A gay Mexican man with HIV/Aids has been granted asylum in the United States after a judge ruled he would be in danger of persecution in his home country. The appeals court in San Francisco overturned earlier rulings in a case that has been closely watched by human rights campaigners.
Waterborne weenie waving has become an unwanted side dish at a waterside restaurant in a popular tourist haunt across the bay from San Francisco, the manager lamented humorously on Tuesday. ”Most of the diners think it is quite comical,” said Jeff Scharosch, manager of The Spinnaker restaurant in the town of Sausalito.
A hacker has broken into computers at Sonoma State University in California and stolen personal information on about 61Â 000 students, according to the college. The unidentified hacker invaded seven staff computers at the college in July by exploiting ”a previously unknown weakness” in an operating system.
They’re being bred now by the millions, the mutants, created to carry the ghastliest of diseases for the benefit of the human race. Since researchers published the mouse’s entire genetic make-up in map form three years ago, increasingly exotic rodents are being created with relative ease.
Internet search giant Yahoo on Thursday trumpeted the release of a trial version of software that lets people seek out music, news, speeches and other audio files online. Yahoo’s service weighs into a competitive internet market where audio-file search programs are offered by companies such as America Online and Google.
Chevron paid Nigerian soldiers who guarded the company’s oil rigs after they allegedly attacked two villages in the African nation, according to company documents that have surfaced during a lawsuit against the energy firm. The invoice asks Chevron to pay 15Â 000 naira, about , to 23 soldiers who responded to ”attacks from Opia village against security agents”.
After an inauspicious plop into the choppy waters off Alcatraz, Jake the pooch swam into the history books as the first canine to escape from the former prison island to San Francisco. The golden retriever and his human swimming buddy, Jeff Pokonosky, led a group of competitors that jumped from a boat in waters off the prison for a 2km swim to San Francisco on Saturday.
Hoping to pave a new path to its popular website, Yahoo has acquired Konfabulator, a tiny software maker that provides a computer platform for monitoring the weather, stock prices and a wealth of other customised information without opening a web browser.
Worldwide PC sales grew by about 17% in the second quarter of the year as falling prices spiked demand in Asia and Latin America, research firm IDC said on Tuesday. Total PC shipments during the second quarter grew to 46,57-million compared with 39,94-million in the same period a year earlier, IDC said.
United States prosecutors announced criminal charges on Tuesday against 40 airplane pilots suspected of lying about potentially dangerous illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to drug addiction. The majority of those indicted were only licensed to fly private jets, but some earned their livings shuttling people or cargo through the skies.
Abnormally warm weather off the Pacific coasts of Alaska and Canada has decimated the plankton population off shore from Northern California, Oregon and Washington state, causing widespread seabird mortality and potentially devastating the marine food chain, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Tuesday.
A pioneer of handheld computing who claims that Microsoft pressured companies to boycott his new invention has sued the software giant for antitrust violations between 1987 and 1994, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Wednesday.
Apple released new software on Tuesday designed to make it easier for users to listen to the increasingly popular, but largely unstructured podcast offerings. Apple, which also announced colour screens for its iPod digital music players, said the new iTunes software comes with a podcast directory that lists more than 3 000 free audio programs.
Authorities described this week’s raids on San Francisco pot clubs as one of the largest drug crackdowns in the area in recent memory, and said the arrests were the first step in uncovering a major international drug operation. United States Attorney Kevin V Ryan said agents raided three pot clubs that operated as fronts for marijuana and Ecstasy trafficking.
Family advocacy groups lauded Yahoo for closing its chat rooms to clean up areas that allegedly were used to prey on children. Over the past month, pressure has been building on Yahoo to crack down on chat rooms that promoted sex with minors.
Hoping to build upon the power of its internet leading search engine, Google is believed to be developing an online payment system that that would pose a stiff challenge to online auctioneer eBay’s industry-dominating PayPal service. Google declined to comment, but the company’s silence didn’t muffle the buzz about a service that would set up a showdown between two internet powerhouses.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dropped a bombshell in his keynote speech opening this week’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. ”Yes, it’s true,” said Jobs, confirming the rumours. ”We are transitioning from PowerPC to Intel processors.”
