NATO: Coalition helicopter crashes in Afghanistan

A coalition helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, but both crew members have been recovered alive, NATO said.
No further details have been disclosed about the crash, which is under investigation.
Aziz Rahman Tawab, acting provincial governor in Kapisa province, said the helicopter crashed into a mountain.
Information about the mission of the helicopter at the time of the crash has not been released.
Aircraft are used extensively in Afghanistan by both NATO and the Afghan government forces to transport and supply troops because the terrain is mountainous and roads are few and primitive.
In September 2010, nine American troops were killed in a helicopter crash in a rugged area of Zabul province in southern Afghanistan. That was the worst helicopter crash for the coalition since May 2006 when a Chinook helicopter went down while attempting a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop in eastern Kunar province, killing 10 U.S. troops.

Taiwanese President Ma to try for second term

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Taiwan's president officially tossed his hat in the ring for a second four-year term Saturday, hoping a record of strong economic recovery and markedly improved ties with rival China will lead him to victory early next year.
After registering his candidacy with the ruling Nationalist Party, President Ma Ying-jeou said his government has "led our nation on a course of peace, prosperity and security," noting that Taiwan's 10.8 percent economic growth last year was its best in a decade.
Ma has no challengers within his party and will automatically become the Nationalists' candidate in general elections slated for next January.

Verizon CFO says not pursuing Web video for now

 
NEW YORK  - Verizon Communications has considered developing an Internet video service that would work outside of its network region but is not pursuing it right now, according to the company's chief financial officer.
Instead Verizon is putting all its attention on increasing the number of customers that subscribe to its FiOS TV service in order to help pay for the $23 billion it spent building a fiber network for FiOS, Fran Shammo said on Thursday.
"Our concentration is to expand our penetration for FiOS right now," Shammo told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The success of DVD rental company Netflix Inc's instant view Web video service has generated a lot of industry questions about what pay-TV providers can do to compete and retain customers as such so-called "over-the-top" services do not require a cable subscription.

Royal wedding mentioned every 10 seconds online: study

 
LONDON  - Britain's royal wedding is generating around 9,000 mentions a day online, or one every 10 seconds, according to a study from specialist technology firm Greenlight published on Thursday.
Internationally, those excited by the marriage between Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29 outweigh the naysayers by six to one, the company's research shows.
During March and April, there have been 158,000 posts related to the wedding on online media, with nearly 61,000, or 38 percent, coming in the last seven days alone.

Your iPhones' 'infidelity app' may reveal your secret flings!

London, April 22 : iPhone users beware! Make sure you've got nothing to hide, or your phone might reveal your secret flings.
It has emerged that iPhones have an 'infidelity app' that can secretly keep track of love cheats and could be viewed by a jealous spouse.
Two British software developers recently exposed that the Apple iphone saves the user's locations and movements, along with a time and date stamp, and stores them in a file.
It then copies the data to the owner's computer whenever the two are synchronised.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody - a jealous spouse, a private detective - with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been,' the Daily Mail quoted Pete Warden, one of the researchers who discovered the file, as saying.
Warden and his fellow researcher Alasdair Allan have set up a web page giving away a programme that lets Apple users check what location data their phone is storing. Other GPS-enabled smartphones do not have the same function, they said.
Although mobile phone networks routinely record the locations of customers' handsets, this information is only available to police and other government agencies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
In contrast, if a thief were to steal an iPhone, he could extract the location database directly.
And anyone with access to an iPhone user's computer could run Warden and Allan's application and see a map of the phone's movements.
Using the programme, they can also view the phone's location on a specific date, see all the locations a user has ever visited with their phone, or create an animated map of its movements over time.
It is understood the tracking started with Apple's iOS 4 update, published in June 2010, meaning that some phones could contain almost a year's worth of data on their owners' whereabouts.

