Tomorrow's newspapers online. 07-22-2013 | S

The bug, discovered by German firm, allows hackers to remotely gain control of and also clone certain mobile SIM cards.

Hackers could use compromised SIMs to commit financial crimes or engage in electronic espionage, according to Berlin's Security Research Labs, which will describe the vulnerabilities at the Black Hat hacking conference that opens in Las Vegas on July 31.

The U.N.'s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union, which has reviewed the research, described it as "hugely significant."

"These findings show us where we could be heading in terms of cybersecurity risks," ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré told Reuters.

He said the agency would notify telecommunications regulators and other government agencies in nearly 200 countries about the potential threat and also reach out to hundreds of mobile companies, academics and other industry experts.

A spokeswoman for the GSMA, which represents nearly 800 mobile operators worldwide, said it also reviewed the research.

"We have been able to consider the implications and provide guidance to those network operators and SIM vendors that may be impacted," said GSMA spokeswoman Claire Cranton.

Nicole Smith, a spokeswoman for Gemalto NV, the world's biggest maker of SIM cards, said her company supported GSMA's response.

"Our policy is to refrain from commenting on details relating to our customers' operations," she said.

BECOMING THE SIM

Cracking SIM cards has long been the Holy Grail of hackers because the tiny devices are located in phones and allow operators to identify and authenticate subscribers as they use networks.

Karsten Nohl, the chief scientist who led the research team and will reveal the details at Black Hat, said the hacking only works on SIMs that use an old encryption technology known as DES.

Nohl said he conservatively estimates that at least 500 million phones are vulnerable to the attacks he will discuss at Black Hat. He added that the number could grow if other researchers start looking into the issue and find other ways to exploit the same class of vulnerabilities.

The ITU estimates some 6 billion mobile phones are in use worldwide. It plans to work with the industry to identify how to protect vulnerable devices from attack, Touré said.

The controversy comes ahead of the anticipated listing of Alibaba, expected to value the firm at $60-$100 billion, which in turn has put a critical spotlight on Ma, the wider Chinese Internet industry and its approach to freedom of speech.

Ma denies he made such an assertion siding with the government and the journalist, too, has said her report for the South China Morning Post this month was changed in editing, and she has apologized to Ma. The daily, though, is standing behind the story.

In undisputed comments in the same report, Ma described the Chinese government as "terrific" and downplayed the significance of Internet censorship. But his disputed comments on the Tiananmen crackdown, a symbol for human rights campaigners of Beijing's intolerance of free speech, drew the biggest reaction.

The interview, published on July 13, has caused public criticism of Ma in the Hong Kong and foreign press, with some Chinese netizens calling for a boycott of Alibaba's e-commerce websites, including Alibaba.com and Taobao.com.

However, journalist Liu Yi, in a statement written in Chinese on her Facebook account, said the published version of the interview with Ma was not the same as her original submission, and that she later took the initiative to edit the online version herself to "set the record straight".

"Ma never intended to make any comments about politics," her statement said. "I solemnly apologize to Mr. Ma Yun (Jack Ma's Chinese name) and resign from the South China Morning Post."

Liu did not respond to a request for further comment made through her Facebook account.

The Post said in a statement on its web site dated Saturday that the reporter had accessed its system and replaced the editor-approved article with an altered version in which Ma's reference to Tiananmen was removed without authorization.

Its statement said that the editor-approved version was restored and that Liu Yi had been suspended, but she chose to resign on July 19 before an investigation had been completed.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is the major cause of cervical cancer, and the virus is known to spread through genital or oral contact.

Actor Michael Douglas is reported to have spoken about the link after his own diagnosis with throat cancer.

Experts said this study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which quantifies the link, showed "striking" results.

There are more than 100 types of HPV. Most people will be infected with HPV at some point, but in most the immune system will offer protection.

There are two HPV strains which are most likely to cause cancer - HPV-16 and HPV-18.

HPV-16 is thought to be responsible for around 60% of cervical cancers, 80% of cancers in the anus and 60% of oral cancers.

Around 1,500 people are diagnosed with throat cancers each year in the UK, with around 470 people dying from the disease.

Survival benefit

This study looked at HPV's link with cancer of the back of the throat - oropharyngeal cancer.

It looked at blood test results collected from people who took part in a huge prospective study into lifestyle and cancer, who were all healthy at the start.

Everyone gives a blood sample when they join the study, and in this case the researchers were able to check for the presence of antibodies to one of HPV's key proteins - E6. E6 knocks out part of cells' protection system, which should prevent cancer developing.

Having the antibodies means HPV has already overcome that defence and caused cancerous changes in cells.

