is depleted in the hippocampus, the brain's memory centre, in Alzheimer's disease patients.

"It's possible that disruptions to the homeostatic scaling process may contribute to the learning and memory deficits seen in Alzheimer's."

The study says that dysfunctions in Arc production and transport could also be a vital player in autism. The genetic disorder Fragile X syndrome, for example, which is a common cause of both mental disabilities and autism, directly affects the production of Arc in neurons.

The office hasn't offered a new update since informing the world Saturday that Mandela was in "serious but stable condition" at a Pretoria hospital with a recurring lung infection.

Visitors to the website of the South African president's office got error messages Sunday.

Reached via e-mail Sunday, presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told CNN he did not have an update to offer.

Mandela, 94, has become increasingly frail, and has been in and out of hospitals in recent years.

Each time he has done so, he has sparked concerns worldwide.

'We will release him'

On Sunday, the front page of South Africa's Sunday Times read, "It's time to let him go." The paper quoted Mandela's longtime friend Andrew Mlangeni as saying that the time may have come for South Africans to say goodbye to the beloved icon.

"You have been coming to the hospital too many times. Quite clearly you are not well and there is a possibility you might not be well again," Mlangeni told the paper.

"Once the family releases him, the people of South Africa will follow. We will say thank you, God, you have given us this man, and we will release him too," Mlangeni said.

Lawmaker invites ire

While lawmakers in South Africa and abroad tweeted their well wishes, Nick Griffin, the head of the far-right British National Party invited the anger of Twitter users when he called Mandela "a murdering old terrorist." "Saint #nelsonmandela on last legs it seems. Make sure to avoid BBC when the murdering old terrorist croaks. It'll be nauseating," he posted on Twitter on Saturday.

Mandela was hospitalized early Saturday after the state of his health deteriorated in the last few days, Maharaj said earlier. Mandela was breathing on his own, Maharaj said.

Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, is at the hospital with him, sources told CNN. She canceled her plans to attend the Hunger Summit meeting in London on Saturday.

History of ailments

A series of media sting operations has already thrust the issue into the limelight and forced one lawmaker, Patrick Mercer, to resign from the ruling Conservative Party.

Three members of Britain's upper house of parliament have also been covertly filmed offering to ask parliamentary questions, lobby ministers and host events in exchange for cash.

In the latest covert recording, Tim Yeo, a former minister and the chairman of a powerful parliamentary energy committee, appeared to admit he had told a representative of a firm that is a subsidiary of a company he is paid to work for, what to say in front of his own committee.

Such conduct does not break rules which forbid lawmakers from taking cash for questions, but the Sunday Times newspaper said it had also got Yeo on camera explaining "how he could secretly help push private business in parliament for cash".

Yeo said he "totally rejected" all the allegations.

"The Sunday Times has chosen to quote very selectively from a recording obtained clandestinely during a conversation of nearly an hour-and-a-half in a restaurant with two undercover reporters, who purported to be representing a client from South Korea," he said in a statement.

Shaken by such scandals, the coalition government has promised to bring forward tighter rules in the coming weeks to ensure lobbying is more transparent.

Lobbying has the potential to become an embarrassing issue for Cameron.

He said before the 2010 general election that it was "the next big scandal waiting to happen," saying:

British and U.S. newspapers have suggested that the U.S. National Security Agency handed over information on Britons gathered under the PRISM program.

In his first remarks on the subject, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the two countries did share intelligence but that GCHQ's work was governed by a very strong legal framework.

"The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful," Hague told BBC TV on Sunday.

"It is nonsense".

Promising he would give a statement on the subject to the lower house of Britain's parliament on Monday, Hague said there was no threat to privacy or people's civil liberties.

He said was limited in what he could disclose.

"Of course we share a lot of information with the United States," he said, adding that the two countries enjoyed "an exceptional intelligence sharing relationship".

"But if information arrives in the UK from the U.S. it's governed by our laws."

Britain's two-party coalition government is under pressure to reveal more details of how Britain and the United States share intelligence after the reports, based on a leak, suggested such cooperation ran much deeper than was previously known.

"SNOOPERS' CHARTER BY THE BACK DOOR"

Critics said the collaboration amounted to a "snoopers' charter by the back door", accusing the security services of having much greater access to Britons' phone and electronic communications than allowed under British law thanks to the clandestine U.S. program.

But Hague said such fears were misplaced.

"Intelligence gathering in this country, by the UK, is governed by a very strong legal framework so that we get the balance right between the liberties and privacy of people and the security of the country."

Any intelligence gathering was "authorized, necessary, proportionate and targeted," he added, saying he personally authorized GCHQ intercepts "most days of the week".

There is public debate in Britain about giving the security services more powers to eavesdrop after a British soldier was brutally killed in London last month in an incident the government described as a "terrorist" attack.

Douglas Alexander, the opposition Labour party's spokesman for foreign affairs, welcomed Hague's promise to address parliament on the subject, but said he needed to be more open.

Early on, critics of the Islamic Republic had described the race as a sure-fire victory for one of the ruling establishment's loyalists. Ultra-conservatives have dominated the field of eight candidates, which is missing leading reformist candidates like former president Hashemi Rafsanjani.

He was disqualified without explanation during the vetting process carried out by the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and lawyers.

But there are strong signs that Rouhani is trying to revive Iran's dormant reform movement -- and some observers say that could give the 65-year-old cleric a fighting chance. Iranians head to the polling booths on Friday June 14. "He appears to be gaining ground daily," explains Tehran-based political analyst Sadegh Zibakalam.

