World news. 06-17-2013 | Politics Ant

Twelve years later, though, Webvan is rising from the dead - in the form of an online grocery business called AmazonFresh.

Four key Amazon.com Inc executives - Doug Herrington, Peter Ham, Mick Mountz and Mark Mastandrea - are former Webvan officials who have spent years analyzing and fixing the problems that led to the start-up's demise.

Kiva Systems, the robotics company that Amazon bought last year for $775 million in one of its largest-ever acquisitions, was built on ideas and technologies originally developed at Webvan and is a key part of the AmazonFresh strategy.

Even Webvan's old Web address, webvan.com, is now part of the Amazon empire.

"We had a lot of Webvan DNA in the room and we drew on that experience a lot," said Tom Furphy, who helped start AmazonFresh with Herrington and Ham before leaving to become a venture capitalist. "That was a good formula for building the business responsibly."

Amazon declined to comment for this story, or make any AmazonFresh executives available for interviews.

Former Amazon and Webvan officials say Amazon drew three big lessons from the Webvan debacle: expand slowly, limit delivery to areas with a high concentration of potential customers, and focus relentlessly on warehouse efficiency.

The opportunity for Amazon is huge. The grocery business in the United States generated $568 billion in retail sales last year, with online accounting for less than 1 percent, and it's among the last major retail sectors that the online giant has yet to tackle.

But the risks are large as well. Groceries are a notoriously low-margin business, and the aggressive expansion of discounters like Walmart has made the business even more cutthroat than it was in Webvan's day.

And competition in the online grocery business is heating up. FreshDirect and Peapod have been plugging away for years, while traditional grocery chains like Safeway also do online ordering and delivery. Walmart is testing its own fast delivery service in some markets in the United States now.

SLOW EXPANSION

AmazonFresh now serves Seattle and Los Angeles, and it plans to launch in the San Francisco Bay Area later this year. If these cities go well, Amazon is eyeing 20 new markets for 2014.

The social-networking site said the requests, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, covered issues from local crime to national security.

Microsoft meanwhile said it received 6,000 and 7,000 requests for data from between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts.

Leaks by a former computer technician suggest the US electronic surveillance programme is far larger than was known. The firms denied the accusations, saying they gave no such access but did comply with lawful requests.

Several also called on the government to grant them permission to release data about the number of classified orders they received.

'Tiny fraction'

In an effort to reassure its users, Facebook lawyer Ted Ullyot wrote on the company's blog that following discussions with the relevant authorities it could for the first time report all US national security-related requests for data.

"As of today, the government will only authorise us to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range," he said. For the six months ending 31 December 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received was between 9,000 and 10,000, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

"These requests run the gamut - from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat," Mr Ullyot said.

"With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of 1% of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of US state, local, or federal US government request."

Mr Ullyot did not indicate to what extent the company had fulfilled the requests, but said Facebook had "aggressively" protected its users' data.

"We frequently reject such requests outright, or require the government to substantially scale down its requests, or simply give the government much less data than it has requested," he said.

Later, Microsoft also published information about the volume of national security orders during the second half of 2012, stressing that they had an impact on only "a tiny fraction of Microsoft's global customer base".

This month the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) banned Viber, another such tool, which like WhatsApp is hard for the state to monitor and deprives telecom companies of revenue from international calls and texts.

The kingdom appears to be making a greater push for more control over cyberspace as Internet and smart phone usage soars, in part due to strict laws that limit opportunities for people to mix in person.

"We have been communicating with WhatsApp and other similar communication platforms to get them to cooperate and comply with the Saudi telecom providers, however nothing has come of this communication yet," Abdullah Al-Darrab, governor of the CITC, told Arab News.

Al-Darrab said Viber was blocked last week for non-compliance, and that WhatsApp and Skype may be next on the list.

Asked when WhatsApp services would be blocked, the CITC chief said it was highly likely to be before the holy month of Ramadan which is expected to start on July 9.

The regulator issued a directive in March saying tools such as Viber, WhatsApp and Skype broke local laws, without specifying how.

Local media reported at the time that Saudi Arabia's three main operators Saudi Telecom Co, Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and Zain Saudi had been asked to tell CITC if they were able to monitor or block such applications.

Mobile penetration was 188 percent by the end of 2012, CITC data shows. Saudi Arabia now has 15.8 million Internet subscribers and the average user watches three times as many online videos per day as counterparts in the United States, according to YouTube.

About 30 of the superpressure balloons are being launched from New Zealand from where they will drift around the world on a controlled path.

Attached equipment will offer 3G-like speeds to 50 testers in the country.

