Apple Plans Futuristic Spaceship-Shaped Cupertino Campus

Aside from launching the iCloud service, Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5 on Monday, iconic Apple CEO Steve Jobs also gave details on Tuesday of a spaceship-shaped campus the consumer electronics giant on is planning to put up in Cupertino, various reports reveal.

Apple Plans Futuristic Spaceship Shaped Cupertino Campus 300x171 Apple Plans Futuristic Spaceship Shaped Cupertino Campus Shaped like a futuristic ring, reports say that the new 12,000-seater facility may be the site of the World Wide Developers Conference – the annual showcase of latest Apple tech and the venue where Jobs unveiled the iCloud, Lion and iOS 5 on Monday – in 2015.

The news comes after an address Jobs gave to a Cupertino City Council meeting. “Apple is growing like a weed…It’s clear we need to build a new campus,” Computer World quotes the CEO at the meeting.

Reports from local media outlets say that the complex will be like a single ring-shaped building surrounded by lush greens at the expansive land Apple has been piecing together in Cupertino. It may be built in 2015 or the year after, reports say.

Computer World says that Jobs has revealed that Apple plans to make the curved-glass for the building on site using technology they, according to the CEO, have perfected.

“We used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. We want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building. It’s pretty cool,” Jobs said.

He said that architecture students will want to flock to the building when they finish building it because it is “that good.”

According to reports, the building will generate its own electricity through natural gas and other clean means and will only rely on conventional grid electricity for backup.

Its massive café, even though downplayed by Jobs to be built that big because 12,000 people need a space that big, will be able to sit 3,000 at the same time, Computer World reports.

Toshiba Thrive Android tablet unveiled

Toshiba has finally revealed the name and more specs of its latest Android tablet – the Toshiba Thrive.

Initially the Thrive was just called the Toshiba Tablet, so we are glad that the company has decided to add a smidgen of excitement into its naming process.

The Thrive comes equipped with the tablet-friendly Android 3.1, Tegra 2 dual-core processor, and has also been given an IPS display.

Connectivity comes in the form of a full-fat HDMI port, USBs and it also has Resolution + technology inside – something that's been borrowed from Tosh's TV range.

Tablet talk

To make the tablet more customisable, the Toshiba Thrive has a back cover you can swap (there's a number of colours to choose from).

There are also some third-party apps on the tablet, including QuickOffice and LogMeIn.

Unfortunately, the Toshiba Thrive has only been announced in the US only for now and is penned for a July release. Pricing is as follows: $429 (£260) for 8GB, $479 (£290) for 16GB, $579 (£355) for 32GB.

Hopefully, this means that we will see it in Britain this autumn, although no UK release date is forthcoming as yet.

Surrey social workers use technology to cut paperwork

About 20 social workers in Surrey are to be given smartphone tablets to find out if latest technology will cut down on time spent completing paperwork.

Surrey County Council said a public sector software company approached the local authority to see if it would test the gadget in a two-month trial.

A spokesman for the local authority said the council was spending nothing on the project.

Councillor Michael Gosling said the tablet should help save time and money.

The cabinet adult social care spokesman said it would reduce the burden of paperwork and allow social workers to focus on care.

The BlackBerry Playbook will be launched in the UK later this month.

An application has been designed that gives social workers secure mobile access to people's care records.

Staff will be able to complete assessments online and update personal details while they are making home visits.

The military has canceled 22 major weapons programs since 1995 at a cost of $32 billion.

The Army's Comanche helicopter was envisioned as "the quarterback of the digital battlefield," a technologically superior aircraft that could hide from enemies, operate at night and in bad weather, and travel farther than any other helicopter.
Gen. Richard Cody, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, called it the "most flexible, most agile" aircraft the country had ever produced.

In 2000, it ranked as the most important planned buy for the Army. Four years later, the program -- which had consumed close to 20 years of work and nearly $6 billion -- was abruptly shuttered.

It is one of 22 major Army weapons programs that have been canceled since 1995, ringing up a price tag of more than $32 billion for equipment that was never built. A new study commissioned by the Army, though not publicly released, condemns the service's efforts as "unacceptable."

The study is the latest indication that the Pentagon -- and the defense industry, in turn -- is undergoing a seismic shift in its approach to new programs.

As pressures mounted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military retreated from its ambitions of building multibillion-dollar, technologically superior systems. Instead, it was forced to make better use of tried-and-true equipment.

For almost a decade, the Defense Department saw its budgets boom -- but didn't make the kind of technological strides that seemed possible.

"Since 9/11, a near doubling of the Pentagon's modernization accounts -- more than $700 billion over 10 years in new spending on procurement, research and development -- has resulted in relatively modest gains in actual military capability," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an address last week.

That outcome, he said, is both "vexing and disturbing."

Gone are the days of "no-questions-asked funding requests," he said. The Defense Department must make do with less. It is focusing on fixing up older equipment and taking a more measured approach to weapon development.

The shifting strategies and a shrinking defense budget have triggered the biggest restructuring in the defense industry since the end of the Cold War.

Contractors big and small have been rethinking their portfolios and buying and selling accordingly. Northrop Grumman, for instance, spun off its shipbuilding unit. And Robert Stevens, chief executive of Lockheed Martin, last week said the company's workforce, which has shrunk by 20,000 since 2009, "may well continue to decline."

In recent years, the Pentagon has killed off some of its most heralded -- and most pricey -- weapons programs, and many of those that remain are not certain to move forward.

"We've had 10 years of wars. We've had a fair amount of money available to the department," said Thomas Hawley, deputy undersecretary of the Army. "It's just time now, with at least one war winding down and another we hope will be winding down and funding definitely coming down, to take a pause, relook where we are and go forward from there in a thoughtful way."

IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN CHANGE NEEDS

As the Army began developing the Comanche helicopter in the 1980s, it was riding high on the success of what are known as the "big five" major weapons systems: the Abrams tank, Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, Apache attack helicopter, Black Hawk utility helicopter and Patriot missile system, all of which are used today.

The Army, launching the Comanche with the Cold War in mind, imagined a new kind of helicopter able to stealthily detect well-equipped enemies. After a complex acquisition process, the military commissioned the team of Boeing and Sikorsky to build the Comanche. The Army eventually settled on buying 650 Comanches for about $39 billion.

But as the Army entered unconventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it suddenly didn't need the best, most capable system available; it simply needed aircraft -- and fast.