The researchers compared blood test results - some more than 10 years old - for 135 people who went on to develop throat cancer and for 1,599 cancer-free people.

The University of Oxford team found 35% of those with throat cancer had the antibodies, compared with fewer than 1% of those who were cancer-free.

However, these patients were more likely to survive throat cancer than people whose disease had other causes, such as alcohol or tobacco use.

The study found 84% of people with the antibodies were still alive five years after diagnosis, compared with 58% of those without.

Broader effect?

Dr Ruth Travis, a Cancer Research UK scientist at Oxford who worked on the study, said: "These striking results provide some evidence that HPV-16 infection may be a significant cause of oropharyngeal cancer."

Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK's director of health information, said: "HPV is an extremely common virus.

"Practising safer sex may reduce the risk of getting or passing on HPV, but condoms won't stop infections completely."

Although it is the first such disaster in the "midday meal" project that feeds about 120 million children every day across India, a Reuters review of audit reports and research papers shows officials have long ignored warnings of the lack of oversight and accountability in the program.

"You only come and do checks when you get complaints or when there are serious cases," said Rudranarayan Ram, the local education administrator for the village of Gandaman in Bihar state, where the children died. "This was the first time."

The poisoning, which police suspect was caused by storing cooking oil in a used pesticide container, killed the children so quickly that some died in their parents' arms while being taken to hospital.

Ram, who was tasked with monitoring the program, said the headmistress of the school, who has fled, bought the food and the oil in which it was cooked. He just doesn't know from where nor how the items were stored.

Although fatal contamination is extremely rare in the midday meal scheme, auditors in several states have described unhygienic conditions in which the food under the program is prepared and served, and the poor quality of food itself. Two audit reports by the state governments of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have said the food in the scheme was often laced with stones and worms.

Another survey by the Indian Institute of Management noted children in Gujarat state were made to wash up after their meals by "rubbing the playground soil on the plates and then giving a quick rinse".

"If the government checks, they will find that the children who have been eating midday meals are under great physical threat," said Ajay Kumar Jha, professor at A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, who led a team to monitor the program in Bihar in April.

The midday meal scheme of giving school pupils a free lunch is the largest such program in the world. It has been widely lauded as one of the most successful welfare measures in India, home to a quarter of the world's hungry, because it also boosts school enrolments and helps children to continue studies.

For millions of poor families, the lunch is the only full meal their children eat in a day. That encourages them to send them to school, and not keep them home to help with chores.

Boehner, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," dodged repeated attempts to get him to spell out his personal views on a path to citizenship for up to 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States, a major point of contention between the House and the Democratic-led Senate.

"It's not about me, it's not about what I want," said Boehner, an Ohio Republican. "This about allowing the House to work its will."

The Senate has passed a sweeping, bipartisan immigration bill that includes a pathway to citizenship, which Republican opponents have called an "amnesty" that would reward lawbreakers and attract more illegal immigrants.

Boehner said taking a personal stand on the issue would make it harder for him to find consensus on immigration in the House.

"If I come out and say, 'I'm for this and I'm for that,' all I'm doing is making my job harder," Boehner said. "My job in this process is to facilitate a discussion and to facilitate a process."

Boehner said the sweeping Senate bill would not pass the House and reiterated that the House would tackle the issue in smaller "chunks" that would include stricter provisions on border protection.

"We want to deal with this in chunks, chunks that the members can deal with and grapple with, and frankly chunks that the American people can get their arms around," he said.

With polls showing public approval of Congress at near record lows, Boehner was asked how he felt to have presided over the least productive and one of the least popular Congresses.

"We should not be judged by how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal," Boehner said.

Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, which has accused the army of orchestrating a military coup and denounced plans to revise the constitution, staged fresh rallies on Sunday to maintain pressure on the new, interim government.

Setting a highly ambitious timeframe, the military wants new elections in around six months and has tasked a panel of 10 legal experts to present proposed changes to the constitution within 30 days for review before a broader-based body.

The original constitution was approved by a referendum last year, but critics said the text failed to protect human rights, minorities and social justice.

Ali Awad Saleh, a judge and the constitutional affairs adviser for the newly installed president, chaired Sunday's panel, saying it would spend the next week receiving ideas from "citizens, political parties, and all sides".

Khaled Dawoud, a spokesman for the National Salvation Front, Egypt's main secular political alliance, called the start of the committee's work "a very positive development".

The Muslim Brotherhood has shown no sign it is ready to engage with the new administration or the army, sticking firmly to its demand for the full restoration of Mursi, who has been held in an undisclosed location since his downfall on July 3.