Twitter users' romantic relationships don't last long

London, April 22 : Twitter users' romantic relationships don't last as long as those of non-Twitterers and the problem gets worse as users get older, a new study has revealed.
The result concluded by OkTrends - the research arm of free online dating website of OkCupid - comes from a survey of 833,987 of its 7million users, reports the Daily Mail.
The study found that an 18-year-old Twitter user has an average relationship-length of around nine months while non-Twitterers - defined as 'everybody else' - enjoy an average relationship of nine and a half months.
But the problem intensifies as the users get older and by the time Twitterers hit 50, the disparity stretches to a two month gap.
The average relationship length for Twitter users at that age is 15 months as opposed to 17 months for 'everybody else'.
"Unfortunately, we have no way to tell who's dumping who here; whether the Twitterati are more annoying or just more flighty than everyone else," said the website.

A cell phone for the visually impaired

Indian mobile manufacturer Intex has launched the Intex Vision, a mobile phone for the visually impaired. The phone was unveiled by the National Association for the Blind (NAB) to its students and faculty.

The phone features a large keypad with numbers written in Braille to assist the recognition of digits. For those who do not read Braille, the phone can speak out the numbers in English at the press of a button. An SOS feature allows calls to one of four preset emergency numbers.

Other features include wireless FM radio, audio player, expandable memory up to 2 GB, torch light, auto call record, mobile tracker, a phone and SMS memory of 1000 contacts and 250 messages respectively.

The phone has been met with a very positive response from the visually impaired community. "Blindness is a disability which could be overcome with training and guidance. The INTEX Vision phone is an ideal tool for the visually impaired people to satisfy their communication needs. It can play a very useful role in their integrated development" said Mr. Mohinder Kapur, President, National Association for the Blind.

The phone will be available at a street price of Rs. 2,600.

Apple developers get iPhone 4S?

An iPhone 4 sporting the same dual-core A5 processor as the iPad2 has surfaced on the Internet. According to 9to5mac, who have reported the existence of the device, describe it as a prototype device meant for developers only to showcase the gaming potential of the A5 processor on the iPhone.

They are calling it the iPhone 4S, as it does not involve any major redesign and only has under the hood upgrades similar on the lines of the iPhone 3GS. 9to5mac was pretty clear in mentioning that these devices were just early prototypes, which might leave room for further design modifications.

After the Japan earthquake many people have ruled out a World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) launch in June for the new iPhone but the September launch looks more likely.

The device is expected to launch with an 8-megapixel camera, the A5 Dual-Core processor, a larger screen and a QUALCOMM world phone chip, which is also currently used in the Verizon iPhone 4.

Happy First Birthday, Facebook 'Like'

The Facebook Like button turns a year old today and Facebook is celebrating the birthday by asking its users what the Like button means to them.

On it's own page, Facebook wrote  "Happy 1st birthday, Like button! For a one-year old, the Like button sure has a lot of friends. More than 10,000 sites add the Like button every day. Tell us what the Like button has meant to you."

Within seven hours the post was "liked" more than 56,000 times and had over 7,000 comments on it. The Like button is now an integral part of social networking consciousness, and the term is commonly used to express appreciation.

Hoping to cash in on the success of the Like button is Google, who  recently launched their version of it called "+1". While the Facebook Like button needs to be integrated in a website, the +1 button appears next to search results in Google.

Samsung bites back at Apple with lawsuit

Samsung Electronics said it has filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging patent infringements, days after the US technology firm took the South Korean company to court on similar grounds.

Samsung said it filed suit Thursday in a Seoul court alleging five patent infringements by Apple. Separate suits were filed in Tokyo citing two patent infringements and in the German city of Mannheim citing three.

"Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business," the company said in a statement which gave no details of the alleged infringements.

Apple tops Nokia as top handset vendor in revenue

Apple has surpassed Finland's Nokia to become the world's largest handset vendor in revenue terms, a technology research company said Thursday.

Strategy Analytics said Apple overtook Nokia for the first time in the first quarter with iPhone revenue estimated at $11.9 billion on sales of 18.6 million units.

Nokia revenue was estimated at $9.4 billion for the period. The Finnish company remains number one overall in terms of units sold, selling 108.5 million handsets in the first quarter but for cheaper prices than the iPhone.

"With strong volumes and high wholesale prices, (Apple) has successfully captured revenue leadership of the total handset market in less than four years," said Alex Spektor of Strategy Analytics.