"The Comanche helicopter was a good helicopter. . . . We hadn't had one like that before," Hawley said. "It just was eating so much of the budget."

Nearly $6 billion was already spent, but the Army and the Pentagon agreed in 2004 that if the program were canceled, the service could redirect the roughly $15 billion budgeted for the Comanche over the next seven years to aircraft already in production, such as Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and unmanned drones.

The cancellations have not stopped there. The helicopter developed to replace Comanche -- known as the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter program -- was abandoned in 2008 after its price ballooned well past its budget. According to the Army study, that second effort cost another $535 million.

More recently, the Army experienced its steepest loss with the end of its Future Combat Systems (FCS) effort, billed as the Army's most important and transformative modernization initiative.

The complex program included a family of manned vehicles, a range of unmanned air and ground systems and sophisticated radios, all tied to a single network and intended to give soldiers a superior view of the battlefield.

The idea was that the Army wouldn't lose a fight if it could see everything its enemy was doing.

Launched at the tail end of the 20th century, the program faced serious technological failures. At the same time, Pentagon leaders, including Gates, began raising fundamental concerns about whether the systems would be successful in wars like Iraq, in which the enemy fought amid a civilian population with unsophisticated but lethal weapons -- the homemade bomb that could destroy a Humvee.

The FCS program was slowly dissolved. The loss was monumental -- $19 billion as calculated in the Army's new study, making it by far the single most expensive cancellation.

"My experience in government is, when you want to change something all at once and create a whole new thing, you usually end up with an expensive disaster on your hands," Gates said. "Maybe Google can do something revolutionary, but we don't have the agility to do that."

Gates set out to single-handedly upend the traditional idea of how the military develops and buys its largest weapons.

He criticized the military, saying it had believed for far too long that "Iraq and Afghanistan were exotic distractions that would be wrapped up relatively soon," meaning the services did not need to change their buying processes or dismantle long-range procurement plans.

ARMY OFTEN THINKS TOO BIG

The end of major weapons programs is clearly linked to the pressures on funding and demand created by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But analysts also point to the scope of the programs.

Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant at the Lexington Institute, blames the failures on the complexity the military sought in modern programs.

For instance, a tank wouldn't just shoot; it would also allow soldiers to view the battlefield, see the status of other weapon systems and communicate with other soldiers.

"Anything that is a system of systems is probably too complicated," Thompson said. "The technology takes too long to develop, and the political system runs out of patience."

The Army often thinks too big when designing its programs, said the new study, a wide-ranging analysis chaired by Gilbert Decker, a former Army acquisition chief, and retired Gen. Louis Wagner, who headed Army Materiel Command. The study points to the service's failure to properly set the parameters for new equipment.

A segment of the military wants program baselines to "only state the operational need and not be constrained by either technology or cost," the study said.

Google Powers Up Alt-Energy Investments

Google seems to be trying to make us think GE stands for Google Energy.

The latest energy investment play from the search and advertising company is a plan it announced Tuesday to plunk down $55 million to help finance Terra-Gen Power’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) wind farm in California’s Tehachapi Mountains. Citigroup Inc. is also putting up funds for the farm.

Googleis based in Mountain View, California, and its local server farms suck up huge amounts of power. The Tehachapi project is close enough to home base to help provide power for them.

But the company is also pouring big money into renewable energy across the United States and the globe, spending over the past few months almost as if it were itself an energy company rather than a tech and media giant.

And these aren’t all small, feel-good, projects, with at least some of them pushing the envelope. They’re big, ambitious investments in bold plans that will generate or transmit huge amounts of electricity. Examples include:

A 42 percent stake in the Atlantic Wind Power Consortium, which is in the process of getting approvals to build a transmission line to carry electricity from offshore wind farms that don’t yet exist to the Mid-Atlantic region from New Jersey to Virginia. The total cost of that project is expected to reach about $5 billion.
A $100 million investment in the Shepherd’s Flat Wind Farm in eastern Oregon being developed by Caithness Energy. That project is getting $1.2 billion in subsidies from federal, state, and local governments and will cost $2 billion in all.
A $168 million investment in BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah Solar Thermal Energy project in the Mojave Desert of California.
A $38.5 million investment in two NextEra Wind Energy projects that was the first of Google’s utility-scale energy investments.
A $5 million investment in a solar energy farm in Germany that will help power a data center there.

In addition, Google has one of the largest solar arrays around at its Bay Area headquarters as it experiments with wringing more efficiency from its data centers.

"With this [Terra-Gen Power] deal, we’ve now invested more than $400 million in the clean-energy sector. We hope AWEC’s success, with its unique deal structure and renewable-energy transmission, encourages more financing and development of renewables that will usher in a new energy future," Rick Needham, Google's Green Business Operations Manager, wrote in a blog post.

Google’s motivations aren’t exactly to get into the energy business to make a lot more money. The company is more concerned with offsetting the cost and pollution involved in its massive power usage.Still, you don’t see Apple or Facebook making similar moves.

How to watch live TV on your iPad and iPhone

A quick search on the web will bring up startling figures about how much time we spend watching TV, and now you can add to that from just about anywhere in the world using your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Doing so is wonderfully easy, but the variety of ways in which you can get live (or indeed catch-up) TV on your iOS device can be a bit bewildering at first, so we spent many hours trying out lots of the hardware and software you can use. Oh, all right, we watched lots of daytime TV - it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

We've focused on ways to watch or record live TV using your iOS device, but that's only part of the story - you may want to catch up on something you missed the previous night or enjoy some of the videos you've got stored on your home PC.

Let's explain a couple of terms we're going to be using. The first is streaming, which is the process of sending live TV over the airwaves to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch using Wi-Fi or your mobile network. Remember that doing so over your mobile network will eat into your data allowance, and you really need 3G coverage to get a good picture.

The second term is electronic programme guide, or EPG, which is the channel-by-channel list of what's on now and later - like the one you get on your Freeview TV.

Choosing the right setup depends on how much TV you intend to watch and where, so keep that in mind as we explain the options and think about which fits your needs.


The first hardware maker we're going to look at is Elgato, which produces a range of TV-related kit.

At the cheaper end, there's the £51 EyeTV DTT or £65 EyeTV DTT Deluxe, which are USB dongles that plug into your computer and TV aerial and can stream to your iOS device.

At the other end of the spectrum is the £180 Netstream DTT, which plugs into your router and TV aerial to stream live Freeview TV over your home network.

