World Newspapers Online 08-22-2013 |

The project, called Internet.org, is the latest move by an Internet company trying to expand Web access globally. Facebook rival Google is hoping technology, including balloons, wireless and fiber connections will expand connectivity.

Internet.org, which was launched on Wednesday, will focus on seeking ways to help the 5 billion people - or two-thirds of the world's population - who do not have Internet access, come online, the company said in a statement.

It added that so far, only 2.7 billion people around the world have Internet access.

The partnership's potential projects will include the development of lower-cost smartphones and the deployment of Internet access in underserved communities as well as working on ways to reduce the amount of data downloads required to run Internet applications, according to Facebook.

But at least initially, the company appeared to have few details on concrete plans.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the group had a "rough plan" for achieving its goal. He said the project was not just about making money for Facebook, which has more than 1 billion members and needs to keep expanding to boost revenue.

Zuckerberg noted that the first billion Facebook members "have way more money" than the rest of the world combined.

While many of today's Facebook members use the service just to keep in touch with friends, Zuckerberg said future Internet users may have more lofty needs.

"They're going to use it to decide what kind of governments they want, get access to healthcare for the first time ever, connect with family hundreds of miles away that they haven't seen in decades," he told CNN.

Facebook recently reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results due to an increase in advertising revenue from mobile users.

Other players in the Internet.org project include Ericsson, MediaTek Inc, Nokia and Opera Software ASA.

While the list did not include mobile network operators, Facebook that these companies would play a central role.

In June, Google announced it launched a small network of balloons over the Southern Hemisphere in an experiment it hopes to use to bring reliable Internet access to the world's most remote regions.

Daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung cited unspecified sources as saying Continental aims to unveil the two pacts at the Frankfurt Car Show in September.

Continental is already in an alliance with U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems to work on systems for automated and driverless automobiles and on data transfer between cars.

A Continental spokesman declined to comment. Spokespeople for Google and IBM in Germany were not immediately available for comment.

Google has been working on self-driving technology since 2010, including testing a fleet of self-driving cars along California roadways.

Microsoft on Wednesday opened a new front against the world's No 1 search provider by piloting an ad-free offering for educational users of Bing, its search engine that for years has trailed Google.

Under the free program called "Bing for Schools," students in participating school districts will no longer see ads or adult content when they do Internet searches.

Microsoft, which has signed up the Los Angeles Unified School District and Atlanta Public Schools among other school districts, has pitched Bing as an alternative at a time of rising public concern over how Internet companies are tracking their users' every move to target the ads they display.

As part of the program, Microsoft will also offer free Surface tablets and course materials for teaching youngsters about Internet use.

Stefan Weitz, Microsoft's director of search, said the program would help expose young users to Microsoft products.

"We hope that we demonstrate the quality of Bing to teachers and students and also their parents, and once they see how good it is, we hope to see increased usage outside of schools too," Weitz said.

Bing, with 18 percent of the search market share, has long trailed Google, at 67 percent, according to data from ComScore, despite an aggressive effort to close the gap.

ATTACK CAMPAIGN

Microsoft's move is the latest sign that technology companies are targeting the education market as a way to reach children who will become the next generation of consumers.

The new Bing campaign, framed in the context of privacy concerns, is part of a broad, anti-Google marketing campaign directed by a team of political consultants including Mark Penn, long-time adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In recent months Microsoft has ramped up allegations posted to its "Scroogled" website, including claims that Google violates its users' trust by scanning emails to target ads. Microsoft has also backed promotion of a "Do Not Track" protocol that would discourage online ad targeting.

"People just don't think it's appropriate to show ads to children in a learning environment," Weitz said.

A Google spokesman declined to immediately comment.

While Microsoft relies heavily on software sales, more than 95 percent of Google's revenue come from ads, and a significant portion of that comes from its dominant search engine.

JOSTLING IN CLASSROOMS

In a blog post Luca Parmitano said water was sloshing around, getting into his eyes and ears.

His spacewalk on 16 July with partner Christopher Cassidy was aborted once mission control heard about the leak.

Barely able to see, he used his safety cable to get back to the airlock.

"As I move back along my route towards the airlock, I become more and more certain that the water is increasing. I feel it covering the sponge on my earphones and I wonder whether I'll lose audio contact," he wrote.

"The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision.,, the water covers my nose - a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. "By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can't even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid.

