Prince Harry joins expedition to North Pole

Longyearbyen, Norway:  Britain's Prince Harry hit the slopes on Tuesday - far above the Arctic Circle.

Days after hosting his brother's bachelor party, the 26-year-old prince joined wounded soldiers training in Norway for a charity hike to the North Pole.

The third in line to the British throne plans to train for three days before accompanying the team on the first five days of their four-week expedition.

Harry was all smiles as he spoke to reporters during a brief break from training - despite the minus 20 degrees Celsius temperature.

He said he was ready for the challenge - although perhaps not as ready as his colleagues, who have been training for the arduous journey for months.

The prince is joining the hike in his role as patron of the Walking With the Wounded charity.

It's hoped the 320 kilometer trek to the Pole will raise two million pounds to help injured military personnel.

The charity's co-founders are taking part in the trip, as are four servicemen wounded in Afghanistan.

Harry, who is training to be an Apache helicopter pilot with the British Army Air Corps, is scheduled to return home on 5 April to continue his military work.

That should leave him plenty of time to prepare for the role of best man to his brother, William, who is getting married to Kate Middleton on April 29.

12-year-old on school trip delivers baby

London:  A 12 year-old Dutch girl, who did not realise she was pregnant, delivered a baby girl when she was on a school trip.

"Neither the girl nor her family had realised she was pregnant, and there were no external signs to show it," the Telegraph quoted a spokesperson for health services as saying.

The girl was from Groningen in the north of the Netherlands.

She felt violent stomach pain when she was on a day out with her classmates last week.

A supervisor alerted the emergency services and when ambulance staff came they saw the girl was about to give birth, the media report said.

She was taken to a nearby building where she delivered her baby.

Both the child-mother and her new-born "are doing well" in the maternity ward of a hospital.

Timothy Geithner seeks uniform exchange rate policy

 

 

China is accused of keeping its currency artificially undervalued

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has kicked off the G20 meeting in Nanjing with a call for more consistency in international currency exchange rates.

Mr Geithner said tight control of currency pricing by some countries was hurting global economy.
The United States and other developed nations have been critical of China's exchange rate policy.
The meeting is being attended by some of the financial world's biggest names.
Mr Geithner said that the Group of 20 nations was working closely to put in place a system that will streamline the exchange rates globally.
"We have been engaged in a multilateral effort in the G20 to establish stronger norms for exchange rate policy," he said.
There have been repeated calls for China to let the value of yuan appreciate against the US dollar. It has been accused of keeping the value of the yuan artificially low in order to help its exporters.

End Quote Timothy Geithner US Treasury Secretary

Beijing has maintained that a sudden appreciation of its currency will be detrimental not only for its export sector but for its overall economy.

Analysts say the scenario is likely to remain the same for the time being.
"China will be sensitive to discussing the yuan, especially on its own ground, but given what's happened in the world economy in the past few weeks, I think exchange rate complaints will be on the back burner," said Mitul Kotecha, global currency strategist at Credit Agricole.
Global currency China has been pushing for yuan to become a global reserve currency.
That push got a big boost as the French president Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that given the importance of emerging economies like China to global growth, their currencies should be added to the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Right (SDR) basket.
His comments were backed by Mr Geithner who said he supported a change to the SDR composition.
"Over time, we believe that currencies of large economies heavily used in international trade and financial transactions should become a part of the SDR basket," he said.
However, Mr Geithner said that for that to happen, the countries will have to loosen their control on the currency.
"To achieve this objective, the concerned countries should have flexible exchange rate systems, independent central banks and permit the free movement of capital flows," he said.

China accuses Google and its affiliates of tax fraud

Saving Rachel (A Donovan Creed Crime Novel)

Beijing:  American search engine Google, which recently accused the Chinese government of blocking its services, has been charged with tax evasion along with three of its affiliate companies.
    
Three Google-affiliated companies have been found using fake invoices and accounting and business tax irregularities were also discovered that involved more than 40 million yuan (USD 6.06 million), the state-run Economic Daily reported today, citing sources in China's tax authority.
    
