parvez ahmed: May 2013

Friday, 31 May 2013

Thursday, 30 May 2013

Dollar weakens in Asian trade

TOKYO: The dollar weakened in Asian trade
Thursday with few trading cues as firms adjust
their month-end forex positions, dealers said,
while concerns about global growth hung over
markets.

Oil prices recover in Asia

SINGAPORE: Oil prices recovered in Asian trade
Thursday following a drop triggered by fresh
economic data that highlighted global growth
concerns, analysts said. New York's main
contract, .

Death toll rises to 123 as two more die of measles

LAHORE: Two more children have died in Punjab
as the overall death toll from the measles
outbreak rose to 123 in the province. As many as
14,823 children are suffering from the disease
in ...

Seven die after taking poisonous food in Muzaffargarh

MUZAFFARGARH: Two more persons including a
girl child died after consuming poisonous food
at Bait Daryai area of Mir Hazar Khan, Jatoi on
Tuesday night after which the toll has increased
to seven, ...

test News SA, KPK MPAs to elect CM, speaker, deputy speaker today

KARACHI: The newly elected members of Sindh
and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies would elect
chief minister, speaker, and deputy speaker on
Thursday morning. Aga Siraj Durrani, MPA of
Pakistan ...

test News SA, KPK MPAs to elect CM, speaker, deputy speaker today

KARACHI: The newly elected members of Sindh
and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies would elect
chief minister, speaker, and deputy speaker on
Thursday morning. Aga Siraj Durrani, MPA of
Pakistan ...

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Pentagon report: Chinese hackers accessed F-35B and other advanced US weapons systems

Many of the Pentagon's most advanced
weapon systems -- including the F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter and PAC-3 Patriot missile
system -- were compromised by Chinese
hackers, according to a classified document
obtained by the Washington Post. The list of
weapons was part of an earlier DoD report
condemning Chinese cyber-espionage
activities, but had been confidential until
now. Other systems hacked are said to
include the Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD), the Navy's Aegis ballistic-
missile defense system, the F/A-18 fighter,
V-22 Osprey and the Littoral Combat Ship
used for shore patrol. Many of these form
the foundation of defense systems from
Europe to the Persian Gulf -- and their
breach goes a long way toward explaining
Washington's unprecedented dressing-down
of China.

Anti-Polio Campaign Worker Shot Dead in Pakistan »

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A volunteer in a
polio vaccination campaign was killed and
her colleague wounded in an attack by
militants near Peshawar on Tuesday, a
district administration official said.
The volunteers were going door to door to
give oral anti-polio drops to children in Sheik
Muhammadi, on the southern fringes of
Peshawar, when two gunmen opened fire on
them and fled, according to the deputy city
commissioner of Peshawar, Javed Marwat. A
police official said that a search operation
had begun but that no arrests had been
made.
Mr. Marwat said the women had not asked
to be accompanied by security.
“Probably, they thought it was good not to
go with a police escort and become a target,”
he said.
The government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa,
the surrounding province, announced after
previous attacks that it would send police
escorts with polio vaccination teams. Most
such violence has been attributed to the
Pakistani Taliban, who have criticized
vaccination efforts as a cover for Western
espionage. Also, religious extremists claim
that the real aim of vaccination campaigns is
to sterilize Pakistan’s Muslim population.
The continued violence has seriously
hampered the campaign of polio
immunization in Pakistan, which is one of
the three countries in the world where polio
is endemic.
A total of 1,803 teams are involved in a
three-day round of anti-polio work that
began on Tuesday, an official in the health
department said. Four cases of polio have so
far been detected in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Province this year, among the 12 cases
discovered throughout Pakistan, the official
said.
No group claimed responsibility for the
shooting on Tuesday. Mr. Marwat said a
meeting had been called to decide whether
to suspend or continue the polio vaccination
campaign.
Last week, militants opened fire on a polio
vaccination team in the northwestern tribal
belt, killing a paramilitary soldier protecting
the workers.
The killings have underscored the dangers
that the campaigns face in the region, which
is the major center of infections in Pakistan.
The effort involves 682 teams that aim to
vaccinate 223,570 children.

