Tomorrow's Newspapers Online. 09-03-2013 | S

As the Skype connection catches up, an image of a robot in a baseball hat, a blue button-down shirt and striped socks appears. Kaspar Two is a robot child. He's not even on, just sitting slumped over. Even though the image is somewhat fuzzy, Kaspar Two is able to give me that feeling, that nagging sense of unease. "I must admit," says Walters, "when I first actually built Kaspar, I did think he was a bit uncanny."

Kaspar has been created at University of Hertfordshire, UK to help children with autism understand how to read emotions and engage with other people, but it falls into what's often called “the uncanny valley”. From humanoid robot heads to super-realistic prosthetic hands, the uncanny valley is where robots that give us the creeps live.

It is the range between obvious cartoons and discernibly real people, where things look almost lifelike, and yet not quite believable. Peering into the uncanny valley is an uncomfortable experience. Its residents, like Kaspar, have a way of eliciting feelings of disgust, fear or dread.

For almost 30 years, the concept of the uncanny valley has acted as a golden rule for roboticists and animators. From Pixar to puppets, creating characters that are too lifelike was thought to be the kiss of death for any project.

But now the concept itself is coming under scrutiny like never before. What exactly we are feeling and why we feel this way are questions that have finally found their way under the microscope. And some researchers are asking whether the uncanny valley exists at all. What's in a name?

Israel and Saudi Arabia have little love for each other but both are pressing their mutual friend in the White House to hit President Bashar al-Assad hard. And both do so with one eye fixed firmly not on Syria but on their common adversary - Iran.

Israel's response to Obama's surprise move to delay or even possibly cancel air strikes made clear that connection: looking soft on Assad after accusing him of killing hundreds of people with chemical weapons may embolden his backers in Tehran to develop nuclear arms, Israeli officials said. And if they do, Israel may strike Iran alone, unsure Washington can be trusted.

Neither U.S. ally is picking a fight with Obama in public. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the nation was "serene and self-confident"; Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal simply renewed a call to the "international community" to halt Assad's violence in Syria.

But the Saudi monarchy, though lacking Israel's readiness to attack Iran, can share the Jewish state's concern that neither may now look with confidence to Washington to curb what Riyadh sees as a drive by its Persian rival to dominate the Arab world.

Last year, Obama assured Israelis that he would "always have Israel's back". Now Netanyahu is reassuring them they can manage without uncertain U.S. protection against Iran, which has called for Israel's destruction but denies developing nuclear weapons.

"Israel's citizens know well that we are prepared for any possible scenario," the hawkish prime minister said. "And Israel's citizens should also know that our enemies have very good reasons not to test our power and not to test our might."

That may not reassure a U.S. administration which has tried to steer Netanyahu away from unilateral action against Iran that could stir yet more chaos in the already explosive Middle East.

Israel's state-run Army Radio was more explicit: "If Obama is hesitating on the matter of Syria," it said, "Then clearly on the question of attacking Iran, a move that is expected to be far more complicated, Obama will hesitate much more - and thus the chances Israel will have to act alone have increased."

"I think transistors really are the unsung heroes of the information age," says Kaizad Mistry, vice president at the world's leading chip maker, Intel. "These tiny little switches ... these are the things that our computers, our servers, our smartphones and laptops (depend on)."

Since Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor in 1971, all chip manufacturers have been striving to increase processor speeds by cramming more and more transistors -- the tiny switches that control electrical signals -- onto surfaces no bigger than the size of a fingernail.

Intel's landmark 4004 chip contained 2,300 transistors, each measuring a few micrometers (a millionth of a meter) across. Today, the most advanced silicon chips contain billions of nano-sized switches controlling the flow of electrical currents. Measuring one billionth of a meter across, objects at the nanoscale are almost impossible to imagine.

Imagine that a marble measured one nanometer across, says the U.S. government's National Nanotechnology Initiative by way of comparison. If it did, then a meter would be equal to the diameter of the Earth.

"Nanoscale devices are important because our societies have gone crazy about information," says professor Peter J. Bentley from University College London and author of "Digitized: The science of computers and how it shapes our world.

"The amount of data produced and consumed every day is reaching unthinkable levels, and it increases every day. But that data has to be stored somewhere, and processed by something," Bentley told CNN via email.