Access will be intermittent, but in time the firm hopes to build a big enough fleet to offer reliable links to people living in remote areas.

It says that balloons could one day be diverted to disaster-hit areas to aid rescue efforts in situations where ground communication equipment has been damaged.

But one expert warns that trying to simultaneously navigate thousands of the high-altitude balloons around the globe's wind patterns will prove a difficult task to get right.

Airborne for months

Google calls the effort Project Loon and acknowledges it is "highly experimental" at this stage. Each balloon is 15m (49.2ft) in diameter - the length of a small plane - and filled with lifting gases. Electronic equipment hangs underneath including radio antennas, a flight computer, an altitude control system and solar panels to power the gear.

Google aims to fly the balloons in the stratosphere, 20km (12 miles) or more above the ground, which is about double the altitude used by commercial aircraft and above controlled airspace.

Google says each should stay aloft for about 100 days and provide connectivity to an area stretching 40km in diameter below as they travel in a west-to-east direction.

The firm says the concept could offer a way to connect the two-thirds of the world's population which does not have affordable net connections.

"It's pretty hard to get the internet to lots of parts of the world," Richard DeVaul, chief technical architect at Google[x] - the division behind the scheme - told the BBC.

"Just because in principle you could take a satellite phone to sub-Saharan Africa and get a connection there, it doesn't mean the people have a cost-effective way of getting online.

"The idea behind Loon was that it might be easier to tie the world together by using what it has in common - the skies - than the process of laying fibre and trying to put up cellphone infrastructure."

'Low risk'

Previous proposals to provide connectivity from the upper atmosphere suggested floating high-altitude platforms that stayed in one place and were tethered to the ground.

Google rejected this idea as it involved fighting the winds, meaning the equipment would have to be large, expensive and limited to a fixed area.

Laws and international conventions dating back to the 1960s have set back research in key areas such as consciousness by decades, they argued in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

"The decision to outlaw these drugs was based on their perceived dangers, but in many cases the harms have been overstated," said David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

In a statement accompanying the Nature Reviews paper, he said the laws amounted "to the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo".

"The laws have never been updated despite scientific advances and growing evidence that many of these drugs are relatively safe. And there appears to be no way for the international community to make such changes," he said.

"This hindering of research and therapy is motivated by politics, not science."

Nutt and Leslie King, both former British government drugs advisers, and co-author David Nichols of the University of North Carolina, called for the use of psychoactive drugs in research to be exempted from severe restrictions.

"If we adopted a more rational approach to drug regulation, it would empower researchers to make advances in the study of consciousness and brain mechanisms of psychosis, and could lead to major treatment innovations in areas such as depression and PTSD," Nutt said.

Nutt was sacked as a government adviser in 2009 after publicly criticizing the government for ignoring scientific advice on cannabis and ecstasy. He has conducted a small human trial using psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms. His study, using volunteers, suggested the drug had the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who did not respond to other treatments.

But in April, Nutt said his plans to conduct the first full clinical trial to explore psilocybin as a treatment had stalled because of stringent rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.

Erdogan told a sea of flag-waving supporters that two weeks of protests had been manipulated by "terrorists" and dismissed suggestions that he was behaving like a dictator, a constant refrain from those who have taken to the streets.

Riot police fired teargas into side streets around the central Taksim Square as he spoke, trying to prevent protesters from regrouping after hundreds were evicted from the adjoining Gezi Park, the centre of the protests, late on Saturday.

"They say 'you are too tough', they say 'dictator'. What kind of a dictator is this who met the Gezi Park occupiers and honest environmentalists. Is there such dictator?," Erdogan said to roars of approval from the crowd.

"The attitude across Turkey with the pretext of Taksim's Gezi Park is not sincere. It is nothing more than the minority's attempt to dominate the majority ... We could not have allowed this and we will not allow it," he said.

Bulldozers removed barricades and municipal workers swept the streets around Taksim, sealed off by police on Sunday after thousands took to the streets overnight following the raid by riot police firing teargas and water cannon.

The umbrella protest group behind the Gezi Park campaign, Taksim Solidarity, called for demonstrators to gather peacefully again in the square, but Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu made clear they would not be allowed to do so.

"Any call for (people to gather in) Taksim will not contribute to peace and security," he told reporters, as riot police fired teargas in several locations to disperse groups of demonstrators trying to reach the square.

"After the current environment becomes stable, they can continue exercising their democratic rights. Under current circumstances we will not allow any gathering."

Erdogan, who also addressed supporters of his ruling AK Party in Ankara on Saturday, said the rallies were to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and not related to the protests, but they are widely seen as a deliberate show of strength.

