Western Iran Earthquake Injures 16

Tehran:  A strong 5.6 earthquake rocked two cities in western Iran on Wednesday, injuring at least 16 people but causing only minor damage to homes, US and Iranian sources said.

The quake occurred just after 5:00 pm (1330 GMT), with the epicentre 51 kilometres (32 miles) east of Dehloran in Ilam province, close to the border with Iraq, according to the US Geological Survey.

It hit at the relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society gave the injured toll, saying the cities of Dehloran and Abdanan, and a total population area of 65,000, were affected.

"No deaths are reported," it said in an initial statement, classifying damage to houses and residential areas as minor.

But the statement said that, due to cold weather, Abdanan's governor had issued an appeal for tents for families whose homes had been damaged.

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 05:37 IST    

Troubled Argentine City Halts Gun Sales

Bueno Aires:  The mayor of the Argentine city of Santa Fe on Wednesday temporarily banned the sale of arms and ammunition in a bid to stem violent crime, much of it linked to drug trafficking.

So far this year, 117 homicides have taken place in the city of Santa Fe, 470 kilometers (290 miles) north of Buenos Aires.

The figure tops the previous record of 116 deaths in 2007. There were 106 killings in 2013.

In a statement, Mayor Jose Corral said he was suspending the sale of arms and ammunition for 90 days.

Many Argentines are worried about violent crime in the country and the problem is especially acute in Santa Fe province, where drug trafficking is a major issue.

In Rosario, the province's largest city, local media say the problem is confounded by political disputes, corruption, poverty and soccer hooliganism.

More than 80 per cent of Argentina's soy, wheat and corn are exported through Rosario's ports.

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 05:47 IST    

Mosquito-Borne Chikungunya Virus Likely to Reach Mexico: Health Ministry

Mexico City:  Mexico is very likely to join the list of countries to register cases of the painful mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya, a senior health ministry official said on Wednesday.

Chikungunya is spread by two mosquito species, and is typically not fatal but can cause debilitating symptoms including fever, headache and severe joint pain lasting months.

There is no current treatment for the virus, which was detected for the first time in the Americas late last year, and no licensed vaccine to prevent it.

Given that the virus has already shown up in much of the Caribbean, Central America and the United States, it is also likely to reach Mexico, Pablo Kuri, the deputy health minister in charge of disease prevention, told Reuters.

"It's very probable that at some point, we'll have confirmed cases of chikungunya," he said, noting that six cases have already been detected, but those people had contracted the virus in the Caribbean and El Salvador.

He said that Mexico is home to the mosquito species that carries the virus, adding to the likelihood of its arrival.

"There's no reason we shouldn't have chikungunya in Mexico," Kuri said.

Last month, El Salvador said it had detected nearly 30,000 cases of the virus. In the United States, locally transmitted infections - as opposed to infections in Americans traveling abroad - were reported for the first time this year.

Chikungunya, a virus more commonly found in Africa and Asia and transmitted by the same daytime-biting aedes aegypti mosquito that causes the more deadly dengue fever, was first detected in the eastern Caribbean at the start of 2014.

© Thomson Reuters 2014

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 06:17 IST    

Google Tests Waters for Potential Ultra-Fast Wireless Service

San Francisco:  Google Inc is preparing to test new technology that may provide the foundation for a wireless version of its high-speed "Fiber" Internet service, according to telecommunication experts who scrutinized the company's regulatory filings.

In a public but little-noticed application with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Monday, Google asked the agency for permission to conduct tests in California across different wireless spectrums, including a rarely-used millimeter-wave frequency capable of transmitting large amounts of data.

It is unclear from the heavily redacted filing what exactly Google intends to do, but it does signal the Internet giant's broader ambition of controlling Internet connectivity. The technology it seeks to test could form the basis of a wireless connection that can be broadcast to homes, obviating the need for an actual ground cable or fiber connection, experts say.

By beaming Internet services directly into homes, Google would open a new path now thoroughly dominated by Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and other entrenched cable and broadband providers. It could potentially offer a quicker and cheaper way to deliver high-speed Internet service, a potential threat to the cable-telecoms oligopoly, experts said.

"From a radio standpoint it's the closest thing to fiber there is," said Stephen Crowley, a wireless engineer and consultant who monitors FCC filings, noting that millimeter frequencies can transmit data over short distances at speeds of several gigabits per second.

"You could look at it as a possible wireless extension of their Google Fiber wireless network, as a way to more economically serve homes. Put up a pole in a neighborhood, instead of having to run fiber to each home," said Crowley.

