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US warns against travel to Iran
The United States warned U.S. citizens on Thursday against traveling to Iran, accusing Islamic authorities there of a “disturbing pattern” of harassment after the detention of a fourth Iranian-American for alleged espionage.
“American citizens may be subject to harassment or arrest while traveling or residing in Iran,” the State Department said after confirming that Ali Shakeri, a peace activist from Irvine, Calif., who has been missing in Iran for more than two weeks, is being held at a notorious prison in Tehran along with three other people.
“Americans of Iranian origin should consider the risk of being targeted by authorities before planning travel to Iran,” the department said, noting that “dual national Iranian-American citizens may encounter difficulty in departing Iran.”
The alert alleged that Tehran continues to repress numerous indigenous minority groups and that “some elements” of the Iranian government and population are extremely hostile to the United States.
Earlier, several international human rights groups urged Iran to immediately release the four Iranian-American scholars and activists being held on suspicion of spying.
“As with the other cases this is simply ridiculous,” said deputy spokesman Tom Casey. “He has no standing with the U.S. government, he is not a U.S. government official, he is not operating or acting on behalf of the U.S. government. He is a private citizen.”
Casey said there had been no response to requests for access to Shakeri or the others by Swiss diplomats who represent U.S. interests in Iran, and repeated flat denials that any of the four are spies or are employed by the U.S. government.
Shakeri, a founding board member at the University of California, Irvine’s Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, was supposed to leave Iran and fly to Europe on either May 8 or May 13 but never arrived at his destination.
He joins three other Iranian-Americans — academic Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and journalist Parnaz Azima — now in custody in Iran.
Esfandiari, Tajbakhsh and Azima have all been charged with endangering Iran’s national security and espionage, the country’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear on Thursday if Shakeri has been charged.
Esfandiari and her organization have been accused by the Iranian Intelligence Ministry of trying to set up networks of Iranians to start a revolution to bring down the hardline regime. The ministry alleges that the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy worldwide, was also part of the conspiracy.
But Casey, as well as their relatives and employers, said they were in Iran visiting family members or engaged in professional work.
“What we are seeing is a disturbing pattern on the part of the Iranians in efforts to harass these innocent people,” Casey said, adding that the detentions undercut Iran’s claims to want a dialogue with the United States.
“It certainly belies any notion that the regime is interested in promoting any kind of dialogue if they are attacking and harassing these Iranian-Americans who are doing nothing more than some pretty basic kinds of human contacts,” he said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the treatment of Esfandiari and the other Iranian-Americans “a perversion of the rule of law.”
A fifth American citizen, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, has been missing in Iran since early March and Washington has cast severe doubts on Iranian claims to have no information about him in response to repeated requests through the Swiss and others.
The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
Perennially poor ties since then have been exacerbated in recent months by rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. allegations that Tehran is supporting armed groups in Iraq.
Last week, Iran said it had uncovered spy rings organized by the U.S. and its Western allies.
[AP]
Baghdad Embassy Plans Turn Up Online
WASHINGTON (AP) – Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.
Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital.
The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.
“We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas,” said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman. “This kind of information out in the public domain detracts from that effort.”
The 10 images included a scheme of the overall layout of the compound, plus depictions of individual buildings including the embassy itself, office annexes, the Marine Corps security post, swimming pool, recreation center and the ambassador’s and deputy ambassador’s residences.
U.S. officials said the posted plans conformed at least roughly to conceptual drawings for the new embassy, which is being built on the banks of the Tigris River behind huge fences due to concerns about insurgents’ attacks.
Dan Sreebny, a spokesman for the embassy in Baghdad, declined to discuss the accuracy of the posted images.
“In terms of commenting whether they’re accurate, obviously we wouldn’t be commenting on that because we don’t want people to know whether they’re accurate or not for security reasons,” he said.
Berger Devine Yaeger’s parent company, the giant contractor Louis Berger Group, said the plans had been very preliminary and would not be of help to potential U.S. enemies.
“The actual information that was up there was purely conjectural and conceptual in nature,” said company spokesman Jeffrey Willis. “Google Earth could give you a better snapshot of what the site looks like on the ground.”
Some U.S. officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives to describe their personal reactions. Still, they downplayed the overall risk.
“People are eventually going to figure out where all these places are, but you don’t have to draw them a map,” said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the embassy project.