U.S. drone kills 4 militants in Pakistan

In this Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012 file photo, American
citizens, hold a banner during a peace march
organized by Pakistan's cricket star turned
politician Imran Khan's party, not pictured, in
Tank, Pakistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A pair of suspected
U.S. missiles fired from an unmanned aircraft
killed four alleged militants early Wednesday
near the Afghan border in Pakistan, intelligence
officials said, the first drone strike since
Pakistan's nationwide elections earlier this
month.
The strike was also the first since President
Barack Obama's speech last week on the
controversial U.S. drone program and more
restrictive rules he was implementing on their
use in places such as Pakistan and Yemen.
Wednesday's strike came in the North Waziristan
tribal region, a stronghold for militants in the
mountainous stretch of land bordering
Afghanistan to the west. Pakistani intelligence
officials said the missiles hit a house in the
town of Miran Shah, the main town in North
Waziristan.
The officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to
talk to the media, said they suspected the house
was being used by foreign militants but had no
other details.
The tribal region is home to a variety of local
and Afghan militant outfits, including al-Qaeda-
linked fighters. The U.S. has often criticized
Pakistan, saying it does not vigorously target
militants in these areas. Using their safe havens
in Pakistan, militants are then targeting
American troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials say their military is already
overly overtaxed by fighting militants in both the
northwestern tribal regions and in the
southwestern province of Baluchistan and that
the casualties they've already incurred battling
militants have not been properly recognized.
Washington's drone program is extremely
unpopular in Pakistan, although the number of
strikes has dropped significantly since the
height of the program in 2010.
The country's incoming prime minister, Nawaz
Sharif, has repeatedly said he is against the use
of American drones on Pakistani soil, and
Pakistani officials have demanded publicly that
the program be stopped.
Senior civilian and military officials are known to
have supported at least some of the attacks in
the past, but that is no longer the case.
Pakistan has been hit by 355 such attacks since
2004, according to the New America Foundation,
a U.S.-based think tank. The figure does not
include Wednesday's strike. Up to 3,336 people
have died in the strikes, said the think tank.
Obama's speech last Thursday was his most
extensive comments to date about the secretive
drone program, which has come under increased
criticism for its lack of accountability.
The president cast drone strikes against Islamic
militants as crucial to U.S. counterterrorism
efforts but acknowledged that they are not a
"cure-all." The president also said he is deeply
troubled by civilians unintentionally killed in the
strikes and announced more restrictive rules
governing the attacks — measures that his
advisers said would effectively limit drone use in
the future.

Tuesday, 28 May 2013

Husic questions whether Apple misled parliament

Apple should consider revising the evidence it
gave to the IT pricing inquiry, according to
Labor MP Ed Husic, who has questioned whether
the Cupertino giant misled parliament by not
fully disclosing its global corporate structure.
After being summoned to the inquiry in March,
Apple's vice president in Australia and New
Zealand, Tony King, pushed the blame for the
pricing disparity for IT and digital content
between Australia and the United States from
Apple to the content owners.
In response to a question on where Apple
Australia sources its hardware, King said Apple
sourced its hardware from overseas and that the
prices were set in Cupertino, but the entire
corporate structure was "very robust".
"We have very robust and deep accounting
systems in place to ensure that all of the
revenues associated with doing business in
Australia are fairly reported and all of the cost
of sale in terms of the hardware, transformation
costs and shipping costs are fairly reported," he
said.
"Certainly at a global level we are setting
consistent product costs for internal use around
the world. Those are a function of a number of
different things but I am not privy to the
underlying details within the product costs."
In Parliament on Tuesday night, Husic
questioned whether, in light of evidence from
the US Senate around Apple's corporate and tax
structure that said price was determined by
Apple in Singapore.
"I am concerned the committee inquiry has
been misled, either deliberately or
accidentally," he said.
"The corporate structure detailed in the US
Senate report was never offered by Apple
Australia and when pressed on its transfer
pricing or price setting, I put it to the House
that Apple deliberately avoided setting out the
detail that became evident in the US Senate
report," he said.
Husic said he called on Apple Australia to
correct the record or provide further detail on
the way it sets prices for products sold in
Australia.
Apple has been contacted for comment.
The US Senate determined that Apple had
implemented a complex web of subsidiaries
based across a number of countries to minimise
the taxes the company pays. It had been
determined, for example, that Apple paid just
two percent tax on profits of US$74 billion
through its Ireland subsidiary.
ZDNet understands that the parliamentary
committee investigating IT pricing disparity in
Australia is likely to table its report in the next
few weeks before parliament rises for the
federal election.

