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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Conservatives lauded President Bush on Monday for his choice of Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, while liberals signaled a contentious confirmation hearing is ahead for the nominee.

Alito, a 55-year-old judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, is a favorite of conservatives, many of whom objected when Bush nominated White House legal counsel Harriet Miers at the beginning of the month.

After Miers withdrew Thursday, her nomination criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, conservatives eagerly awaited a nominee with judicial experience and credentials similar to Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. (An overview of Alito's judicial record)

Bush touted Alito's 15 years as a federal appellate judge and said, "This record reveals a thoughtful judge who considers the legal merits carefully and applies the law in a principled fashion." (Watch Bush call Alito 'fair-minded and principled' -- 4:15)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, reeling from an array of political troubles, patched up a rift with conservatives by nominating Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court on Monday but set up a bruising battle with Democrats over the court's future.

The choice of the conservative Alito drew quick praise from the right and condemnation from the left, which said a weakened Bush had placed a higher priority on healing a divided Republican Party than on uniting the country behind a consensus nominee.

"This is a needlessly provocative nomination," said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel that will consider Alito's nomination.

(CNSNews.com) - Democrats seized on news Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted on five counts in the Valerie Plame case, with some accusing the Bush administration of conspiring to lie to the American people about the war in Iraq.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called the indictment "evidence of White House corruption at the very highest levels far from the 'honor and dignity' the president pledged to restore to Washington just five years ago."

"The criminal indictments of a top White House official mark a sad day for America and another chapter in the Republicans' culture of corruption," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a statement.

"At the heart of these indictments was the effort by the Bush Administration to discredit critics of its Iraq policy with reckless disregard for national security and the public trust," said Pelosi.

"They suggest that a senior White House aide put politics ahead of our national security and the rule of law," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of the charges against Libby.

Lewis Libby indicted on 5 counts

Friday, October 28, 2005; Posted: 3:26 p.m. EDT (19:26 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA leak investigation is "not over," special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said Friday after announcing charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Fitzgerald said he will be keeping the grand "jury open to consider other matters." But, he said, "substantial work" is done.

Libby resigned Friday after a federal grand jury indicted him on charges related to the leak probe, including one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.

During an afternoon news conference, Fitzgerald said, "A CIA officer's name was blown and there was a leak and we needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it. Given national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts."

LONDON (Reuters) - This week's report into how Saddam Hussein dodged sanctions and earned billions from oil smuggling and bribes is a lesson to the U.N. how not to handle a possible crisis in Iran, a former British diplomat said.

"The Saddam regime was sustained by illegal smuggling that amounted to some $11 billion. The U.N. Security Council, including the U.S. and Britain, did very little to stop that," said Carne Ross, who was responsible for handling Britain's Iraq policy at the United Nations from 1998 to 2002.

"We should never make that mistake again," he told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

He was speaking the day after a U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, said more than 2,200 companies from 66 nations made illicit payments during the oil-for-food program.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - Lawyers in the C.I.A. leak case said Thursday that they expected I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, to be indicted on Friday, charged with making false statements to the grand jury.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

George Bush said one of the reasons he picked Harriet Miers for the supreme court was that he knew her so well. It says a lot about the president's current standing that the endorsement not only failed to save her: it may have helped sink her.

The withdrawal of a nominee before formal confirmation hearings have even begun is embarrassing enough. Dropping her after repeated personal endorsements, in the face of rancorous opposition from the president's own party, is an unprecedented humiliation.

George Bush's presidency hit a new low yesterday when his supreme court nominee, Harriet Miers, was forced to withdraw in the face of overwhelming resistance from within Mr Bush's own party.

The embarrassing rejection of the president's former personal lawyer and White House counsel, despite his enthusiastic backing, helped make this week probably the most miserable of his five years in office.

It could well get even worse today, when a special prosecutor is expected to conclude a 22-month investigation into a White House intelligence leak. Mr Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, and the vice-president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, have been implicated in the leak and risk indictment.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More than 2,000 of the foreign companies that did business with Iraq in the U.N. oil-for-food programme made illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government, a report on the programme said on Thursday.

The U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker reported that Saddam diverted some $1.8 billion (1 billion pounds) in kickbacks and surcharges.

The 500-page report is the final one from the panel, which has investigated the now-defunct programme for 19 months.

It detailed the manipulation of the programme by companies around the world as well as individuals, groups and governments and made clear that nearly half of all the companies that took part in the programme made illegal payments.

"By the year 2000 the imposition of kickbacks and surcharges by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein brought about the emergence of illicit payments," the report said. "This irrevocably changed the nature of the programme."

The programme, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. It achieved considerable success in feeding Iraqis, and allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to pay for food, medicine and other goods.

The Singapore High Commissioner, Joseph Koh, has made a plea for Australians to accept his nation's determination to hang Nguyen Tuong Van for heroin trafficking, saying the Australian had a fair trial.

"We weigh the rights of offenders against the rights of victims and the rights of the community to live and work in safety and security," he said.

Singapore's president has been asked to convene a constitutional tribunal in a last-ditch attempt to stop the execution.

If the president does not issue a stay of execution, the hanging is likely to go ahead as soon as November 11, in two weeks time.

Just eight days into her epic voyage around Australia, solo Queensland adventurer Margaret Williams' biggest battle is to stay awake.

The 45-year-old doctor has been deprived of sleep for much of her first week at sea due to severe storms while trying to avoid being run down by tankers in a busy shipping lane.

Even so, Dr Williams was upbeat despite what has been a very stressful week.

"I felt very vulnerable sitting in the middle of a violent electrical storm 200 (nautical) miles out to sea and all alone," Dr Williams told her support team by radio on Thursday.

"I'm in desperate need of some decent sleep right now but am in better spirits and it's much less stressful now that I'm out of the shipping lane," she said.

Dr Williams set off from Mooloolaba, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, in the 12 metre sloop Against All Odds, on October 19.

Lawyers for the nine Bali heroin defendants have been dealt a slim hand, but there is one card always there for the playing: too young, not bright enough. Scott Rush's team have finally thrown it on the table.

Of the nine, only Matthew Norman is Rush's junior, and neither look their 19 years. You'd ask them for ID at a nightclub, and on sight it's hard to credit them with being part of a drug syndicate.

It's this combination of youth and apparent naivety that Rush's lawyers reached for yesterday as they asked judges to dismiss the charges against him.

The prosecution, the defence said, was being "imaginative" - so imaginative that they wanted the judges to believe someone "who is still very young, adolescent" could be "so clever and brave".

Robert Khuana was the first defence lawyer to use what might be called the "young and stupid" argument, and also the first to employ a tactic more common in Australian courts.

Brain Flip 4, a new variant of the classic game Memory. You can choose between two up to seven cards which must be equal to each other. You can play against the computer (different levels), yourselve or another player.

Windows adds extra **** for security, this has nothing to do with us.

No, all sign up's are done online on our secure sign up page.
You can get to the sign up page by clicking here

No we do not send any disks out.If you need help with your set up you can call or email us for support.
If you are currently a customer and need to set up a connection again you can go to:
Dial Up Access Number Lookup and log in.
Find an access number and use the "Auto Setup" hyperlink to download a new set up configuration.

No, we prefer that all billing is done on a monthly basis.

Go to: http://newwebmail.gct21.net/ to log in to Webmail.

Use the first part of your e-mail address and your password.

Example: joesmith

NOT: joesmith@gct21.net

We recommend using webmail all of the time, not just when you need to access it when you are traveling!

WEBSPACE IS FOR DIAL UP CUSTOMERS ONLY
You will need to request that we enable the webspace for you.

You can make a request via support@ConnectTo.Net or by phone 1-877-586-3538.
Once the webspace is enabled your URL will be this:

http://www.gct21.net/~your user name

You will use the same username and password for your dial up account to FTP into your space.

Example:
username- joe
password- iwantftpnow
FTP information:
DNS: Primary is: ns1.gct21.net
Secondary is: ns2.gct21.net

Create a public_html folder (if there is not one created already)and upload your pages into it.

You will need to use an FTP program, there are many free ones available.

No, your account will be put on hold until the following month.
Limited service.
You should only choose the 150 hour plan if you use the internet less than 5 hours a day.

Our only requirement is that the connection is used only by members of your immediate family living under the same roof, and that you do not attempt to maintain a connection when no operator is present.

Usage of more than 16 hours in any 24 hour period will be construed as a violation of these requirements.

Your account will be put on hold until the next month for violating the usage policy.

The easiest way to do it is to log into the dial up access number look up
on either your old computer or another computer that has internet access

The dial up access number lookup is here: Dial Up Access Numbers

Find the access number or numbers you want to use-then download the file and save it to a disk the file is small so it can be saved onto a floppy disk, cd or even sent via email.

Then just open the file on your new computer and it will automatically configure your dial up connection.

If you have trouble with that or you are unable to do that process you can also go to the manual set up instructions which will walk you through step by step (with pictures) how to set up the dial up connection.
MANUAL SET UP

There are also instructions for email set ups on the same web page.

At the present time you will need to call us.
We do not have an online page to change it yourself.
You can call us or send an email. If you are sending an email please make sure you include your dial up username.

You can sign up from any computer connected to the internet (a friend or neighbor's house, the library, at work, etc.)

If you do sign up from a computer other than your own please be sure to print out the manual set up instructions for your operating system.

That way when you get home you will be ready to set up and connect!

The manual set up should only take a few minutes and is very simple to do.
You can get to the page with the set up instructions by clicking here:
SET UP INSTRUCTIONS

NOTE #1: If you sign up from another computer make sure you DO NOT download the set up configuration.

If you do download the set up it will configure which ever computer you are using to dial up to our service.

NOTE #2: You may also call us and we can issue a temporary user name to allow you to connect for a short time so that you can sign up for our service

Yes! All you need to do is connect using the dial up username you have with us and download Propel on the second computer.

Thu Oct 27, 2005

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from record oil and gas prices.

While profit was up 75 percent and revenue rose 32 percent to more than $100 billion, the results fell short of Wall Street forecasts due to production outages caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and sharply lower profit at the company's chemicals division.

Analysts have warned that record profits for Big Oil, at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline, could add to calls for a windfall profits tax or other penalties on oil companies.

Thu Oct 27, 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the fate of at least two top White House advisers hanging in the balance, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald appeared set to announce his decision on Friday on criminal charges over the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, lawyers said.

Expected indictments in the case could trigger an immediate shake-up at the White House, already on the defensive over plummeting poll figures, soaring gas prices, opposition to the Iraq war and the withdrawal of President George W. Bush's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Harriet Miers.

Fitzgerald has zeroed in on Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser. Other current and former administration officials may also face charges.

Thu Oct 27, 2005

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More than 2,000 of the foreign companies that did business with Iraq in the U.N. oil-for-food program made illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's government, a report on the program said on Thursday.

The U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker reported that Saddam diverted some $1.8 billion in kickbacks and surcharges.

The 500-page report is the final one from the panel, which has investigated the now-defunct program for 19 months.

End users are reporting an operator intercept of "all circuits are busy". We are aware of the issue and we are working to resolve it ASAP. Unfortunately we do not have an ETR at this time.