A few thousand women, children and men marched from the site of a round-the-clock, pro-Mursi vigil in a Cairo suburb on Sunday, moving to within sight of the defense ministry, ringed by barbed wire and protected by well-armed soldiers.

"Why, Sisi why, why did you kill our sisters?" the crowd chanted, referring to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the defense minister who played a central role in forcing Mursi from office following mammoth street protests against the Islamist ruler.

More than 100 people have died in violent clashes this month, including three women taking part in a pro-Mursi rally in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura on Friday.

CONSTITUTIONAL DOUBTS

Trying to burnish their democratic credentials, the Egyptian military has said the new constitution should be put to a referendum before planned parliamentary elections.

However, some analysts have expressed doubts about rushing to revise the text given the lack of political consensus that has clouded Egypt's faltering transition to democracy in the wake of the 2011 removal of veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

A statement issued earlier supports the automatic exchange of tax information between countries.

It also backs plans by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to stop firms moving their profits across borders to avoid taxes.

The OECD said some firms "abuse" current rules to avoid tax.

UK Chancellor George Osborne said the announcement, which came after a two-day G20 meeting in Moscow, was an "important step towards a global tax system that is fair and fit for purpose for the modern economy".

'Aggressive tax avoidance'

Last month, the G8 group of leading economies agreed a deal to "fight the scourge of tax evasion", and nations including the UK, France, Germany, the USA and Australia are taking part in a pilot information exchange scheme. British Prime Minister David Cameron made the issue a priority for the UK's presidency of the G8 this year, and Australia has agreed to do the same during its G20 presidency next year.

The OECD said current tax rules, some dating to the 1920s, were created to avoid "double taxation" of companies working in more than one country - but it said they were being abused to allow "double non-taxation".

BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam said the "bandwagon of clamping down on aggressive tax avoidance" was moving on from developed economies to emerging ones like Brazil and India.

The rules should mean bigger bills for companies which could previously "pit one country off against another in terms of tax", our correspondent added.

The G20 asked the OECD to come up with a plan to improve tax cooperation, and the finance ministers said they "fully endorse the OECD proposal for a truly global model" of information sharing.

Their statement called on all countries to make automatic information sharing a reality "without further delay", adding that "capacity-building support" would be provided for poorer nations.

Closing loopholes

The G20 said the changes should be in place within two years, but our correspondent called that "very ambitious" because hundreds of tax treaties exist between countries and "thousands of amendments" might be needed.

Many multinational firms currently avoid tax - legally - by means including loopholes and tax havens, but the new rules could require them to pay more in the countries where they do business.

Firms including Google, Starbucks, Amazon and Apple have been criticised for the amount of tax they pay.

The victory in the vote for parliament's upper house gives Abe a stronger mandate for his prescription for reviving the stagnant economy. Ironically perhaps, it could also give lawmakers in his own party, some of whom have little appetite for painful but vital reforms, more clout to resist change.

Public broadcaster NHK said early on Monday that Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its partner, the New Komeito party, had won at least 74 of the 121 seats up for grabs in the 242-seat upper house.

With the coalition's uncontested 59 seats, that ensures it a comfortable majority, tightening Abe's grip on power and raising the chances of a long-term Japanese leader for the first time since the reformist Junichiro Koizumi's rare five-year term ended in 2006.

It also ends a parliamentary deadlock that began in 2007 when Abe, then in his first term as premier, led the LDP to a humiliating upper house defeat that forced him to resign two months later. But the LDP fell short of a majority on its own on Sunday.

Abe, who returned to power after his coalition's big win in a December lower house poll, repeated on Sunday that he would focus on fixing the world's third-biggest economy with his "Abenomics" mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, fiscal spending and a growth strategy including reforms such as deregulation.

"We've argued that our economic policies aren't mistaken, and the public gave us their support. People now want to feel the benefits. The economy indeed is improving," a weary but confident-sounding Abe said at LDP headquarters late on Sunday after his ruling coalition's victory was assured.

"We'd like to do our best to generate a positive cycle -- in which job conditions improve and wages rise, boosting personal consumption and prompting companies to invest more -- as soon as possible," he added.

But some, including Japanese businesses with a big stake in the matter, worry the hawkish leader will shift to focus on the conservative agenda that has long been central to his ideology.

That agenda includes revising the post-war pacifist constitution, strengthening Japan's defense posture and recasting Tokyo's wartime history with a less apologetic tone.

The sell off comes after the stock was riding at five-year highs and is the biggest in percentage terms since April 2000, when the world's largest software company was locked in an antitrust dispute with the U.S. government and the internet stock bubble was deflating rapidly.