The company also makes the EyeTV Sat, but this only work with free-to-air services such as Freesat, not Sky. Virgin Media cabled TV and Freeview HD don't work with Elgato gear either.

To get the USB tuners to stream live or recorded TV to your iPhone or iPad, you need the £2.99 EyeTV app. Elgato will also tell you that you need a Mac, and it must be running and connected to your network.

This isn't strictly true, because if you install the free Orb system on your Windows PC and the OrbLive app on the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad (£5.99), you can stream live TV from an Elgato tuner in your PC to your iPhone over Wi-Fi or 3G.

The OrbLive app also enables you to record TV at the touch of a button, but there are drawbacks. Your PC needs to be on, the Orb software must be running, there's no EPG and on the iPhone and iPod touch, you can only watch in portrait orientation.

To get started, go to once you've installed Orb on your PC, you'll probably need to restart to detect your USB Elgato TV tuner. If you do have a Mac, the Elgato EyeTV software gives you full EPG and recording functionality on your iOS device while you're on your home network.

Out and about, you can use the free My EyeTV service to connect to the Elgato tuner on your Mac at home and watch live TV that way, though your router settings may need some tweaking. And remember - picture quality outside of your home network will depend on your broadband's upload bandwidth - with 1Mbps up, it isn't brilliant but is perfectly watchable.

The Netstream DTT sends live TV over your home Wi-Fi network without the need for your computer - all you need is the EyeTV app on your iOS device. The great thing about the Netstream DTT is its dual tuner, so two people can watch different shows at the same time, or you can record one channel and watch another (if your Mac's on).

You'll need an aerial cable splitter to keep your regular TV plugged in, because the Netstream DTT can't pass the signal through. Although these networked models can work separately from the computer, there's a caveat.

The Netstream DTT's functionality is limited if you don't use your Mac as a middleman. If you're prepared to leave your Mac running to watch TV on iOS, you get a full EPG and can set programmes to record - both at home and elsewhere. Without the Mac, you get live TV on the latest iOS devices around the house only and little else.

You're probably getting our drift that Elgato gear is designed to be used primarily around the home on your Wi-Fi network, and it's best used in conjunction with a Mac. It's brilliant at what it does and the Mac software is very easy to set up, but to watch TV when you're out and about, you might want to consider other options.

One last point regarding the Elgato kit - think about where it'll go. You get a mini aerial with the product, but depending on how strong the signal is in your area, this may not be enough, meaning you'll need to put the tuner near an aerial socket. The Netstream DTT also needs to plug directly into your router with an Ethernet cable.

Its name might suggest the Slingbox is designed to be flung over your shoulder as you go out, but it actually needs to sit permanently in your front room connected to your TV setup and router.

It's a powerful bit of kit that effectively makes your home TV setup available from anywhere you can get 3G or Wi-Fi reception on your iOS device. It even enables you to watch and control your cable or satellite box from your iOS kit, meaning you can watch any paid-for channels you subscribe to.

There are three varieties of Slingbox - the SOLO (£120), PRO (£140) and PRO HD (£240). To discover more about the ins and outs of the three, have a look at this comparison page.

One notable difference is that the PRO and PRO HD have a Freeview tuner for use when you're watching TV out and about. This is important, because so long as you've got a second Freeview box for your home TV, you can enjoy live Freeview on your iPhone or iPad without affecting what someone at home's viewing. However, if you start watching TV from your Sky box on your iPhone via the Slingbox, anyone at home will see the same channel as you if they try to watch Sky.

The Slingbox doesn't have its own EPG, but it will feed one through from an external source. Ditto a recording facility - it doesn't have a means to do this itself, but if you've got a personal video recorder (PVR), you can control that from your iOS device through the Slingbox.

And if your TV and router are in different rooms, Sling makes the SlingLink TURBO, which sends the TV signal through the power lines in the walls. It'll set you back around £70, but will mean you don't need to move anything around to be able to stream TV over the internet to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

And drawbacks? The Sling Player iOS app isn't particularly cheap at £17.99, and it's a different version for the iPad and iPhone, meaning you may have to shell out twice.

You can't set up a Slingbox using an iPhone or iPad - you'll need a computer to do this. You may also need to have a fiddle with your router's port forwarding settings to get stuff working, although Sling provides some router-specific help.

And, like the Elgato gear, the limitations of your home broadband's upload ability could hamper the picture quality. But make no mistake, this is a powerful bit of kit that packages up your finely tuned home TV setup and lets you take it anywhere in the world.

The equinux tizi is a standalone, battery-powered digital TV receiver. It picks up Freeview signal, just like your rooftop aerial, and transmits the high-quality picture over Wi-Fi to your iPhone or iPad. This means you don't need mobile reception or to be in range of a Wi-Fi network to watch TV.

The significance of this is that it won't touch your monthly 3G data allowance. When it's fully charged, you'll get a good three hours' use out of it, and it's so small and light that it'll easily slip into your bag or pocket.

Its accompanying app enables you to record TV as well as watch live. At £150, it's on the expensive side, although the app is free.

The drawback - and it's a big one - is that you can't attach an external antenna. In our experience, the little built-in one isn't always enough to pick up signal in areas where a larger, rooftop aerial will. Annoyingly, the only way you can really find out is to get one, try it and then return it if it's no good.

Despite this, the tizi is ideal for watching Freeview TV where mobile reception is poor, if you have an iPod touch or Wi-Fi-only iPad, or if your iPhone's on a low monthly data package. To find out more about the tizi, have a look at our in-depth Equinux Tizi tv review.

New in the App Catalog for 14 May 2011

It’s been over a week since our last update of what’s new in the App Catalog, and sadly that’s mostly because there hasn’t been a whole lot of new. But the new apps have been piling up and nagging at us (and we got a nice drop last night), so it’s time to take another look at everything that’s new:

* WhitePages is the ultimate in phone number lookup, with more than two hundred million US homes and buseinsses, along with reverse number lookup, contact saving,Yellow Pages search, and store locators.
* 3D Camera lets you build a 3D-viewable image by merely taking and combing two photos.
* Photo Effects Pro is an on-device photo editor that allows you to rotate and crop your images, adjust their coloration, and apply various effects.
* Desk Assistant is a near-complete package of calculators, converters, and common info lookups, ranging from tips and interest to zip codes and time zones.
* QR offline Decoder snaps a photo of a QR code, decodes it, and give you the data, all without an internet connection.
* TileStorm Eire HD is the next step in Eggbot’s adventure, this time taking the puzzle solving game to the rolling hills of Ireland.

