New IMF boss Rodrigo Rato said on Tuesday surging oil prices, which hit a fresh 1990 closing high minutes after he spoke, are disrupting financial markets. Rato, the incoming managing director of the International Monetary Fund, welcomed a call by Saudi Arabia for Opec to boost output by 1,5-million barrels per day.
The FBI’s nearly -million effort to modernise its antiquated computer systems to help prevent terrorist attacks is ”not on a path to success,” according to an outside review completed weeks after the bureau director gave the United States Congress assurances about the programme.
About 57-million United States internet users have received e-mails luring them to fake websites in an effort to obtain bank or credit card information, a survey showed on Thursday. The survey on the scheme known as ”phishing” also estimated that this type of fraud cost US banks and credit card issuers about ,2-billion last year.
United States President George Bush on Wednesday told a skeptical Arab world that the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by some members of the US military was ”abhorrent” and does not represent ”the America that I know”. He stopped short of apologising. ”People will be brought to justice,” Bush said.
A new worm raced across the internet on Monday, leaving millions of computers infected and disrupting systems controlling trains, banks and even the European Commission government offices. The Sasser worm is seen as a major threat because it spreads itself to any unprotected computer linked to the internet.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=65787">How to stop Sasser</a>
Iraq has become the world’s worst place for journalists to work in, the United States-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day on Monday. The advocacy group also listed Cuba, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh, China, Eritrea, Haiti, the West Bank and Gaza, and Russia, following Iraq, in a ranking that it said ”represents the full range of current threats to press freedom”.
Zimbabwe: So this is democracy?
‘Endangered species’
Apple Computer celebrated the first anniversary of its online music service on Wednesday, announcing it had sold 70-million songs and was still growing. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the figures show it is ”the number one online music service in the world” with some 70% of the market for legal music downloads.
The recording industry sued 477 more computer users on Wednesday, including dozens of college students at schools in 11 states, accusing them of illegally sharing music across the internet. The Recording Industry Association of America, praised efforts by colleges and universities to use technology and school policies to crack down on music piracy on their own networks.
Ethiopia on Thursday got a nod from international lenders for ,3-billion in debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. The East African country is the thirteenth country to obtain debt forgiveness through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Countries must undertake economic reforms and tackle corruption in order to join the elite club.
About 75Â 000 years ago someone living in a cave overlooking the Indian Ocean bored holes in a set of shells and strung them as beads — the earliest known human jewellery. Uncovered in Blombos cave on the Indian Ocean shoreline in South Africa, the newly discovered beads were made from the shells of a type of mollusc.
Just one month after taking office in 2001, United States President George Bush bluntly told Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to bring terror kingpin Osama bin Laden to justice, the official September 11 inquiry was told on Thursday. Musharraf was also told to abandon support for the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
President George Bush was on Tuesday struggling to prevent the escalating violence in Iraq from engulfing his re-election campaign, after his worst political week this year triggered bipartisan calls for a rethink of United States strategy there.
US forces battle guerrillas in Iraq
The United States government has warned local law enforcement authorities that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups could soon launch a series of attacks on US passenger trains and buses. The US action follows the discovery in Spain of a new bomb planted on a high-speed railway line linking Madrid and Seville.
United States Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says he believes people are born gay but are not guaranteed the right to marry within their own gender. ”I think it’s entirely who you are from birth, personally,” Kerry said in an interview to be broadcast on MTV.
US lawmakers joined the chorus of criticism on Thursday of the European Union decision imposing a record fine and other sanctions on Microsoft for antitrust violations.
If the Bush White House had heeded warnings in early 2001 about the threat from al-Qaeda, at least two of the September 11 hijackers would ”probably have been caught” and ”there was a chance” the attacks could have been prevented, the president’s former top counter-terrorism adviser told The Guardian newspaper last week.
Microsoft’s rivals lauded Wednesday’s European Union antitrust decision imposing a record fine on the software giant and ordering changes to the Windows operating system used in Europe. The EU ordered Bill Gates’s firm to offer a European version of its all-conquering Windows operating system without the Media Player program within 90 days.
President George Bush and Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry are running neck and neck in United States voter support, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Tuesday. Bush and Kerry share a 46-43% support — a tie since the difference matches the poll’s margin of error.
Shopping for a new computer, whether a desktop or notebook, is always an unsettling experience. Since your last computer purchase, a lot has happened in the world of technology. New acronyms and new options await you. So how do you sort through the jumble of paraphernalia that makes up a PC today?
The United States military is about to add a new weapon to its already impressive arsenal in Iraq. But in contrast to other armaments, this one does not shoot or explode. It screams and hollers. The weapon can deliver a shrill 145-decibel tone over a distance of more than 300 metres, causing splitting headaches, pain, panic and, in some cases, even hearing loss.
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday discussed Haiti’s political situation with South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, one day after she called for an inquiry into former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s departure from his country.
Powell asked SA to take Aristide
Looting continues in Haiti
The United States on Tuesday said it was widening an existing sanctions regime against Zimbabwe to include seven government-related businesses. The enhanced US sanctions ban any transactions with the seven black-listed groups.
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/ 27 February 2004
Researchers probing mountains and ancient seas in Antarctica have discovered two previously unknown types of dinosaurs, the National Science Foundation reported. The fossilised remains, thousands of kilometres from each other, were found less than a week apart on the frozen continent that once had a far warmer climate.
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/ 26 February 2004
Researchers in Washington on Wednesday said they had identified a protein able to block the replication of the HIV virus in monkeys, a key discovery that sheds light on halting the spread of Aids among humans. Humans have a similar protein, but it is not as effective at stopping HIV, according to the researchers, whose work is published in the journal Nature.
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/ 26 February 2004
Zimbabwe’s government used ”torture by various methods” against its critics, and Ugandan rebels killed or abducted nearly 10 000 people last year, the United States State Department said in its annual report on human rights around the world.
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/ 24 February 2004
The world’s largest diamond producer, De Beers, is involved with talks with the United States Justice Department to settle charges of price fixing levelled against it nearly 50 years ago and return to the US market, The Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.
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/ 17 February 2004
Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide vowed to remain in office until his term runs out in 2006, and charged that the rebels trying to depose him fear elections, in an interview published by The New York Times on Tuesday. He is facing a rebellion in several cities that since February 5 has cost the lives of more than 55 people.
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/ 9 February 2004
John Kerry’s three-state United States weekend rout, capped by his coast to victory in Maine, pushed him closer to the Democratic nomination and left his rivals scrambling to find a way to stop the front-runner. Kerry’s winning streak is beginning to demoralise his opponents.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30861">Anxious Bush on charm offensive</a>
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/ 6 February 2004
An independent commission on the September 11 2001 terror attacks, established along similar lines to the intelligence inquiry announced by the United States White House this week, has been dogged by a constant struggle between the investigators and the Republican administration, which the commission regularly accuses of hampering its work.
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/ 5 February 2004
The investigation into the appearance of the deadly poison ricin on Capitol Hill this week and earlier in two ominous letters is focusing on a mysterious ”Fallen Angel” who threatens to use ricin as a weapon unless new United States trucking regulations are rolled back.
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/ 5 February 2004
As Americans turn to the internet more often for election news, some websites that offer such news are providing less useful information than they did four years ago, a new study has found. The sites contained less original reporting and fewer links to external sites, and fewer opportunities for web surfers to interact with the sites.