IMAGE TARNISHED

The blunt-talking prime minister has long been Turkey's most popular politician, overseeing a decade of unprecedented prosperity, and his AK Party has won an increasing share of the vote in three successive election victories, but his critics complain of increasing authoritarianism.

The offer came only days after North Korea abruptly canceled planned official talks with South Korea, the first planned talks in more two years. The North blamed the South for scuttling discussions that sought to mend estranged ties between the rival Koreas.

The North Korea National Defense Commission in a statement carried by KCNA news agency on Sunday said Washington can pick a date and place for talks and the two sides can discuss a range of issues, but no preconditions should be attached.

"In order to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to achieve regional peace and safety, we propose to hold high-level talks between the DPRK and the United States," said the spokesman for the North's National Defense Commission in the statement. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"If the U.S. is truly interested in securing regional peace and safety and easing tensions, it should not mention of preconditions for the talks," the statement said.

The United States will discuss the new offer in meetings with Japan and South Korea in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, a senior administration official said.

Washington has been skeptical of any move by Pyongyang for dialogue as it has repeatedly backtracked on deals, the latest in 2012 when it agreed to a missile and nuclear test moratorium, only to fire a rocket weeks later.

"We have always favored dialogue and, in fact, have open lines of communication with the DPRK," said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

"Our desire is to have credible negotiations with the North Koreans, but those talks must involve North Korea living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearization," Hayden said in statement.

"We will judge North Korea by its actions, and not its words and look forward to seeing steps that show North Korea is ready to abide by its commitments and obligations," she said.

ECONOMIC AID AT STAKE

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear and missile strikes against South Korea and the United States after it was hit with U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear weapons test.

Obama's talk with the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany came before next week's Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland. The five leaders discussed "ways to support a political transition to end the conflict" in Syria, the White House said. British Prime Minister David Cameron told CNN that during the video conference, Obama said further intervention into Syria "should be done on our own timeline."

"We have already taken some decisions in that Britain is helping to give technical assistance, training, advice, help, shaping, to the Syrian opposition, and we do that along with the Americans, French and others and will continue to do that, and we will take time to make these decisions with our allies," Cameron said.

One G8 member, Russia, was not part of the call Saturday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot missiles from Jordan would violate international law, according to Russian state broadcaster Russia Today.

Russian television reported that Lavrov's comment followed speculation in the media that a no-fly zone could be imposed through the deployment of the missile systems and fighter jets sent by the United States to global military drills in Jordan.

Also Saturday, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy announced that he has cut diplomatic ties with Damascus, the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

"We have decided to close down the Syrian embassy in Cairo," Morsy told a conference in support of the Syrian opposition at a Cairo stadium. "The Egyptian envoy in Damascus will also be withdrawn."

Morsy told CNN in January that he supported calls by people in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad to be tried for war crimes.

Meanwhile, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki dismissed media accounts Friday about Obama having decided on establishing a no-fly zone. Those reports are incorrect, she said.

U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes also addressed the matter Friday when he was asked how difficult it would be to establish a no-fly zone. "In Syria, when you have the situation where regime forces are intermingled with opposition forces, they're fighting in some instances block by block in cities. That's not a problem you can solve from the air," he said.

The timing of the attack suggests the attacks are politically motivated, said Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Eric Gross, the vice president of security engineering, in a blog post.

Google has detected a significant jump in phishing activity in the region during the past three weeks. The messages appear to be sent from Google and provide a link where users can make changes to their account settings. If the user clicks on the link, they are presented with a fake Google sign-in page where the hacker can steal victims' usernames and passwords.

This phishing campaign does not appear to place any malware on the victims' systems or employ any sophisticated tactics. The search giant has also been able to disrupt a number of the email scams.

But it doesn't take much -- attackers could have unlocked a trove of information from their victims, accessing all of their emails, Google documents and Google chats. "Gmail credentials are the keys to the kingdom," said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky Labs.

The scam emails have been sent to tens of thousands of Iranian Google users and Schouwenberg said this number is "very substantial" for a targeted campaign like this one.

During election season,Iran has a history of censoring certain websites, such as Google, Facebook (FB) and Twitter. The country has also completely cut off its citizens' access to the Internet at times.

Prof Sugata Mitra was outlining details of the first "school in the cloud".

While there would be an online adult moderator at times, the pupils would largely organise themselves, he said.

Meanwhile, an MIT professor laid out his vision of bringing the very best university education to some of the poorest parts of the world.

Prof Anant Agarwai already has one million students enrolled in his online school, edX, an online platform offering courses from some of the highest-profile universities.

He started the non-profit website because he believed it was time for a radical shake-up of education.

"Education has not changed in 500 years - we still herd children like cats into classrooms at 9am."