"To make matters worse, I realise that I can't even understand which direction I should head in to get back to the airlock. I can't see more than a few centimetres in front of me, not even enough to make out the handles we use to move around the station."

As he struggled to hear the voices of Cassidy and a mission controller, Shane Kimbrough, he suddenly remembered his safety cable. "Its cable recoil mechanism has a force of around 3lb [1.3kg] that will 'pull' me towards the left. It's not much, but it's the best idea I have: to follow the cable to the airlock."

"I move for what seems like an eternity (but I know it's just a few minutes). Finally, with a huge sense of relief, I peer through the curtain of water before my eyes and make out the thermal cover of the airlock: just a little further, and I'll be safe." Nasa halts spacewalks The trouble cropped up barely an hour into what was to be a six-hour spacewalk to perform cabling work and other routine maintenance.

The US space agency Nasa is investigating the incident and has suspended all of its spacewalks until the problem is fixed. Nasa says it is also looking more broadly at past operations and maintenance, to ensure the safety of future spacewalks.

However, two Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS will go on a spacewalk on Thursday, to install a platform for a small optical telescope and do work on a docking assembly. Their spacesuits are very different from the US ones. The ISS currently has a crew of six.

Luca Parmitano, 36, expressed bewilderment about the source of the water, as it did not appear to have come from his drinking flask.

"It feels good," he says. "I like playing music, I like doing design and now designing musical instruments and playing your own design — it's kind of the ultimate happiness. In the end everybody can just play music that wants to play music and not have to learn a complex code."

When Pieters enrolled at the Design Academy Eindhoven he began to play around with electronic sensors that would allow musicians to control sound using only the movement of their own bodies. One of his tutors encouraged him to look at the way people move when they dance and incorporate those movements into his design.

The result is a collection of five instruments, which Pieters calls Sound on Intuition: • A sensor that measures the position of the musician's hand, raising and lowering the pitch of the note with the rise and fall of the hand

• A collar that fits around the finger and converts tapping, bending and stretching movements into sound

• A heart rate monitor that produces rhythms based on the beating of the musician's heart

• A strap that wraps around the musician's foot and produces the sound of a bass drum in time with his or her foot-tapping

• A scanner that reads lines or dots drawn by the musician and represents them musically: "If you want to have a sound that goes up and down," Peters says, "you just draw a line that goes up and down."

Although electronic music is nothing new, Pieters says that abandoning instruments altogether in favor of computer programs can take some of the joy out of making music. "Now everybody sits behind his computer and just types in commands to create a sound, but it's not that fun anymore," he says. "If we have instruments that you can move and kind of play the computer in a fun way, I think making music is more fun."

Hein Mevissen, a Dutch film director and designer of the radically simple John's Phone, praised the intuitive interface and said that he could imagine the approach spreading to other art forms.

Faltering economic growth at home and abroad and concern that President Barack Obama's signature health care law will drive up business costs are behind the wariness about taking on full-time staff, executives at staffing and payroll firms say.

Employers say part-timers offer them flexibility. If the economy picks up, they can quickly offer full-time work. If orders dry up, they know costs are under control. It also helps them to curb costs they might face under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

This can all become a less-than-virtuous cycle as new employees, who are mainly in lower wage businesses such as retail and food services, do not have the disposable income to drive demand for goods and services.

Some economists, however, say the surge in reliance on part-time workers will fade as the economy strengthens and businesses gain more certainty over how they will be impacted by Obamacare.

Executives at several staffing firms told Reuters that the law, which requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide healthcare coverage or incur penalties, was a frequently cited factor in requests for part-time workers. A decision to delay the mandate until 2015 has not made much of a difference in hiring decisions, they added.

"Us and other people are hiring part-time because we don't know what the costs are going to be to hire full-time," said Steven Raz, founder of Cornerstone Search Group, a staffing firm in Parsippany, New Jersey. "We are being cautious."

Raz said his company started seeing a rise in part-time positions in late 2012 and the trend gathered steam early this year. He estimates his firm has seen an increase of between 10 percent and 15 percent compared with last year.

Other staffing firms have also noted a shift.

"They have put some of the full-time positions on hold and are hiring part-time employees so they won't have to pay out the benefits," said Client Staffing Solutions' Darin Hovendick. "There is so much uncertainty. It's really tough to design a budget when you don't know the final cost involved."