Numbers affected during this ticket :
- 2526035441
- 2526045441
- 2526025441
- 2526025441
- 2526135441
- 2526145441
- 2526155441

**Phone # 2526075441 has been added to this ticket

***Phone # 9103495441 has been added to this ticket 12:30 pm PST

Published: October 27, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications.

What do we know about any of these people?

"Other candidates mentioned frequently included conservative federal appeals court judges J. Michael Luttig, Priscilla Owen, Karen Williams, Alice Batchelder and Samuel Alito; Michigan Supreme Court justice Maura Corrigan; and Maureen Mahoney, a well-respected litigator before the high court."

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers will get another chance to bolster her case when senators review her answers to a second set of questions from the committee in charge of her confirmation.

Miers' answers to a first questionnaire were criticized by Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and senior Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. She is expected to respond Thursday to a second questionnaire from the Judiciary Committee.

The committee has scheduled Nov. 7 confirmation hearings for her, but Specter and Leahy said Miers' answers to their original questions were "incomplete" and "insufficient," one of several setbacks Miers has faced over her nomination to replace retiring Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor.

Published: October 27, 2005

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 - More than 4,500 companies took part in the United Nations oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, according to the independent committee investigating the program.

The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Google Inc. has unintentionally provided a sneak peek at what appears to be a looming expansion into classified advertising -- a free service that might antagonize some of the Internet search engine's biggest customers, including online auctioneer eBay Inc.

Screen shots of the experimental service, dubbed "Google Base," appeared on several Web sites Tuesday shortly after the legions of people who dissect the online search engine leader's every move discovered a link to a page inviting people to list things like a used car for sale, a party planning service and current events.

Google confirmed the development of the service a few hours after taking down the link.

"We are testing new ways for content owners to easily send their content to Google," the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement. "We're continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don't have anything to announce at this time."

By offering a forum that would enable people to sell goods and services without paying for the advertising, Google might hurt eBay -- a major buyer of the online ads that account for most of Google's profits.

LONDON, England (AP) -- King Tutankhamen was a red wine drinker, according to a researcher who analyzed traces of the vintage found in his tomb.

Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane told reporters Wednesday at the British Museum that she made her discovery after inventing a process that gave archaeologists a tool to discover the color of ancient wine.

"This is the first time someone has found an ancient red wine," she said.

Wine bottles from King Tut's time were labeled with the name of the product, the year of harvest, the source and the vine grower, Guasch-Jane said, but did not include the color of the wine.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Former presidential candidate calls for Iraq pullback

Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry says President Bush should bring home 20,000 troops from Iraq over the Christmas holidays if the December elections there are successful.

Defeated by Bush last year and a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Kerry called for a "reasonable time frame" for pulling back troops rather than a full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. He said it could be completed in 12 to 15 months.

"It will be hard for this administration, but it is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down, starting immediately after successful elections in December," Kerry said in a speech prepared for delivery Wednesday at Georgetown University. Excerpts of the speech were obtained by the Associated Press.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

PARK RIDGE, New Jersey (AP) -- A crossing guard was struck and killed in front of a high school by another crossing guard on his way to work, police said.

Estelle Reynolds, 81, was killed Tuesday morning after being struck in a crosswalk by a vehicle driven by Marvin Hodgdon, 70. He was on his way to his crossing guard job in nearby Hillsdale.

Hodgdon told police he didn't see Reynolds, who was wearing high-visibility safety gear in front of Park Ridge High School, police Chief Richard Oppenheimer said.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have mapped patterns of tiny DNA differences that distinguish one person from another, a step that will speed up the search for genes that promote common illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

The map represents "a real sea change in how we study the genetics of disease," said Dr. David Altshuler, a leader of the project that included more than 200 researchers from six nations.

Scientists want to find disease-related genes as a means for diagnosis, prediction and developing treatments. Such genes give clues to the biological underpinnings of disease, and so suggest strategies for developing therapies.

Genes that predispose people to common disorders -- heart disease, cancer, diabetes, asthma and others -- are devilishly hard to find.

But the new "HapMap" -- taken from the genetics term, haplotype -- opens the door to launching comprehensive searches through the human DNA for those genes, said Altshuler, who does research at the Broad Institute, which is a collaboration of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Iran is permitting around 25 high-ranking al-Qaeda members to roam free in the country's capital, including three sons of Osama bin Laden, a German monthly magazine reports.

Citing information from unnamed Western intelligence sources, the magazine Cicero said in a preview of an article appearing in its November edition that the individuals in question are from Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Europe.

They are living in houses belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the report said.

"This is not incarceration or house arrest," a Western intelligence agent was quoted as saying.

"They can move around as they please."

The three sons of Osama bin Laden in Iran are Saeed, Mohammad and Othman, Cicero reported.

Another person enjoying the support of the Revolutionary Guards is al-Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaib, the report said.

Iran first said late last year that it had arrested and would try a number of foreigners suspected of having links to al-Qaeda, a loose network of military groups that Washington blames for the attacks of September 11, 2001 and bomb attacks in Spain, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere.

Suspected rebels from Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have shot dead two local aid workers in the remote north of the country, a United Nations security official in the region said.

The LRA has seldom targeted humanitarian staff in the past, but in two days there have been three attacks on three different aid agency vehicles in three neighbouring districts.

"A Caritas staff member named Joseph Stalin was shot dead today in Kitgum district. He was a passenger on a motorbike that was fired on," the UN security official said.

"Then, later this afternoon a clearly marked Accord vehicle was shot at in Pader district. One man, a local staff member, was killed and two others were critically injured."

On Tuesday, two local aid workers were shot and wounded when their Christian Children's Fund car was ambushed by suspected LRA rebels, aid workers in the region said.

The two men were flown by helicopter to a Kampala hospital.

"It is clear that the aid community is now being targeted," a senior aid worker in the capital told Reuters.

A new protocol--Transport Layer Security--will be used instead of SSL, among other changes.

Microsoft will dump SSL 2.0 encryption in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 for a stronger security protocol, TLS 1.0, the IE 7 development team has revealed.
The default settings for the HTTPS protocol in IE 7 will be for TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.0. In the current Internet Explorer, TLS must be enabled by the user, via the Tools/Internet Options/Advanced menu.

IE 7 will also block access to Web sites that offer up a problematical digital certificate. If a certificate's been issued to a host name other than the URL's actual hostname, or the certificate was issued by an untrusted root domain, IE 7 will put up a message that explains the problem. If the user chooses to proceed, IE 7 will tint the address bar red as an additional warning.

Oct. 26, 2005

Spammers are playing off avian flu fears to shill pharmaceuticals and pitch stocks.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

Spammers are playing off avian flu fears to shill pharmaceuticals and pitch stocks, a security firm said Wednesday.
U.K.-based Sophos warned users that its honeypots -- purposefully unprotected PCs set up to trap spam samples -- have been capturing a rising number of messages peddling Tamiflu, the Roche-made drug that reduces symptoms of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

One spam example that Sophos cited starts out "Bird flu case discovered in the USA" to stoke fears and prod people into buying Tamiflu from a Web site. The statement's not true; no confirmed cases of the avian flu have yet been found in the United States.

"Drugs like Tamiflu should be prescribed by legitimate doctors, not quacks on the Internet," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos, in a statement. "Buying medicine online from a Web site advertised by spam is like playing Russian Roulette."

Oct. 26, 2005
The hardware/software combo provides intrusion detection and prevention, and allows enterprises to respond individually to denial-of-service attacks.

Juniper Networks has announced a network security solution designed to defend voice over IP (VoIP) systems from session initiation protocol (SIP)-based attacks.
The Dynamic Threat Mitigation solution brings Juniper's routers and intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) systems with its service deployment system (SDX) to create a single unified security solution. The solution mitigates SIP-based denial of service (DoS) attacks and worms by allowing enterprises and providers to identify and respond to them individually.

Juniper's IDP system identifies potential threats to the centralized IDP Manager, which generates requests for action to the SDX. The SDX invokes the appropriate response, applying rate limits and filters on traffic flows. In the event that the IDP system detects an actual infection, the SDX policy server can quarantine and notify the affected user, redirecting him to a captive web portal

Samuel Cloud turned 9 years old on the Trail of Tears. Samuel's Memory is told by his great-great grandson, Michael Rutledge, in his paper Forgiveness in the Age of Forgetfulness. Michael, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a law student at Arizona State University.

It is Spring. The leaves are on the trees. I am playing with my friends when white men in uniforms ride up to our home. My mother calls me. I can tell by her voice that something is wrong. Some of the men ride off. My mother tells me to gather my things, but the men don't allow us time to get anything. They enter our home and begin knocking over pottery and looking into everything. My mother and I are taken by several men to where their horses are and are held there at gun point. The men who rode off return with my father, Elijah. They have taken his rifle and he is walking toward us.

I can feel his anger and frustration. There is nothing he can do. From my mother I feel fear. I am filled with fear, too. What is going on? I was just playing, but now my family and my friends' families are gathered together and told to walk at the point of a bayonet.

We walk a long ways. My mother does not let me get far from her. My father is walking by the other men, talking in low, angry tones. The soldiers look weary, as though they'd rather be anywhere else but here.

They lead us to a stockade. They herd us into this pen like we are cattle. No one was given time to gather any possessions. The nights are still cold in the mountains and we do not have enough blankets to go around. My mother holds me at night to keep me warm. That is the only time I feel safe. I feel her pull me to her tightly. I feel her warm breath in my hair. I feel her softness as I fall asleep at night.

As the days pass, more and more of our people are herded into the stockade. I see other members of my clan. We children try to play, but the elders around us are anxious and we do not know what to think. I often sit and watch the others around me. I observe the guards. I try not to think about my hunger. I am cold.

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A man charged in connection with a notorious hoax which diverted British police during their hunt 25 years ago for the Yorkshire Ripper was refused bail and remanded in custody on Wednesday.

John Humble, 49, is set to appear in court again to make a plea on January 9 next year.

Humble is accused of sending letters and an audio tape which led police to focus their inquiry on the wrong area.

Sent in 1979, they goaded detectives for failing to catch the serial killer who murdered 13 women between 1975 and 1980.

Humble, of Sunderland, was charged with perverting the course of justice after his arrest earlier this month.

The hoax diverted resources from the hunt for the real killer, lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe, who was jailed for life in 1981 for the murders.

The Yorkshire Ripper case is one of the most high-profile in British criminal history.

Police were criticised for falling for the hoax and moving resources from Yorkshire to a north-eastern area where local accents match the voice of the hoaxer, dubbed Wearside Jack.

It was Andrew Chan's big gamble, with his and eight other lives. He knew Australian investigators were on to his heroin smuggling plot from Bali but went ahead anyway, police documents suggest.

According to Indonesian records, Chan had said he was aware he was under Australian Federal Police surveillance. But even though the police pressure forced him to delay the heroin smuggling attempt, he did not abandon it - and on April 17, he and eight other Australians were arrested in Denpasar. All nine are now on trial and could face firing squads if convicted.

A lawyer for five of the Bali accused said yesterday that Australian police would bear the blame if any of the accused was sentenced to death. But the Chan allegations, if true, suggest the alleged ringleader was determined to go ahead even when he knew their risk of being caught had increased dramatically.

October 27, 2005

THE era of "sit-down" money for Aborigines in remote communities has ended, with Centrelink officers telling indigenous people those who do not work will lose their handouts.