Nokia's market share falls below 30 percent

Nokia Corp. reported better than expected first-quarter profits Thursday but its global market share dropped to below 30 per cent for the first time in over a decade as the world's top cellphone maker continued to lose ground to rivals.

The Finnish company's net profit in January through March fell euro5 million to euro344 million ($499 million) from a year earlier. Revenue grew 9 per cent to euro10.40 billion.

The company's share price climbed several per cent as markets had anticipated a greater fall in profits and lower sales, but closed almost unchanged at euro5.96 ($8.65) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Syrian security forces open fire; 49 killed

Beirut:  Syrian security forces fired bullets and tear gas Friday on pro-democracy demonstrations across the country, killing at least 49 people - including a young boy - in the bloodiest day of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime, witnesses and a human rights group said.

The protests, held every Friday, have become weekly bloodbaths as security forces try to crush the demonstrations. But the mounting death tolls have only served to invigorate a protest movement whose demands have snowballed from modest reforms to the downfall of the 40-year Assad dynasty.

Japan plans disaster budget, building 100K homes

Tokyo:  Japan's government proposed a special $50 billion (4 trillion yen) budget to help finance reconstruction efforts Friday and plans to build 100,000 temporary homes for survivors of last month's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The twin disasters destroyed roads, ports, farms and homes and crippled a nuclear power plant that forced tens of thousands of more people to evacuate their houses for at least several months. The government said the damage could cost $309 billion, making it the world's most expensive natural disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he was moved by his conversations with victims during a recent tour of shelters.

"I felt with renewed determination that we must do our best to get them back as soon as possible," he told reporters.

She'll get to the Royal Wedding at any cost!

Mexico City:  People called her crazy, but 19-year-old Estibalis Georgina Chavez has never given up her dream of attending next week's Royal Wedding in London.

After a 16-day hunger strike that she says left her weak and demoralised, she is now one step closer to her own fairytale.

On Thursday, the teenager headed for the capital after a good Samaritan heard her story and agreed to lend her the money so she could make the journey to London, where her next challenge awaits: giving a portrait she has painted herself to William and Kate Middleton, as a wedding present.

Chavez decided to leave her modest home in the outskirts of Mexico City in February to camp out in front of the British Embassy and begin a hunger strike to try and obtain an invite to the royal wedding.

She has been repeatedly told no more invitations to the event are available.

Her story, widely covered by Mexican media, touched the heart of Octavio Fitch Lazo, a lobbyist with a silver association in Mexico.

Lazo said Chavez' perseverance moved him and he agreed to lend her the money to pay for her flight to London.

Chavez has created an oil painting of William and Kate's engagement photo, one of many royal-themed works she keeps in a small room in her home.

She said she will try to find someone who can give it to the royal couple on her behalf once she gets to London.

"I know it's not the nicest way, but it's clear that the royal protocol would never allow me near them," she said.

Obama's young mother abroad

Stanley Ann Dunham at Borobudur in Indonesia,
in the early 1970s.

The photograph showed the son, but my eye gravitated toward the mother. That first glimpse was surprising - the stout, pale-skinned woman in sturdy sandals, standing squarely a half-step ahead of the lithe, darker-skinned figure to her left. His elastic-band body bespoke discipline, even asceticism. Her form was well padded, territory ceded long ago to the pleasures of appetite and the forces of anatomical destiny. He had the studied casualness of a catalog model, in khakis, at home in the viewfinder. She met the camera head-on, dressed in hand-loomed textile dyed indigo, a silver earring half-hidden in the cascading curtain of her dark hair. She carried her chin a few degrees higher than most. His right hand rested on her shoulder, lightly. The photograph, taken on a Manhattan rooftop in August 1987 and e-mailed to me 20 years later, was a revelation and a puzzle. The man was Barack Obama at 26, the community organizer from Chicago on a visit to New York. The woman was Stanley Ann Dunham, his mother. It was impossible not to be struck by the similarities, and the dissimilarities, between them. It was impossible not to question the stereotype to which she had been expediently reduced: the white woman from Kansas.