Google itself is under investigation for tax evasion, it said.
    
The authority has asked the companies to correct their wrong-doing and has retrieved the money, the daily's report being circulated by the official Xinhua news agency said.

    
In October, 2007, two Google-affiliated companies registered in Beijing were investigated for tax evasion involving more than 20 million yuan.
    
The news of the tax cases came about ten days after Google accused the Chinese government of "blocking" its services, while making it appear as if it is a technical problem.
    
The American search engine, which patched up with the Chinese government after a prolonged wrangle last year over periodic interference of its content by intrusive censors, said that investigations carried out by it to look into recent disruptions revealed there was no technical problem.
    
"There is no issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage, carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," it said in a statement issued here on March 21.
    
Google's Internet and e-mail services went haywire ever since the "Jasmine" uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt last month, which subsequently spread to several other Gulf countries.
    
While China blocked all information relating to these protests in Chinese language Internet services, used by over 457 million people, Google and Gmail services experienced periodic disruptions after overseas Chinese dissident groups started calling for similar protests in Chinese cities, which were put down with an iron hand by the Chinese police.
    
Google, which had 35 per cent of the Chinese market before it moved its search engine over to Hong Kong following a spat with the government, managed to return to the Chinese market this year after obtaining a new licence accepting the
stringent censorship rules governing the Internet in China.
    
Google's return was largely attributed to the lure of the burgeoning Chinese Internet market, which has emerged world's largest, with over 457 million connections.
    
The Chinese government appears increasingly cagey over the speed with which Internet has spread as it has quickly emerged as a new media threatening the relevance of the tightly controlled official media.

According to recent reports, China has over 100 million microbloggers, who managed to establish networks of their own despite a ban on social network websites like Twitter and Facebook.
    
Most of the Chinese bloggers are hooked on to Chinese messaging networks like Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, which has millions of accounts, making authorities apprehend that the fast spreading Internet and microblogging networks could be used by dissidents to challenge the one-party political system.

Message for Mohali - straight from the web

If it's the talk of the town, could social networking sites be far behind? Celebrities and commoners alike posted last minute online messages of excitement, tension and good luck on the India-Pakistan semifinal in Mohali on Wednesday. An excited Sania Mirza, Indian tennis player, tweeted early on Wednesday: "Okkkk...here we gooo...good luck Team India..more than a billion wishes are with you...give it ur all..(sic)".

Film personality Pritish Nandy similarly tweeted: "Pakistan's bowlers vs India's batsmen: that's the real battle today".

Actor Rahul Bose tweeted that he was on his way to Mohali to watch the match. Kunal Kapoor, another Bollywood actor, tweeted that the tension was "unbearable".

The hype over the match reached a crescendo Wednesday as a lot of cricket buffs took leave from work to watch the match. They did not forget to post their online updates, of course.

Abhinav Singh, an advertising professional, said: "This is one match I just couldn't have missed. So I applied for casual leave and thankfully my boss was understanding enough to grant me the day off! I have called over a few friends to my place so that we can watch the match together and root for India."

Sara Mishra, a student, posted on Facebook: "The big day is here! Good luck Team India! I am sure you will bowl them over".

Author Chetan Bhagat also rooted for the home team on Twitter, saying: "Alright men in blue, d-day today! Cream pak, so they finally realise why partition was a bad idea (sic)."

To all the maddening hype around, Bhagat said: "I know the match is getting overhyped, but it's ok. We get few such moments of national unity. We are one today."

A snake escapes from zoo, appears on Twitter

Last Friday, as New Yorkers droned through their morning commute, employees of the Bronx Zoo discovered something rather disturbing: An adolescent Egyptian cobra had gone missing from an exhibit enclosure at the zoo.

Fugitive reptiles don't usually make it to the pages of the Bits Blog, but a series of Twitter streams that unfurled online after the snake's escape show just how creative the Internet can be.