Friday's loss means about $36 billion has been wiped off Microsoft's market value in one day, exceeding the size of rival Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft's earnings were wrecked by a $900 million write down on the value of unsold Surface tablets after it cut prices in a bid to excite buyers.

The poor results shocked Wall Street, which had believed the company's strength with business customers would help it ride out a downturn in consumer PC sales. The results provoked fresh skepticism of Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's new plan to reshape the company around devices and services, unveiled last week.

"The recent reorganization does not fix the tablet or smartphone problem," said Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund in a note to clients on Friday. "The devices opportunity just received a $900 million hardware write-off for Surface RT and investors may not even like the idea of wading deeper into this territory."

Sherlund suggested that activist investors will pressure Ballmer to reconsider his strategy this summer, a reference to ValueAct Capital, which took a $2 billion stake in Microsoft in April and is widely expected to push for a board seat this summer.

"This (the results) was much more disruptive than investors have expected, with Microsoft missing its guidance in every division and guiding lower," wrote Sherlund. "Everything an activist investor could ask for."

Other Wall Street analysts were similarly dismayed by Microsoft's latest financial report.

Brokerages Raymond James and Cowen & Co cut their ratings on Microsoft stock by a notch to "market perform" and at least five others trimmed their price targets by as much as $3.

Price targets were cut as low as $35, below Thursday's closing price of $35.44. The shares fell to $31.55 on the Nasdaq.

FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal said Microsoft's revenue from Windows operating system in the fourth quarter was 9 percent below his expectations.

"The key potential growth drivers (Windows 8, Surface) of the Microsoft story appear to be fading, heading into FY14," Hilal wrote in a note.

Shares of the internet search giant were set to open 4 percent lower on Friday.

BMO Capital Markets, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Raymond James cut their price targets on Google's stock by as much as $40 to factor in a drop in margins as the company invests in its non-core businesses.

The lowest price target was $860, compared to the stock's closing price of $910.68 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

"... Investors should assume continued margin erosion as new investments will never match the margins of the core search business," BMO analysts said in a note to clients.

The brokerage cut its target price on Google shares to $890 from $915 and maintained its "market perform" rating on the stock.

Earlier this year, Google changed the way advertisers run campaigns on its website, offering the same ads simultaneously on PCs and mobiles.

However, cheaper ad rates on mobile devices ate into its margins.

Some brokerages, such as Piper Jaffray, JMP Securities and Canaccord Genuity, raised their price targets, with Piper Jaffray saying that the new system will increase ad revenue in the longer term.

Google, which posted worse-than-expected second-quarter results on Thursday, reported a quarterly operating margin of 28 percent, down from 33 percent a year earlier.

"Enhanced Campaigns is the biggest change in the Google ad platform to date and thus it will likely take 6-12 months for the positive impact to show in the numbers," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note.

Prompted by customer complaints about the slowness of streaming video in peak evening hours, the regulator, ARCEP, examined if Iliad was hampering YouTube in a bid to get Google to pay money to help boost capacity on the overloaded network.

Many Internet providers and telecom operators globally have argued that companies like Google and Netflix, which generate massive traffic on networks, should help pay for them instead of getting a free ride.

Iliad's larger competitor Orange has disclosed that Google pays millions of euros annually to help upgrade capacity to ensure its services run well for Orange customers.

Competition regulators in Brussels raided the offices of three of Europe's biggest telecom operators earlier this month as part of an investigation into whether they abused their market position in deals with Internet companies to deliver content to consumers.

However, ARCEP said on Friday Iliad was not intentionally limiting the delivery of YouTube traffic, which would violate the principle that all Internet data should be treated equally.

Instead, it said interconnection points between Iliad's network and the middlemen used to deliver Google's YouTube simply did not have enough capacity to handle the traffic, leading to slowdowns.

Adding capacity to those interconnection points was Iliad's choice as a business, and if it chose not to, then consumers had the power to choose another broadband provider, it added.

"The inquiry did not reveal that (Iliad) was employing traffic management techniques on its network that differentiated traffic routing conditions based on the type of content, its origin, its destination or the type of protocol used," the regulator wrote in a decision.

Iliad did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

ARCEP stepped in when a survey of more than 16,000 broadband customers by French consumer group UFC Que Choisir found 83 percent of Iliad's customers, 47 percent of Orange customers and 46 percent of Vivendi's SFR customers could not use YouTube properly.

The fact that ARCEP did not find any infractions shows how difficult it is for regulators to ensure consumers are being treated fairly when opaque commercial agreements between internet providers, the middleman or transit companies, and content giants often determine users' experience of the web.