Gotcha! Woman catches toddler who fell from fourth floor

London:  A woman managed to catch a baby girl who fell from a fourth-floor balcony of a hotel in the US. The baby didn't even suffer a scratch on her body, it was reported here Friday.

Forty four-year-old Helen Beard was sitting by the swimming pool at Econo Lodge hotel in Orlando Wednesday when she noticed a baby girl hanging from the balcony.

Beard promptly ran to a spot just below the child and watched as she fell.

Sixteen-month-old Jah-Nea Myles hit the third-floor balcony and then landed squarely into Beard's outstretched hands.

"I'm thanking the Lord above right now for saving my child's life. I'm also thanking that lady because she was an angel sent from heaven," the child's mother Helena Myles was quoted as saying.

Medical personnel said the baby had no injuries and was in good health.

"She's perfectly fine. Not a scratch on her body," said Myles.

US firm charged with mistreating Indian workers

Washington:  A US federal agency has filed a lawsuit against an Alabama based oil rig construction company for alleged demeaning treatment of 500 Indian immigrant workers recruited to work in Mississippi and Texas.

Listing numerous complaints of discriminatory conduct by Signal International, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleges that Indian workers were forced to live in "substandard" accommodations and given "unwholesome" food, for which they were charged $35 daily.

The complaint, filed on Wednesday in Gulfport, Mississippi, also says the workers were lured into forced labour in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Orange, Texas, were subjected to hostile working conditions, and demeaned by being referred to by numbers instead of their names.

Signal retaliated against at least two workers for opposing the alleged unlawful conduct, the EEOC said, alleging the company violated the rights of the Indian guest workers.

Chinese who killed woman after accident sentenced to death

Beijing:  A student of music who stabbed to death a woman after an accident as he feared she will report him to the authorities was sentenced to death on Friday by a court in China's Shaanxi province.

Yao Jiaxin murdered the woman, who had only suffered minor injuries and a small fracture, after an accident in October 2010, Xinhua reported.

He was sentenced to death Friday by a court in Xi'an.

Yao, 21, a student at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music, ran into cyclist Zhang Miao while driving his car around 10.30 p.m.

Fearing that Zhang would remember his license plate number and report him to authorities, he stabbed her to death, according to the Intermediate People's Court of Xi'an.

The court also ordered Yao to pay 45,498.50 yuan in compensation to Zhang's family.

Yao fled the scene after stabbing the woman and injured two others as he drove away.

He denied the murder to the police Oct 22, but surrendered the next day and admitted to the killing, the court said.

Yao allegedly admitted to killing the woman as he feared the "peasant woman would be hard to deal with".

Police said the victim had suffered only slight injuries from the accident, including a small fracture to her left leg.

Yao did not try to help the victim, and he instead resorted to murder to silence her, making his crime extremely serious, the court said.

"The motive is extremely despicable... the measures are extremely cruel... and the consequence is extremely serious," the court judgment added.

'Webcam' murderer produced in court

Toronto:  Relatives of a murdered Chinese woman whose struggle with her attacker was seen on webcam by her boyfriend in China visited the coroner's office on Thursday, as the suspect in the attack made his first court appearance.

Police said the man charged with the murder lives in the same building as the victim.

The body of York University student Liu Qian, 23, of Beijing, was found last Friday in her apartment in Toronto a few hours after her boyfriend witnessed the attack, police said.

Liu's father, Liu Jianhui, who arrived from China after being notified of his daughter's death, thanked authorities for their quick action.

Police refused to publicly release any details about the crime or its possible motive.

Liu was naked from the waist down but there were no obvious signs of sexual assault or trauma severe enough to kill her.

An autopsy on Liu's body was inconclusive, and police say it may be weeks before the results of toxicology tests are known.

Brian Dickson, 29, lived in one of the units at 27 Aldwinckle Heights and Liu lived in the basement apartment, a police source said.

In court on Thursday, Dickson did not enter a plea and his case was held over until 26 April. The justice of the peace imposed a publication ban on nearly all other details.

