'Pump and Dump' conmen targeted

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Spam is used to boost share prices so conmen can cash in

Scammers using the net to hype stocks are being targeted with software that can spot fraudulent trading patterns.

Many hi-tech conmen use junk mail to hype stocks so they can sell shares they own in the companies at a profit.

It has been estimated that 15% of all spam or junk e-mail is made up of messages that "pump" stocks that are later "dumped".

Developed by web giant VeriSign the anti-fraud software works by keeping an eye on real-time trading activity.

"This gives brokers a jump on the attackers and raises the bar," said Perry Tancredi, senior manager of anti-fraud services at Verisign.

New Lara Croft squares up for fight

By Jonathan Blake
Newsbeat reporter

A 23-year-old professional gymnast from south London has been unveiled as the new face of Lara Croft.

Alison Carroll will promote the new Tomb Raider: Underworld game which is due out in November.

Alison told Newsbeat: "It's an amazing opportunity. Lara is strong, athletic, confident and independent so it's a huge responsibility to take on her role."

Lara Croft is an iconic gaming character. She just goes from strength to strength The new face of Lara Croft, Alison Carroll

After quitting her day job as a receptionist, Alison is about to star in TV commercials and marketing campaigns around the world.

She follows in the footsteps of Nell McAndrew who brought Lara Croft to life in the 1990s, and Angelina Jolie who played the character in the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001.

As the sexy, clever and fearless adventurer starring in the classic Tomb Raider, Lara Croft was something gamers had never seen before.

Alison added: "She's got everything that a woman aspires to be like and everything that a man would like to meet."

And it's not just the games, Lara Croft has fought her way through comics, feature films and animations, holding the Guinness world record for the most successful human video game heroine.

BY-BBC NEWS

Invisibility cloak 'step closer'

Scientists in the US say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people invisible.

Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have developed a material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear".

The materials do not occur naturally but have been created on a nano scale, measured in billionths of a metre.

The team says the principles could one day be scaled up to make invisibility cloaks large enough to hide people.

Stealth operations

The findings, by scientists led by Xiang Zhang, were published in the journals Nature and Science.

The light-bending effect relies on reversing refraction, the effect that makes a straw placed in water appear bent.

Previous efforts have shown this negative refraction effect using microwaves—a wavelength far longer than humans can see.

In order to have the 'Harry Potter' effect, you just need to find the right materials for the visible wavelengths Ortwin Hess

The new materials instead work at wavelengths around those used in the telecommunications industry—much nearer to the visible part of the spectrum.

Two different teams led by Zhang made objects made of so-called metamaterials—artificial structures with features smaller than the wavelength of light that give the materials their unusual properties.

One approach used nanometre-scale stacks of silver and magnesium fluoride in a "fishnet" structure, while another made use of nanowires made of silver.

Light is neither absorbed nor reflected by the objects, passing "like water flowing around a rock," according to the researchers. As a result, only the light from behind the objects can be seen.

BY-BBC NEWS

Sky-high system to aid soldiers

Hardware used to spot gamma ray bursts could soon be helping direct troops on a battlefield.

Defence firm Qinetiq has brought the technology down to Earth to make a monitoring system that may be able to track thousands of targets.

The futuristic system manages the feat without using lenses to gather light from the scene it is watching.

Instead it employs a sensor array, a special "mask" and image processing software to picture a scene.

High guard

Astronomers had been attracted to such devices because they coped much better with harsh conditions when a spacecraft is launched and in space, said Dr Chris Slinger, Qinetiq's principal investigator on the system.

"It's hard using lenses and mirrors up there," he said.

Instead of lenses the imaging system uses an array of microscopic sensors in front of which is a specially made "mask" randomly punctured with holes in a particular pattern.

Light from the scene over which the detector is passing hits the mask and casts a distinctive shadow on the array behind it.

"If you design your coding pattern well it's possible to take this mishmash pattern and use digital signal processing to decode the pattern to pull out an image of the scene," said Dr Slinger.

This coded aperture helps Swift spot gamma ray bursts

Nasa used such an approach, called coded aperture imaging, for the Swift satellite that was sent aloft to spot gamma ray sources.

By doing away with lenses and mirrors to focus light it is possible to produce an imaging system that is very sensitive but also light and durable.

Because the image the device is picking up is spread across many thousands of sensors, damage to one in the array does not significantly degrade the entire image.