Craig Barratt, the head of the Google Access and Energy division leading the effort to offer high-speed fiber networks in Kansas City and other locations, signed off as the authorized person submitting Google's FCC application.

The world's No.1 Internet search engine has expanded into providing consumers with services such as Internet access. The company said it wants to roll out its high-speed Internet service to more than 30 U.S. cities, and in 2013 it struck a deal to provide free wireless Internet access to 7,000 Starbucks cafes across America.

Earlier this year, technology news website The Information reported that Google was exploring ways to offer a full-fledged wireless service, with voice and Internet access, in markets where the company already offers its Fiber service.

Google's application to conduct the 180-day test is heavily redacted to protect confidential information that Google said would provide "valuable insight into Google's technology innovations and potential business plans and strategy."

The purpose of the test is so that Google can "expeditiously test radios in a way that is likely to contribute to the development, extension, expansion or utilization of the radio art," Google stated cryptically in one of the filings.

Google declined to comment on the FCC filing.

COULD BE JUST BASIC RESEARCH

Wireless experts noted that the tests could simply be basic research that does not ultimately lead to new products or services. In the past, Google has submitted applications with the FCC to test wireless communications.

The latest test, which Google hopes to begin on Nov. 13, will include three sites in the San Francisco Bay Area, including one in San Mateo county and two locations a half-mile apart which appear to be on Google's Mountain View, California campus. Google said the effort will use radio transmitters operating in the 5.8 GHz frequency, the 24.2 GHz frequency and in the millimeter wave bands of 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz, according to the application.

Millimeter wave frequencies work best over short distances, such as a few city blocks, and require a direct line-of-sight connection to a receiver. But multiple such devices placed next to each other, atop buildings could provide an alternative to in-the-ground fiber cables used for shuttling data throughout a city as well as for delivering Internet access directly to residences, theorized several wireless experts.

"This could be anything from something relatively small scale, like a way to supplement their existing fiber system to something like how to put a wireless cloud around your city that leverages your fiber backbone," said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a non-profit that focuses on broadband access and competition issues and which receives funding from tech companies including Google.

The FCC is scheduled to hold a meeting on Friday about the use of wireless spectrum above 24 GHz for mobile services, including ways the agency can facilitate the development and deployment of technology using such frequencies.

Google noted that the tests are for narrow-bandwidth transmissions. According to Crowley, the application suggests that Google will not be transmitting data over the networks, but sending simple pings between locations to gauge how the signals travel over distances and in different terrains.

Google appears to be trying to get ahead of the competition in understanding the potential to use the millimeter frequencies now being discussed by the FCC, said Public Knowledge's Feld.

"If they can pull it off, they will have a potentially very innovative next-generation delivery system," he said. 

© Thomson Reuters 2014

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 06:55 IST    

Rare Comet Fly-By of Mars on Sunday

Washington:  A fast-moving comet is about to fly by Mars for a one-in-a-million-year encounter with the Red Planet, photographed and documented by a flurry of spacecraft, NASA said.

The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), has a core about a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide in diameter, but is only as solid as a pile of talcum powder.

Siding Spring is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 88,000 miles (139,500 kilometers).

If the comet were passing by our planet, that would be about a third of the way between the Earth and the Moon.

Siding Spring will come closest to Mars at 2:27 pm (1827 GMT) on Sunday, October 19, NASA said.

Flying through space at a breakneck speed of 122,400 miles per hour (202,000 km per hour), the small comet faces little risk of colliding with the Red Planet.

But scientists are keen to study its trajectory and trail.

"Are we going to see meteors in the Mars atmosphere? Comets are very unpredictable," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

"I think it is unlikely that it will be destroyed," Green told reporters. "But whether it retains its structure or not is of interest."

 

NASA has maneuvered its Mars orbiters to the far side of the planet so they won't be damaged by the comet's high-speed debris.

Even as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN have been repositioned to avoid hazardous dust, scientists hope they will be able to capture a trove of data about the flyby for Earthlings to study.

NASA's two rovers -- Curiosity and Opportunity -- will turn their cameras skyward and send back pictures of the comet's pass in the coming days, weeks and months, the US space agency said.

Billions of years old

The comet was discovered by Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory in January 2013.

It is believed to have originated billions of years ago in the Oort Cloud, a distant region of space that is a source of comets that are "largely unchanged since the early days of the solar system," NASA said.

Carey Lisse, senior astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said scientists are intrigued by comets for many reasons.