Eight communities have been told in the past month they have to change or face the same penalties as the rest of the community: loss of dole payments.

Until now, about 8000 indigenous people have been exempt from mutual obligation programs because they live in areas where there is no locally accessible labour market program or education and training facilities.

But the Howard Government is dismantling the system of exemptions and has in the past month told about 880 people they will be taken off the program. Already, 115 of them are working for the dole. Their jobs include art and craft production, upgrading and maintenance of infrastructure, community fencing, sewing, creche activities, language maintenance programs and even sport coaching and umpiring.

Those in the affected communities are being given three choices: a spot in a work-for-the-dole CDEP program; a job the community collectively decides it wants done; or a place in a training program that could lead to a real job.

A former Khmer Rouge commander convicted over the 1994 murder of three Western tourists has been captured in Cambodia, officials have said.

They said that Chhouk Rin - who had been on the run for nearly a year - was detained in the north of the country.

Chhouk Rin was given a life sentence in 2002 for involvement in the abduction and killing of the three backpackers from Britain, Australia and France.

In February, the Supreme Court upheld in absentia a guilty verdict.

Mark Slater from Britain, Australian David Wilson and Jean-Michel Braquet from France were ambushed on a train travelling from the capital, Phnom Penh, to the seaside resort of Sihanoukville.

Wednesday, October 26

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- A bounty hunter and another man have been arrested in the investigation into whether city police stole almost 200 cars from a dealership after Hurricane Katrina, authorities said Tuesday.

Police have acknowledged some cars were taken from a Cadillac dealership after patrol cars were flooded. A department spokesman said earlier this month that it was not considered looting because the officers patrolled in the vehicles.

Alroy M. Allen, 23, and Sean Franklin, 39, are accused of stealing a 2003 Cadillac Escalade from the dealership.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A government watchdog is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate at least 13 occasions of alleged improper use of FBI surveillance, including searches and seizures of e-mail and bank records.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) released 93 pages of internal FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The documents previously were classified, The Associated Press reported.

The center told Senate Judiciary Committee members there may have been hundreds of such cases.

Police found bloody footprint, seized suspect's computers

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Police found a bloody shoe print on the lid of a storage container at the hilltop estate where Pamela Vitale was beaten to death, a court affidavit revealed.

The document, released Monday, also provided details of the violent beating the wife of prominent attorney Daniel Horowitz received before she died.

Vitale's injuries included a four-inch stab wound in her abdomen, a traumatic head injury and multiple wounds on her legs, an affidavit stated.

On October 15, Horowitz called police at 5:53 p.m. and screamed, "Help me, she's dead," the affidavit said.

Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies searched the home of Scott Dyleski on October 19. He was charged as an adult with murder last week in connection with Vitale's death.

Investigators seized two laptops, a computer central processing unit, bedding, knives and a duffel bag from Dyleski's house, just down the hill from Horowitz and Vitale's estate in Lafayette, an affluent community east of Oakland.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail.

Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don't have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers.

And that could bode ill for Microsoft Corp. and its flagship Office suite, which packs together word processing, spreadsheets and other applications.

The threat comes in large part from Ajax, a set of Web development tools that speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over.

"It definitely supports a Microsoft exit strategy," said Alexei White, a product manager at Ajax developer eBusiness Applications Ltd. "I don't think it can be a full replacement, but you could provide scaled-down alternatives to most Office products that will be sufficient for some users."

Ironically, Microsoft invented Ajax in the late 90s and has used it for years to power an online version of its popular Outlook e-mail program.

CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.

In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.

Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.

The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.

In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.

NEW YORK (AP) -- When it comes to reading or arithmetic, Marvin Calvin is delighted to help his two children. He missed out on many of the duties of parenthood during a 10-year stretch in prison for armed robbery.

But when it comes to MP3 players, video game consoles, computers or the Internet, he is just baffled.

"I won't even sit down with them and play that little game thing because I don't even know how to operate it," said the 48-year-old Calvin, who was freed in July.

He is a technological Rip Van Winkle.

Because of the rapid pace of technological change, thousands of inmates like Calvin leave prison every year to find a world very different from the one they knew when they went in.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity could hand up charges as early as today.

The grand jury is meeting this morning and is scheduled to expire on Friday, but special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could extend it.

On Tuesday, FBI agents interviewed a Washington neighbor of Valerie Plame for a second time. (Watch Washington wait for possible indictments -- 2:59)

The agents asked Marc Lefkowitz on Monday night whether he knew about Plame's CIA work before her identity was leaked in the media, and Lefkowitz told agents he did not, according to his wife, Elise Lefkowitz.

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Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 9:49 a.m. EDT (13:49 GMT)

(MedPage Today) -- About an hour after surgeons started removing her diseased right eye, Carol Weihrer woke up -- but no one in the operating room knew it.

"Anesthesia is a cocktail," Weihrer said. "The part of the cocktail that paralyzed the body was working, so I was paralyzed. But the part of the cocktail that puts the brain to sleep, what I call the 'brain scrambler,' was not working."

Weihrer's tale is not for the squeamish. "For something like two hours I was awake," said Weihrer, which means for almost half of the 5 1/2-hour surgery.

The first thing she heard was disco music playing in the operating room. Then she heard the "surgeon say, 'Cut deeper, you need to cut deeper.' "

That made her scream, but it was a silent scream.

"I knew nothing was coming out of my mouth, meanwhile I could feel them pulling, pulling on the eye."

She struggled to find a way to communicate "trying to move a finger or a toe, something so that they knew I was awake." Somehow, she got through, and she heard her surgeon say, "She is awake."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 10:52 a.m. EDT (14:52 GMT)

(SPACE.com) -- After the sun and the moon, Venus is the third brightest body in our sky, and because of this it received lots of attention from all the great ancient civilizations, including the Mayans, the Egyptians, and the Greeks.

As early as 1600 B.C. the Babylonians kept detailed records of its movement across the sky.

But in modern times our nearest neighbor has been somewhat neglected and only three missions have been dedicated to studying the heavily clouded planet. As a result, there is still a lot astronomers don't know about Venus.

Even the things they do know fairly well, such as the contents of its atmosphere, speed of rotation, and texture of its surface, continue to raise questions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baggage screeners found bomb components in a carry-on piece of luggage at San Diego International Airport on Tuesday and cleared the area to investigate, Department of Homeland Security spokesmen said.
A department spokesman said the screeners found "all components of an IED" (improvised explosive device) in a piece of luggage at around 7:45 a.m. (10:45 a.m. EDT)

They then evacuated the commuter terminal of the airport and bomb specialists began to investigate, the spokesman said.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez said an employee noticed a "suspicious item" in a piece of luggage as it was going through the X-ray machine.

Officials at the airport were not immediately available for comment.

The Homeland Security spokesman said officials were investigating to see if there was any link between the discovery in San Diego and bomb threats at two Los Angeles-area airports.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The White House on Tuesday sidestepped questions about whether Vice President Dick Cheney passed on to his top aide the identity of a CIA officer central to a federal grand jury probe.

Notes in the hands of a federal prosecutor suggest that Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, first heard of the CIA officer from Cheney himself, The New York Times reported in Tuesday's editions.

A federal prosecutor is investigating whether the officer's identity was improperly disclosed.

The Times said notes of a previously undisclosed June 12, 2003, conversation between Libby and Cheney appear to differ from Libby's grand jury testimony that he first heard of Valerie Plame from journalists.

"This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation and we're not having any further comment on the investigation while it's ongoing," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

A Hong Kong man has been convicted of movie internet piracy in what is believed to be the first case involving BitTorrent file-sharing software.
Chan Nai-ming was found guilty of copyright infringement for distributing three Hollywood blockbusters using BitTorrent, said a court official.

BitTorrent is widely used to trade material like TV shows and movies.

It makes the sharing of material easy by breaking a file up into fragments and then distributing them.

Barani is an Aboriginal word of the Eora, the original inhabitants of the place where Sydney City now stands. It means 'yesterday'. Sydney dates from the arrival of the first convicts to the place in 1788. For Indigenous people, who have lived here for at least forty thousand years, that is only yesterday. In 1788 when the locals were asked 'what is this place?', the answer they gave was 'werrong' or 'warran' which translates roughly as 'here...this place'. Perhaps Sydney would be better named Warran?

But just in case you thought that the history of Aboriginal people is somehow a pre-contact history, the name Barani (Yesterday) reminds us that there has been a continued presence. Like the history of everyone in the city, the history of the Indigenous citizens of Warran/Sydney is as new as yesterday.

Celebrating 18 years of trade, Jacksons has long been renowned as one of the most exciting and vibrant venues in Sydney. With four floors of entertainment encompassing six bars, Jacksons has something for everybody!

Located in the heart of the city and only a few minutes from The Rocks, Circular Quay, Opera House and major hotels, Jacksons is open around the clock seven days a week.

The Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, Est. 1841, is Sydney's oldest. The sandstone architecture is one of Australia's finest. All rooms permit beautiful views of the historic Rocks, the brasserie offers eclectic cuisine, and the ground floor bar is renowned for the six beers brewed in-house.

The Great Barrier Reef, off Australia's east coast, is one of the wonders of the natural world. It is World Heritage listed and is one of Australia's, and the world's, premier holiday destinations. The combination of glorious weather (be aware that it rains a lot in the wet season!), pristine rainforest, white sandy beaches, and an ocean varying in hue from blue to turquoise to green, ensures it's where the world wants to go to lie on the beach, swim, surf, snorkel, sail, bushwalk and birdwatch.

History

The first Melbourne Cup held in 1861 was certainly a dramatic event. According to legend, Archer the first horse to win the Melbourne Cup was reported to have walked 850 km (560 miles) from Nowra to Flemington to be a part of a race, that one day would capture the spirit of a nation.

While at the time the news of the death of the explorers Burke and Wills may have kept people away from the race, a modest crowd of four thousand watched the seventeen starters and the thrilling lead up. Before the race commenced, Twilight started early and was captured only after he had run the whole course, and tragically, two horses, Dispatch and Medora, had died after a fall.

The following year Archer raced again to win his second successive Melbourne Cup. Although it is rumoured, he again had walked from Nowra to Flemington, many people thought it was more likely that he had travelled anonymously by ship.

Despite his owner's intention to race Archer for a third Melbourne Cup, he was unable to do so because of a technical error. Archer's acceptance nomination to race failed to arrive in time because it was delayed in the post. As a result, owners scratched many horses, in a show of solidarity. This left a starting field of only seven horses that history shows was to be the smallest field of horses to race in the Melbourne Cup.

The Fashion

Whilst the undisputed heroes of the Melbourne Cup Carnival are the stars of the turf, the accompanying fashion frenzy that seizes Melbourne in Spring is truly spectacular. Fillies and fellows alike relish the opportunity to frock up in their finest and head to Flemington as the racecourse becomes the place to see and be seen. Last year's Spring Racing Carnival saw racegoers splurge on an amazing 47,960 hats, 39,578 pairs of shoes and 22,321 handbags.

Nine days before nine young Australians were arrested in a heroin smuggling sting in Bali, Australian police knew almost everything: who they were, where they would stay, when they would try to leave, even how they would strap the drugs to their bodies.