Shifting the systems focus of interest was much easier than with bulky lens-based equipment because it was so light, said Dr Slinger.

The system should also have a "super resolution" mode that can dial into a scene to produce very detailed pictures of one location in its field of view.

Qinetiq is developing the imaging system for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) as part of a project known as Lacoste - Large Area Coverage Optical Search While Track and Engage.

The Lacoste project aims to produce an imaging system that will fly on a drone or airship to keep an eye on a battlefield or a huge swathe of a city.

Dr Slinger said Darpa wanted the system to be able to keep track of thousands of vehicles for months at a time.

Hardware with these abilities would be helpful for peace-keeping forces who want to wind images back from an incident, such as a car bomb exploding, to gather useful intelligence about where the vehicle began its journey.

BY-BBC NEWS

NASA: Space shuttle replacement won't fly until 2014

(CNN) -- NASA has put off the planned launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft for a year, a setback to efforts to fly a successor to its aging space shuttles, the space agency announced Monday.

The Orion space vehicle in this artist rendering from Lockheed Martin's web site, won't see space until 2014.

"September 2014 is when we are saying we will launch the first crew on the Orion," program manager Jeff Hanley told reporters in a conference call Monday.

NASA officials plan to wrap up assembly of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet in 2010, freeing up money to build and fly the new spacecraft. Cost concerns are at the root of the delay, but NASA is also giving itself wiggle room to deal with the unforeseen technical problems that will inevitably crop up, Hanley said.

"It's the unknown unknowns that we have to hedge against," he said. "Having some number of months of schedule flexibility to meet our commitment, in addition to having some number of months of cost -- dollars -- flexibility, is key to keeping ourselves in a healthy posture."

Sometimes called "Apollo on steroids," Orion is designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually back to the moon. Unlike the space shuttles, which land like an airplane, Orion is a capsule that will parachute to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

What to know before buying your kid a cell phone

By Jacque Wilson
CNN

(CNN) -- He was gone. Kristi and Claudio Lai turned around for just one minute and their son had disappeared at Sea World.

Cell phones in schools can lead to classroom distractions, text-message cheating and inappropriate photographs.

After frantically searching the park, they found him 15 minutes later on a jungle gym. That was when the Simi Valley, California, couple knew they wanted to get Giancarlo a GPS-equipped cell phone very soon.

Their son is 3 years old.

Cell phones are rare in preschool, but as parents fill their child's backpack this month with pens, pencils and other supplies, some may be wondering whether a wireless phone is a necessary back-to-school accessory.

More and more children are showing up at school each August with cell phones, and the Center on Media and Child Health Web site states that 54 percent of 8- to 12-year-olds will have a cell phone in the next three years.

For many parents, a cell phone's convenience and the peace of mind it offers -- being able to reach your child at any time, anywhere -- is hard to argue against. But should every kid have a cell phone? And how young is too young?

Here are some issues parents should consider before buying their child a cell phone for the upcoming year.

Cost

When Kathy Carter's 10-year-old son Jordan first got his cell phone, he downloaded 3 million songs and games. At least that's what it looked like to the Teaneck, New Jersey, mother when she got the phone bill.

Bush could weaken Endangered Species Act

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

An adult male Florida panther growls as he enters his new home at Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a "back door" to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1986. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

The changes would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that might harm endangered wildlife and their habitat. Government wildlife experts currently perform tens of thousands of such reviews each year.

Africans get upwardly mobile in cell phone boom

By Lara Farrar
For CNN

LONDON (England) CNN -- One afternoon late in 2002, Mukhsin Alhassan Kadir drove his taxi from the busy streets of Accra, the capital of Ghana, to a nearby market community to meet a man who wanted to trade a plot of land for two cell phones.

Ghanaian taxi driver Mukhsin Alhassan Kadir once traded two cell phones for a plot of land.

When he arrived, Kadir collected the papers for the land and handed over what would be the first telephones this man and his wife had ever had in their lives.

"During that time, everybody wanted to own a mobile phone, but it was not common to find them in this country," Kadir told CNN.

In less than a decade, cellphones, once the preserve of the very rich, are now ubiquitous in Africa and parts of Asia.

A device that's sometimes used as a fashion accessory in the West has become a lifeline for millions of people in the developing world.

In Ghana, Kadir's phone functions as a portable office that he takes on the road with him during his taxicab shifts.

"Sometimes I am in bed and a customer will call me and I will go and pick him up," said Kadir while driving a client down a highway on a recent morning in Accra. "It has helped my business a lot."