Yahoo’s steeply discounted foray into online music subscriptions struck a sour note on Wednesday with the shareholders of Napster and RealNetworks — the owners of the rival services that stand to lose the most from the new competitive
threat.
Google’s earnings are growing so rapidly that not even the stock-market bulls can keep up. Blown away by the online search engine leader’s first-quarter profit, securities analysts raised their already high expectations for Google and investors scrambled on Friday to buy a piece of the company.
Online auctioneer eBay posted on Wednesday a 28% surge in earnings on turnover that topped -billion for the first time. The world’s biggest internet marketplace said it traded more than -billion worth of goods in the first quarter, earning net profits of ,3-million or 19 cents per share.
A horrified diner bit into part of a human finger, complete with its nail, when she tucked into a bowl of chilli in a California fast-food restaurant, health officials said on Thursday. The woman was so sickened by the grisly discovery on Tuesday that she began vomiting. Police were summoned to take the offending digit into custody.
Media mogul Barry Diller has expanded his internet holdings with a ,85-billion purchase of the Ask Jeeves internet search engine, according to a statement on Monday by Diller’s holding company IAC/InterActiveCorp. Ask Jeeves allows users to ask questions in natural language and is the fifth most-popular search engine in the United States.
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/ 11 February 2005
David Talbot, founder of the online magazine Salon, stepped down as editor-in-chief and as the publishing company’s chief executive on Thursday — the same day the struggling company reported its first profit ever. ”It’s an excellent time for me to move into a new role,” said Talbot, who is working on a book about John and Robert Kennedy.
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/ 9 February 2005
Underdog online search engine Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines, a web log index and internet news funnel popular with serious readers of online journals, in its latest bid to gain ground on heavyweight rivals Google and Yahoo. Ask Jeeves’ stock opened up 22 cents at ,65 a share on the Nasdaq stock market on Tuesday.
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/ 8 February 2005
Setting up a battle for the future of computing, engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba unveiled details of a microprocessor they claim has the muscle of a supercomputer and can power everything from video game consoles to business computers.
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/ 2 February 2005
Google’s fourth-quarter profit surged to a sevenfold increase, accelerating the financial gains that have quickly turned the online search engine leader into a Wall Street favourite. The Mountain View-based company said on Tuesday that it earned ,1-million or 71 cents per share, during the final three months of 2004.
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/ 20 January 2005
A documentary filmmaker has spent more than a year capturing people on film as they jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The report said Eric Steel had filmed most of the 19 suicides that occurred at the San Francisco icon last year plus a number of attempted suicides.
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/ 12 January 2005
Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled a very small computer on Tuesday and a flash memory-based music player called the iPod Shuffle. The new products seek to make inroads against the traditionally more affordable PC market and against lower-cost competitors to Apple’s wildly popular iPod.
A United States federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a defamation lawsuit that Evel Knievel and his wife brought against the cable television sports network ESPN for labelling the daredevil a ”pimp”. The 66-year-old Knievel and his wife, Krystal, claimed a caption to a photograph posted on ESPN’s website damaged their reputations.
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/ 17 December 2004
An internet virus disguised as an electronic greeting card was spreading on Thursday across the world, duping e-mail users with a ”Merry Christmas” message that automatically appears in their native language. The Zafi-D virus infected 10% of e-mail on the net, according to anti-virus firm Sophos.
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/ 15 September 2004
Yahoo is buying online jukebox provider Musicmatch for -million in a deal designed to broaden the internet giant’s appeal with the growing audience of consumers who buy songs off the web. The all-cash acquisition, announced on Tuesday, gives Sunnyvale-based Yahoo a major drawing card as it competes against the likes of Apple Computer, RealNetworks and Napster in the rapidly growing field of digital music management.
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/ 2 September 2004
Google employees and other insiders will be free to sell an additional 4,67-million shares of the company’s stock on Thursday, providing another test of the online search engine’s popularity with investors. The Google shares eligible to begin trading on Thursday represent the first in several waves of insider stock that could pour into the market during the next few months.