It was a crime not yet committed but with terrible consequences if it was discovered in Indonesia: the death penalty. Yet on April 8, the Australian Federal Police wrote to their Indonesian counterparts outlining in extraordinary detail what would take place. They named the alleged ringleader, Andrew Chan. And they told the Indonesians: "If you suspect Chan and/or the couriers are carrying drugs at the time of their departure, please take whatever action you deem necessary."

The Indonesians did. On April 17, Chan and four others were arrested at Denpasar Airport. Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj, Renae Lawrence and Martin Stephens had heroin strapped to their bodies. Another four, Myuran Sukumaran, Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman, were arrested soon after at a Bali hotel. All nine are now on trial.

Ahjumawi is a place of exceptional, even primeval, beauty. Brilliant aqua bays and tree studded islets only a few yards long dot the shoreline of Ja-She Creek, Crystal Springs, and Horr Pond. Of the park's 6000 acres, over two thirds of the area is covered by recent (three to five thousand years) lava flows including vast areas of jagged black basalt.

Fort Ross was established in 1812 by Russians as an outpost for sea otter hunters and a permanent trade base. It was the southernmost outpost of a Russian presence in the Pacific Northwest. The Russians remained at Fort Ross until sea otters became scarce in 1841. The holdings were sold to John Sutter, who later became famous when gold was discovered at his saw mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The serene, majestic beauty of this Grove is a living reminder of the magnificent primeval redwood forest that covered much of this area before logging operations began during the 19th century. Armstrong Redwoods preserves 805 acres of the stately and magnificent Sequoia sempervirens, commonly known as the coast redwood. These trees stand together as a testament to the wonders of the natural world. The Grove offers solace from the hustle and bustle of daily life, offering the onlooker great inspiration and a place for quiet reflection.

The ancient coast redwood is the tallest living thing on our planet! These remarkable trees live to be 500-1,000 years old, grow to a diameter of 12-16 feet, and stand from 200-250 feet tall. Some trees survive to over 2000 years and tower above 350 feet. Coast redwoods are classified as temperate rainforests and they need wet and mild climates to survive. The rainfall in Armstrong Redwoods averages 55 inches per year and the trees are often shrouded in a mystical fog that helps to maintain the moist conditions needed for the redwoods to survive.

Highlights of the park include Yosemite Valley, and its high cliffs and waterfalls; Wawona's history center and historic hotel; the Mariposa Grove, which contains hundreds of ancient giant sequoias; Glacier Point's (summer-fall) spectacular view of Yosemite Valley and the high country; Tuolumne Meadows (summer-fall), a large subalpine meadow surrounded by mountain peaks; and Hetch Hetchy, a reservoir in a valley considered a twin of Yosemite Valley.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

It all began with a statement that President Bush made in his January 2003 State of the Union address - a statement that some immediately knew was patently false.

One of those was Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, who knew that, contrary to what the president said that night, there was no evidence that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. Wilson had been sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to look into that very thing, and what evidence existed had turned out to be forged documents.

So later in 2003, Wilson wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times saying so. The response from the White House was to go on the attack - to undermine Wilson's credibility by showing that he was not a neutral party to the CIA. His wife, Valerie Plame, in fact, was a CIA operative. This fact then found its way into a column by conservative writer Robert Novak and other reporters.

What those in the Bush administration did was reckless and underhanded. Whether it was criminal, however, will be determined in the coming hours and weeks as Washington awaits indictments to be handed down following a 22-month grand jury investigation. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., the vice president's chief of staff, both of whom have testified to the grand jury about their conversations with reporters about Plame, appear to be at the center of the investigation. Either or both could face indictments concerning obstruction of justice, giving false testimony to the grand jury and/or mishandling classified information.

If they are indicted, it will likely mean they will step down, dealing another major blow to an already reeling White House.

LONDON (Reuters) - Two genes that are turned off in ovarian cancer cells could provide an early test for the illness known as the silent killer, Austrian scientists said on Tuesday.

Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna have identified five genes that have very low activity in ovarian cancer. Two, called N33 and NFA6R, do not work in most cases.

"These two genes are turned off," said Professor Michael Krainer, an ovarian cancer researcher at the university.

Although exactly what N33 and NFA6R do is not known, Krainer and his team suspect they may be involved with the progression of ovarian cancer which kills 114,000 women worldwide each year.

They suspect the genes have been turned off by a process called methylation, a form of gene inactivation, which may help identify patients with early signs of the illness.

"This would perhaps be a tool for earlier diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the future," Krainer told Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A "non-specific, non-credible" bomb threat has delayed flights at the Long Beach Airport in California, and a separate bomb threat at Orange County airport has been resolved, security officials said on Tuesday.
Both airports are in southern California.

At Long Beach, "they are treating it as a non-specific, non-credible threat at the moment ... although the airport is being swept by canines," a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said.

"Eight flights are affected. They normally open at 5 a.m. (0800 EDT) but they are now probably going to start opening between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.," the spokesman said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the delayed flights included those operated by JetBlue Airways, US Airways, American Airlines, and Alaska Airlines.

Officials said an earlier threat at Orange County airport had been resolved after canine teams swept the airport and found nothing amiss.

Officials could not give any additional details on the nature of the bomb threats.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 8:04 a.m. EDT (12:04 GMT)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- From Cancun to Key West and Marco Island to Miami, people are mopping up water and sweeping up debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, which is now churning in the Atlantic.

The deaths of at least 10 people -- four in Mexico and six in Florida -- were being blamed on the storm. At least 3.2 million homes and businesses in Florida were without power Tuesday, and Florida Power and Light said it could take a month before service is fully restored to all areas.

The acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Paulison, described the damage in the Sunshine State as "pretty extensive from the west coast all the way across to the east coast."

"A lot of power lines down ... a lot of tree damage, a lot of trees down, a lot of roof damage," Paulison told CNN's "Larry King Live." He also said mobile homes in the storm's path were "pretty much all wiped out." (Watch Paulison describe the damage -- 2:26)

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 7:33 a.m. EDT (11:33 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Documents in the CIA leak investigation indicate the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney first heard of the covert CIA officer from Cheney himself, The New York Times reported in Tuesday editions.

The newspaper said notes of a previously undisclosed June 12, 2003, conversation between I. Lewis Libby and Cheney appear to differ from Libby's grand jury testimony that he first heard of Valerie Plame from journalists. The newspaper identified its sources as lawyers who are involved in the case.

Libby has emerged at the center of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation in recent weeks because of the Cheney aide's conversations about Plame with Times reporter Judith Miller.

Miller said Libby spoke to her about Plame and her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, on three occasions.

Rosa Parks, who helped trigger the civil rights movement in the 1950s, has died, her longtime friends told CNN. She was 92. Parks inspired the movement when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955. Her arrest triggered a boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Phuket is the largest and most popular island in The Land Of Smiles also known as Thailand. Last year more than three million people visited this tropical holiday paradise.

Long sandy beaches below rugged headlands, a craggy coastline with natural arches and secluded coves are features that make Sonoma Coast State Beach one of California's most scenic attractions.

The Beach, actually a series of beaches separated by rock bluffs and headlands, extends 17 miles from Bodega Head to Vista Trail located 4 miles north of Jenner. Beachcombers, fishermen, sunbathers and picnickers can access the beach from more than a dozen points along coast Highway 1.

While the north coast weather can be foggy in the summer, it usually burns off by midday and the cool ocean breezes make the Sonoma Coast a haven for visitors seeking to escape the inland heat.

Day and night, there’s always something happening at Darling Harbour.

Transformed in the 1980s from a derelict dockyard into one of the world’s great waterfront destinations, this vibrant and modern precinct is ‘a must see’ for visitors and a favourite playground for Sydneysiders and their guests.

Whatever your interests, you’ll find something to delight: excellent attractions, world-class museums, exceptional shopping and a year round calendar of free outdoor events.

For superb waterside dining – from a lunch break to a special meal – Darling Harbour has more than 100 restaurants, cafés and take away outlets offering everything from pasta and pretzels to authentic Asian and contemporary Australian cuisine.

Quality hotels and serviced apartments located in Darling Harbour offer singles, couples and families the chance to ‘stay where you play’ right in the middle of all the action and with spectacular views of the harbour and city skyline from each hotel.

Holiday atmosphere

Best beach in Sydney

Beautiful harbourside inlets

Great pubs, bars & restaurants

International Jazz Festival and Surfing Contests

Bush not a prototype

ON a recent visit to an inner-east Sydney cafe, I was confronted with that popular new intellectual pastime of many Australians: radical anti-Americanism. Prominently displayed under the wall-mounted menu was a faded American flag and next to it a supposedly thought-provoking question: "Would you like world domination with that?"

The tone of the Chomskyesque quote was like something out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion while the message was reminiscent of the Sinophobic gold rush-era cartoons. After it was pointed out that the wall was being used for what amounted to racist sloganeering, the best the barista could come up with was a "so what?" expression on her face. Apparently, anti-Americanism is the prejudice du jour.

No longer afflicting only those mythical tribes with a fondness for latte or chardonnay, the loud and proud hatred of everything the US stands for is becoming the default ideological setting across political, economic and municipal lines. My awareness of this fledgling mood received a shot in the arm when I was made out to be the intellectual outcast at a recent dinner party among educated Westerners. My sin? Failure to find a moral justification for suicide bombings.

Yet such a public endorsement of xenophobic sentiments as exhibited by the said cafe was surprising, not least given the location. Apparently, under the prevailing political correctness regime, some nationalities are more equal than others.

This is not to say that US public policy should not be criticised or resisted. From New Orleans to Enron and from Abu Ghraib to the Florida vote count, the Washington political establishment has received justified criticism. However, the track record of one president and his college-buddy appointees should not be used to tar the 48 per cent of US voters who sought to oust him in 2004, by anyone pretending to judge people as individuals and not based on an ethnic, religious or any other such marker.

t is particularly ironic that some Australian small-l liberals are choosing to ignore America's progressive heritage. After all, the US is home to a public broadcaster that makes the ABC look like Fox News. It has a history of independent-minded senators much longer than Barnaby Joyce's tenure in Canberra. Numerous US cities are run by mayors with considerably more aggressive gay-rights agendas, illustrated by San Francisco's experiment with issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples despite state and federal opposition.

This contrasts with Melbourne and Sydney's reluctance to go past attracting the pink tourist dollar. A bill looks likely to be passed by Congress that many argue clears the way for native Hawaiians to claim a collective right to self-determination. Finally, let's not forget the nationality of the peace activist whose recent deportation so many bemoaned.

One does not have to share Bob Carr's passion for America's philosophical foundations to understand the complexity and the diversity of its people's experiences of their own society and the world. A visit to the first Starbucks after passing through immigration will make clear the unfairness of the pop culture pastiche masquerading as political thought on that cafe wall. Must it be spelled out that equating all Americans with President George W. Bush is only marginally less preposterous than arguing that all Sydneysiders agree with Fred Nile?

Here is what the "movement" is about.

About Our Movement
The Hillary Clinton for President campaign is a grassroots and netroots based support network. We believe that Hillary Clinton is the best candidate to be the next leader of the free world and we are sowing the seeds for her historical candidacy.

Hillary Clinton is a strong and visionary woman and she brings out the best in the Democratic Party; however because of that great gift she brings out the worst in our opposition.

It is our duty as her support network to stand with our bold progressive candidate and fight for America’s values.