CAUTIOUS STRATEGY

The delay in the Obamacare employer mandate "confused people even further," said Bill Peppler, managing partner at Kavaliro, a technology staffing firm in Orlando, Florida. "When we talk to customers, I still don't think anyone has a handle on this."

Judge Colonel Denise Lind, who last month found Manning guilty of 20 charges including espionage and theft, could have sentenced him to as many as 90 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for 60 years.

Manning, 25, will be dishonorably discharged from the U.S. military and forfeit some pay, Lind said. His rank will be reduced to private from private first class.

Manning would be eligible for parole after serving one-third of his sentence, which will be reduced by the time he has already served in prison plus 112 days.

Wearing his dress uniform, the slightly built Manning stood at attention as the sentence was read, seeming to show no emotion. As he was escorted out of the courtroom, supporters shouted "Bradley, we are with you."

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the sentence "unprecedented" in its magnitude.

"It's more than 17 times the next longest sentence ever served" for providing secret material to the media, Goitein said. "It is in line with sentences for paid espionage for the enemy."

In 2010, Manning turned over more than 700,000 classified files, battlefield videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the pro transparency website, in a case that has commanded international attention.

Defense attorneys had not made a specific sentencing request but pleaded with Lind not to "rob him of his youth."

Manning was working as a low-level intelligence analyst in Baghdad when he handed over the documents, catapulting WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, into the international spotlight.

The classified material that shocked many around the world included a 2007 gunsight video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Baghdad. Among the dozen fatalities were two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks dubbed the footage "Collateral Murder."

KEEPING SECRETS

The case highlighted the difficulty in keeping secrets in the Internet age. It raised strong passions on the part of the U.S. government, which said Manning had put American lives at risk, and anti-secrecy advocates, who maintained Manning was justified in releasing the information.

During a pretrial hearing, Lind had determined that the eventual sentence would be reduced by 112 days because of harsh treatment after his arrest in 2010. He likely will be imprisoned at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Convening on Wednesday at the Cairo jail where Mubarak is held, the court ordered the release of the military man who ruled Egypt for 30 years until he was overthrown during the uprisings that swept the Arab world in early 2011.

Asked when his client would go free, Mubarak's lawyer, Fareed al-Deeb, told Reuters: "Maybe tomorrow".

Mubarak, 85, was sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to prevent the killing of demonstrators. But a court accepted his appeal earlier this year and ordered a retrial.

The ailing ex-president probably has no political future, but the court ruling, which state prosecutor Ahmed el-Bahrawi said cannot be appealed, made some Egyptians indignant.

"The army has brought back Mubarak's regime, the same regime," said Guma Abdel Alim, outside a bicycle shop in central Cairo. "Those who were elected by the people are now in prison."

He was referring to a widescale security sweep on Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood that has netted many of its leaders.

Shopworker Rubi Abdel Azim said Mubarak had been the worst ruler in Egypt's history, but a passerby in a worn-out shirt disagreed. "He was the greatest president," said Nagi Hassan.

Political turbulence has kept Egypt on edge for months. At least 900 people, including 100 soldiers and police, have been killed in a crackdown on Mursi supporters in the past week, making it the country's bloodiest internal episode in decades.

"LOUSY REGIME"

The United States and the European Union are both reviewing aid to Cairo in light of the bloodshed, but Saudi Arabia, a foe of the Brotherhood, has promised to make up any shortfall.

There was no immediate reaction to the ruling on Mubarak from the Brotherhood, whose leaders are mostly behind bars.

Mubarak is still being retried on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the revolt against him, but he has already served the maximum pre-trial detention in that case.

The court ruling removed the last legal ground for his imprisonment in connection with a corruption case, following a similar decision in another corruption case on Monday. Mubarak will not be allowed to leave Egypt and his assets remain frozen.

Children's profiles will have default settings making less of their personal information publicly visible, with more prominent links to safety information.

Support requests from child members will also be dealt with separately.

The decision comes the day after the social-networking site for professionals launched University Pages, allowing higher education institutions to set up profiles.

Dr Bernie Hogan, of the Oxford Internet Institute, said the development, which takes effect on 12 September, would help children "differentiate between the public profile they want for employment [and] the personal profile they share on Facebook with their friends and family".

"I am personally opposed to employers intruding on Facebook pages while screening candidates," he said.

"The risk of unintended discrimination is very high."

But Dr Hogan also warned children could become a nuisance to Linkedin's 225 million existing members if they used the site to play games or set up profiles with false names.

"You can't get employed under a fake name," he said.

