Tomorrow's Newspapers Online. 08-13-2013 | General

In a statement released before the market opened on Monday, the company said board member Timothy Dattels, an investment banker and former Goldman Sachs executive, will chair the new committee, which will also include Blackberry Chief Executive Thorsten Heins.

"Given the importance and strength of our technology, and the evolving industry and competitive landscape, we believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives," Dattels said in a statement.

BlackBerry pioneered on-your-hip email with its first smart phones and email pagers. But it has struggled to compete against the likes of Apple Inc and phones using Google Inc's Android operating system, and its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones have failed to gain traction.

Reuters last week quoted sources familiar with the situation as saying BlackBerry was considering going private to give it some breathing room as it works through its turnaround.

BlackBerry shares rose 9.4 percent in premarket trading.

"While a change in structure could result in a higher stock price in the near term, we do not envision any changes that would help BlackBerry reverse the significant smartphone share loss or rapid decline in service revenues," said Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital markets.

Heins said he was pleased with the progress that has been made and still sees compelling long-term opportunities for the BlackBerry 10. He said the company will continue a cost-cutting drive that has already shrunk the company considerably.

Dattels is a senior partner at private equity firm TPG Capital and a former top investment banker at Goldman Sachs. His appointment to BlackBerry's board last year sparked a flurry of speculation that the company might consider a leveraged buyout or going private.

Dattels' nomination to the board came in June 2012, shortly after BlackBerry hired JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets to help it evaluate strategies, including a possible overhaul of its business model, as well as other moves like expanding the BlackBerry platform through partnerships and licensing deals.

Fairfax Financial Chairman and Chief Executive Prem Watsa said on Monday that he would resign from the BlackBerry board due to potential conflicts of interest. Watsa said Fairfax has "no current intention" of selling its Blackberry shares.

BlackBerry's new line of devices hit store shelves this year just as the high-end smartphone segment had begun to show signs of saturation. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd recently reported results that fell shy of expectations, while Apple earlier this year reported its first quarterly profit decline in more than a decade.

The issue affects some Android "wallet" apps, the organisation said, including Bitcoin Wallet and BitcoinSpinner.

To protect an Android wallet, the developers said users must update their apps once a new version was available. The news came as a US banking regulator ordered companies to co-operate with a probe into the way Bitcoin is used. Bitcoin said the wallet problem had to do with Android's ability to generate sequences of secure random numbers needed to keep the wallets safe. Analysts say Android's SecureRandom Java program sometimes repeats the number sequences, which must be unique in order to keep each Bitcoin secure.

Members of a Bitcoin forum have suggested that the equivalent of thousands of US dollars may have already been stolen.

Number sequences

"Because the problem lies with Android itself, this problem will affect you if you have a wallet generated by any Android app," the Bitcoin statement said on Sunday.

The issue affects only programs where the number sequences - or private keys - are controlled on the user's device.

For wallet apps that were vulnerable, Bitcoin said it would be necessary to change keys. This involves "generating a new address with a repaired random number generator and then sending all the money in your wallet back to yourself", according to the Bitcoin statement.

Some of the affected apps were in the process of updating their wallet apps to fix the problem, including Bitcoin Wallet, BitcoinSpinner, Mycelium Wallet and blockchain.info, Bitcoin said.

But experts say virtual currencies could face ongoing problems of a similar nature because of the way they have been designed.

Dr Joss Wright, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said that cryptographers relied heavily on a computer's ability to generate random numbers in order to keep information secure. But, he added, that computers did not always do this reliably.

"Choosing good random numbers is the key issue," Dr Wright said. "If the random numbers can be predicted by somebody else, this could lead to all sorts of security problems."

Meanwhile, The New York Department of Financial Services has told about two dozen firms associated with Bitcoin it wants information on anti-money-laundering programmes, consumer protection measures and investment strategies, .

The newspaper said there were concerns that virtual currency companies did not comply with money transfer rules and the state of New York was considering legislation aimed specifically at virtual currencies.