We believe in Truth, Justice, and the American Way and we’re here to support Hillary Clinton today!

**ConnectTo Customers, what do you think about Hillary Clinton For President?

Even though Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has more than a year left in her re-election campaign, she is "already focused" on 2008 and a campaign to become the first female president of the United States, political analysts say.

Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, told Cybercast News Service that "there's no way in the world she couldn't be thinking about" running for the White House "because everybody else is thinking about her doing it."

Referring to a survey conducted by the Institute in early October, Carroll said Clinton can look beyond 2006 since she currently holds a 2-to-1 advantage over her likely GOP opponent, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, in next year's election.

According to that poll, 64 percent of New York State voters said Clinton deserves to be re-elected, including 32 percent of Republicans.

Updated: 8:59 a.m. ET Oct. 24, 2005
WASHINGTON - The grand jury that has investigated the disclosure of a CIA officer’s identity is set to expire on Friday, fueling speculation that the special investigator will issue indictments sometime this week.

Top presidential political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, have emerged as central figures in the probe because they had contacts with reporters who learned the officer’s identity or disclosed it in news stories.

Asked whether Rove or Libby should step down in the event of an indictment, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said Sunday that “I think they should step down. I do think that’s appropriate ... if they’re in the midst of an indictment.”

Suspended pending investigation triggered by Miami airport screeners.
Updated: 8:15 a.m. ET Oct. 24, 2005
MIAMI - A United Airlines pilot was removed from the cockpit and questioned by police after security screeners at Miami International Airport reported smelling alcohol, police said.

The pilot was not arrested and no breath test was done, but the airline suspended him pending an internal investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating.

(CNSNews.com) - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says the so-called "leakgate" case is really about President Bush's "dishonesty over the Iraq question."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, Dean said, "This is not so much about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. This is about the fact that the president didn't tell us the truth when we went to Iraq, and all these guys involved in it -- it's a huge cover-up. That's what they're in trouble for."

It's thanks to former ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration's "dishonesty" has come to light, Dean indicated.

"Half the stuff the president told us about Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, the trip to Niger, the purchase of uranium -- we know it's not true," Dean said. He added that the 9/11 commission found "no evidence of a terror connection" between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and that Saddam "had nothing to do with 9/11."

Dean accused President Bush of "pushing that line nevertheless. We know the president wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq."

[President Bush has said that pre-war intelligence indicated that Saddam Hussein was a threat; that the U.S. Congress "looked at the intelligence, and they saw a threat," and even the United Nations saw a threat, Bush said in July 2004, a few months before he was re-elected.]

We will add a new poll on 10/25 so if you have not voted on "What is most important to you with regard to our service?" please do it today.

Watch for the new poll tomorrow.

Current stats for this poll are:
Connection Speed 59.3%
Pricing 18.5%
Customer Service 18.5%
Adding More Features 3.7%
Other 0.0%

Total votes: 54

The scourge of e-mail--spam--has reinvented itself for the world of blogs, in a phenomenon experts have dubbed "splog." And Google is in the hot seat.

The search giant's Blogger blog-creation tool and BlogSpot hosting service, together the most popular free blogging service on the Web, fell victim this past weekend to the biggest splog attack yet--an assault that led to clogged RSS readers and overflowing in-boxes, and that may have manipulated search engine rankings.

"Uh, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I think we have an emergency on our hands," Tim Bray, Web technologies director at Sun Microsystems, wrote in his blog in response to what he called the "splogsplosion."

The attacker, or splogger, used automated tools to manipulate the Blogger-BlogSpot service and create thousands of fake blogs loaded with links to specific Web sites (home mortgage, poker and tobacco sites among them). The move was designed to doctor search results and boost traffic to those sites by fooling the search-engine spiders that crawl the Web looking for commonly linked-to destinations.

Unlike e-mail programs, blogging services don't have the capability to easily detect and filter out spam, said Bob Wyman, chief technology officer at blog search and tracking service PubSub.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Zoo's giant panda cub, known to its keepers simply as "the Cub" since his birth 100 days ago, finally has a name: Tai Shan, which means "peaceful mountain."

The name received 44 percent of the estimated 200,000 votes cast on the zoo's Web site, zoo officials said Monday.

The panda went without a name for its first hundred days in observance of a Chinese custom. It's rare for pandas born in captivity to live more than a few days, and keeping the animals nameless is seen as a way to trick fate into letting them survive.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- A volcano has begun to erupt on one of the Galapagos Islands known for its diverse flora and fauna, including the archipelago's famed giant tortoises, park officials said Sunday.

The 1,500-meter (4,920-feet) Sierra Negra volcano, located on seahorse-shaped Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands, began erupting late Saturday afternoon, producing three lava flows, officials from the Galapagos National Park told The Associated Press in a statement.

It has not yet been determined whether the island's plant and animal life have been affected.

Many Galapagos tortoises, some of which have a lifespan of more than 150 years, live near volcano craters.

Puerto Villamil on Isabela's southern coast is home to 2,000 people, but the eruption posed "no risk to the population," the statement said. Tourist centers near Sierra Negra were closed as a precaution.

The Galapagos Islands, located 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) off Ecuador's Pacific coast, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 for their exotic wildlife such as marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies.

The islands' rich biodiversity inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Women made up 7 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests, the government reported Sunday.

A co-author of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Paige Harrison, linked an upswing in the rate of arrest for women to their increased participation in drug crimes, violent crimes and fraud.

The number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in 2004 was up 4 percent compared with 2003, more than double the 1.8 percent increase among men, the study said. In 1995, women made up 6.1 percent of all inmates in those facilities.

"The number of incarcerated women has been growing ... due in large part to sentencing policies in the war in drugs," The Sentencing Project, a group promoting alternatives to prison, said in a statement.

The group said the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has risen from 40,000 in 1980 to more than 450,000 today. According to FBI figures, law officers in 2004 made more arrests for drug violations than for any other offense -- about 1.7 million arrests, or 12.5 percent of all arrests.

Those sentenced for drug offenses made up 55 percent of federal inmates in 2003, the report said.

KEREN, Eritrea (Reuters) -- Seyoum Goitom, inventor and father-of-six, stood in his workshop in Eritrea, explaining his passion for mechanics, while young girls herded goats outside and butterflies wobbled in the warmth.

Goitom has so far built a biscuit maker, welding machine and lawnmower from recycled parts. Now he is looking at a much bigger and possibly more significant project.

The 38-year-old is turning his creative energies to deforestation around Keren, his home and one of Eritrea's most attractive towns, where the forest is slowly disappearing.

He is working on an enormous, solar-powered cooker based on a satellite dish which he believes could drastically cut the need for firewood among his compatriots in the Red Sea state.

Some 95 percent of Eritrea's forests have been lost in the past century because of drought, a growing population and -- to a lesser extent -- the war for independence from Ethiopia when many trees were cut to deny hiding places to combatants.

President's Bush nominee to succeed Greenspan will be his chief economic adviser, report says.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - President Bush was expected to announce Monday that he has picked top economic adviser Ben Bernanke to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Reuters reported.

The news agency, quoting a knowledgeable source, said an announcement was to come at 1 p.m. EDT.

Bush told reporters there would be "an announcement soon" on his choice to replace Greenspan, whose 18-year tenure at the Fed runs out on Jan. 31, Reuters said.

Bernanke is chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. He served on the Fed's board of governors for nearly three years before moving to the White House in June.

His move to the White House was watched with interest on Wall Street because of the belief that he was on the fast track to replace Greenspan.

Bernanke is a former Fed governor who was considered one of the policy trend setters while at the central bank, espousing the virtues of an inflation target to guide monetary policy.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Three explosions rocked Iraq's capital at sunset Monday near two hotels housing international journalists, Iraqi police said.

The third blast was larger than the initial explosions and apparently was designed to hurt police and rescue crews, according to initial reports.

Police said the three blasts were car bombs, but journalists in one of the hotels said the first two explosions were rockets, followed by a car bomb. (Watch explosions rock central Baghdad -- 2:05)

The flash from the explosion could be seen more than a mile and a-half away, CNN's Nic Robertson said.

Authorities said there were casualties in the attack, but had no details on how many people were hurt.

Iraqi officials said there was considerable damage in the area.

The bombs went off near the Palestine Hotel and another hotel, which overlook Firdos Square, where Iraqis and U.S. troops pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein after the April 2003, U.S.-led invasion.

World's largest hotspot stretches over fields of onions.

HERMISTON, Oregon (AP) -- Parked alongside his onion fields, Bob Hale can prop open a laptop and read his e-mail or, with just a keystroke, check the moisture of his crops.

As the jack rabbits run by, he can watch CNN online, play a video game or turn his irrigation sprinklers on and off, all from the air conditioned comfort of his truck.

While cities around the country are battling over plans to offer free or cheap Internet access, this lonely terrain is served by what is billed as the world's largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune.

Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition. In Philadelphia, for instance, plans to blanket the entire city with Wi-Fi fueled a battle in the Pennsylvania legislature with Verizon Communications Inc., leading to a law that limits the ability of every other municipality in the state to do the same.

But here among the thistle, large providers such as local phone company Qwest Communications International Inc. see little profit potential. So wireless entrepreneur Fred Ziari drew no resistance for his proposed wireless network, enabling him to quickly build the $5 million cloud at his own expense.

2.2 million homes without power, governor says.

NAPLES, Florida (CNN) -- Hurricane Wilma slammed into south Florida on Monday with high winds, driving rains and storm surges, killing one man in Coral Springs before weakening.

Gov. Jeb Bush said at least 2.2 million homes were without electricity and some 4,000 utility workers were on standby to begin repairs after the storm passes.

Bush said there were reports of several tornado touchdowns in central Florida since Sunday night and the threat of tornados on the eastern peninsula continues. (Watch Wilma's damage in Florida -- 1:53)

Significant storm surge flooding also has been reported in the Keys, Bush said.

The storm made landfall as a powerful Category 3 at 6:30 a.m. ET, about 22 miles south of Naples, the National Hurricane Center said. Its top winds were 125 mph.

Schumer says Supreme Court nominee lacks votes for confirmation.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House said Monday that President Bush is confident Harriet Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, even though a Democrat on the Senate panel that will hold hearings on her nomination said she doesn't have the votes.

Republicans countered that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, cannot predict how the GOP-controlled Senate will decide Miers' fate. Many Republicans have yet to commit to approve President Bush's second nominee to the high court.

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush is committed to sticking with Miers until the Senate vote.

"He's confident that she will be confirmed because as senators come to know her like the president knows her, we're confident that they will recognize she will make an outstanding Supreme Court justice," McClellan said.

An East African jumping spider has eight legs, plenty of eyes, the hunting prowess of a cat, and a taste for blood.

An extensive series of tests has shown for the first time that these spiders don't just eat the blood of vertebrates. They like it more than other types of food.

A 3m snake believed to have been living in toilet pipes in a block of flats for three months has been caught.

The boa constrictor, named Keith, is thought to have been abandoned by a resident who was evicted after owing £5,500 in rent to his landlord.

The huge snake has been slithering out of toilet bowls throughout the flats in Manchester since August.

A brave resident finally put the snake's antics to an end by coaxing the creature into a bucket.

The Danish Air Force has agreed to pay compensation to Olavi Nikkanoff, a part-time Danish Santa Claus, following the death of his reindeer.