Dickson was arrested on Wednesday. Toronto spokesman Tony Vella said Dickson was known to police but would not elaborate.

Police only announced his name and age on Wednesday and asked the media not to publish any photos of Dickson, saying it could compromise the investigation. Vella declined to elaborate on the request further.

Liu was chatting with her boyfriend, Meng Xianchao, by webcam at about 1 a.m. on Friday when a man knocked on the door, police said.

Meng reported seeing a struggle break out between the two before Liu's webcam was shut off. Meng contacted other friends in Toronto who in turn called police.

Air India bombing accused faces legal fees of $5.2-million

Vancouver:  In a major decision on Thursday, the Canadian Supreme Court allowed the government to recover legal fees of $5.2 million from Air India Kanishka bombing accused Ripudaman Singh Mailk.

Malik was acquitted in the case in 2005. The Vancouver-based millionaire businessman had expressed his inability to pay his legal fees for the trial, forcing the provincial British Columbian government to shell out $5.2 million to his defence lawyers.

Kanishka flight 182 from Montreal to Delhi was blown off near Ireland June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people on board. Within an hour, another bomb meant for another Air India flight went off at Tokyo's Narita airport, killing two baggage handlers. Both the bombs were planted by Khalistani extremists to avenge the India army action at the Golden Temple in 1984.

While plot mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar, who fled to India and was killed in a police encounter in Punjab in 1992, Malik - along with Ajaib Singh Bagri and Inderjit Singh Reyat - was charged and arrested in 2000 for their role in the plot.

Only Reyat, who admitted his role in making the two bombs, was jailed, while Malik and Bagri were acquitted in 2005 after a trial in Vancouver.

In its unanimous verdict on Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the provincial British Columbia government to recover the amount from Malik.

While applying for bail after his arrest in 2000, Malik had filed evidence that he and his wife had net worth of $11 million.

But within a year when the trial process began, he claimed he is broke and asked government to pay his legal fees.

Though the Vancouver-based British Columbia Supreme Court rejected his application for public funding, his family falsified their assets to get the government to pay $5.2 million for his legal fees.

After his release in March 2005, Malik was asked by the government to repay $5.2 million. But the issue has been dragging in courts since then after Malik challenged the government's decision.

The provincial government has seized documents in raids on Malik to prove that his family misrepresented its assets in court.

iPhone helps Verizon, but not enough for some

NEW YORK – Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) gained wireless subscribers with Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone, but the effect on its financials failed to impress investors, who sent its shares down 2.3 percent.
With subscriber growth only meeting Wall Street estimates, some analysts complained about profit margins and others said revenue growth was lower than they hoped at Verizon Wireless, the mobile venture of Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L).
Since Verizon's shares had increased 18 percent in the five months ahead of the quarter, its merely "solid" results were not remarkable enough, said Mizuho analyst Michael Nelson.
"I'm not sure if there's anything in today's report that gives investors reason to believe Verizon should continue to expand its premium valuation," Nelson said.

Exclusive: Apple to beat Google on cloud music: sources

NEW YORK  – Apple has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies' plans.
Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential.
The maker of the wildly popular iPhone and iPod, Apple has yet to sign any new licenses for the service and major music labels are hoping to secure deals before the service is launched, three of the sources said. Apple has not told its music partners of when it intends to introduce its music locker, they said.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Amazon.com Inc launched a music locker service earlier in April without new licensing agreements leading to threats of legal action from some music companies. At the time, Amazon argued that its so-called Cloud Drive service does not need licenses, and said uploaded music belongs to the users.
Last week, however, Amazon held talks with some labels to reach agreements for a new, more sophisticated locker service.