Few are, and in Baghdad, the construction is under heavy guard and treated with extreme secrecy. It is off-limits to all but those with special passes, surrounded by tall, concrete blast walls and impossible to see except from the air.
The images posted on the Web site show that the $592 million embassy, expected to be completed in September on prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington’s National Mall, will be a spacious and comfortable facility, albeit dangerous.
Identified as the “Baghdad U.S. Embassy Compound Master Plan,” the images show palm-lined paths, green grass gardens and volleyball and basketball courts outside the Marine post, as well as the swimming pool.
“In total, the 104-acre compound will include over twenty buildings, including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families,” the Web site says.
It says the compound will include the embassy building, housing, a PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping areas, restaurants, schools, a fire station, power and water treatment plants as well as telecommunications and wastewater treatment facilities.
A U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report last year said embassy security will be extraordinary: Setbacks and perimeter no-go areas will be especially deep, structures reinforced to 2.5 times the standard and five high-security entrances, plus an emergency entrance-exit.
[AP]
Ex-spy Plame and publisher sue CIA over her memoir
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An ex-spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of unconstitutionally interfering with publication of her memoir.
Valerie Plame Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, filed a suit in the U.S. District Court in New York on Thursday against J. Michael McConnell, the CIA director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Plame’s cover as a CIA agent was blown when her identity was leaked to reporters and appeared in a newspaper column in July 2003, shortly after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, emerged as an Iraq war critic.
The suit said although the CIA had released Plame’s dates of service in an unclassified document, “the CIA now purports to classify or reclassify Ms. Wilson’s pre-2002 federal service dates” so it cannot be published in her memoir “Fair Game.”
The CIA had also demanded “significant portions” of Wilson’s manuscript be “excised or rendered ‘fiction’” to protect the secrecy of Wilson’s service before 2002, it said.
“Defendants cannot unring the bell by asserting that their documented, authorized and voluntary disclosure was just a mistake,” the suit said.
“There simply is no basis for the CIA to maintain in effect that Valerie Plame is the only person in the world who is not entitled to publish this information,” it said.
Plame’s dates of service were contained in an unclassified letter sent to her in 2006 by the agency after she inquired about her retirement benefits.
‘ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR’
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the letter had been “an administrative error” because it contained classified information and the CIA had taken steps to fix the problem.
“The concern is that publication of the manuscript as submitted would cause additional damage to operations and would affect the agency’s ability to conduct intelligence activities in the future,” he said.
All publications by CIA and ex-CIA agents must be approved by a review board, which says its only objective is to prevent classified material from being released to the public.
The suit said Plame has worked with the CIA Publications Review Board for the past 10 months to comply fully with her secrecy agreements and avoid divulging any national security information.
“The CIA’s effort to classify public domain information is an unreasonable attempt at prior restraint of publication, and a violation of our First Amendment rights,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement.
“We have filed our suit in the belief that the CIA’s actions have implications that are much broader than this particular case, and that could have a chilling effect on the nature of public discourse in a free society,” it said.
The leaking of Plame’s identity prompted an investigation to determine if government officials had broken any laws.
Nobody was charged with blowing her cover, but Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, was found guilty in March of lying and obstructing the investigation.
Evidence at that trial showed Libby and several other White House and State Department officials leaked her identity to discredit her husband, who had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to build a case for invading Iraq.
Simon & Schuster is a unit of CBS Corp.
[Reuters]
Economy Has Worst Growth Since 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy nearly stalled in the first quarter with growth slowing to a pace of just 0.6 percent. That was the worst three-month showing in over four years.The new reading on the gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department Thursday, showed that economic growth in the January-through-March quarter was much weaker. Government statisticians slashed by more than half their first estimate of a 1.3 percent growth rate for the quarter.
The main culprits for the downgrade: the bloated trade deficit and businesses cutting investment in supplies of the goods they hold in inventories.
“We are still keeping our head above water — barely,” said economist Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics.
For nearly a year, the economy has been enduring a stretch of subpar economic growth due mostly to a sharp housing slump. That in turn has made some businesses act more cautiously in their spending and investing.
The economy’s 0.6 percent growth rate in the opening quarter of this year marked a big loss of momentum from the 2.5 percent pace logged in the final quarter of last year.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t believe the economy will slide into recession this year, nor do Bush administration officials. But ex-Fed chief Alan Greenspan has put the odds at one in three.