The Facebook (FB) chief operating officer and author of the much buzzed-about "Lean In" sold nearly 2.4 million shares of the social network's stock last week at an average price of $38 per share, according to a regulatory filing. It amounts to about $91 million.

Sandberg is using a pre-arranged trading plan, which means she has no control over the specific timing of her sales. Such plans are a common way for top executives to cash in on a portion of their holdings while avoiding accusations of insider trading.

Sandberg has sold Facebook shares several times in the past year. Last year alone, she cashed out around $50 million in the months after Facebook went public in May. Her move this time came just a week after Facebook shares rose above $38 a share Wednesday for the first time since the social network went public in May 2012. The stock has clawed back from a low $17.55 in September.

But Facebook shares soared after the company blew past earnings estimates last month. Shares have climbed nearly 50% in the last month. Sandberg has periodically sold small portions of her holdings since the stock went public, but she still has plenty left. What she sold this week represented only about 5% of her holdings.

After selling 30.2 million shares during Facebook's IPO, CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn't sold any more of his holdings. Last September, Zuckerberg said in a filing that he had no intention of selling any shares for at least 12 months.

Power from sun and wind fluctuates dramatically, so capturing it for later use makes the supply more predictable.

"We can't just rely on sunlight," Governor Jerry Brown told the Intersolar conference in San Francisco last month. "We've got to bottle the sunlight."

California's storage push comes as renewables move toward a mandated one-third of the state's electricity supply by 2020. The proposal has fired up a technology race that has already attracted venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla, large-scale battery makers such as LG Chem, and establishment forces like General Electric Co and Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates.

It isn't just about California. Germany is a storage pioneer, and in the United States, stimulus funds have backed projects in states such as New York and Texas.

But the Golden State's aggressive renewables target is forcing the issue here: it wants storage of up to 1.3 gigawatts by 2020. That capacity is enough for traditional plants to power more than a million homes.

Lux Research analyst Steven Minnihan said California's proposal is the first legislation that will have an immediate and lasting impact on the grid storage market, which he estimates will soar to installations worth $10.4 billion in 2017 from just $200 million last year.

But storage is costly when compared to building new gas plants, and many storage projects were set up with the help of stimulus funds that have since run dry, meaning utility customers will end up with much of the tab. There are also risks that unproven storage technologies will not deliver on their promise.

"The ratepayers would be on the hook," said Farzad Ghazzagh, who is analyzing the proposal for the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, an arm of the California Public Utilities Commission. His analysis is not complete, but Ghazzagh has seen estimates of $1 billion to $3 billion to install so much storage.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said the city police adopted a policy of "indirect racial profiling" by targeting racially defined groups for stops.

The practice resulted in disproportionate, discriminatory stopping of blacks and Hispanics that the city's highest officials "turned a blind eye" toward.

"No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life," Scheindlin wrote in her opinion.

The class action was considered the broadest legal challenge to stop and frisk, a tactic in which city police stop people they suspect of unlawful activity and frisk those they suspect are carrying weapons.

Scheindlin's decision follows an exhaustive nine-week trial that pitted the NYPD's interest in keeping New York's crime rate down against black and Latino plaintiffs who felt discriminated against. Scheindlin presided over the trial without a jury.

As part of her ruling, Scheindlin ordered the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance with other remedies she ordered.

Holder will outline the status of a broad, ongoing project intended to improve Justice Department sentencing policies across the country in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco.

"I have mandated a modification of the Justice Department's charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels, will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences," Holder is expected to say, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks provided by the Justice Department.

The United States imprisons a higher percentage of its population than other large countries, largely because of anti-drug laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Holder will also reveal a plan to create a slate of local guidelines to determine if cases should be subject to federal charges.

The attorney general will point to the bipartisan backing of such goals in Congress, where there is "legislation aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimums to certain drug offenders."

The bipartisan backing could be important because the Obama administration will need Republican support for any major changes in Congress.

Holder is expected to say that laws like these could save the United States billions of dollars.

Some Israelis reacted angrily to the scheduled release on Tuesday or Wednesday of the long-term Palestinian prisoners.