Samsung countersues Apple over iPhone, iPad

SEOUL  – Samsung Electronics Co has filed patent lawsuits against Apple over the U.S. firm's iPhone and iPad in a tit-for-tat case after Apple claimed Samsung's smartphones and tablets "slavishly" copied its products.
Apple filed a lawsuit last Friday alleging Samsung violated patents and trademarks of its iPhone and iPad, as the popular gadgets are being threatened by the fast rise of rival devices based on Google's free Android operating system.
The legal battle between Apple and Samsung could jeopardize business ties between the two technology companies, as the Cupertino, California-based company depends heavily on Samsung for components such as chips and LCD displays.
Operating systems have emerged as the key battlefield for dominance of the world's smartphone market.
Android became the most popular smartphone software in the United States in the three months ending in February, ahead of Apple and Research in Motion, according to a recent survey by research firm comScore.
Samsung is one of the fastest growing smartphone makers on the back of the Android boom and has emerged as Apple's strongest competitor in the tablet market, with models in three sizes.
COUNTER LAWSUITS
Samsung said in a statement Friday that Apple's iPhone and iPad infringe Samsung's 10 mobile technology patents and it called for Apple to stop infringing its technology and compensate the company.
Samsung said the suits, filed in South Korea, Japan and Germany, involved 10 alleged infringements of patents mainly involving power reduction during data transmission, 3G technology for reducing errors during data transmission, and wireless data communication technology.
"Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business," the statement said.
Global technology companies are locked in a web of litigation as they try to defend their shares of the booming tablet and smartphone market.
Strong sales of the iPhone and iPad translate into more revenue for Samsung. Apple was Samsung's second-biggest client after Japan's Sony Corp last year, bringing in around 6.2 trillion Korean won ($5.7 billion) of sales, and is widely expected to become Samsung's top client this year.
The battle comes ahead of Samsung launching a new version of its successful Galaxy S smartphone next week in Korea, a key product for the world's No.2 handset maker to meet its target of 60 million units of smartphone sales this year.
Shares in Samsung, Asia's biggest technology company with a market value of $140 billion, fell 2.5 percent by 0410 GMT after three consecutive sessions of gains, versus a 0.2 percent fall in the broader market.

Adobe Updates Acrobat, Reader to Guard against Flash Zero-Day

Adobe is once again releasing software updates to address a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash. Adobe already unleashed an updated version of Adobe Flash itself, but today it is also releasing updated versions of Acrobat and Reader which both rely on a vulnerable component of Flash.
The updates arrived sooner than expected, perhaps in response to new exploits in the wild. The Adobe security advisory explains, "There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat, as well as via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Word (.doc) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment targeting the Windows platform."
Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek describes the current threat in a recent blog post. Kandek says that the malicious Word document file attachment typically has a legitimate sounding name to lure users into opening it. But, as soon as the victim opens the attachment, the Flash zero-day vulnerability is exploited to install a remote control agent, and then a second Word document is opened which contains the real content. The insidious part is that it all happens in the blink of an eye--much faster than most users would even notice.
I have pointed out that the similarities of the back to back zero-day flaws in Flash seems to indicate they are related, and suggest that perhaps Adobe rushed the patch so much the first time around that it missed some key element of the vulnerability. But, an Adobe spokesperson stressed that the two Flash vulnerabilities are completely unrelates, explaining, "The two vulnerabilities existed in entirely different parts of the code and different ActionScript Virtual Machines (AVMs)."
The affected software includes Adobe Reader X (10.0.1) and earlier versions for Windows, Adobe Reader X (10.0.2) and earlier versions for Macintosh, and Adobe Acrobat X (10.0.2) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. Users of these products are strongly encouraged to download and install the updated software as soon as possible.
Adobe is still holding out for the regular quarterly update cycle in June to patch the Windows version of Adobe Reader X. Adobe states that the Protected Mode sandbox security in Reader X for Windows will prevent any exploit from executing, so it does not consider it a priority for developing an out-of-band update.

Why William won’t kiss the bride

 
LONDON--Even being the future king of England and the co-star of one of the most viewed weddings in history will not spare Prince William the frustration of being denied one typical marriage custom.
Sorry, William, you may not kiss the bride.
As he watches Kate Middleton walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey on April 29, William will have the traditional groom's checklist stashed in his memory. He will surely mentally admire Kate's dress, nervously go over his vows one final time in his head, and prepare to listen to the solemn words of the archbishop of Canterbury in his final seconds as a bachelor.
But once the ceremony is complete and the rings have been exchanged, there will be no royal smooch at the abbey altar for the benefit of the 1,900 guests in attendance. Church of England protocol expressly forbids such behavior, especially in a hallowed site such as Westminster Abbey, one of the world's most famous churches.
"There will be no kiss during the wedding ceremony," explained the Very Reverend Dr. John Hall, the dean of Westminster and the man responsible for overseeing the spiritual life of Westminster Abbey. "We don't do that in the Church of England. That's sort of a Hollywood thing: ' You may now kiss the bride.' It doesn't happen here."