According to a letter of complaint sent to the Air Force, Rudolf the reindeer was grazing peacefully at Nikkanoff's farm in central Denmark when a number of F-16s flew overhead. Nikkanoff claimed his reindeer collapsed and died as a result of a fright received from the loud noise made by the low flying jets. Consequently, this part-time Santa Claus was faced with having only one reindeer to pull his sleigh at Christmas time.

Captain Morten Jensen of the Danish Air force stated "we got a letter from Santa complaining about his reindeer's death and looked into it seriously." After checking into the matter, confirming flight times and veterinary reports, the Air Force concluded that the low flying planes had more than likely caused the death of Rudolf.

Olavi Nikkanoff received approximately $3,000 in compensation from the Air Force and is said to be buying a new reindeer in time for Christmas.

A 25-year-old Australian drug trafficker will be hanged after the Singaporean Government rejected pleas for clemency.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, unsuccessfully made representations for the death penalty, imposed after Nguyen Tuong Van was found guilty of carrying nearly 400 grams of heroin, to be lifted on compassionate grounds.

Layers of blind partnerships, botnets, and the many distributors that make up the online ad business make spyware almost impossible to trace.

Most everyone is familiar with the black sheep of the online advertising business: unwanted adware and spyware that's tough to get rid of once it sneaks onto computers. But few know that much of it is the product of a flawed system in which a company placing an online ad eventually loses control of how it appears. A company that wants to advertise online works through an agency that pays distributors operating through a network, which in turn has affiliates. On it goes until the original ad becomes the dreaded, can't-get-rid-of-it pop-up.

Everything is running normally now. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Connectto.net is down and you may have trouble reaching the webmail log in page as well. We are working on this.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police arrested two young men and destroyed a package in their rental car in an incident that closed several streets around the U.S. Capitol building for about two hours on Friday.
Capitol police declined to release the names of the men or say whether the package had posed a danger. They said the rental car the men were using was registered in Florida.

Police closed several streets near the Capitol building and cleared a nearby commercial office building during the incident. The Capitol and congressional office buildings were not evacuated.

"The two individuals approached our officers and advised them that they believed they had a suspicious package in their vehicle," police spokeswoman Jessica Gissubel told reporters.

ORMOND BEACH, Fla. - Was the pig a victim of a rural drive-by shooting?

That's one theory a Publix spokesman offered to explain how a bullet wound up in an Ormond Beach woman's pork loin.

Diane Johnson's son-in-law found the bullet in a pork loin casserole she served Tuesday to her family. She said there was no mistaking the projectile's distinct shape in the pork loin she bought at a local Publix grocery store.

All meat is scanned with a metal detector before reaching Publix shelves, said Dwaine Stevens, spokesman for the company's northeast Florida district.

It's not clear how the scanners missed the bullet -- or how the bullet got in the pork loin in the first place.

Stevens said someone may have fired into a herd of grazing livestock.

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 21, 2005

Harriet Miers -- whose courtesy calls with senators in their Capitol Hill offices have been more chaotic than courteous -- has finished the tour, the White House has told congressional aides.
Miss Miers will spend the next two weeks cramming for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Republican Senate staffers working on the nomination told The Washington Times yesterday.
The meetings have been fraught with misunderstandings and disagreements, giving ammunition to detractors, both liberal and conservative, that Miss Miers is in over her head.
"No one is walking out of these meetings thinking they've just met with a star," a Republican Judiciary staffer said yesterday.
Depending on how the confirmation hearings go next month, the White House may schedule more meetings after the hearings have concluded.
"This is highly unusual," said one Republican staffer, who noted that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had private meetings with senators in the weeks preceding his confirmation hearings.

A Reston trading firm yesterday pleaded guilty to paying more than $440,000 in kickbacks to the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein under the United Nations' fraud-ridden oil-for-food program.
Midway Oil Trading Inc. agreed to pay a fine of $250,000 for its part in the scheme, which involved two purchases of about 1.7 million barrels of Iraqi oil in 2001.
Investigators from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said the kickbacks were paid to Iraqis from Tikrit, the deposed dictator's hometown.
"It is reasonable assumption that [the payments] went to members of Saddam's family," investigator Dan Castleman told a New York press conference yesterday.
Officials for Midway Oil could not be reached for comment, and an answering machine at the company's Reston office was not accepting messages.
The district attorney's investigation is one of several into the $64 billion oil-for-food program, begun in 1996 to ease Iraq's humanitarian crisis brought on by international sanctions through a program of strictly controlled sales of the country's oil.
Partly because of the poor design and oversight of the U.N. program, Saddam was able to skim off an estimated $12.8 billion through smuggled oil sales, kickbacks and bribes over the seven years of the program, said Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who heads the U.N. probe of the scandal.

AP) A 93-year-old driver apparently suffering from dementia fatally struck a pedestrian and drove for three miles with the man's body through his windshield, police said.

Ralph Parker was stopped after he drove through a toll booth on the Sunshine Skyway, Traffic Homicide Investigator Michael Jockers said. The toll taker called police, he said.

Parker was not likely to face charges because he did not appear to know what happened or where he was, said Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant in the Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney's Office.

"He may have somewhere in his mind have realized it was a crash, but immediately forgot about it," Jockers said.

(CBS/AP) The fearsome core of Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel early Friday, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline, where thousands of stranded tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel ballrooms.

"That eye of the storm is now 35 miles wide," said CBS News Early Show weatherman Dave Price, at the National Hurricane Center. "The tropical storm-force winds out of this hurricane extend almost 200 miles. That's massive."

At 8 a.m. EDT, Wilma was about 50 miles from Cozumel, Mexico, and moving toward the north-northwest.

Cuba evacuated more than 200,000 people in the face of the Wilma, which has already killed at least 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica. The hurricane is expected to sideswipe Cuba's tip — 130 miles east of Cancun — then swing to the right and head toward hurricane-weary Florida.

Most of the tourists fled the Florida Keys, but some residents of the island chain didn't seem in a hurry to evacuate as Hurricane Wilma churned slowly through the Caribbean.

(CBS/AP) A defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's mass murder trial who was kidnapped Thursday night has been found dead, police and a top lawyers' union official said on Friday.

The body of Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi was found dumped near a Baghdad mosque. He had been abducted from his office Thursday evening, a day after participating in the first session of the trial, acting as the lawyer of one Saddam's seven co-defendants.

His body, with two bullet shots to the head, was found hours later on a sidewalk near Fardous Mosque in the eastern neighborhood of Ur, near the site of his office, police said. His identity was confirmed on Friday by the police.

Diaa al-Saadi, a senior lawyers syndicate official, said al-Janabi's family confirmed to him al-Janabi was dead. "He was killed. It is confirmed," al-Saadi said.

"This will have grave repercussions. This will hinder lawyers from defending those held for political reasons," al-Saadi warned.

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient artifact believed to be an early clockwork mechanism. It was discovered in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to about 87 BC.

The wreck was discovered in 1900 at a depth of about 40 m (140 ft), and many statues and other works were retrieved from it by sponge divers. On May 17, 1902, archaeologist Spyridon Stais noticed that one of the pieces of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it.

The mechanism is the oldest known surviving geared mechanism, made from bronze in a wooden frame, and has puzzled and intrigued historians of science and technology since its discovery. The most commonly accepted theory of its function is that it was an analog computer designed to track the movements of heavenly objects. Recent working reconstructions of the device support this analysis. The device is all the more impressive for its use of a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century.

Derek J. de Solla Price, a science historian at Yale University, published an article on the mechanism in Scientific American in June 1959 while the device was still only partially inspected [1]. In 1973 or 1974, he published an analysis based on gamma ray imaging by Greek archaeologists. He claimed that the device had been built by a Greek astronomer, Geminus of Rhodes. His conclusion was not accepted by experts at the time, who believed that the ancient Greeks had the theoretical knowledge but not the necessary practical skills.

A partial reconstruction was built by Australian computer scientist Allan George Bromley (1947–2002) of the University of Sydney and Sydney clockmaker Frank Percival. This project led Bromley to review Price's X-ray analysis and to make new, more accurate X-ray images that were studied by Bromley's student, Bernard Gardner, in 1993.

Later, a British orrery maker named John Gleave constructed a working replica of the mechanism. According to his reconstruction, the front dial shows the annual progress of the sun and moon through the zodiac against the Egyptian calendar. The upper rear dial displays a four-year period and has associated dials showing the Metonic cycle of 235 synodic months, which equals 19 solar years. The lower rear dial plots the cycle of a single synodic month, with a secondary dial showing the lunar year of 12 synodic months.

Another reconstruction was made in 2002 by Michael Wright, mechanical engineering curator for the Science Museum in London, working with Allan Bromley. He analyzed the mechanism using linear tomography, which can create images of a narrow focal plane and thus visualized the gears in great detail.

In Wright's reconstruction, the device not only models the motions of the sun and moon, but those of every celestial body known to the Ancient Greeks: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

This new reconstruction gives credence to ancient mentions of such devices. Cicero, writing in the first century BC, mentions an instrument "recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets." Such devices are mentioned elsewhere as well. It also adds support to the idea that there was an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology which was transmitted via the Arab world, where similar devices are found later, and could have yielded to or integrated with European clockmaking and ancient cranes. Some scientists believe that not only was the device used to track celestial bodies, but to calculate their positions for events or births.

The original mechanism is displayed in the Bronze collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, accompanied by a replica. Another replica is on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana.

The Antikythera mechanism, not described in any surviving source, shows that our knowledge of ancient technology is incomplete. In 1996, the Italian physicist Lucio Russo (professor at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata") published an essay putting new light on the issue. The essay has been translated and published in English in 2004 under the title "The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn".

Signalling a trend towards increased 'outsourcing' of some elements of malware creation, security experts are reporting a surge in the level of professionalism and commercialisation in the creation of so-called rootkits.

A rootkit is a tool that helps worm authors to slip past malware detection tools. The rootkit is 'wrapped around' the virus, and hides its payload from detection engines. After the rootkit has penetrated a system's defences, the worm can start doing its work.

Antivirus vendor F-Secure reported last week that it had detected a new rootkit designed to bypass detection by most of the modern rootkit detection engines.

Traditionally a rootkit would be designed to evade only one security product, such as Symantec's or F-Secure's antivirus scanners.

"The professionalism of these rootkits is coming to another level," said Allen Schimel, chief strategy officer at StillSecure, a developer of intrusion detection, vulnerability management and network access control applications.

"These rootkits just cranked it up a notch in their ability to evade multiple antivirus products."

Adding a rootkit to a virus increases its chances of avoiding detection because modern antivirus applications do not just look for specific code, but incorporate behavioural analysis to catch worms.

A rootkit can also help a worm to remain undetected even after antivirus vendors have created signatures to catch the malware.

Have you noticed that the Internet is a little slow and weird today? Check out this scoreboard from the Internet Health Report. Two gigantic backbones, Level3 and Verio, are both in the red, failing to route traffic at nominal levels. Level3 recently screwed up huge swathes of the Internet by pitching a tantrum over a contract negotiation with Cogent another tier-one ISP. No word on what's causing the whackiness today, though.