"Shame on the government and shame on the prime minister and his supporters," Zvia Dahan, whose father, Moshe Becker, was killed while tending his orange grove in Israel in 1994, wrote on Facebook. One of Becker's three killers is to be freed.

The 26 prisoners are the first of a total of 104 Israel has decided in principle to free as part of an agreement reached after intensive shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to renew talks for Palestinian statehood.

Israel sweetened the deal for far-right members of its governing coalition on Sunday by announcing plans to build 1,187 new dwellings for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and parts of the territory it annexed to Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war.

"Those who do these things are determined to undermine the peace negotiations, are determined to force people like us to leave the negotiating table," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

Commenting on the latest projects, a spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said: "Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law and threaten to make a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impossible."

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the new construction would take place in areas Israel intends to keep in any peace agreement. "This in no way changes the final map of peace. It changes nothing," he said.

Some 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem amid 2.5 million Palestinians. Israel withdrew in 2005 from the Gaza Strip, which is now governed by Hamas Islamists opposed to permanent co-existence with the Jewish state.

LOW EXPECTATIONS

Peace talks halted three years ago in a row over settlement building. They resumed in Washington on July 30, with a second round due in Jerusalem on Wednesday and later in the West Bank.

Few expect the latest negotiations to resolve issues that have defied solution for decades, such as borders, settlements, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Washington, which pressed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the table, wants a deal within nine months.

Five drugs salesmen for foreign companies told the BBC their firms paid bribes in order to increase sales of their products.

None of them wanted to be identified, fearing they would lose their jobs.

The revelations come as Beijing widens its investigation into drugs-price fixing amid a bribery scandal engulfing drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline.

'Inflated prices'

One of the salesmen said his company paid about $1,000 (£647) to get its product back on the shelves at one hospital. "I don't deny [giving money to doctors] happens in foreign companies," the sales representative said. "It is rare though and only very few people get it," he added.

But he described an incident where a product had been cleared from a hospital's shelves, which proved to be "an embarrassment" for him and his company.

"If we follow the normal procedure to recover it, it is very complicated. It will cost a lot of money and energy. We looked for a quick way."

He admitted that strictly speaking, the money paid out to ensure the product returned to shelves was probably a bribe and that his manager signed it off. He said it would have cost a lot more to achieve the same result through official routes.

"It may cost us more if we have not paid the bribe. It will be a lot of money and energy," he said.

Such revelations follow last month's allegations by the Chinese police that the British drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline had engaged in "mafia-style behaviour". GSK was accused of directing up to £320m through travel agencies to facilitate bribes to doctors and officials.

A detained Chinese executive from the firm told state television that bribes paid by his company had inflated prices of its products by a third.

GSK has said that it is co-operating with the Chinese investigation.

China's health care spending is expected to more than double by the end of this decade.

The tussle between Chief Executive Michael Dell and firebrand activist investor Carl Icahn is also starting to spook some customers.

It's the last thing a company, grappling with the ever-darkening global outlook for personal computers, needs. IDC estimates Dell's PC shipments slid 4.2 percent in the second quarter, compared to a year earlier.

Some customers have begun asking if Dell is even going to be around in the longer term, said Michael Gavaghen, vice president of sales and marketing at Florida-based Dell reseller SL Powers. Sales are taking longer to close as well, he said.

"We hold their hand and gently say to just table the purchasing decision another few weeks," said Gavaghen. He stressed, however, that customers are "not fleeing by any means."

The cacophony surrounding the $25 billion buyout bid proposed by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners has picked up over the past month. Icahn threatened to wage a campaign to replace the CEO and his board, and sued the company in Delaware to try to force an earlier shareholder vote.

Michael Dell raised his offer twice to try to win over major investors. A shareholder vote has been scheduled for September after being delayed three times.

Morale within the company is stable for now, say some employees, though they add that could change rapidly if Icahn has his way and were to reshuffle management.