Apple to be more open in future:

Apple CEO Tim Cook believes that the
company's customers want Apple to make the
decisions about features in iOS, but that the
company would look to open up its API in the
future, he revealed in a wide-ranging interview
to kick off the D11 conference.
Cook said that Apple believes customers pay
the company to make choices on their behalf,
but that the closed nature of iOS would be
pried open slightly, with third parties being
allowed to implement some features in iOS.
With WWDC due in a fortnight, the CEO was
unsurprisingly cagey in addressing any new
devices or new releases of iOS or OS X to be
announced at the event.
In a move that will have the rumour mill
running until the conference, Cook dodged the
question on whether Apple was planning to
announce a multiple iPhone line up.
"We haven't so far. That doesn't shut off the
future," said Cook.
Cook discussed the trade-offs made by handset
manufacturers to carry screens larger than the
iPhone, and said that Apple still believes that
the Retina display is the best.
On the topic of iOS, rather than announce a
new Jony Ive flat UI-inspired nirvana, Cook cited
a range of engagement and customer
satisfaction statistics intended to demonstrate
how happy the marketplace is with iOS.
One area where the marketplace appears
unhappy is in regard to the company's stock
price. Cook dismissed worries about Apple's
stock price as part of a cycle, and said Apple
just focuses on products.
"Our North Star is always on making the best
products," he said.
The CEO was equally cagey when it came to
discussing his leadership techniques compared
to previous Apple CEO and co-founder Steve
Jobs. Keeping the culture of Apple was cited by
Cook as the most important responsibility of an
Apple CEO, but when pressed on leadership
styles, said that he and Jobs were different in a
ton of ways, though the same when it came to
"the most important things".
Apple has been under the pump in recent
weeks about its tax structure following Cook's
appearance before a US Senate Subcommittee
last week .
Cook said that Apple paid US$6 billion in taxes,
making it the largest amount paid in the US,
and called for comprehensive reform of the tax
code — so long as it was revenue neutral.
He denied that Apple had a special deal with
the Irish government, saying that he would like
to bring offshore profits back into the US, but
warned that the concept of a tax regime that
involved US companies paying US tax on sales
made throughout the world was a worrying one.
In Australia, government MP Ed Husic raised
the question of whether Apple misled the
Australian parliament after the company
appeared before the local IT pricing inquiry.
Turning to wearable technology, and Google
Glass in particular, Cook said that it has some
positives and would appeal in some vertical
markets, but that broad appeal is hard to see.
"There is nothing great out there that I have
seen, or will convince a kid who has never worn
watches, or a band or glasses to wear one," he
said.
"There are lots of things to solve, it's ripe for
exploration."
Whether Apple would venture into the realm of
wearing computing, Cook said that the area was
an important and profound one, but glasses are
risky.
"You have to convince people it's so incredible
you want to wear it."
As an exercise left to the reader, Cook
announced that Apple has acquired nine
companies, but would not reveal which
companies they were.
Cook downplayed interest in purchasing a social
network as Facebook and Twitter are already
integrated into Apple OSes.

Self-service banking can kill intimacy with customers: ANZ

Cutting down the number of
retail bank branches makes sense
from a cost perspective, but not
from a customer relationship
perspective, according to ANZ
CTO, Patrick Maes.

Australian government unveils national cloud strategy

Communications Minister Stephen
Conroy today released a national
cloud strategy that will, among
other things, require government
agencies to begin shifting their
websites into the public cloud.

Ego 2.0 and the tragedy of the shrinking digital commons

A down to earth voice from a
previous era sounds a warning
about overconfident posturing
around how to do things by those
who rarely have and lack of
respect for those who actually
getting business done

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