On Wall Street, investors took the weak GDP showing in stride. The Dow Jones industrials were up 22 points and the Nasdaq gained 14 points in morning trading.
The first-quarter’s performance was the weakest since the final quarter of 2002, when the economy was recovering from a recession. At that time, GDP eked out a 0.2 percent growth rate. Economists were predicting the first-quarter performance this year would be downgraded, but not as much as it did. They were calling for a 0.8 percent pace.
GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced in the United States. It is considered the best measure of the country’s economic fitness.
In other economic news, the Labor Department reported that fewer people signed up for unemployment benefits last week. New filings dropped by 4,000 to 310,000. That suggests the employment climate is weathering well the economy’s sluggish spell.
Another report showed that construction spending edged up by 0.1 percent in April, down from a 0.6 percent gain in the previous month. Spending by private builders on nonresidential projects and spending by the government on big projects each climbed to all time highs in April but that strength was tempered by continued weakness in residential construction.
In the GDP report, many economists believe the first quarter will be the low point for this year. They expect growth will improve but still be sluggish.
The National Association for Business Economics predicts the economy will expand at a 2.3 percent pace in the April-to-June quarter.
In the first quarter, there was a larger trade deficit than first thought. That ended up shaving a full percentage point from the GDP. Businesses cut back on inventory investment as they tried to make sure unsold stocks of goods didn’t get out of whack with customer demand. That lopped off nearly a percentage point to first quarter GDP.
Those were the biggest factors behind the government slicing its initial GDP estimate released a month ago by as much as it did.
The sour housing market also restrained overall economic activity. Investment in home building was cut by 15.4 percent, on an annualized basis, in the first quarter. However, that wasn’t as deep a cut as the 17 percent annualized drop initially estimated. And, it wasn’t as severe as the 19.8 percent annualized drop seen in the final quarter of last year.
Even so, there is no doubt that troubled housing market is one of the biggest problems for the economy. Although some businesses tightened the belt in the first quarter, consumers did not. That helped to prevent the economy from stalling out altogether.
Consumers boosted their spending by a 4.4 percent growth rate in the first quarter, the most in a year. Consumer spending accounts for a major chunk of economic activity.
Some economists wonder how much interest consumers will have in continued brisk spending, however, given rising gasoline prices that have topped $3 a gallon in many markets. More money spent filling up the gas tank leaves less to spend on other things.
One of the reasons consumers have stayed so resilient even as the housing market has been stuck in a rut for a year is because the job market has been good. Employers — still enjoying profits — are keeping a close watch on spending but they are not drastically clamping down on hiring.
Companies profits gained a bit of ground in the first quarter. One measure showed after tax profits rising by 1 percent, up from 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter.
An inflation gauge tied to the GDP report and closely watched by the Fed showed that core prices — excluding food and energy — rose at a rate of 2.2 percent in the first quarter. That was unchanged from an initial estimate but up from a 1.8 percent pace in the fourth quarter.
The Federal Reserve’s key interest rate has been at 5.25 percent for nearly a year. Many economists predict the rate probably will stay right where it is through the rest of this year.
[AP]
China and India in ‘race to the moon’
China and India are both planning to launch moon shots within a year in the latest sign of the two Asian powerhouses’ intensifying rivalry and growing technological prowess.
Although both countries deny they are engaged in a 21st century re-run of the 1960s race to the moon between the cold war superpowers, their haste to launch suggests more than casual interest in the other’s progress.
China said this month that it expected to launch its first unmanned lunar orbiter, the Chang’e-1 (named after China’s mythological “lady in the moon”) before the end of this year, while India this week announced that it could send up a similar space probe as early as April 2008.
The two lunar programmes should be scientifically complementary, with Chinese scientists stressing Chang’e’s goal of improving understanding of the geochemistry of the moon’s surface and India focusing on three-dimensional mapping.
Chinese lunar programme scientist Ouyang Ziyuan told the Financial Times in 2005 that he was excited about the possibility that the moon might be a rich source of helium-3, a potential fuel for nuclear fusion reactors that is scarce on earth.
S. Krishnamurthy, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organisation, said on Wednesday that the spin-offs for India’s nuclear programme from potential lunar sources of helium-3 could be “considerable”.
Non-governmental groups have put the Indian space agency on the defensive about the programme, arguing it is hard for a country that is home to a quarter of the world’s poor to justify costly space missions.
Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, has defended it, saying the country must deal with the fundamental problems of development and at the same time aspire to operate on the frontiers of science.
“In the increasingly globalised world we live in, a base of scientific and technical knowledge has emerged as a critical determinant of the wealth and status of nations and it is that which drives us to programmes of this type,” he said last year.
Mr Krishnamurthy said the Chandrayaan-1 probe, which will map the moon’s surface for chemicals using a spectrometer and terrain-mapping cameras during a two-year mission, would cost Rs3.9bn ($96.3m), a 10th of ISRO’s annual budget.
Under Beijing’s three-stage plan, the Chang’e orbiter will be followed by a lunar landing and then by a mission to bring back rock and soil samples. India is building a two-legged robot for a possible follow-up mission to the moon’s surface in 2011.
However, the Chang’e programme will have to compete for resources with the high-profile manned space programme and Beijing’s push to develop its military space assets.
Madhavan Nair, chairman of ISRO, said this week that his organisation would submit a report to the Indian government in a year’s time on whether a manned space mission, likely to cost about Rs100bn ($2.4bn), would be needed.
Nasa will provide two scientific instruments for Chandrayaan-1, illustrating the Bush administration’s drive to build a strategic partnership with India, the centrepiece of which is a deal on nuclear co-operation.
Chandrayaan-1, equipped with a US-made water-detecting radar and a moon mineralogy mapper, will be propelled into space by a satellite launcher from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, 100km north of Chennai.
[FT]
Cease-Fire Eyed to Stop Violence in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. military commanders are talking with Iraqi militants about cease- fires and other arrangements to try to stop the violence, the No. 2 American commander said Thursday. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said he has authorized commanders to reach out to militants, tribes, religious leaders and others in the country that has been gripped by violence from a range of fronts including insurgents, sectarian rivals and common criminals.
“We are talking about cease-fires, and maybe signing some things that say they won’t conduct operations against the government of Iraq or against coalition forces.,” Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.
“It’s just the beginning, so we have a lot of work to do on this,” he said. “But we have restructured ourselves to organize to work this issue.”
Odierno said the effort goes hand in hand with reconciliation efforts by the Iraqi government.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other leaders are under increasing pressure from Washington to do more to achieve reconciliation among factions because, officials argue, no amount of military force can bring peace to the country without political peace.
Al-Maliki announced a national reconciliation proposal nearly a year ago that has made limited progress. It offered some amnesty to members of the Sunni-led insurgency and a change in a law that had removed senior members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from their jobs.
[AP]
Putin issues sharp warning to US, vows to counter ‘imperialism’
President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning “imperialism” in world affairs.
“Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty,” Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes.
“We warned them then that we would come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world. Yesterday we conducted a test of a new strategic ballistic missile with multiple warheads, and of a new cruise missile, and will continue to improve our resources.”
The United States informed Russia in 2001 that it was exercising its option to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact. It has since stepped up controversial plans, fiercely opposed by Russia, to deploy a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.
Putin warned Wednesday that the US missile defense plan would turn Europe into a “powder keg” and he repeated on Thursday previous assertions that the planned deployments would ignite a new Cold War-style arms buildup.
“We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race,” Putin said.
The Russian president’s comments came a week before he meets US President George W. Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations at a summit in Germany.
He is also scheduled to hold one-on-one talks with Bush in the United States at the beginning of July.
In a thinly disguised attack on US foreign policy in recent years, Putin warned there had been attempts by actors — he did not name any country or bloc explicitly — in international affairs to impose their will on others.
“In our view, it is nothing other than diktat, than imperialism,” the Russian leader stated.
“Problems have arisen because the world changed and there was an attempt to make it unipolar. There was a desire among several international actors to dictate their will to each and everyone and to act not in accordance with the norms of international life and law,” Putin said.
He added: “This is very dangerous and unhealthy. The norms of international law have been altered for political expediency. What is this political expediency and who defines it?”
Tensions between Russia and the United States have risen dramatically in the past year amid sharpening differences over the US missile plans, the state of democracy in Russia and concerns over energy supplies.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated on Wednesday the US assertion that the planned missile defense system in eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia and that Moscow’s concern over it is “ludicrous.”
Her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, countered at a meeting of G8 foreign ministers outside Berlin that “there is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again.”