Such a model might work to a certain extent in the developed world but for many parts of the world, another way of doing things is needed.

The edX platform now has 27 university partners, all offering online courses in a wide range of subjects.

"For the first time, learners are able to take course from some of the best professors in the world," said Prof Agarwai.

The cost of running the platform has been boosted with investments of $60m (£38m) from MIT and Harvard universities and the site is hoping to fund itself in the future by licensing some of the online courses back to universities to offer a more blended learning experience for all students.

'Cloud grannies'

At the main TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in LA in February, Prof Sugata Mitra was awarded a $1m (£638,000) prize fund to set up a series of cloud schools.

At TEDGlobal he laid out how he intended to spend the money and what a cloud school would be like.

"A school in the cloud is basically a school without physical teachers. We need this because in many places you can't get teachers or the teachers are very bad," he said.

Initially he intends to set up five cloud schools, three in India and two in the UK, near the University of Newcastle where he teaches.

The remotest of the locations is Korakati, a village in eastern India, where he hopes to build a school in the next four months. It will be very different from a conventional school - a glass pod filled with computers and with one large screen to allow moderators to Skype in and play a role in the education of the children.

The moderators will be drawn from Prof Mitra's "cloud granny" programme, which is already up and running in the UK and India.

Microsoft Corp, Sony Corp, Electronic Arts and other industry giants whipped up the crowd of gamers and developers at the event into a frenzy, with displays of high-powered new consoles and previews of popular genre games.

For an industry accustomed to dwindling revenue in recent years, the pervasive visual pyrotechnics offered something to look forward to after years of subsisting on franchise-oriented games such as "Call of Duty" and "Halo" that run off aging technology.

This fall will usher in the Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4, which apart from being more powerful than their predecessors, now support cloud-based game play and mobile integration.

It remains to be seen whether these will avoid the fate of Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii U, whose disappointing sales since its late 2012 launch have forced the Japanese company to sharply curtail revenue forecasts.

The Xbox One will sell for $499 and the PlayStation 4 for $399 - a hefty bit of change in an era when free-to-play Internet and smartphone games from "Angry Birds" to "Clash of Clans" are attracting budget-conscious gamers and millions in investment.

"The graphics capabilities of console games are going through the roof, but mobile games are becoming more and more sophisticated too," said Mike Cuff, vice president of content at Wikipad, which launched a portable gaming tablet at E3.

At this year's E3, which will end late on Thursday, the debate raged around how Microsoft and Sony will treat used games, a segment that is growing quickly because the Facebook and iPhone generation seem to be moving away from the traditional practice of shelling out for newly released, highly marketed franchise titles.

"Sony and Microsoft still have work to do in order to convince a broad consumer base that they need to spend $400 or $500 on new hardware, in addition to $60 for each new piece of software," R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said.

Eddy Cue said he was not surprised when publishers increased prices for new and best-selling titles after Apple entered the e-books market in 2010, but he disputed that Apple caused prices industry-wide to increase.

"I didn't raise prices," he testified in federal court.

Apple is the sole remaining defendant in a lawsuit in which it is accused of working with five major U.S. publishers to fix e-book prices and undo Amazon.com Inc's market control. The publishers all reached settlements with the U.S. government.

Cue, a 24-year veteran of Apple, was the primary negotiator with major U.S. publishers in December 2009 and January 2010 before Apple launched its iBookstore and, according to a Justice Department lawyer, the "chief ringleader" of the alleged conspiracy.

During Thursday's proceedings, Cue, 48, said he had felt "tremendous" pressure to get a deal done with the publishers quickly after former CEO Steve Jobs gave him approval in late 2009 to pursue an iBookstore for the then-under wraps iPad.

Jobs, who died in 2011, was "near the end of his life" as the January 2010 unveiling of the iPad neared, Cue said. Not getting a deal done would have meant debuting the iPad without the bookstore, he said later.

"I wanted to get it done in time for that as I wanted to get it done for him," Cue said.

At the time of the negotiations, Amazon controlled up to 90 percent of the market by 2009, court filings show. Amazon, which had entered the market with its Kindle in 2007, was pricing new and bestselling e-books at $9.99, often below cost.

Cue testified initially Apple intended to adopt a wholesale model like Amazon, buying titles from the publishers and then setting the prices itself.

But after talking with publishers, Apple instead went with a so-called agency model, in which publishers set the price and Apple received a 30 percent commission on sales.

Publishers subsequently pushed Amazon to also adopt the agency model, a shift the government contends Apple encouraged through a contract clause that would allow it to reduce prices on its bookstore if other retailers sold e-books cheaper.