"So basically, we either keep getting smaller so that we can store and process more information in the same small size for about the same power cost ... or we will have to start rationing data usage per person because the computing power needed will eventually use more energy than the planet can support," he added.

In a bid to keep pace with Moore's Law -- Intel founder Gordon E. Moore's assertion that the number of transistors on a chip should double roughly every two years -- Intel have developed new "3-D" or "Tri-Gate" transistors, each one measuring 22 namometers across.

Washington says more than 1,400 people, many of them children, were killed in the world's worst use of chemical arms since Iraq's Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in 1988.

U.S. military action will be put to a vote in Congress, which ends its summer recess on September 9, giving President Bashar al-Assad time to prepare the ground for any assault and try to rally international support against the use of force.

In a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval, Syrian U.N. envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari called on "the U.N. Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria", state news agency SANA said on Monday.

He called on the Security Council to "maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy".

Ja'afari said the United States should "play its role, as a peace sponsor and as a partner to Russia in the preparation for the international conference on Syria and not as a state that uses force against whoever opposes its policies".

Syria denies using chemical weapons and accuses rebel groups, who have been fighting for more than two years to topple Assad, of using the banned weapons. At least 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started in March 2011 with protests against four decades of Assad family rule.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that tests showed sarin nerve gas was fired on rebel-held areas on August 21.

Taipei prosecutors confirmed that HTC vice president of product design Thomas Chien, research and development director Wu Chien-Hung and senior manager of design and innovation Justin Huang were arrested on Friday.

Chien and Chien-Hung remain in custody, while Huang was released on bail, prosecutors office spokesman Mou Hsin Huang said.

The executives were also accused of making false commission fee claims totaling around T$10 million ($334,200). No further details about the allegations were immediately available.

The arrests came in response to a complaint filed by HTC last month accusing the executives of leaking trade secrets.

HTC declined to comment except to say the investigation had no impact on its operations. Chien and Chien-Hung could not be reached and Huang was not immediately available to comment.

Media reports citing the police said the executives were planning to use stolen new interface technology to set up a new mobile design company aiming at Chinese vendors.

Shares of HTC lost 6.4 percent to T$146.5 at 0250 GMT, versus a 0.2 percent fall in the broader market.

Rocked by internal feuding and executive exits, and positioned at the high end of a smartphone market that is close to saturation, HTC has seen its market share slump to below 5 percent from around a quarter five years ago.

The report late Sunday by Globo's news program "Fantastico" was based on documents that journalist Glenn Greenwald obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, was listed as a co-contributor to the report.

"Fantastico" showed what it said was an NSA document dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was still a candidate at that time. In the messages, Pena Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.

A separate document displayed communication patterns between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her top advisers, "Fantastico" said, although no specific written passages were included in the report.

Both documents were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be "intelligently" filtered, Fantastico said.

Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo told O Globo newspaper that the contents of the documents, if confirmed, "should be considered very serious and constitute a clear violation of Brazilian sovereignty."

"This (spying) hits not only Brazil, but the sovereignty of several countries that could have been violated in a way totally contrary to what international law establishes," Cardozo said.

Cardozo traveled last week to Washington and met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden and other officials, seeking more details on a previous, seemingly less serious set of disclosures by Snowden regarding U.S. spying in Brazil.

Rousseff is scheduled to make a formal state visit in October to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, a trip intended to illustrate the warming in Brazil-U.S. relations since she took office in 2011.

A spokesman for Rousseff would not comment on the new spying allegations. Officials at Mexico's presidential palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vodafone cautioned that there is no guarantee that an agreement will be reached, but said that the deal would consist of a mixture of Verizon common stock and cash. "A further announcement will be made as soon as practicable," the company said in a statement. Verizon declined to comment.

If completed, it will be one of the largest deals in corporate history. Vodafone paid a record $180 billion for Germany's Mannesmann in 2000. Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) has expressed desire in controlling all of Verizon Wireless for years, but rumors that such a deal was about to get done have increased over the past few months.

Verizon Wireless is the most profitable U.S. wireless carrier, and Verizon wants total access to that firehose -- not just 55% of it. The wireless business is the only reason the company is growing: Landlines are dying, and Verizon has stopped building out its FiOS Internet and television infrastructure.

Related story: Vodafone's $10 billion German takeover The British company could use the proceeds to pay down debt. It may also return a substantial portion to shareholders.