"The more I hear about Rouhani, the more I'm encouraged that he might be able to be a spoiler in this election," adds Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

Rouhani's campaign gathered steam last month soon after his first live interview on state television. During his exchange with the show host, Rouhani did what few Iranian politicians dare do -- accuse Iran's state-run media of censorship and lies. Several video clips of the interview racked up thousands of views on YouTube. "He turned the host into a cutlet," a viewer wrote in the comment section.

Days later, Rouhani held a televised rally and whipped his supporters into a frenzy when he criticized the government's tight grip on security. "Why does there have to be a securitized atmosphere everywhere?" Rouhani asked the fired-up crowd. "We must crush the securitized atmosphere."

The command, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, about 25 miles north of Washington, is rushing to add between 3,000 and 4,000 new cyber warriors under its wing by late 2015, more than quadrupling its size.

Most of Cyber Command's new troops will focus on defense, detecting and stopping computer penetrations of military and other critical networks by America's adversaries like China, Iran or North Korea.

But there is an increasing focus on offense as military commanders beef up plans to execute cyber strikes or switch to attack mode if the nation comes under electronic assault.

"We're going to train them to the highest standard we can," Army General Keith Alexander, head of Cyber Command, told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit last month. "And not just on defense, but on both sides. You've got to have that."

Officials and experts have warned for years that U.S. computer networks are falling prey to espionage, intellectual property theft and disruption from nations such as China and Russia, as well as hackers and criminal groups. President Barack Obama will bring up allegations of Chinese hacking when he meets President Xi Jinping at a summit in California beginning on Friday - charges that Beijing has denied.

The Pentagon has accused China of using cyber espionage to modernize its military and a recent report said Chinese hackers had gained access to the designs of more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems in recent years. Earlier this year, U.S. computer security company Mandiant said a secretive Chinese military unit was probably behind a series of hacking attacks that had stolen data from 100 U.S. companies.

Meeting at the luxurious Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs in California, Obama will seek Xi's assurance that he takes seriously accusations of growing Chinese cyberspying, including snooping on advanced U.S. weapons designs.

"All nations need to abide by international norms and affirm clear rules of the road," a U.S. official told reporters in previewing the summit. "That's the backdrop to the discussions that the two presidents will have."

Dispute over cybersecurity could test the two leader's ability to get along when they meet in the Californian desert in talks that are billed as an informal get-to-know-you encounter.

Obama intends to tell Xi that Washington considers Beijing responsible for any cyberattacks originating from its territory and that it must take action, U.S. officials said.

But in his first meeting with Obama since taking over China's presidency in March, Xi may not be in a conciliatory mood.

He is expected to voice discomfort over Washington's strategic "pivot" toward Asia, a military rebalancing of U.S. forces toward the Pacific that Beijing sees as an effort to hamper its economic and political expansion.

And Obama's protests about Chinese cyberspying might be blunted by news that the U.S. government has been quietly collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Huawei, probably better known as a leading telecoms gear maker under fire from U.S. politicians over its potential links to the Chinese state, is looking to drive sales of its consumer devices, but is hobbled by not having effective consumer retail channels. Traditionally, it co-brands its devices with carriers.

In an interview on Friday, Guo told Reuters he sees this changing as Huawei shifts from focusing on the technology in its devices to better understanding consumers' tastes and perceptions.

"In some ways, (designing) a smartphone is in the middle of Silicon Valley and Hollywood," he said. "Silicon Valley represents technology - and smartphones need strong technology - and the Hollywood aspect is about experience and perception."

"It's like your beloved pet, you can't leave it. This is how we think about Huawei's consumer brand. It needs to be between Hollywood and Silicon Valley," he said on the sidelines of a business conference in Chengdu in southwestern China.

The consumer device push comes at a critical time for Huawei's telecommunication equipment business, which ranks behind Sweden's Ericsson in terms of market share and faces greater scrutiny from governments worldwide.

Just as Huawei tries to convince the West it's a safe company to do business with, a British parliamentary committee report on Thursday slammed the way in which ministers were not fully informed about a multi-billion pound deal for Huawei to supply equipment to BT Group Plc in 2005.

The ZenRobotics Recycler (ZRR) is an intelligent robot which separates construction materials on a conveyer belt, plucking out recyclable materials and depositing them in bins for collection. The robot is designed to replace manual sorting, which can be dangerous and frequently prohibitively expensive. Worldwide, the construction and demolition sector is thought to contribute over one third of all waste. The U.S. alone contributes a staggering 325 million tons of waste every year, and the UK produces another 120 million tons.

While household and municipal waste has fallen in recent years across the developed world, Waste Watch -- a not-for-profit sustainability organization based in the UK -- suggests that over 80% of all human waste that potentially could be recycled currently goes into landfill.

ZenRobotics founder Jufo Peltomaa notes that the problem is equally severe across the EU: "In the EU alone there's 900 million tons of construction and demolition waste. If you were to convert that to the average sized car, the queue would go 45 times around the globe."

Peltomaa and his team at ZenRobotics constructed the ZRR to help deal with this problem. "It's a really difficult job for robots and machine learning systems to do," says Peltomaa. "There are currently no such systems in the world, so our system is the first."

The ZRR identifies different types of waste using a process called "sensor fusion." By analysing the data, the sensors sort through objects on a conveyor belt and distribute them into surrounding chutes. The sensor fusion system uses a range of technologies including weight measurement, 3-D scanning, tactile assessment and spectrometer analysis, which measures how much light reflects from various different materials.

ZenRobotics believes its creation will help ease the burden of the repetitive and dangerous job of waste filtration, which is currently done manually.