There’s plenty more new apps, and a bucket or two of updated apps, all after the break.

New apps:

* 01net, Free, by Groupe01. The latest technology news from 01net.
* 12 Min Run, $0.99, by Infinite Appz. Determine your fitness level with your age, gender, and how far you can run in twelve minutes.
* 3D Camera, $1.99, by Third Wish Software. Take two pictures of the same object while slightly apart and built a 3D image viewable with colored glasses or by crossing your eyes.
* 401(k) Calculator, $0.99, by Umlauts R Us. Calculate how much your 401(k) will be worth in the future.
* 8tracks, Free, by GMTurbo. Listen to your custom 8tracks playlists.
* Advanced Chess, Free, by VocShop Games. Classic black-and-white chess.
* BabyFirst's Scratch A Sketch, $1.99, by BabyFirstTV. “Scratch” away the blackness to reveal a colorful picture.
* Baseball Scorebook Free, Free, by Gelb Intergalactic. Keep score as a coach or specator, with team rosters, line ups, and more.
* Baseball Watcher, $0.99, by Zenlook Software. Track the score, inning, and outs at your next baseball game.
* BHoliday2, Free, by Blue Star Software. Calculate the dates of holidays in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
* Blood Hustle Free Online RPG, Free, by El Chimpa Productions. Build a gang and gambling empire.
* Bubble Birds (DS), Free, by DS Effects. Inflate bubbles to kill evil birds.
* Coin Flip - SC, Free, by Sumner Creations. Randomly flip a coin for easy decision-making.
* ComicList, $1.50, by InTheHallInc. Get a list of recently released comics and build your own comics watchlist.
* Desk Assistant, $2.50, by CES Associates. An everything-in-one app with tip, loan, interest, conversion, date, fraction, and area calculators; base, ASCII, and character converters; and area code, time zone, and zip code look-ups.
* DigiCalendar: The better Calendar, $9.99, by DigiKat Software Company. A full-featured calendar replacement with agenda view, reminders, search, templates, and more. Does not tie into Synergy.
* Drag Math, Free, by m0ngr31. Approximate how fast your car will manage a 1/4-mile drag race.
* DS Love Calculator, Free, by DS Effects. A mock love compatibility calculator.
* Editor, $1.99, by Tamoggemon. An on-device text editor with multiple card support, text search and replace, sharing, and more.
* Emoticon Email Editor, $0.99, by Gp Imports. Create and send emails with animated emoticons.
* FSOT, $3.99, by Upward Mobility. Prepare for the Foreing Service Officer test with 297 simulated exam questions.
* Genealogy Date Converter, Free, by Polar Jack Software. Convert dates between the French Republican Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar.
* Hippocratic Oath, $0.99, by Palmdoc.net. Read the Hippocratic Oath and the Declaration of Geneva Physician's oath.
* Homeland Security Alerts, $0.99, by TayTaBBB. Get the latest terror alert level from the Department of Homeland Security.
* Horoscopes! for webOS, $1.99, by thetaEight. Get your horoscope from Astrology.com, with Exhibition support.
* Hyter of Flok Comic Book 4, $0.99, by Lugram Comics. Book four of the Hyter of Flok comic series.
* IQ, $0.99, by Quizmine.com. Ten intelligence quotient tests.
* Locked Launcher, $0.99, by LongBeach IT. A fake unresponsive launcher to frighten your friends that constantly borrow your phone.
* Lovatics, Free, by #3 Fan. Get the latest lyrics, tweets, and more from singer Demi.
* MACE, $3.99, by Upward Mobility. Two hundred ninety six test prep questions for the Medication Aide Certification Exam.
* Master Of Mind, $2.99, by Ing.Gelbard. Guess the random pattern of 4, 6, or 8 colors. [Master Of Mind light]
* Midwife, $3.99, by Upward Mobility. Prepare for the AMCB CNM certification exam with 250 sample questions.
* mite. touch, $4.99, by ZenAppStudios. Track your projects, tasks, and customers with your mite. account.
* Mobile Vikings Status, Free, by Frederic Vanmol. Checks the status of your account with the Belgian mobile operator Mobile Vikings.
* Modo - Computer Music Player, Free, by Bastian Pflieger. Play sound files from Amiga, C64, Nintento, Sega, Atari, and more.
* Munch Munch!, Free, by TayTaBBB. munchmunch! Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarpants. Eating chocolate. It’s as exciting as it sounds.
* Name That Movie, $0.99, by Umlauts R Us. Identify movies from pictures with the actors faces removed.
* News Republic, Free, by Mobiles Republic. Read consolidated news stories from New Republic.
* Open Flair - Festival-App, Free, by Robert Muetzner. [German] An app for the Open Flair Festival.
* Our Daily Bread, Free, by Palmdoc.net. Get the latest updates from RBC Ministries.
* Photo Effects Pro, $2.99, by Rusty Apps. On-device photo rotation, cropping, color adjustment, and effects application.
* Pill Identifier, $2.99, by Infinite Appz. Identify pills by name, color, imprint, and shape.
* Pokémon TCG Companion, Free, by Daniel Brierton. Search the Pokémon Trading Card Game database.
* Prayer Journal!, $0.99, by JimLong. Track the status of your prayers. God – you’re on notice.
* Programme TV, Free, by Cyril Morales. [French] TV listings for France.
* PuTTY / SSH for Palm, $2.00, by Open Merchant Account. Remotely control your Windows or Linux server with SSH or command prompt. Requires PuTTY be installed on the server.
* QR offline Decoder, Free, by Stefan Bühler. Decode QR code images on the device, no internet access required.
* Recovery Tools, $0.99, by JimLong. A set of tools to help you with your 12-step recovery.
* Relais Colis, Free, by Relais Colis. [French] Track packages on Relais Colis.
* Savvy & Mandy, Free, by #3 Fan. Fan app for the musical duo Savvy & Mandy.
* Search Buttons, $0.99, by 909m.com. Quickly search a number of sites, including Amazon, Wikipedia, Dictionary, eBay, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, and many more.
* Society of Hospital Medicine, Free, by Handmark. Read articles from the Journal of Hospital Medicine and The Hospitalist.
* SpeedTracker Life, $0.99, by AOWORK. Trake your current, average, and maximum speed, and calculate your mileage and time costs.
* Stay OnTask!, $0.99, by JimLong. Keep yourself on-task with to-do items with priorities, status updates, stakeholders, and next steps.
* Street Basket, $0.99, by Gp Imports. Shoot hoops in the street.
* Subtitle Search, $1.25, by Open Merchant Account. Find English subtitles for foreign films.
* SumTotal Mobility, Free, by SumTotal Systems. Securely download and access learning material from your corporate SumTotal Learning Management System.
* Supersonic Veer+Pixi, $1.99, by Kuuasema. [320x400] The awesome tunnel racer Supsersonic, in Veer and Pixi-size.
* Terraforming, Free, by Blue Flame 47. Sample prayers, splinter check list, and more from terra4ming.com.
* TileStorm Eire HD, $2.99, by Massive Hadron. Eggbot takes to Ireland for new puzzles and riches.
* tran-go EU, $2.99, by Mobile Apps Lehel. A complete offline travel dictionary for English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish with over 30,000 entries. [tran-go
EU-2, tran-go EU-3]
* Umpire, Free, by Horner's Corner. A simple baseball score tracker with balls, strikes, outs, innings, and score.
* UnitedNews, Free, by Karl Davies. All the news about Manchester United.
* UsefulCodeViewer, Free, by Un-Map.com. Write and save GLBasic routines While on the go.
* UtdFan, $0.99, by Karl Davies. News, updates, scores and more for Manchester United. [UtdFanFree]
* VectorEditor, Free, by Un-Map.com. Create shapes in 2D.
* Vinimuni, $0.99, by GldnFleece Software. Get arrival estimates of Muni and BART vehicles stopping within your vicinity.
* Wallpapers, Free, by Karl Davies. More than eighty wallpapers for your phone.
* WhitePages, Free, by WhitePages. Look up phone numbers for more than 200 million US homes and businesses, with reverse number lookup, contact saving, Yellow Pages search, store locators, and more.
* Xpenser for webOS, Free, by prenewbie. Track your expenses with xpenser.com.