Vodafone's possible exit from the U.S. comes as the telecoms group deepens its presence in Europe. In June, Vodafone outbid Liberty Global and paid $10.1 billion to buy German cable operator Kabel Deutschland. That purchase should allow it to continue growing in the German market by cross-selling TV and broadband services to its existing customers.

Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, made the announcement in a corporate blog post which complained of the government's "continued unwillingness" to let it publish information about Fisa requests.

Each company filed a suit in June arguing that they should be allowed to state the details under the first amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, and in the process defend corporate reputations battered by Edward Snowden's revelations. Critics accused the companies of collaborating in the snooping.

"On six occasions in recent weeks we agreed with the department of justice to extend the government's deadline to reply to these lawsuits. We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all," Smith wrote.

The negotiations failed, he wrote, so Google and Microsoft were going to court. He did not specify when, or to which court.

"With the failure of our recent negotiations, we will move forward with litigation in the hope that the courts will uphold our right to speak more freely. And with a growing discussion on Capitol Hill, we hope Congress will continue to press for the right of technology companies to disclose relevant information in an appropriate way."

Snowden, a former NSA whistleblower, gave documents to the Guardian and Washington Post revealing NSA claims about access to technology firms' data via its Prism system.

The companies denied the NSA had "direct access" to their systems but said they were legally unable to disclose how many times they have been asked to provide information on users.

Fisa requests are granted by a special court that sits in secret and can grant the NSA permission to collect data stored by any company about a named person. In 2012, the court granted 1,856 requests and turned none down.

"We believe we have a clear right under the US constitution to share more information with the public," said Smith's post. "The purpose of our litigation is to uphold this right so that we can disclose additional data."

The decree, known as Decree 72, says blogs and social websites should not be used to share news articles, but only personal information.

The law also requires foreign internet companies to keep their local servers inside Vietnam.

It has been criticised by internet companies and human rights groups, as well as the US government.

Vietnam is a one-party communist state and the authorities maintain a tight grip on the media.

Dozens of activists, including bloggers, have been convicted for anti-state activity in the country this year.

The new law specifies that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook should only be used "to provide and exchange personal information".

It also prohibits the online publication of material that "opposes" the Vietnamese government or "harms national security".

Last month the US embassy in Hanoi said it was "deeply concerned by the decree's provisions", arguing that "fundamental freedoms apply online just as they do offline".

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that campaigns for press freedom worldwide, has said the decree will leave Vietnamese people "permanently deprived of the independent and outspoken information that normally circulates in blogs and forums".

Mandela, 95, had spent 87 days in a Pretoria hospital after he was rushed there in early June suffering from a recurring infection of the lungs, a legacy of the nearly three decades he spent in jail under apartheid.

"Madiba's condition remains critical and is at times unstable. Nevertheless, his team of doctors are convinced that he will receive the same level of intensive care at his Houghton home that he received in Pretoria," South Africa's presidency said in a statement. It referred to Mandela by the traditional clan name by which he is affectionately known.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate's latest hospitalization in June had attracted a wave of attention and sympathy at home and across the world.

His home in Johannesburg's Houghton suburb had been "reconfigured" to allow him to receive special care there, the presidency added. Police blocked off a section of the street in the upscale neighborhood, where a crowd of reporters and camera crews had gathered.

"The health care personnel providing care at his home are the very same who provided care to him in hospital. If there are health conditions that warrant another admission to hospital in future, this will be done," the presidency added.

"It is a day of celebration for us, that he is finally back home with us," Mandela's grandson and heir Mandla said in a statement, acknowledging that he was "not a young man anymore".

Mandla said his grandfather's discharge from hospital disproved claims that Mandela was in a "vegetative" state "waiting for his (life) support machines to be switched off, in effect declaring him dead".

Thousands of well-wishers had visited the Pretoria medical facility during his stay there to leave flowers, cards and gifts.

Mandela made his last public appearance waving to fans from the back of a golf cart before the Soccer World Cup final in Johannesburg in 2010. In April state broadcaster aired a clip of the thin and frail statesman being visited by President Jacob Zuma and top officials from the African National Congress.

The ruling party said he was "in good shape" but the footage showed a weak old man sitting expressionless in an armchair.

"Dictatorships like Iran and North