Amazon cloud disruption hits some startups

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Disruption to Amazon.com Inc servers that host Internet services took down a raft of social networking websites including Foursquare and Quora early on Thursday, underscoring concerns about reliability as more companies turn to the "cloud."
Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud," part of the online retail company's cloud-computing service that hosts websites for startups, experienced latency problems and other errors, according to Amazon's status page.
The company said it was dealing with capacity issues amid a flood of queries and information.
Amazon is "now seeing significantly reduced failures and latency and ... continuing to recover. We have also brought additional capacity online in the affected availability zone," it said in the latest update on its status page.
Foursquare, one of the best-known location-based social services from which users can "check in" or broadcast their locations to friends, said it was experiencing technical difficulties as a result of Amazon's service.
"Our usually amazing data center hosts, Amazon EC2, are having a few hiccups this morning, which affected us and a bunch of other services that use them," read a message on the homepage of Foursquare's website on Thursday. The message said "everything looking to be getting back to normal now."
Quora's homepage said the site was down but should be back up shortly.
Cloud computing, or the hosting of sites and services on the Internet, is viewed as the future of computing for consumers and corporations in an increasingly mobile, connected world.
Though experts have warned of security, privacy and reliability issues, corporations -- especially cash-starved Internet startups -- are increasingly seeking to outsource such functions as web-hosting to third-party servers to hold costs down.
Others rely on the cloud to host services -- such as storage of multimedia content -- across a plethora of wireless Internet devices, like smartphones and tablets.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment beyond the messages on its status page.
Shares in Amazon were holding steady, up 0.6 percent at $184.89 in afternoon trade.

Samsung files lawsuits against Apple

 
SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. said it is suing Apple Inc. for patent rights violations, only days after Apple sued Samsung for the same reason.
Samsung is accusing Apple of violating its rights to 10 smartphone and computer patents. The company filed lawsuits Thursday in Seoul, Tokyo and Mannheim, Germany.
The lawsuits come only days after Apple sued Samsung in a California court. Apple alleges Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones and tablet computers copy Apple's popular iPad and iPhone.
The lawsuits are the latest in a long string of patent disputes among phone makers. In recent years Apple, Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp., HTC Corp. and others have taken legal action to protect their intellectual property rights.

Malaysia reviews safety of rare earth plant

 
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Malaysia said Friday it is appointing international experts to investigate whether a refinery being built by Australian miner Lynas Corp. Ltd. to process rare earth minerals presents any threat of radioactive pollution.
The plant in Malaysia's central Pahang state could become the first such facility outside China in years. Officials say it may curtail China's monopoly on the global supply of 17 rare earths essential for making high-tech goods, including flatscreen TVs, mobile phones, hybrid cars and weapons.
But public worries have soared over risks posed by low-level radioactive waste from the site, even though Lynas insists it would have state-of-the art pollution controls.

Amazon failure takes down sites across Internet

 
 NEW YORK – Major websites including Foursquare and Reddit crashed or suffered slowdowns Thursday after technical problems rattled Amazon.com's widely used Web servers, frustrating millions of people who couldn't access their favorite sites.
Though better known for selling books, DVDs and other consumer goods, Amazon also rents out space on huge computer servers that run many websites and other online services.
The problems began at an Amazon data center near Dulles Airport outside Washington and persisted into the afternoon. The failures were widespread, but they varied in severity.
HootSuite, which lets users monitor Twitter and other social networks more easily, was down completely, as was questions-and-answers site Quora.
The location-sharing social network Foursquare experienced glitches, while the news-sharing site Reddit was in "emergency read-only mode."