My colleague Alexis Mainland at the City Room blog, chronicles the anonymous Twitter user who is impersonating the missing snake under the handle @BronxZoosCobra. The account, which is barely 24 hours old, has amassed tens of thousands of followers, and offers a hilarious "account" of the snake's travels through New York City. Some of the funnier Twitter messages include:

I want to thank those animals from the movie "Madagascar." They were a real inspiration.

Holding very still in the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. This is gonna be hilarious!

Taking the Sex and the City Tour!!! I'm totally a SSSamantha.

A victim, her picture and Facebook

The truth, said Chrissy Criscitiello, is that she never gave a moment's thought to the deal she was making when she posted pictures on Facebook. "They're of me and my friends when we go out," Ms. Criscitiello said. "My son's graduation. My husband's family reunion. A vacation we went on to Lake Wallenpaupack.

"I never thought they would be able to sell those pictures or give those pictures to someone else."

In 2009, Ms. Criscitiello got a crashing introduction to the world of intellectual property, as the pictures and content on Facebook are called. On March 30, her sister Caroline Wimmer, 26, was murdered in her apartment on Staten Island. A month later, a reporter with The Staten Island Advance called the family home with news that a picture of her dead body had been posted on the Facebook page of one Mark Musarella.

As it turned out, Mr. Musarella, a retired police officer, was one of the emergency medical technicians who responded to the apartment when Ms. Wimmer's parents discovered her body and dialled 911. He had taken at least one picture of her, and then uploaded it to his account. One of his cyber-friends informed the hospital where he worked of the picture, and he was immediately fired.

"I went right on Facebook, but by the time I got there, his account had been deleted," Ms. Criscitiello, 34, said.

The picture of Caroline Wimmer in death showed her after she had been beaten and strangled with an electric cord. The family reeled.

Facebook has rules that bar precisely these kinds of pictures, but they generally are enforced only when members complain about them, not through advance screening done by the company. Photos come in by the millions every month; Facebook says its users share 30 billion pieces of content every month. They also grant the company nearly unlimited rights to use that data any way it wants.

A 1996 federal law, the Communications Decency Act, gives online service providers broad protection from any responsibility for what people say or do on their sites. It is thought to be a cornerstone of free speech on the Web. It also protected Facebook from legal responsibility for the grotesque act of Mr. Musarella, who ultimately pleaded guilty to official misconduct.

In the months after Ms. Wimmer's death, her family hired a lawyer, Ravi Batra, who wanted to find out what had happened to the picture while it was visible on Facebook; who had viewed or downloaded it; and what had become of it after the medic's account was closed.

Mr. Batra said he had asked a lawyer for Facebook if the picture still existed on a server or was stored somewhere else. According to Mr. Batra, the lawyer replied: "I can't answer that. I can't tell you how many places they put it. All I can tell you is that it's not available through the member accounts."

In a letter to Mr. Batra, Facebook said it would provide the Wimmers with certain details about the activity on Mr. Musarella's account, but only if he -- the very man who had taken the picture of the dead woman and posted it for his world to see -- signed a consent form. Facebook helpfully sent along a copy of the standard form.

"They told us to get Mark Musarella's permission," Ms. Criscitiello said on Tuesday.

As was widely reported, the Wimmer family announced on Monday that it had filed suit against Facebook. "We are not suing Facebook for money," Ms. Criscitiello said. "We're suing them to change things, so no other family members of a murdered person have to experience these things."

A Facebook spokesman said Tuesday that the company was horrified by what had happened with Ms. Wimmer's photo, and he promised that it did not keep any copies of her picture in any of its databanks. The spokesman, Barry Schnitt, said that when a photograph was deleted by a user, it was removed from all of the company's servers within 90 days.

Why wasn't this told to the Wimmer family?

"It sounds like there may have been some mis communication back in 2009," Mr. Schnitt said. "It was never our intention to suggest that we wouldn't cooperate. In fact, we worked with authorities to convict the man who posted the photograph. We'd be happy to share the results of our investigation with the parents if they would like."

They certainly would, said Chrissy Criscitiello. "Everyone is all about technology," she said. "What about morals?"

