Freelance Projects, Design and Programming Tutorials
As sets were still being constructed, comedian and host James Corden claimed he had “the best seat in the house”.
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MEPs debated the creation of a European patent system.
Europe’s complex and costly procedures for patenting inventions look set to be simplified after Euro MPs gave the go-ahead for a new system.
Under the plan, 25 of the 27 EU member states will adopt a uniform procedure for registering patents in Europe.
Currently European patents can cost ten times more than patents registered in the US because of translation costs.
Italy and Spain oppose the plan, which envisages using English, French and German for translating patents.
For about a decade, efforts to get an EU-wide agreement on patents have been blocked by language disputes and the lack of unanimity.
The European Parliament vote means that a common patent system can be launched under the EU “enhanced co-operation” procedure – an innovation under the Lisbon Treaty.
The fast-track mechanism enables nine or more EU countries to push ahead with a measure, even if it has not been agreed by all 27.
The mechanism has only been used once before – to get a divorce law adopted in 2010. It clarifies the rules for spouses in cross-border lawsuits involving different jurisdictions.
New patent legislation is a vital component in the EU’s drive to make the single European market function better.
The European Commission has warned that Chinese firms are rapidly narrowing the performance gap with the EU.
The legal affairs spokesman of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, Sajjad Karim MEP, said emerging economies “are literally breathing down Europe’s neck” and the new patents regime “will be a big part of what is needed by our entrepreneurs”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
BBC’s Matt Cole: “They really are swamped”
Italy has warned that an influx of Tunisian migrants arriving on its shores could have devastating consequences for all European nations.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said migrants who have landed on the island of Lampedusa threaten the institutional and social structures of Europe.
Italy is asking the EU for about 100m euros (£84m) to tackle the influx.
In another development, a boat was intercepted off Sicily carrying about 30 people believed to be from Egypt.
Italian police said the boat was intercepted overnight off the coast near Ragusa.
Meanwhile, in Tunisia, the authorities have lifted a night-time curfew.
But the interior ministry said the state of emergency, which has been in place since President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali went into exile last month, will continue “until further notice”.
More than 5,000 immigrants have reached Lampedusa – south of Sicily – by boat in the past week.
The upsurge follows last month’s mass protests over unemployment and poverty in Tunisia which resulted in the overthrow of President Ben Ali.
The vast majority of the men here seem young, perhaps in their early 20s.
They carry small bags or tiny backpacks but little else. Speaking mainly French, they talk of wanting freedom – “liberte” is a word heard again and again.
Late on Monday evening, about 100 were flown from Lampedusa to the larger Italian island of Sicily.
As they queued for security checks, most revealed they weren’t aware of their next destination, but they didn’t seem too concerned.
Instead, they said they were glad not to be in Tunisia and said they hoped they would be given the chance of freedom to live and work in Europe.
Most of those arriving in Lampedusa say they are seeking work and a better life in Europe, although correspondents say they could include escaped convicts and members of the ousted regime fleeing retribution.
“It is a question that risks igniting an extremely fast process of change in North African countries, that can have devastating consequences on the institutional and social structures of European nations,” Mr Maroni said.
“I have asked, and I think it is fundamental, that Europe at its top levels – meaning heads of state and government – defines a strategy… and starts a strong diplomatic action towards all countries that are touched by these phenomena.”
Mr Maroni also said he had asked for the intervention of the EU’s border management agency, Frontex, and deployed an extra 200 soldiers to supervise centres where migrants are staying.
Lampedusa Mayor Bernadino Rubeis has declared a state of emergency.
“There is an entire nation trying to escape Tunisia to reach Italy and then to go on to other countries,” he said.
Laura Boldrini of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) who is on Lampedusa, told the BBC World Service that the situation on the island was “critical”.
She said conditions had improved slightly since the island’s reception centre re-opened on Sunday but it was important to move people to other reception centres in Italy.
Ms Boldrini said migrants were either saying they wanted to escape “insecurity” in Tunisia or had left to look for jobs in Europe.
She said some planned to travel on to France and other European countries to be reunited with family members already there.
Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni: “It’s not a question of traditional immigration involving Italy alone”
“This influx is affecting many other countries, not only Italy,” she said.