[AFP]
US Internet ‘Spam King’ arrested
US prosecutors said they captured on Wednesday a nefarious Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him “Spam King.”
Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud.
“Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners,” said US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Jeffrey Sullivan.
“Our investigators dubbed him the ‘Spam King’ because he is responsible for millions of spam emails.”
Between November of 2003 and May of 2007 Soloway “spammed” tens of millions of e-mail messages to promote websites at which his company, Newport Internet Marketing, sold products and services, according to prosecutors.
Soloway routinely moved his website to different Internet addresses to dodge detection and began registering them through Chinese Internet service providers in 2006 in an apparent ploy to mask his involvement.
Spam messages sent by Soloway used misleading “header” information to dupe people into opening them, according to Sullivan.
Soloway is accused of using “botnets,” networks of computers, to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses that wound up blamed for unwanted mailings.
If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars.
Prosecutors want to seize approximately 773,000 dollars they say Soloway made from his spamming-related activities.
[AFP]
Saudi prisoner kills self at Guantanamo, U.S. says
MIAMI (Reuters) – A Saudi Arabian prisoner died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.
“The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted,” the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said in a statement.
The military did not indicate how the prisoner died.
He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002 and holds about 380 foreign terrorist suspects on the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba.
Three other prisoners — two Saudis and a Yemeni — hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells last June and their deaths are still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
“The remains of the deceased detainee are being treated with the utmost respect. A cultural advisor is assisting the Joint Task Force to ensure that the remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner,” the Southern Command said.
It said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had begun an investigation.
The latest death of a prisoner comes eight days after a new commander took over the military task force that runs the controversial five-year-old detention center.
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby took over command of the prison camp last week, replacing Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who was new to the job when the previous suicides took place last year.
The United States has faced growing criticism over its indefinite detention at Guantanamo of men it considers “unlawful enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections granted prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
It opened the prison camp shortly after the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people, and says the prison is needed to prevent dangerous al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from returning to the battlefield, and to extract information that could help prevent future attacks.
Human rights activists, who have long urged Washington to close the Guantanamo prison operation, denounced the earlier deaths as a sign of desolation while the U.S. military characterized them as acts of “asymmetrical warfare” in the war on terrorism.
A military tribunal was scheduled to convene on Monday at Guantanamo to arraign two prisoners on war crimes. The earlier suicides also occurred days before a war crimes tribunal was to convene.
[Reuters]
Israel rebuffs truce call
Israel has killed two Hamas militants in an air strike in the Gaza Strip, saying it is not considering a cease-fire with the Islamist group, despite appeals from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office has noted a “relative decrease in Qassam rocket launchings”.
But it says Israel’s security cabinet has decided to continue “attacks and military pressure on terrorist groups, mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad”.
Mr Abbas has proposed a truce covering the Gaza Strip and said it should be extended to the occupied West Bank within a month.
Hamas, which formed a unity government with Mr Abbas’ Fatah faction two months ago, says any cease-fire must include an immediate end to all Israeli attacks in both territories, a demand rebuffed repeatedly by Israel.
Mr Abbas will meet Mr Olmert on June 7.
Hamas and other militant groups have fired more than 270 rockets from Gaza, killing two Israelis, over the past two weeks.
Israel has hit back mainly with air strikes, killing nearly 50 Palestinians, most of them fighters.
At the security cabinet meeting, one minister proposed destroying homes near rocket launching sites, but no decision on the matter was taken, a government official said.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces detained the Mayor of a small town near Nablus as part of a crackdown on Hamas politicians in the territory.
Dozens of Hamas officials have been seized since last week.
[Reuters]
Russian president anxious about youth isolation of cultural roots
Moscow, May 30, Interfax – Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his concern about the lowering cultural lever of the modern youth.
‘According to the experts, people, and especially young ones, are losing their skills to vividly express their minds, to identify inflections and nuances. Many young people are hardly aware or even isolated of their cultural roots,’ Putin said on Wednesday as he opened a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in the Kremlin.
Many young people have rather low level of ‘the culture of behavior,’ the president added.
According to the president, though the internet has a great impact on our youth, among its resources only 0.5 percent may be regarded as culturally informative.
‘The youth of Russia, as well as of many other countries, is becoming increasingly technocratic,’ he said.
‘We should learn how to use and improve modern informational webs’ for the sake of culture and enlightenment, the president added.