Napatech Demos Its Latest 1x40 GbE Intelligent Network Adapter

Napatech, supplier of multi-port 10 GbE and 1 GbE intelligent adapters for network analysis, has shipped its first 1x40 GbE NT40E2-1 intelligent network adapter for customer evaluation. The hardware will also be demonstrated at Interoplas Vegas this week before being made generally available.
“The interest in the NT40E2-1 is surprisingly high considering the early stage of this market,” says Napatech CEO Henrik Brill Jensen. “Our OEM customers are keen to be prepared for the data traffic increases expected over the coming years”.

Indeed, various market reports are anticipating Internet traffic to double every two years in the coming years. In addition, traffic in data centers and mobile data networks are expected to grow even faster. These trends, says a Napatech press release submitted to Channel Pro-SMB, “are driving interest in delivering 40 GbE appliances for network monitoring and analysis.”

The NT40E2-1 is one of the first commercial 40 GbE network adapters in the field. It provides a high-speed physical interface with intelligence and acceleration features to help OEM vendors accommodate the tens of millions of packets per second that 40 GbE networks can generate.

Many network appliance applications for real-time network monitoring and analysis, as well as network security, face challenges in keeping up with high traffic rates. The advanced acceleration features provided by the NT40E2-1, however, help OEM vendors to off-load data processing tasks to the network adapter, enabling higher throughout performance and accelerated applications.

Apple usurps Google as world's most valuable brand

LONDON - Apple has overtaken Google as the world's most valuable brand, ending a four-year reign by the Internet search leader, according to a new study by global brands agency Millward Brown.

The iPhone and iPad maker's brand is now worth $153 billion (S$189 billion), almost half Apple's market capitalisation, says the annual BrandZ study of the world's top 100 brands.

Apple's portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company last year.

Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple's meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers.

"Apple is breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model,"he told Reuters by telephone. "It's doing what luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire."

"Obviously, it has to be allied to great products and a great experience, and Apple has nurtured that."

Of the top 10 brands in Monday's report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.

McDonald's rose two places to number four, as fast food became the fastest-growing category, Coca-Cola slipped one place to number six, Marlboro was also down one to number eight, and General Electric was number 10.

Walshe said demand from China was a major factor in the rise of fast-food brands. "The Chinese have been discovering fast food and it's such a vast market - Starbucks, McDonald's... and pizza has hit China," he said.

"The way McDonald's has reinvented itself, adapted its menus, added healthy options, expanding the times of day it can be visited, for example oatmeal for breakfast... that allied with growth in developing markets has really helped that brand."

Nineteen of the top 100 brands came from emerging markets, up from 13 last year.

Facebook entered the top 100 at number 35 with a brand valued at $19.1 billion, while Chinese search engine Baidu rose to number 29 from 46.

Toyota reclaimed its position as the world's most valuable car brand, as it recovered from a bungled 2010 product recall.

The survey was carried out before the March earthquake that caused massive disruption to Japanese supply chains.

The total value of the top 100 brands rose by 17 per cent to $2.4 trillion, as the global economy shifted to growth.

Millward Brown takes as a starting point the value that companies put on their own main brands as intangibles in their earnings reports.

It combines that with the perceptions of more than 2 million consumers in relevant markets around the world whom it surveys over the course of the year, and then applies a multiple derived from the company's short-term future growth prospects.

To infinity and beyond: New hi-tech £40m space centre will help Britain to conquer the final frontier

Space centre’s opening follows an announcement that the European Space Agency is planning to build a spaceship with the U.S.

A state-of-the-art £40million science centre dedicated to space will be officially opened today.

The International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) in Harwell, Oxfordshire, is unique in Europe, and will help universities and industry work together to develop and exploit space technology.

Space is seen as a key growth area in the UK where the sector has expanded by 10 per cent in the past decade.

Universities and Science Minister David Willetts, who will conduct the opening ceremony together with the Duke of York, said: ‘The UK space industry is worth an estimated £7.5billion, and to continue this success businesses need the right environment for sustainable growth and innovation.

HP Unveils Pavilion dm4x Equipped With Sandy Bridge CPU

HP hase today announced the arrival of a new laptop to its range the HP Pavilion dm4x which is equipped with Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge processor and Turbo Boost Technology.