Crooks are using a new technique, called "JS/Wonka," to obfuscate their code, and it's spreading fast.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

Hackers and scammers have suddenly turned to a new technique to hide malicious JavaScript on compromised or criminal sites, a security researcher said Thursday.
According to Dan Hubbard, the senior director of security and research at Websense, a family of obfuscation routines with the umbrella name of "JS/Wonka" has spread wildly in the last few weeks.

"For whatever reason, the number has just skyrocketed since the last of September," said Hubbard. "There are 10,000 unique sites using this exact same method. The strange thing is, they're completely different types of sites."

It's not uncommon to see hackers and scammers try to hide their malicious JavaScript code, said Hubbard. They want the code to be invisible to both Internet users and site operators. But the scale Websense is seeing is unprecedented.

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Famed throughout the ancient world for her outstanding beauty, Akhenaten's queen Nefertiti remains the one of the most well known of the queens of Egypt.
The famous statue of Nefertiti, found in a sculptors workshop in Akhetaten, is one of the most immediately recognisable icons from this period of history. It has escaped the excesses of the Amarna artistic style, and survived the wholesale destruction of Akhenaten's monuments after his death.

Little is known about the origins of Nefertiti but it seems unlikely that she was of royal blood. Her father was possibly a high official of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten called Ay, who went on to become Pharaoh after Tutankhamun.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six daughters, although the succession after his death is uncertain as there is no record of a male heir. It is possible that Akhenaten's successors Smenkhkare and Tutankhaten were his children by another royal wife called Kiya who became his principle queen for a short while after year 12 of his reign.

Loreta Janeta Velazquez spied for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Born in Havana, Cuba, Velazquez grew up in New Orleans, LA. She married a United States Army officer who, when the war started, decided to fight for the Confederacy. According to her book, The Woman in Battle, Velazquez fought for the South, too. Although she may have exagerrated her adventures, her story is fascinating.

As Velazquez told the story, she disguised herself as a man by flattening her breasts with wire shields and braces and wearing an army uniform. Calling herself Harry T. Buford, Velazquez adopted a manly swagger, perfected the ability to spit, and organized a company of soldier's, the "Arkansas Grays." As a lieutenant of the company, Velazquez fought in several battles -- the first battle at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff and Shiloh. "Fear was a word I did not know the meaning of," Velazquez wrote later.

Living as a man among men, Velazquez concluded that their conversations were generally "revolting and utterly vile." She also reported that soldiers' talk about women was "thoroughly despicable."

By 1863, Velazquez's husband had been killed, she had been wounded twice, and her true sex had been discovered. At this point, Velazquez switched to spying. She claimed that she managed to work undetected on the staff of Union Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the United States Secret Services. She was also sent to Canada to spy. According to one account, Velazquez was "the beautifu Confederate spy whose black eyes bewitched passes from Union generals."

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

They change their names, of course.

Philip Morris is leading the way.

What have they done in response to years of bad exposure for knowingly selling dangerous products? Decided to sell healthier products? Stopped marketing to and addicting kids?

No, they changed their name to Altria and picked a new logo, hoping that when people see Altria has made their food, they won't realize their money is going into the pockets of the same people who told us all that cigarettes are safe and nicotine is not addictive.

Recently, Philip Morris spent $250 million to gloss over their image. The campaign highlighted the company's charitable contributions and downplayed the deadly and addictive tobacco products that built the company. Well, luckily the people aren't that easily fooled. All that money spent and the Reputation Institute ranks Philip Morris second to last in public opinion. Rightly so, because tobacco still makes up 61.2% of the company's $90 billion income.

In case you were wondering what Altria means: "Altria, as you know, means nothing, and can't be any derivative of altus [meaning 'high'] --altr-- is a nonexistent stem. But it sounds pretty good, doesn't it? And has no suggestion at all of emphysema or lung cancer," according to a Latin Professor quoted by TheStreet.com.

WiMAX is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL. WiMAX will provide fixed , nomadic, portable and, eventually, mobile wireless broadband connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight with a base station. In a typical cell radius deployment of three to ten kilometers, WiMAX Forum Certified™ systems can be expected to deliver capacity of up to 40 Mbps per channel, for fixed and portable access applications. This is enough bandwidth to simultaneously support hundreds of businesses with T-1 speed connectivity and thousands of residences with DSL speed connectivity. Mobile network deployments are expected to provide up to 15 Mbps of capacity within a typical cell radius deployment of up to three kilometers. It is expected that WiMAX technology will be incorporated in notebook computers and PDAs in 2006, allowing for urban areas and cities to become “MetroZones” for portable outdoor broadband wireless access.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, trying to soothe critics from his own Republican Party, said on Thursday he was fulfilling a campaign promise by nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court because she shared his judicial philosophy.
Bush's pick has been criticized by members of his own political party who say they do not know how she would rule on issues important to conservatives because she has never been a judge.

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, on Wednesday criticized Miers' written answers to a questionnaire as "insufficient" and complained about a "chaotic" confirmation process so far.

But Bush has steadfastly defended Miers, who is the White House counsel, and said he picked her because she had never been a judge and would bring a "fresh outlook" to the bench.

"She will strictly interpret the Constitution," Bush said at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"I said that when I ran for president. I said, 'If you elect me, I will name people that will have that judicial philosophy,"' Bush said.

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A Photo Gallery For Spanish Works Inc

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Three Bay Area professionals -- an engineer, an executive and a professor -- were honored Tuesday evening as ``Women of Vision'' by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

The honorees of the inaugural awards are: Radia Perlman, senior engineer at Sun Microsystems; Janie Tsao, senior vice president of worldwide sales, marketing and business development at Cisco Systems; and Pamela Samuelson, professor of law and information management at the University of California-Berkeley.

The Palo Alto-based institute, which receives support from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Sun, Google, Cisco and IBM, was created in 1997 to promote women in technology and innovation.

Borg was a longtime advocate for women and technology who was appointed in 1999 by
President Clinton to the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology. She founded the institute at Xerox PARC; it was renamed in her honor after she died in 2003. Borg also worked for many years as a researcher at Digital Equipment in Palo Alto.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Elana Back was denied tenure as a school psychologist because her superiors "presumed that she, as a young mother, would not continue to demonstrate the necessary devotion to her job, and indeed that she could not maintain such devotion while at the same time being a good mother." She sued them.

In Back v. Hastings on Hudson Union Free School District, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York in 2004 held that stereotyping mothers is a form of gender discrimination.

So why are some young women at Yale still mouthing this pernicious stereotype-laden platitude on the Sept. 20 edition of The New York Times?

Yes, I'm talking about that story that The Times chose to run on its front page a few weeks ago in which young women at a top Ivy said they didn't think that devotion to work and children was truly possible.

At the end of his career, even the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist--not known for his staunch defense of women's rights--recognized the need to overcome stereotypes about women's domestic roles. He said such stereotypes perpetuate "a self-fulfilling cycle of discrimination that . . . fostered employers' stereotypical views about women's commitment to work and their value as employees."

The Guardian's Iraq correspondent, Rory Carroll, was last night missing after being kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad. Carroll, 33, an experienced foreign correspondent, had been conducting an interview in the city with a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime. He had been preparing an article for today's paper on the opening of the former dictator's trial yesterday.
Carroll, who was accompanied by two drivers and a translator, was confronted by the gunmen as he left the house where he had been carrying out the interview. He and one of the drivers were bundled into cars. The driver was released about 20 minutes later.

Carroll has been in Iraq since January. He volunteered for the assignment and his coverage has been critical of the US-led coalition. Before Iraq, he had been the paper's correspondent in Africa, based in Johannesburg, since 2002. In the previous three years he had been based in Rome, where he covered the aftermath of the Kosovo war.

He was born in Dublin, attended university there and worked for various Irish papers before moving to London. He has an Irish passport. The Irish government was last night in contact with its embassies throughout the Middle East to try to secure help in finding him.

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, said: "We're deeply concerned at Rory's disappearance. He is in Iraq as a professional journalist - and he's a very good, straight journalist whose only concern is to report fairly and truthfully about the country. We urge those holding him to release him swiftly - for the sake of his family and for the sake of anyone who believes the world needs to be kept fully informed about events in Iraq today."

Updated: 6:48 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas - A state court issued an arrest warrant on Wednesday for Rep. Tom DeLay, requiring him to appear in Texas for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges.

The court set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before the Texas Republican’s first court appearance Friday.

DeLay, R-Texas, could be fingerprinted and photographed, although his lawyers had hoped to avoid this step. DeLay probably will surrender in his home county of Fort Bend, near Houston, but he could go to any law enforcement office in Texas. His court appearance will be in Austin.

The warrant, known as a capias, is “a matter of routine and bond will be posted,” said DeLay’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin.

DeLay has stepped down as U.S. House majority leader — at least temporarily — under a Republican rule requiring him to relinquish the post if charged with a felony.

Two grand juries have charged DeLay and two political associates in an alleged scheme to violate state election law, by funneling corporate donations to candidates for the Texas Legislature. State law prohibits use of corporate donations to finance state campaigns, although the money can be used for administrative expenses.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Lawyers for former House Republican leader Tom DeLay subpoenaed Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle on Tuesday as part of a campaign to discredit indictments charging DeLay with breaking Texas campaign finance laws.
The subpoena seeks to get Earle and two of his assistants to testify in court in Austin, Texas about whether they improperly sought charges against DeLay, a spokeswoman for the congressman said.

Earle said in a statement that laws on grand jury secrecy limited his response, "But we fully expect to prevail in this matter."

DeLay was forced to step down as House majority leader after he was indicted by Travis County grand juries on money laundering and conspiracy charges tied to a campaign finance scheme by Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), his political action committee.

Posted by RyanJ on Wed, 10/19/2005 - 17:14
At the time of posting, Fx has 100,000,000 downloads, long live Fx!

Firefox did it, it reached 100,000,000 million downloads and as http://www.spreadinternetexplorer.com/ weeps we rejoice.

Its party time! Party time!!!!!

Malformed user name issue

We have begun using a new server for authentication of the dial up connections. Some people have spaces BEFORE or AFTER their user name entered on thier dial up connection.

The space must be removed. If you are having trouble connecting to the internet please check to make sure that there is NO space entered before or after your dial up username.

Example [joesmith#gct@e.56k.cc ]-a space cannot be here after the username- put your cursor on the line and make sure you backspace to the .cc

[ joesmith#gct@e.56k.cc] A space cannot be BEFORE the user name either so please make sure you check this if you or someone you know is having connection problems.

The examples above with the [ ] brackets are what we see on our logs.

They are NOT what you will see and you probably cannot "see" a space either.

The old server allowed a spaces but the new server does not.

An increased number of so-called 'splog' entries on Google has drawn the ire of prominent bloggers.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

A bump-up in the number of spam blogs on Google's Blogspot has drawn the ire of prominent bloggers, and at least one blog search service has stopped indexing posts on the hosting service.
The warpath against Google is unwarranted, said one "splog" expert Tuesday, while another took the other end of the argument and said Google needed to do something before things really get out of hand.

"Not index a site because of spammers? That's ludicrous," said David Sifry, the chief executive of Technorati, a search engine that tracks blog updates. "There's a whole arsenal available. You don't want to use a shotgun when you can use a rifle."

"I think there's not been enough done on the part of Google," countered Bob Wyman, the founder and chief technology officer for PubSub, a company that provides a matching engine to help users find blogs. "Google is the front line, and they should take the responsibility. They need to strictly enforce their terms of service, or they'll end up poisoning the stream for the whole [blog] community.