He has criticized also domestic television companies for purchasing poor-quality TV products in other countries.
There is “a common trend toward commercializing culture, which is not always oriented toward satisfying sophisticated tastes today,” Putin told.
“Over more than 15 years, our young people have lived in a massive cultural influence of surrogates from abroad,” the head of state said.
“Television has not played a positive role on all occasions, either. Everything that is cheap is purchased on the international market,” he said.
“Of course, we need to understand and accept other countries’ culture and know how to use its best features,” Putin said.
“We have always done so. But first of all we should create conditions that would allow the younger generation to grow amid the salubrious atmosphere of domestic culture, which will help nurture sophisticated artistic taste and behavior standards in them,” the president said.
It is also important to develop “cultural immunity” in the young, he said.
[Interfax]
Microsoft unveils revolutionary device
In the next year, Bill Gates will manage one of the highest-profile transitions in American business history — he’ll leave his day job as Chief Software Engineer at Microsoft, the $300 billion company he co-founded 32 years ago, and will move full time into philanthropy.
But before he leaves, Gates has a few more high-tech projects to finish. Until this morning, one project — almost five years in the making and code-named ‘Milan,’ — was top-secret.
In a TODAY exclusive, I had a chance to talk with Gates at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus about a revolutionary new device Microsoft now calls “Surface.” (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)
“Pretty exciting, eh?” Gates said with a sly smile, when he put his hand down on what looked initially like a low, black coffee table: At the touch of his hand, the hard, plastic tabletop suddenly dissolved into what looked like tiny ripples of water. The ‘water’ responded to each of his fingers and the ripples rushed quickly away in every direction.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Try it.” When I placed my hand on the table at the same time, there were more ripples.
It took a moment to appreciate what was happening. Every hand motion Gates or I did was met with an immediate response from the table. There was no keyboard. There was no mouse. Just our gestures.
“All you have to do is reach out and touch the Surface,” Gates told me with barely concealed pride. “And it responds to what you do.”
In an industry whose bold pronouncements about the future has taught me the benefits of skepticism, Surface literally took my breath away. If the Surface project rollout goes as planned in November, it could alter the way everyday Americans control the technology that currently overwhelms many of us.
After Gates and I spent about 20 minutes taking the device out for a spin, a lot of my preconceived notions about how people interact with computers began to melt away.
How it works
The radical new approach starts with the guts of the device itself. Under the impact-resistant plastic top skin on an otherwise nondescript table hide five infrared scanners, a projector, and a wireless modem. The scanners recognize objects and shapes placed on the top and respond to them accordingly. For example, if the scanners recognize fingers, and the fingers have been placed in color circles that appear on the surface, the projector shows colored lines that follow the tracings and movements of your fingers. Meanwhile, an internal modem sends and receives signals from any electronic device placed on it. All of the hardware is run by a special version of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista.
To do things on Surface’s tabletop screen, you reach down, touch it and push it. To make the image you see on the screen bigger, spread your fingers. To make it smaller, squeeze your fingers together. To move something into the trash, push it into the trash with your hand. And it allows what Microsoft calls “Multi-Touch” and “Multi-User” interaction — namely, more than one person can interact with it at a time. Try that with your home computer.
One of the most revolutionary aspects of Surface, though, is its natural interaction with everyday objects and technologies. When you place your wi-fi enabled digital camera on the table, for example, Surface ‘sees’ the camera and does something extraordinary: It pulls your digital pictures and videos out onto the table for you to look at, move, edit or send. Images literally spill out in a pool of color.
The whole thing is remarkably intuitive, says Gates, because it’s remarkably similar to what people do in everyday life. “When you make it so that it’s just visual — touch and visual — you’re drawing on what humans are incredibly good at,” he said. “You know, what people have been practicing their entire lives. People will start to see that this world of information and entertainment is going to be far more accessible.
The first place you’ll probably see Microsoft Surface is at one of its four inaugural retail partners, including T-Mobile USA, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and Harrah’s Entertainment. AT T-Mobile, for example, you will be able to place any of their phones on Surface. Surface will sense the presence of each individual phone and then project each phone’s features in front of you for you to consider. If you want to add a feature in the store, just “push” that feature “into” your phone with your finger.
Want to compare three phones? Four? Put them all on the table, and their respective features will line up next to one another, for your consideration.
It’s safe to say computing will not look the same again.
[MSNBC]