John Pucillo-Dunphy, senior engineer and owner of Miracle Networking Solutions, a Dell reseller based in Middleboro, Massachusetts, said he supports Dell's going private and is more comfortable with Michael Dell's leadership since it remains unclear what Icahn's long game is.

"I have seen the emails from Michael Dell. I haven't seen anything from Icahn," Pucillo-Dunphy said.

Icahn, who with 8.9 percent of the company is now its second-largest shareholder, has said little about what future he envisions for the company beyond that it has promising prospects based on its large base of PC customers, and that it should remain partly public.

Pucillo-Dunphy said customers are not overly concerned about the drama. "For the most part, they kind of have that mentality that (Dell is) too big to fail."

Chatbots greet users when they enter an online chat room, for example, or kick them out when they get obnoxious. More insidiously, spambots indiscriminately churn out e-mails advertising miracle stocks and unattended bank accounts in Nigeria. Bimbots deploy photos of gorgeous women to hawk work-from-home job ploys and illegal pharmaceuticals.

Now come socialbots. These automated charlatans are programmed to tweet and retweet. They have quirks, life histories and the gift of gab. Many of them have built-in databases of current events, so they can piece together phrases that seem relevant to their target audience.

They have sleep-wake cycles so their fakery is more convincing, making them less prone to repetitive patterns that flag them as mere programs. Some have even been souped up by so-called persona management software, which makes them seem more real by adding matching Facebook, Reddit or Foursquare accounts, giving them an online footprint over time as they amass friends and like-minded followers.

Researchers say this new breed of bots is being designed not just with greater sophistication but also with grander goals: to sway elections, to influence the stock market, to attack governments, even to flirt with people and one another.

“Bots are getting smarter and easier to create, and people are more susceptible to being fooled by them because we’re more inundated with information,” said Filippo Menczer, a professor at Indiana University and one of the principal investigators for Truthy, a research program at Indiana University that tracks bots and Twitter trends.

Socialbots are being circulated around the Web for many purposes. To irritate his adversaries, a software developer from Australia designed a bot that automatically responds to tweets from climate change deniers, sending them counterarguments and links to studies debunking their claims. A security engineer in California programed a bot to scoop up reservations for State Bird Provisions, a trendy restaurant in San Francisco. Mercenary armies of bots can be bought on the Web for as little as $250.

The 95-year-old anti-apartheid leader has been in a Pretoria hospital for two months for treatment of a recurrent lung infection.

"The former president is making a slow but steady improvement," South Africa's Presidency said in a statement, adding Mandela still remained in a critical condition.

Mandela's youngest daughter told state broadcaster SABC on Friday that her father's health was improving daily and he was able to sit up for minutes at a time.

Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president in all-race elections in 1994 that marked the end of the apartheid system.

Since Snowden leaked secret documents to the media, critics have called the NSA's domestic surveillance -- including a program that monitors the metadata of domestic phone calls -- a government overreach. Many of those same critics have asked the Obama administration and Congress to rein in the programs. "Given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives," Obama said during a news conference in the East Room of the White House.

Documents shed light on U.S. surveillance programs

But the president slammed the release of the information that has "come out in dribs and drabs," saying a general impression has taken hold "that we are somehow out there willy-nilly sucking information from everybody." At the same time, Obama sought to assure the public that there are safeguards in place, while acknowledging the need for transparency.

Among the steps being taken, according to the president: Working with Congress to pursue appropriate improvements of the telephone data program; reforming the secret court that approves that initiative; improving transparency to provide as much information as possible to the public, including the legal rationale for government collection activities; and appointing a high-level, independent group of outside experts to review surveillance technologies.

"There's no doubt Mr. Snowden's leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than if I had simply appointed this review board," the president said.

'Take a pause'

But Obama refused any characterization of Snowden as a "whistle-blower" or "patriot," saying there were "other avenues" the former NSA contractor could have taken instead of leaking national security surveillance information. Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, has been charged with three felony counts related to the leaks, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act.

If Snowden believes his actions were right, "he can appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case," the president said. Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia, a move that further strained already tense relations between Washington and Moscow.