"Google could do much more, should do more," Wyman added.

The size of the splog -- for spam + blog -- surge was also up for grabs, said the two experts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new report by members of the former September 11 commission faults the FBI for failing to act on the panel's recommendations for preventing terrorist attacks, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The privately funded report, scheduled for release on Thursday, will also say the White House is not doing enough to defend civil liberties in the post-September 11 era, the newspaper said, citing commissioners and staff members.

The New York Times cited some commissioners as saying a civil liberties board created by the White House lacked power and funding.

The report also takes aim at Congress for inaction on the panel's recommendation to overhaul congressional oversight of intelligence and terrorism issues, Timothy Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission told the newspaper.

The commission wrote the seminal 2004 analysis of what when wrong before and after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

The panel formally disbanded after submitting its final report in July last year, but the members continue their work as the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which tracks implementation of the 2004 report's recommendations.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' confirmation hearings will begin on November 7, congressional aides said on Wednesday.
Though at least some Democrats had sought more time before the proceedings begin, Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee Chairman and a Pennsylvania Republican, decided to start the hearings on November 7 and plans to announce it later on Wednesday, aides said.

The Republicans' goal is to have a confirmation vote by the full Republican-led Senate before the November 24 Thanksgiving Day holiday. But Democrats may try to push that back if they believe more time is needed to evaluate President George W. Bush's nominee to the nation's highest court, aides said.

A security firm mistakenly identified a new Trojan as the first to exploit one of last week's vulnerabilities in Windows, but it has corrected itself.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

A security firm on Monday mistakenly identified a new Trojan as the first to exploit one of last week's vulnerabilities in Windows, but corrected itself and labeled it as one which attacks the same bug as August's Zotob bot worm.
Fanbot.c, said Trend Micro late Monday, included a proof-of-concept exploit against one of the vulnerabilities disclosed Tuesday, Oct. 11 in Microsoft's MS05-051 security bulletin. Trend also said that although the Trojan was written in Visual Basic -- which usually indicates low-level skills on the part of the attacker and often means it's a "script kiddy" copy-cat -- arming malware with yet another exploit matched earlier hacker habits.

By early Tuesday, however, Trend had modified its technical description of Fanbot.c to say that the exploit was actually one directed toward the Plug and Play bug unveiled in August's MS05-039 bulletin.

MS05-039's Plug and Play vulnerability was the one used by the Zotob bot worm to attack and infect Windows 2000 PCs worldwide.

Concern over a possible repeat of Zotob has been building since Microsoft released its October batch of bulletins and patches last week. One of the bug described in MS05-051, say security experts, could be easily exploited by attackers to launch another series of attacks against Windows 2000 machines.

This false alarm aside, no exploits against MS05-051 have been found; several exploits, however, have been created and disseminated by commercial vulnerability and exploit researchers to their customers.

Africa's most populous country is making anti-corruption efforts a key focus in its government. Under the proposed law, anyone found guilty of spamming can be sentenced to at least three years in jail, have to pay a fine equal to $3,500, or both.
By Bashir Adigun, The Associated Press

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP)--Nigeria--with its global notoriety as a base for criminals exploiting the reach of the Internet--is considering making spamming a criminal offense that could land senders of unsolicited e-mails in jail for three years.
"Any person spamming electronic messages to recipients with whom he has no previous relationship commits an offense," said the text of the draft law presented to the legislature this week.

A person found guilty risks either at least three years in jail, a fine equal to US$3,500 (about euro3,000), or both.

The bill must be approved by a simple majority of lawmakers to become law. It stands a good chance. It was introduced by the governing party, which has an overwhelming majority in both houses of parliament.

Africa's most populous country is known for its "advance fee" scamsters--criminals scouting for victims by sending millions of unsolicited e-mails with false proposals around the world.

There is a new skateboard in town and it's called PUMGO! This board is the first human-powered board that you don’t have to push off the ground. It looks just like a skateboard with a deck and four wheels, but it has springs to help you lead. The springs connect from the deck to the wheels and allow your feet to move them by pumping the deck. It’s push-free!

PUMGO is a safe and fun exercise for everyone ages 7 and up. Rick Mayo is a master fitness trainer who took PUMGO for a spin and declared it an efficient toy for strengthening your stomach muscles, lower back and legs. PUMGO allows you to work your upper body and legs while you balance on the board, cruise down the streets and have fun!

Librarian finds a 179-year-old manuscript by Beethoven, one of music's greatest composers.

One of the greatest discoveries in music history was made recently – by accident! Librarian Heather Carbo was cleaning out a cabinet when she found a missing 179-year-old manuscript by one of music’s most famous composers. The manuscript by Ludwig van Beethoven had been missing for 115 years!

"It's a very important discovery," said Jeffrey Kallberg, a University of Pennsylvania musicologist.

EIGHTY-SEVEN years after the end of World War I, only a gossamer thread now links the nation to its baptism of fire and blood, after the death of the last Australian to go to the Great War.

Evan Allan died late on Monday night at the age of 106, leaving only one living connection with the "war to end all wars" - Jack Ross, 106, who enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1918, but who never saw a shot fired in anger.

Born in Bega, NSW, in July 1899, (William) Evan Allan enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy as a boy sailor at the outbreak of the Great War, when he was only 14 years old.

He served 33 years in the navy and was the sole surviving Australian veteran to serve in both world wars.

A statement from his family said he passed away peacefully. It spoke of a boyhood spent in the NSW bush, where his hero was a bushman called "Nugget".

It spoke of remarkable events witnessed during a long life, including the surrender of Germany's WWI fleet, being rescued from the Atlantic after being washed from the deck of HMAS Australia, and of meeting royalty on several occasions, including as a member of the Australian contingent at the coronation of King George VI.

It spoke of gentle things and passionate, of how he met his wife Gwen on a visit to Vancouver in 1924 and returned in 1941 to propose and bring her to Australia, where they lived on a small farm at Somerville in Victoria.

When he was a spry 100, Mr Allan spoke of how his boyish imagination was fired by photographs he had seen of America's Great White Fleet in Sydney Harbour and how he badgered his father to sign his papers so he could go to sea.

"Too young to realise what I was doing," he said then.

He spoke of his sadness too, at being among the last of his generation. "It's hard to realise that I'm one of the remaining ones," he said. "I feel very sad about it."

Customers with log ins that have @p.56k.nu need to read this!
Original post was: 2005-09-26

Many customers who have dial up usernames which end in @p.56k.nu may be using access numbers that are going to be de-activated on the first of the month.
Please call us so that we can give you a new access number BEFORE the numbers are no longer available.

Please contact us for new log in information A.S.A.P

How do I add additional e-mail addresses to my account?
At the moment you will need to contact us either by e-mail or by phone 1-877-586-3538.
If sending the request by email please include your user name
and the new e-mail user names with passwords that you would like to add.

Use the link to get to the step by step instructions.

The IRCbot variant is spammed via e-mail, with the attached file disguised as the newest release of Skype, version 1.4.

By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

A Trojan passing itself off as the Skype voice-over-Internet (VoIP) client is making the rounds, security firm MessageLabs warned Monday.
The IRCbot variant is spammed via e-mail, with the attached file payload disguised as the newest release of Skype, version 1.4, said MessageLabs. Skype Technologies released the 1.4 client at the end of September.

"For further details see the attached document," read the e-mail after an opening spiel touting Skype's features.

Users who launch the attached file see a fake dialog box on their screens; the dialog displays a phony installation error. In fact, the Trojan is installing itself, shutting down access to Windows Update, and connecting to an IRC server for further instructions from its handler.

"This is the first case that we've seen that specifically mentions Skype," said Maksym Schipka, a senior anti-virus researcher at MessageLabs, in a statement. "It's another example of how malware writers are quickly exploiting new releases of popular software applications in order to spread their malicious payloads."

Microsoft says customers reported a wide variety of strange behaviors after installing one of three patches released last week. It's the second time in three months Microsoft released a buggy patch for problems it deemed "critical."
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

For the second time in three months, Microsoft has released a buggy patch for problems it had deemed to be "critical."
Messages on Microsoft's newsgroups about problems began accumulating as early as Wednesday Oct. 12, within 24 hours of the patches' debut. Late Friday, Microsoft acknowledged the buggy patch in one of its infrequent security advisories, and said that customers had reported a wide variety of strange behaviors after installing one of the three critical patches released that week.

In a more detailed Knowledgebase document on its support site, Microsoft noted that the problems affect users who have changed the default permission settings of the COM+ catalog, which are files located in the %windir%\registration folder. Users who have modified the COM+ settings reported all kinds of oddities, ranging from the Windows Firewall not starting to users seeing a blank screen after installing the patch.

You receive the "0x80042108 Outlook is unable to connect to your incoming POP3 e-mail server" error message in Outlook 2002 and Office Outlook 2003

This article was previously published under Q318790
Important This article contains information that shows you how to help lower security settings or how to turn off security features on a computer. You can make these changes to work around a specific problem. Before you make these changes, we recommend that you evaluate the risks that are associated with implementing this workaround in your particular environment. If you implement this workaround, take any appropriate additional steps to help protect your system.

SYMPTOMS
When you start Microsoft Outlook, you may not be able to send and receive messages, and you may receive the following error message:
0x80042108 Outlook is unable to connect to your incoming POP3 e-mail server.

CAUSE
This behavior may occur if any of the following conditions are true:
• There are corrupted files on your hard disk.
• You are running Norton Personal Firewall 2002.
• You are running Norton Internet Security software.
• You have installed an update to Microsoft Office.
• The Norton anti-spam add-in is enabled in Outlook.

Note Norton Personal Firewall 2002, Norton Internet Security software, and the Norton Anti-Spam add-in are supported by Symantec Inc.

RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, remove your Norton Person Firewall or Norton Internet Security software and then reinstall your Norton Person Firewall or Norton Internet Security software.

Alternatively, you can use the contact information that is provided later in this article if you need help.

To remove and then reinstall Norton Person Firewall or to remove and then reinstall Norton Internet Security software, follow these steps.

Warning This workaround may make your computer or your network more vulnerable to attack by malicious users or by malicious software such as viruses. We do not recommend this workaround but are providing this information so that you can implement this workaround at your own discretion. Use this workaround at your own risk.
Important These steps may increase your security risk. These steps may also make your computer or your network more vulnerable to attack by malicious users or by malicious software such as viruses. We recommend the process that this article describes to enable programs to operate as they are designed to, or to implement specific program capabilities. Before you make these changes, we recommend that you evaluate the risks that are associated with implementing this process in your particular environment. If you choose to implement this process, take any appropriate additional steps to help protect your system. We recommend that you use this process only if you really require this process

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. In Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs.
3. In the list of currently installed programs, click Norton Personal Firewall 2002, and then click Remove.

Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to remove the program from your computer.
4. In the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, click Add New Programs, and then click CD or Floppy.

Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to reinstall Norton Personal Firewall 2002.
5. Look for updates to the Norton Personal Firewall software or the Norton Internet Security software by visiting the following Symantec Web site.
http://www.Symantec.com/techsupp/

End users connecting into these two POPs will experience an authentication error of 691.
Numbers affected during this ticket :
- 3167658621
- 7855588621