The Pavilion dm4x is equipped with a 14 inch screen and is supplied running either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, with a number of configuration options available. Allowing you to install one from the choice of three Intel Core i5 and one Intel Core i7 processors. Together with a choice of 4, 6 or 8GB of RAM and a 1GB Radeon HD 6470M graphics card with a choice of storage from 500GB up to 750GB.Other optional extras, include the ability to install both a six and nine cell battery, together with integrated peripherals such as a DVD-RW drive, webcam, Wi-Fi and a Bluetooth option, 3 x USB ports, 1 x HDMI port and 1 x VGA port, too name a few.

The new HP Pavilion dm4x is now available to purchase at $730 for the base model rising to $1078.98 for HP’s recommended system.

Intel to Mass-Produce New 3-D Transistors for Faster, More Efficient Computer Chips

In a move that could remake the microchip industry, Intel announced Wednesday it will start mass-producing the first three-dimensional silicon transistors. The 3-D transistor design, which Intel says will improve efficiency by more than one-third, will be integrated into a 22-nanometer node in an Intel chip called Ivy Bridge.

It’s a major change from the two-dimensional flat transistor structure we all know and love, which has powered every computer chip for the last 50 years. The 3-D switch design and the scale of its production will allow Moore’s Law to advance apace, Intel said.

Moore’s Law holds that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit will double every two years, but this places limits on the circuits’ size — a growing problem as engineers cram greater numbers of transistors onto ever-tinier chips. A 3-D switch could allow computer chips to be built like skyscrapers, optimizing space by building upward, and thereby allowing uninhibited transistor growth.

The Tri-Gate transistors consist of a thin 3-D silicon fin that arises vertically from the silicon substrate, Intel explains. Each fin has three gates, one on the top and one on each side, which allows for greater transistor current control. When it’s on, current flow is more efficient, and when the switches are off, the flow of electrons is closer to zero. By contrast, flat transistors have one gate, only on top.

All this leads to greater efficiency, allowing chips to operate at a lower voltage and with lower leakage — Intel claims a whopping 37 percent performance increase over its 2-D chips. Since the fins and their gates are vertical, more transistors can be packed close together. Eventually, designers will be able to make taller fins, aiming for even better performance.

“It will give product designers the flexibility to make current devices smarter and wholly new ones possible,” said Mark Bohr, a senior fellow at Intel.

More than 6 million 22-nm Tri-Gate transistors could fit inside the period at the end of this sentence, according to the company. (If you zoom in, who knows how many could fit!)

The new transistors will be integrated into Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core processors by the end of this year, which consumers will be able to get in 2012, Intel said.

Plenty of other chip designers have been talking about 3-D chips — just last month, we saw a 2-D reprogrammable one designed to behave as if it was a 3-D one. But Intel has taken it a step further by figuring out how to mass-produce them.

It’s technically 3-D because the switches are vertical and horizontal, but the transistors are not stacked, allowing electrons to flow in three dimensions — that’s a holy Grail of microprocessor design. But a new circuit design that allows more transistors on tinier spaces certainly sounds like a major breakthrough.

GoDaddy.com CEO Under Fire for Posting Video of Elephant Hunt in Zimbabwe

Some animal rights activists and animal lovers are outraged at GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons after he posted online a video of himself hunting and killing an elephant, MyFoxPhoenix.com reports.

The “vacation video” shows Parsons in Zimbabwe criticizing the “damage” elephants cause to farmers’ crops, a common complaint in the region.

“Unless elephants are stopped entire crop may be lost,” reads a video caption. “When crops are lost subsistence farmers risk starvation.”

As the hunters wait for elephants to arrive, night falls and a spotlight is shone on an approaching bull elephant. Parsons fires first, killing the elephant. Villagers arrive in chaotic masses the next morning to eat the elephant meat.

On his personal blog, Parsons says that he hunts “problem elephants” because it’s “so helpful for the local residents.” He also explains that he only hunts in regulated areas and that in these areas there is no concern about elephants becoming extinct, according to MyFoxPhoenix.com.

But Twitter is abuzz with people criticizing Parsons’ actions -- some saying they wonder whether the successful businessman was actually helping villagers, and others threatening to take their business elsewhere.

Parsons, whose Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company provides domain and Web hosting services, told MyFoxPhoneix.com Tuesday that he “kind of figured that this might happen.”

“So be it, I'm not ashamed of what I did... All these people that are complaining that this shouldn't happen, that these people who are starving to death otherwise shouldn't eat these elephants, you probably see them driving through at McDonald cutting a steak. These people (in Zimbabwe) don't have that option,” he told the station by phone.

Conflict with humans is the biggest threat to the African elephant, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

"As the elephants continue to raid crop fields, farmers are being killed while trying to defend their fields and elephants are becoming the source of resentment and anger by the local communities," World Wildlife Fund says on its website.

Grey Stafford, director of conservation at the Wildlife World Zoo in Arizona, suggested that people like Parsons with the financial means to do so should get behind nonviolent efforts to alleviate the decades-old human-elephant conflict, such as relocating the animals away from villages.

“The ever expanding human population on a shrinking planet makes these deadly conflicts more likely in the future and while elephants may ‘win’ a few battles, their species most certainly will lose the war unless we humans change our ways fast,” Stafford said.

Virgin territory extends to deep sea

British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is signaling that the time has come for its long-discussed deep-sea exploration and tourism venture

Advance word comes in the form of an invitation to a Los Angeles press event on April 5, during which a "major new initiative and challenge" will be announced. "The Virgin brand has reached many places — the seven continents of the earth, up into the jet stream and soon, even into space. There is only one frontier left," the Virgin Group's invitation reads.

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It doesn't take much sleuthing to figure out the general topic. For one thing, once you rule out Earth's land mass, the atmosphere and outer space, the oceans are the only things left. Also, Branson has been talking about a venture called "Virgin Oceanic" (or "Virgin Aquatic") for a couple of years now.

Branson unveiled one part of his underwater ambitions last year, in the form of the "Necker Nymph." That's a a prototype submersible vehicle that's part of a $113,000 weeklong tour package available on Necker Island, the billionaire's vacation spot in the British Virgin Islands. (It's $25,000 for the sub ride, but another $88,000 for the resort stay). The craft was reportedly built at a cost of $670,000 (£415,000).