The BBC’s Jim Muir in Tunis says many people there are puzzled by the upsurge in the number of people trying to get to Italy, as the situation in Tunisia is seen to be stabilising.
Some of those trying to leave are said to be well-dressed and paying over the odds for the trip, our correspondent says – indicating they might be associated with the former regime and trying to avoid retribution.
But most are believed to be economic migrants taking advantage of a security loophole, he adds.
Michele Cercone, spokesman for the European Commission for Home and Justice affairs, said there had to be a European common approach to increasing migration sparked by recent turmoil in northern Africa.
“On one hand we have to intervene, if needed, with urgent measures to assist member states and on the other hand we have to be sure that we co-operate with… countries of origin of these migrants, in order to have a more consistent and long term solution,” he said.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say at least five migrants died and others are missing after their boat sank off the Tunisian coast near Zarzis.
Alleged survivors told AFP news agency that a Tunisian coastguard ship rammed their boat on Friday as it was making its way to Italy.
“The boat… was carrying 120 passengers – 85 people were saved, five died and 30 are still missing,” 23-year-old Ziad Ben Abdaalah is reported to have said.
Coastguard officials in Zarzis contacted by AFP confirmed that a boat had sunk but blamed it on the poor condition of the boat and declined to make any further comment.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Linda Norgrove’s parents have said no-one was to blame for her death An inquest into the death of Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan has heard she had a bullet wound on her lower right leg.
Ms Norgrove, 36, from Lewis, on the Western Isles, was taken hostage in September 2010 and died during a US special forces operation on 8 October.
A military investigation found that she was killed by a grenade thrown by one of her rescuers.
An inquest into her death has resumed in Trowbridge.
Wiltshire coroner David Ridley said the hearing will not apportion blame.
It has heard that, as well as injuries caused by a grenade, she also had a bullet wound on her right leg.
The first witness to give evidence was senior British officer Brig Robert Nitch who was involved in the joint UK and US investigation into the American rescue attempt.
He said there was no attempt to hide the facts of what happened during the operation and was struck by the integrity of the US special forces.
Ms Norgrove’s parents, Lorna and John Norgrove, are attending the inquest and have previously said they do not blame anyone for the death of their daughter.
BBC Scotland reporter Tim Reid has been given permission by the coroner to use the messaging website Twitter to tweet short reports from the inquest.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Muslims make up nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million population Islamic morality police in Malaysia have arrested more than 80 Muslims in an operation to stop them celebrating Valentine’s Day.
Officers raided budget hotels in the central state of Selangor and capital, Kuala Lumpur, detaining unmarried Muslim couples who were sharing rooms.
The religious authorities in Malaysia say Valentine’s Day is synonymous with immoral activities.
Those arrested could be jailed for up to two years if convicted.
The anti-Valentine’s Day campaign by the country’s Islamic authorities goes back to a fatwa issued in 2005.
On Monday evening, religious enforcement officers launched co-ordinated raids, targeting budget hotels and public parks in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.
In Selangor alone, officials said 80 people were detained for khalwat or close proximity – an Islamic law that prevents unmarried Muslims from being alone with someone of the opposite sex.
In the capital, officials detained 16 mainly teenage Muslims, who had paid about 50 ringgit (£9) for a hotel room for two hours, according to a report from the AFP news agency.
The raids stem from a campaign launched last week by the religious authorities, called Mind the Valentine’s Day Trap.
The government-run Department of Islamic Development said Valentine’s Day was “synonymous with vice activities” and that it contravened Islamic teachings.
Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had labelled Monday’s celebration as “not suitable” for Muslims.
Other faiths were not affected by the boycott in a country where Muslims make up nearly two-thirds of the 28 million population.
But not all Malaysian Muslims agreed with the campaign, with some saying Valentine’s Day is harmless.
Human rights groups say actions such as the Valentine’s Day ban harm Malaysia’s image as a moderate and progressive Muslim state.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Satellite image showing snow across the UK, Monday 20th December Railway bosses have admitted that they made mistakes in their response to the severe weather at the end of last year.
Thousands of services were cancelled, and passengers were sometimes stranded on trains for hours.
Robin Gisby from Network Rail told MPs on the Transport Committee that basic operating mistakes had been made, but that they had been “little things”.