"There is nobody in Ghana who is not using a mobile phone," added Kadir, speaking to CNN on a late model Sony Ericsson that he ordered for around $220 from someone in Italy.

"Even a shoe shiner has his own mobile phone," he jokes.

Numbers from the International Telecommunications Union indicate that since the end of 2006, nearly 70 percent of those subscriptions have come from developing countries.

There are now almost seven million cellphone users in Ghana, up from only a couple hundred thousand subscribers in 2000. The continent's biggest users are in South Africa, with nearly 25 million subscribers, followed by Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco.

However, the figures are startling in the lesser developed and poorer African countries.

My biofuel road trip: Hot as hell, eco-friendly

By Cody McCloy
CNN

GRAND CANYON WEST, Arizona (CNN) -- I was stranded in the Arizona desert in my broken-down truck wondering if I had made a big mistake: Our CNN.com biofuel road trip seemed doomed to fail.

CNN.com's Cody McCloy, left, and co-pilot Brian Hardy set out on their biofuel experiment on July 28.

My newly purchased 1978 International Harvester Scout quit on me during our very unscientific experiment to drive a biodiesel-powered truck from California to Georgia in two-weeks.

Under a hot sun, with no air conditioning in the truck, I feared that my Scout would be stolen while I went for help. Worse, I worried that I'd be forced to abandon the vehicle altogether and return home to Atlanta with my tail between my legs.

But two things happened as I sat in the middle of nowhere, a stone's throw from the Grand Canyon. One: I was reminded of the incredible capacity for people to help total strangers. And two: The Scout proved that it wasn't quite ready for the junk yard.

A very generous Grand Canyon West employee named Dave drove me and my co-pilot Brian Hardy two-and-a-half hours to Kingman. There, we rented a car and gathered hard-to-find auto parts that brought the Scout back to life.

Fraudulent spam about CNN.com

Earlier this week, a spam message purporting to be from CNN began circulating the Internet. We decided to blog about this to alert those of you who hadn’t yet received it to be on the lookout for it; and also to assure those of you who did receive it that the message was NOT, in fact, from CNN.

As you may know, spammers often disguise or forge the source of their e-mail to give recipients the impression that the message derived from another system, especially one tied to a recognizable brand. In this instance, the spammer chose to use the CNN brand.

The message, claiming to contain CNN’s Top 10 news stories and videos of the day, is fraudulent and did not originate from CNN. If you have received it, we suggest that you delete it from your mailbox. Further, we recommend you delete any e-mail message from your mailbox that you believe may be illegitimate.

Thanks to all of you out there who alerted us to the existence of this spam purporting to be from CNN.

Posted by: CNN Public Relations

The big battle of the brands

David Reid looks at how the net has thrown the battle over counterfeit goods into stark relief.

Legal action has been taken against eBay in Europe and the US by makers of luxury goods who claim it has aided the sale of counterfeit goods.

There is little doubt that auction sites such as eBay have revolutionised the market in second-hand goods by putting buyers in direct contact with sellers.

But, say the makers of luxury goods, alongside that has gone the growth of the net as the channel of choice for fake products.

Marc Antoine Jamet, chairman of the French anti-counterfeiting group Union des Fabricants and former secretary general at LVMH, said in the past people bought fake goods that were caricatures rather than copies and there was a limited market.

He said the internet, however, has allowed counterfeiting to become "globalised, more diverse and industrialised on a massive scale".

However, the internet is just one of the contributors to a market that is estimated to be worth $600bn every year.

Sales of counterfeit goods have grown by more than 10,000% globally in the past two decades, according to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC).

BY-BBC NEWS

Is it time to embrace the e-book?

When electronic books first came onto the market, some thought it spelt the end for the printed page.

But following a flurry of headlines, and prophesies of doom from the publishing industry, the revolution in downloadable literature failed to materialise.

However, despite scepticism from some technology experts that the tactile satisfaction of the paper book has not been successfully replicated, it now seems that the e-book is starting to take off.

The Amazon "kindle" e-book sold out in the United States within a few hours on its first run. Bookseller Borders' iLiad e-book is selling well and the much-hyped Sony Reader is due out in September.

"It has been spoken about for a long time but things are actually starting to happen," says Julie Howkins, head of e-commerce at Borders.

"Publishers are beginning to think seriously about their e-book strategy."

BY-BBC NEWS