But that's just the beginning: When Branson discussed Virgin Oceanic with Time back in 2009, he said the venture would send pressurized submarines to depths of 35,000 feet:

"The oceans need exploring — we know nothing about what's going on under 25,000 feet. I have an island called Necker Island, and 15 miles from there is the deepest place in the whole of the Atlantic, the Puerto Rican Trench. It's quite likely that we'll set up a scientific and exploration center on Necker to send out expeditions to explore that trench and other trenches in the world."

Branson also discussed the idea in a WatchMojo video recorded at McGill University. "Besides discovering new species, charting the trenches and finding treasure, we may even find the lost city of Atlantis," he said.

A few other hints worth noting: VirginOceanic.com has been registered by the Virgin folks and is currently password-protected. AlwaysOn, an agency that has done design work for Virgin in the past, has created a Virgin Oceanic logo as well as some visual concepts for a deep-diving submarine. And Virgin's invitation promises that "eminent scientists" will be in on the L.A. press conference next month.

One eminent scientist, University of Washington oceanographer John Delaney, says he's not familiar with Branson or Virgin Oceanic. But he's in favor of any venture that will increase the public's awareness of the oceans as the world's most complex and crucial set of ecosystems. "The real intellectual power, the real emotional power, is in the recognition that we depend on something we don't understand," he told me today.

Delaney has been working for years on a different approach to marine exploration, based on the convergence of telepresence technologies. Just last month, a construction team began the first installation phase of the Ocean Observatories Initiative's Regional Scale Nodes, a network of fiber-optic cables that could eventually send terabytes of data from high-resolution cameras and other sensors under the sea.

"We can only take hundreds of people to the deep ocean, but we can bring the ocean to billions of people," he said.

Delaney has been in deep-sea submersibles plenty of times, and says it's a fantastic experience. But he hopes Virgin Oceanic can add enough scientific and educational context to turn deep-sea observation into a paradigm-shifting phenomenon. "My fantasy isn't to go to these places physically — but to occupy, in a telepresence fashion, entire volumes of this planetary life support system," he said.

Stay tuned in the days ahead for more about Branson's latest adventure, and about Earth's deep-sea frontier.

Japanese Nuclear Panic Rises as Agency Says Radiation Is Leaking Into Atmosphere

Japan -- Dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors Tuesday after an explosion and a fire dramatically escalated the crisis spawned by a deadly tsunami.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima state, one of the hardest-hit in Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world's third-largest economy.

Though Kan and other officials urged calm, Tuesday's developments fueled a growing panic in Japan and around the world amid widespread uncertainty over what would happen next. In the worst case scenario, the reactor's core would completely melt down, a disaster that could spew large amounts of radioactity into the atmosphere.

The radiation fears added to the catastrophe that has been unfolding in Japan, where at least 10,000 people are believed to have been killed and mllions of people have spent four nights with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones.

Asia's richest country hasn't seen such hardship since World War II. The stock market plunged for a second day and a spate of panic buying saw stores running out of necessities, raising government fears that hoarding may hurt the delivery of emergency food aid to those who really need it.

In a rare bit of good news, rescuers found a 70-year-old woman alive in her swept-away home four days after the tsunami flattened much of Japan's northeastern coast.

After Tuesday's fire and separate explosion at two reactors in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, officials just south of the area reported up to 100 times the normal levels of radiation, Kyodo News agency reported. While those figures are worrying if there is prolonged exposure, they are far from fatal.

Tokyo reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) away. Closer to the stricken nuclear complex, the streets in the coastal city of Soma were empty as the few residents who remained there heeded the government's warning to stay indoors.

Kan and other officials warned there is danger of more leaks and told people living within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to stay indoors to avoid exposure that could make people sick.

"Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told residents in the danger zone.

"These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that," he said.

Weather forecasts for Fukushima were for snow and wind from the northeast Tuesday evening, blowing southwest toward Tokyo, then shifting and blowing west out to sea. That's important because it shows which direction a possible nuclear cloud might blow.

The nuclear crisis is the worst Japan has faced since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It is also the first time that such a grave nuclear threat has been raised in the world since a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded in 1986.

Some 70,000 people had already been evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius from the Dai-ichi complex. About 140,000 remain in the new warning zone.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that Japanese officials told it that the reactor fire was in the storage pond -- a pool where used nuclear fuel is kept cool -- and that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere."

Workers were desperately trying to stabilize three reactors at the power plant that exploded in the wake of Friday's quake and tsunami, after losing their ability to cool down and releasing some radiation. Since the quake, engineers have been injecting seawater into the reactors as a last-ditch coolant.

A fourth reactor that had been shut down before the quake caught fire Tuesday and more radiation was released, Edano said.

The fire was put out. Even though the fourth reactor was shut down, the fire there was believed to be the source of the elevated radiation.

"It is likely that the level of radiation increased sharply due to a fire at Unit 4," Edano said. "Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower."

He said another reactor whose containment building exploded Monday had not contributed greatly to the increased radiation. Edano said that reactor, and another, Unit 3, had stabilized but the status of Unit 2 was unclear.

Temperatures in two other reactors, units 5 and 6, were slightly elevated, Edano said.

"The power for cooling is not working well and the temperature is gradually rising, so it is necessary to control it," he said.

Officials said 50 workers, all of them wearing protective radiation gear, were still trying to pump water into the reactors to cool them. They say 800 other staff were evacuated. The fires and explosions at the reactors have injured 15 workers and military personnel and exposed up to 190 people to elevated radiation.

In Tokyo, slightly higher-than-normal radiation levels were detected Tuesday but officials insisted there are no health dangers.

"The amount is extremely small, and it does not raise health concerns. It will not affect us," Takayuki Fujiki, a Tokyo government official said.

Kyodo reported that radiation levels nine times higher than normal were briefly detected in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo and that the Tokyo metropolitan government said it had detected a small amount of radioactive materials in the air.

Edano said the radiation readings had fallen significantly by the evening.

Japanese government officials are being rightly cautious, said Donald Olander, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at University of California at Berkeley. He believed even the heavily elevated levels of radiation around Dai-ichi are "not a health hazard." But without knowing specific dose levels, he said it was hard to make judgments.

"Right now it's worse than Three Mile Island," Olander said. But it's nowhere near the levels released during Chernobyl.

On Three Mile Island, the radiation leak was held inside the containment shell -- thick concrete armor around the reactor. The Chernobyl reactor had no shell and was also operational when the disaster struck. The Japanese reactors automatically shut down when the quake hit and are encased in containment shells.