"It is amazing that they are still around after four and a half billion years, but most of the reason for that is they have been living very, very far from the Sun and are in a deep freeze," he said.

This particular comet is about the size of a small mountain, but is probably the consistency of powder, or a meringue that would melt in your mouth, he explained.

"It should have more of the really volatile ices -- methane, carbon monoxide -- things that boil off very easily. It has never been heat treated very strongly before."

Scientists say they are curious to learn if the comet may have already broken up some on its approach to Mars.

"There is a possibility that Mars may drive some more activity, that is why we are looking," Lisse said.

The comet has traveled more than one million years to make its first pass by Mars, and will not return for another million years, after it completes its next long loop around the Sun. 

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 07:10 IST    

John F. Kennedy's Wedding Negatives Sell for $34,000 at Boston Auction

Boston:  One black-and-white photograph captures a dapper John F. Kennedy slicing into his wedding cake. Another shows the family dog peeking out playfully from the folds of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's billowing white dress.

The images were among those imprinted on 13 original negatives from the Kennedys' fairytale wedding that sold for $34,073 on Wednesday to a doctor in Las Vegas, who declined to reveal his name, according to RR Auction in Boston.

The Kennedys were married on Sept. 12, 1953 at St. Mary's Church in the well-heeled resort town of Newport, Rhode Island, south of Boston.

The images, which went up for auction Sept. 26 with a $200 opening bid, show the wedding party posing outside, the newlyweds leaving the church and the couple cutting the wedding cake.

RR Auction said the images are attributed to freelance photographer Frank Ataman and were found in the darkroom of another photographer and have likely never been published.

Four are of the newlyweds, two show the entire wedding party, and the remainder show the cake, reception and wedding attendees.

The Kennedy wedding was a high society affair covered by Life magazine, drawing some 700 guests to the ceremony and 1,200 to the reception.

At the time, Kennedy was less than a year into his first term as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and more than seven years from his election as the country's first Roman Catholic president and its youngest elected head of state.

Bobby Livingston, the auction house's executive vice president, says interest in Kennedy memorabilia - and indeed other icons of the 1960s, such as NASA and the Beatles - continues to grow as the Baby Boomer generation enters the later stages of their working lives or retirement and have more disposable income.

"These things have an intense public interest. Because it's the Kennedys, there's a passion for collecting these and a passion for the memories," he said. "These photos really capture the beginning of Camelot, and that resonates."

The negatives are among other Kennedy materials auctioned off Wednesday, including a White House holiday card President Kennedy and his wife signed just days before his assassination in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. That sold for $19,500, according to the auction house.

In September, RR Auction auctioned off a collection of World War II-era letters Kennedy sent to the family of a lost PT-109 crewmate for $200,000. Last October, it sold a white Lincoln Continental that the president and first lady rode in hours before his death for $318,000, as well as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's gold wedding band for $108,000.

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 07:16 IST    

US to be 'More Aggressive' in Monitoring Ebola Response: Barack Obama

Washington, United States:  US President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged a "much more aggressive" response at home to the Ebola threat, and insisted that the risk of a serious outbreak on US soil was low.

After a crisis meeting with top aides at the White House, Obama underlined the importance of helping African countries stem the spread of the virus, calling such aid "an investment in our own public health."

"If we are not responding internationally in an effective way... then we could have problems," Obama said in comments aired on US television.

The meeting -- attended by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, among others -- came after a second US Ebola infection was diagnosed at a Texas hospital where a Liberian man died a week ago.

Obama said meeting participants discussed "monitoring, supervising, overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what's taking place in Dallas" to ensure those lessons are "transmitted to hospitals and clinics all across the country."

"This is not a situation in which, like a flu, the risks of a rapid spread of the disease are imminent," Obama said, adding he "shook hands with, hugged and kissed" nurses who had treated an Ebola patient at Emory University hospital in Atlanta.

"They followed the protocols. They knew what they were doing and I felt perfectly safe doing so," he said.

"I am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak of the disease here in the United States... The key thing to understand about this disease is that these protocols work."

The White House said Obama had canceled plans to visit Rhode Island and New York on Thursday so he could follow up on the Ebola meeting.

So far, Ebola has killed nearly 4,500 people, the vast majority of them in West Africa, where the outbreak began early this year.

Since the announcement last month that the United States would send at least 3,000 troops to West Africa to help fight the outbreak, Obama has repeatedly criticized the international response to the health crisis as insufficient.

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 08:09 IST