More wishes for Sakshi Dhoni

With the match underway, more wishes are pouring in for the first couple of Indian cricket. These are the top ten wishes for Sakshi Dhoni on Facebook and Twitter as India and Pakistan fight it out in Mohali.

1. Aakash Dhoundiyal : Tendulkar saved again...!!! M S Dhoni please do not criticize d UDR system nw...!!!
2. Vicky Peter: I am a gr fan of Dhoni and I pray India win this world cup under his capatainship one more feather in his cap
3. Harsh Sharma: Bhabhiji Dhoni ji se kaho ki kuch run bhi bana le kyonki ad. main toh kafi sixer lagaye the...............!
4. Vikram Vishwa: What a worse batting sirji.
5. Shamini Nehru: Wish You Very All the best INDIAN TEAM. My best wishes to Dhoni. Your Rock......GO INDIA GO.........!!!
6. Ketan Bodkhe: common 'mahi' r khiladi is baar ka world cup India mein
7. Dolly Kripalani: All the Best Dhoni Go for it !!!!!!!!!!!!!! and make it happen
8. Meenakshi Singh: Sakshi, Dhoni ke balle main dum lagaou......
9. Golfernikki: Please get Ashwin In, instead of Nehra @Sakshi are you on a hot line to @dhoni
10. missCsays: if its just 1 of those normal n boring matches.. den i'll jus tweet u as well as watch it.

Your heartbeat could recharge your iPod

London:  Out jogging and your iPod has run out of battery? Well, don't worry, your heart could soon be powering your iPod and your mobile phone too.

Scientists have found a way of powering a range of devices with body movements.

A team has created a tiny chip which uses natural motion to generate power for hand-held gadgets. They plan to use the human heart to power these devices, including iPods and mobile phones, eliminating batteries.

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, made their discovery using zinc oxide nanowires which create electricity whenever they are manipulated, the Daily Mail reports.

In theory, any body movement, even the pinch of a finger, could be used to generate power. So far the team used the technology to transmit a radio signal and to power LCD displays and diodes, but they are convinced it can go much further.

Lead researcher Zhong Lin Wang from Georgia, said: "This development represents a milestone toward producing portable electronics that can be powered by body movements without the use of batteries or electrical outlets."

"Our nano-generators are poised to change lives in the future. Their potential is only limited by one's imagination," Wang added.

In experiments five 'nano-generators' created about the same amount of power as two AA batteries - three volts. Wang said: "While a few volts may not seem like much, it has grown by leaps and bounds over previous versions of the nano-generator."

The findings were presented at the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Who will contest against Jagan from Kadapa?

Hyderabad:  The ruling Congress in Andhra Pradesh is desperately looking for a suitable candidate to take on its former leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and his mother Vijayalakshmi in the two forthcoming by-elections.

As it heads for the all-important by-elections to Kadapa Lok Sabha and Pulivendula Assembly constituencies on May 8, Congress is struggling to select someone to take on Jagan and his mother.

The by-election was caused following Jagan's resignation from the Lok Sabha as well as the Congress on November 29 last year.

Jagan, son of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, will fight for the Kadapa Lok Sabha seat while Vijayalakshmi will vie for the Pulivendula seat which she had vacated along with his son.

Initially, it was expected that Congress would pit state Agriculture Minister Y S Vivekananda Reddy, Jagan's uncle, against his sister-in-law in Pulivendula, a family stronghold.

Viveka, younger brother of late YSR, retired as a member of the state Legislative Council on March 29 and has to get elected to the state legislature within six months to continue as a minister.

Since biennial elections to the Legislative Council have concluded, the only option for the Congress is to field him from Pulivendula.

Though Viveka today offered to step down as minister, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy refused to accept his resignation since there is a constitutional provision that enables him to continue in the post for six more months.

Initially, the name of Viveka's son-in-law Narreddy Rajasekhara Reddy was put in circulation for the Kadapa Lok Sabha seat but the move was strongly opposed within Congress as Narreddy was perceived to be no match for Jagan.