New York University, the University of Michigan and French business school Insead have already set up Linkedin profiles.

Communications regulator Ofcom is proposing to license a new satellite system for aircraft, ships and trains.

Earth Stations on Mobile Platforms (ESOMPs) can deliver connections up to 10 times faster than those currently available to travellers.

Britain's airlines have not indicated whether they would use the technology.

Ofcom began a consultation last week on the authorisation of the stabilised satellite dish system, which utilises high-frequency bands.

'Commercial decision'

Several commercial satellite operators are planning to launch networks that support the use of ESOMPs in the coming months.

An Ofcom representative said airlines would "have to make a commercial decision" on whether to utilise the new systems.

British Airways' in-flight entertainment and technology manager, Richard D'Cruze, said the airline was "closely monitoring developments in the connectivity market in both the satellite and direct air-to-ground technology areas". Ofcom says it has been working with its European counterparts for the past two years, including France, Germany and Luxembourg, who are in the process of putting together their own regulations.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US has already authorised the use of ESOMPs.

Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband information website thinkbroadband.com, told the BBC the "inevitable higher costs for new systems" may be passed on to data-hungry passengers, who would instead choose to rely on various 3G and 4G mobile options.

"The parts of the UK that might benefit the most are those train services in rural areas where 3G connectivity is currently very poor or non-existent," he added.

It announced the move at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne as part of its ID@Xbox self-publishing programme.

The equivalent hardware for the Xbox 360 costs thousands of pounds.

One expert said the move might help address a perception that Sony was more "indie-friendly".

The PlayStation maker dedicated a large part of its presentation to independent developers at the E3 expo in June, while Microsoft only briefly mentioned the sector at the Los Angeles event.

"Microsoft needed to be stronger about its message about this side of the industry," said Ed Barton, director of digital media at research firm Strategy Analytics.

"It has always been good at supporting the big firms with 400-strong teams, but it needs to show it can go down the spectrum all the way to the one-man bands.

"No-one knows where the next Minecraft will come from. And even if this doesn't move the needle hugely in terms of video game sales it will get the firm good press. There's a part of the public that love [independent] games like Journey - they make the ecosystem more interesting."

Track record

Although Microsoft said that in time it intended to make it possible for software writers to create games using retail versions of the Xbox One, at launch the facility will be limited to special development editions of the machine. To qualify, it said, developers must have a proven track record of shipping games on a console, PC or mobile devices.

Teams which are approved will be given two of the development machines free of charge.

The teams must also have their programs certified by Microsoft's managers before they become available to the public, but they will be free to set their own wholesale price to which the console-maker will then add its own charge.

Microsoft added that it was taking steps to make sure gamers could easily discover self-published titles on its marketplace by:

Allowing the games to show up in the main Xbox One store rather putting them into a separate area, as was the case with the Xbox 360 Offering a view of what is "trending", based on what the gamers' friends and the wider community are playing Using an "editor picks" section to showcase indie titles In addition, it confirmed it would not charge developers to distribute software updates - the firm ended such fees for the Xbox 360 in April - and would not place a limit on how many updates they offered.

The storage tank breach of about 300 tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday.

The latest leak, which is continuing, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.

After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

"That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse," said Michiaki Furukawa, who is professor emeritus at Nagoya University and a nuclear chemist.

The embattled utility Tokyo Electric has struggled to keep the Fukushima site under control since an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor meltdowns in March 2011.

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority has classified the latest leak as a level 1 incident, the second lowest on an international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.

But it is the first time Japan has issued a so-called INES rating for Fukushima since the meltdowns. Following the quake and tsunami, Fukushima was assigned the highest rating of 7, when it was hit by explosions after a loss of power and cooling.

A Tokyo Electric official said that workers who were monitoring storage tanks appeared to have failed to detect the leak of water which pooled up around the tank.

"We failed to discover the leak at an early stage and we need to review not only the tanks but also our monitoring system," he said.

Continued contaminated water leaks from Fukushima has alarmed Japan's neighbors South Korea and China.

Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco, has been criticized for its failure to prepare for the disaster and been accused of covering up the extent of the problems at the plant.

FLOODED BASEMENTS

Massive amounts of radioactive fluids are accumulating at the Fukushima plant as Tepco floods reactor cores via a jerry-rigged system to keep melted uranium fuel rods cool and stable.

The water in the improvised cooling system then flows into basements and trenches that have been leaking since the disaster.