Firms said they were improving their ability to cope with bad weather.
Mr Gisby said “We made a number of mistakes in the first week (of the bad weather). We learnt from this quite rapidly.” He said that Network Rail “got into a pickle” on one day by trying to run a full timetable rather than a temporary one.
The rail bosses denied that trains had been cancelled in order to avoid paying compensation for the services being late. They insisted that decisions were taken to give the best, most robust service to passengers – rather than to avoid fines.
The man leading the government review of how the bad weather affected the transport network in December, Chairman of the RAC Foundation David Quarmby, also gave evidence to the Committee.
He agreed that Network Rail had been “caught short” by the weather. But he said the performance of the rail network had been better in the second cold snap, just before Christmas.
Mr Quarmby said he refuted the suggestion that the UK was worse than other countries in dealing with snow. “As a nation we tend to deprecate ourselves”, he said, “and the media play into that.”
Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron said the weather disruption was understandable but he was “frustrated” at how long it took to improve the situation.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Paul Scott, 22, died at a flat in Toll House Gardens, Tranent A man has been arrested and charged in connection with the murder of a 22-year-old in East Lothian.
Paul Scott, from the Niddrie area of Edinburgh, died at a flat in Toll House Gardens, Tranent, having been the victim of a “violent attack”.
Police were called to the scene at about 0400 GMT on Monday 7 February, where Mr Scott’s body was found.
Police said a 29-year-old man was to appear at Haddington Sheriff Court on Wednesday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Stuxnet may have been designed to target Iran’s nuclear programme A powerful internet worm repeatedly targeted five industrial facilities in Iran over 10 months, ongoing analysis by security researchers shows.
Stuxnet, which came to light in 2010, was the first-known virus specifically designed to target real-world infrastructure, such as power stations.
Security firm Symantec has now revealed how waves of new variants were launched at Iranian industrial facilities.
Some versions struck their targets within 12 hours of being written.
“We are trying to do some epidemiology,” Orla Cox of Symantec told BBC News. “We are trying to understand how and why it spread.”
The worm first grabbed headlines late last year after initial analysis showed that the sophisticated piece of malware had likely been written by a “nation state” to target Iran’s nuclear programme, including the uranium enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz facility.
Russia’s Nato ambassador recently said the virus “could lead to a new Chernobyl,” referring to the 1986 nuclear accident.
Although speculation surrounds which countries may have been involved in its creation, the origins of the worm still remain a mystery.
“One organisation was attacked three times, another was targeted twice”
Orla Cox Symantec
Iranian officials have admitted that the worm infected staff computers. However, they have repeatedly denied that the virus caused any major delays to its nuclear power programme, although its uranium enrichment programme is known to have suffered setbacks.
The new research, which analysed 12,000 infections collected by various anti-virus firms, shows that the worm targeted five “industrial processing” organisations in Iran.
“These were the seeds of all other infections,” said Ms Cox.
The firm was able to identify the targets because Stuxnet collected information about each computer it infected, including its name, location and a time stamp of when it was compromised.
This allowed the researchers to track the spread of the virus.
Symantec declined to name the five organisations and would not confirm whether they had links to the country’s nuclear programme.
However, Ms Cox, said that previous research confirmed that the worm could disrupt the centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
The five organisations were targeted repeatedly between June 2009 and April 2010, she said.
“One organisation was attacked three times, another was targeted twice,” she said.
These waves of attacks used at least three different variants of the worm.
“We believe there was also a fourth one but we haven’t seen it yet,” she said.
The worm seeks out specific industrial hardware once inside an organisation Analysis of the different strains and the time it took between the code being written and it making its first infection suggested that the virus writers had “infiltrated” targeted organisations, she said.
The researchers drew this conclusion because Stuxnet targeted industrial systems not usually connected to the internet for security reasons.
Instead, it infects Windows machines via USB keys – commonly used to move files around and usually plugged into a computer manually.
The virus therefore had to be seeded on to the organisation’s internal networks by someone, either deliberately or accidentally.
The virus could have been spread between the organisations by contractors that worked for more than one of them, she said.
“We see threads to contractors used by these companies,” she said. “We can see links between them.”
Once on a corporate network, the worm is designed to seek out a specific configuration of industrial control software made by Siemens.