Olander said encasing the reactors in a concrete sarcophagus -- the last-ditch effort done in Chernobyl -- is far too premature. Operators need to wait until they cool more, or risk making the situation even worse.

The death toll from last week's earthquake and tsunami jumped Tuesday as police confirmed the number killed had topped 2,700, though that grim news was overshadowed by a deepening nuclear crisis. Officials have said previously that at least 10,000 people may have died in Miyagi province alone.

Millions of people spent a fourth night with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones. Asia's richest country hasn't seen such hardship since World War II.

With snow and freezing temperatures forecast for the next several days, shelters were gathering firewood to burn for heat, stacking it under tarps and tables.

Though Japanese officials have refused to speculate on the death toll, Indonesian geologist Hery Harjono, who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami, said it would be "a miracle really if it turns out to be less than 10,000" dead.

The 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people -- of which only 184,000 bodies were found.

Rescuers were heartened Tuesday to find one survivor. Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani says a 70-year-old woman was found inside her house that was washed away by the tsunami in northeastern Japan's Iwate prefecture. The rescuers from Osaka, in western Japan, were sent to the area for disaster relief.

Kotani said the woman was conscious but suffering from hypothermia and is being treated at a hospital. She would not give the woman's name.

The impact of the earthquake and tsunami dragged down stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged for a second day Tuesday, nose-diving more than 10 percent to close at 8,605.15 while the broader Topix lost more than 8 percent.

To lessen the damage, Japan's central bank made two cash injections totaling 8 trillion yen ($98 billion) Tuesday into the money markets after pumping in $184 billion on Monday.

Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of dollars, costs that would likely add to a massive public debt that, at 200 percent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialized nations.

Yuta Tadano, a 20-year-old pump technician at the Fukushima plant, said he was in the complex when quake hit.

"It was terrible. The desks were thrown around and the tables too. The walls started to crumble around us and there was dust everywhere. The roof began to collapse.

"We got outside and confirmed everyone was safe . Then we got out of there. We had no time to be tested for radioactive exposure. I still haven't been tested," Tadano told The Associated Press at an evacuation center.

"I worry a lot about fallout. If we could see it we could escape, but we can't," said Tadano, cradling his 4-month-old baby, Shoma.

The Dai-ichi plant is the most severely affected of three nuclear complexes that were declared emergencies after suffering damage in Friday's quake and tsunami, raising questions about the safety of such plants in coastal areas near fault lines and adding to global jitters over the industry.

U.S. Lawmakers Consider Ways of Arming U.S. Agents in Mexico After Killing of ICE Agent

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are weighing actions to allow U.S. agents working in Mexico to pack heat after a drug gang killed an unarmed U.S. immigration agent and wounded another.

U.S. agents have not been allowed to carry weapons in Mexico since a 1990 agreement. But their safety has been increasingly in jeopardy ever since Mexican President Felipe Calederon declared war on the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006.

"It is essential that the U.S. government conduct a comprehensive threat assessment to protect U.S. government personnel working in Mexico," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "We must also talk to the Mexicans about their prohibition against U.S. personnel carrying weapons and determine the extent to which security details must be expanded."

A Homeland subcommittee led by Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, is planning a hearing next month to probe the U.S. role in Mexico's war on its drug cartels.

"The Mexican government doesn't allow our law enforcement to carry weapons in Mexico. It seems to me we're assisting them in this war against the drug cartels. Our law enforcement should be armed," McCaul told Fox News. "These two agents were sitting ducks and sitting targets in what was an intentional ambush.

Immigrations and Customs Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were shot on a federal highway while traveling in the northern state of San Luis Potosi en route to Mexico City on Feb. 15. The area is at the center of a power struggle between two rival drug gangs, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Zapata was killed, the first murder of a U.S. agent in the line of duty of Mexico's drug war.

The Mexican Defense Department said Wednesday that a suspect was detained but provided little additional information.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder attended Zapata's funeral Tuesday in his hometown of Brownsville, Texas. Both vowed to continue helping Mexico in its war against drug cartels battling for lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.

The Homeland Security and Justice Departments formed a joint task force led by the FBI to help Mexico find the killers.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told FoxNews.com that she introduced bipartisan legislation in the last session of Congress and on the first day of the current session to give additional tools to DEA, ATF, CPB agents on the U.S. border so that they are prepared with the weapons to confront the violence.

"Officers cannot enforce laws without good equipment," she said.

McCaul said the attack was a "game changer" because the operating assumption for more than 25 years was that drug cartels would not target or kill a U.S. agent.

"I see this assault as a direct assault on the United States and I think the United States needs to respond accordingly," he said.

World says 'tax evasion' not fraud: India

New Delhi:India's attempt to crack down on taxes evaders/black money is being scuppered by the world over mere nomenclature!

With the Opposition parties in India corenring the Congress-led UPA government on black money, a new urgency is being shown by authorities to ensure the guilty do not manage to escape the law.

India has decided to press for removal of distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud which has helped Indians conceal their income in tax havens abroad.

This is part of India's drive to get back the monies abroad.

Sources said that a number of countries have refused to give information on the ground that tax evasion was not an offence under their law but if tax fraud was included they will cooperate.

The point was forcefully made at G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Paris last week end.

Pointing out that different definitions of expressions like "tax evasion" and "tax frauds" leads to problems, Mukherjee said there was a need to harmonize them that countries can exchange information without any hindrance.

"Some countries/jurisdictions differentiate between tax fraud and tax evasion. This difference in perception assists deliberate concealment of wealth for the purpose of evading tax, something regarded as crime all over the world, and impedes effective exchange of information.

"We should encourage countries to remove this distinction in order to help efforts of government authorities in pursuing tax cheats who have parked funds outside the country", he said in his address at the ministerial meeting at the G-20.

The Minister further said that India was in the process of revising its Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with all the 78 countries which whom it had signed such agreements.

"Revision of DTAA with 10 countries have been completed and many more are in the offing", he said. Revised DTAA will help in seeking banking information about the offenders.

He also raised the issue of ill-gotten money being stashed abroad during his bilateral meetings with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and his German counterpart Wolfgang Scheuble.

Mukherjee, who is spearheading the fight against tax evasion at G-20 grouping, said that about 500 tax information exchange agreements have been signed between different countries across the world, a development that would help in the fighting the menace tax evasion and track ill-gotten money.

The Minister also underlined the case for collective action against those countries which refuse to part with tax and banking information essential for tracking slush funds.