The code can then reprogram so-called PLC (programmable logic control) software to give attached industrial machinery new instructions.
Previous analysis suggests that it targeted PLCs operating at frequencies between 807 and 1210Hz, a range that includes those used to control uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Subverting PLCs requires detailed knowledge and, although security researchers had raised concerns about exploits in the past, had not been seen before Stuxnet.
Ms Cox said the firm’s analysis revealed incomplete code in Stuxnet that looked like it was intended to target another type of PLC.
“The fact that it is incomplete could tell us that [the virus writers] were successful in what they had done,” she said.
The novelty of the virus, combined with attack mechanisms that targeted several previously unknown and unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows, have led many to describe Stuxnet as “one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever”.
However, research by Tom Parker from security firm Securicon says that elements of it were “not that advanced at all”.
“I’ve compared this less advanced code to other malware and it does not score very highly,” he said last year.
Ms Cox agrees that elements of the code and some of the techniques it uses are relatively simple. But, she says, that misses the bigger picture.
“If you look at the sum of its parts, then it is certainly very sophisticated,” she said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
In many Japanese cities large central kitchens deliver food each day to many schools More than 950 schoolchildren have fallen ill at nine schools on Japan’s northern Hokkaido island in a suspected outbreak of food poisoning.
Thirteen children are in hospital in the city of Iwamizawa; 48 teachers and other school staff also have symptoms.
The affected schools will remain closed until the end of the week.
The outbreak was so widespread because, like many cities in Japan, Iwamizawa operates large central kitchens which deliver food each day to many schools.
Three of these kitchens have been shut as well while an investigation is carried out.
The children began to fall ill last week after eating lunch of miso soup, salad and Japanese radish with minced meat.
In all 953 students have been affected but none is in a critical condition.
The health authorities in Hokkaido suspect a salmonella infection may be to blame but have yet to determine the cause of the outbreak.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
I have a Zen Cart shop and am having trouble getting EasyPopulate to work. This shop will have many products, so a mass-upload solution is crucial.
Note: The solution can be Easy Populate or any other mass-upload solution that works with Open Office documents.
Zen Cart v1.3.9h (latest version)
Easy Populate v1.2.5.4
We are looking for this to be a hosted solution that we can add contacts and send messages either by all methods or selected methods. We need the ability to import users or manually add.
We need a notify system where we can have the following methods to communicate or post:
Multiple emails
cell (text)
phone (leave recorded voicemail)
fax
facebook page
twitter
calendar event
We would need to have user security and groups. We would like for users to be able to log into a webpage that is like a profile page that they can manually update and enter their information. It would also show calendar with any events listed.
ex: The ability to notify John Smith about Friday’s lunch meeting via email, text, voicemail, fax, post to his facebook and send a calendar invite. It would also be added to his online calendar. It would also track that it was sent, opened, and the ability to one click rsvp. It would provide the admin user a report that this was completed.
I have two mailing lists that I have imported into Mailchimp. However Mailchimp doesn’t allow automated subscription of role-based addresses.
More info here:
http://tinyurl.com/6z5ktjn
and
http://tinyurl.com/65bm822
This project is to:
1. Extract the role based addresses (525 of them according to Mailchimp) from my mailing list (2839 addresses in an Excel spreadsheet).
2. Manually subscribe the extracted role-based addresses at Mailchimp. This needs to be done one address at a time.
http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/Google_Checkout_Beta_Subscriptions.html
I need this programmed for my subscribers on my website. I have a windows 2003 server. I need it done asap.
Can you look at my site and be able to come up with a good press release with minimal info from me?
I need somebody to write a very good press release for my insurance site. 200 t0 250 word press release is ok. I need this as soon as possible.
I will need to see sample of press release you’ve written before and possible, about 5 URLs where it appears at.
Let me know how soon you can complete this job.
Thanks.
Solomon
Need a website redesigned.
Current website information is to be obtained from oktirelondonsouth.aaro.ca
Would like something similar to
silsauto.com
Which is based on thesis theme from what I can see.
Specific logo must be used – that matches certain criteria for size, clarity and background that it can be placed on. Background must be light – less than 30% black basically. So if that can be worked around that would be great.
Quick turnaround needed.