Microsoft plans to partner with rival Novell on Linux system

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhuanet)-- Microsoft surprised the tech world, unveiling a plan to go into partnership with longtime rival Novell (NOVL), the world's leading maker of operating systems based on Linux.

The two companies shook hands on a tie-up to create interoperable software and to "build, market, and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft products work better together."

"We believe the investment we're making together will make our respective products attractive to customers," Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said at a news conference Thursday. "We're going to make it easier for customers to manage these mixed environments."

The two companies signed three agreements, with a technical cooperation pact covering virtualization, Web-services management, and document-format compatibility.

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Tags: partnership | operating system | novell | Microsoft | Linux | Beijing

World Split On Iraq Divided Over Death Sentence

WACO, Texas -- Saddam Hussein's death sentence is drawing mixed reactions around the world.
The range of reactions reflects new geopolitical fault lines drawn after the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.

The European Union welcomes the verdict. But the EU said Saddam should not be put to death. At the Vatican, Pope Benedict's top prelate for justice issues called the sentence a throwback to "eye for an eye" vengeance.

A respected Muslim cleric in Thailand calls the Saddam case "the problem of America and its domestic politics." He said "Maybe Bush will use this case to tell the voters that Saddam is dead and that the Americans are safe." But as he puts it, "actually the American people will be in more danger with the death of Saddam."

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Tags: VERDICT | Waco | Vatican | union | U.S. | Thailand | Texas | split | Saddam | Pope | Muslim | Iraq | EUROPEAN | divided | BENEDICT | America

Beatle buys Linda tapes

LONDON: Sir Paul McCartney has secretly paid almost $500,000 to secure audio tapes which reportedly contain explosive allegations about his marriage to first wife Linda.

The recordings, which second wife Heather Mills wants to use as part of her divorce claim that he was abusive towards her, were handed over to Sir Paul during an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger meeting in a Central London cafe.

Sir Paul bought the tapes from literary agent Peter Cox, who made them with Linda when he was co-authoring her 1989 book Linda McCartney's Home Cooking.

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Tags: Sir Paul McCartney | TAPES | meeting | marriage | DIVORCE | buys | London | Central London | Beatle

Madonna is the wrong target for what ails Africa

CAN'T see the Kirsty and Madonna interview leading to a series, somehow. For one thing, there isn't enough gauze in the world. The set was drenched in the stuff. What with the candelabras and the flower petals strewn across faux antique tables, it looked as if the duchess of current affairs was interrogating the queen of pop in a bridal boutique.

After the pyjama party on Oprah, the Wark interview was meant to be a no-holds-barred examination of the star's decision to adopt a 13-month-old baby from Malawi. Hopes were high after reading the Newsnight presenter's blog. One thing she wanted to know was what Madonna would have done if David Banda had tested positive for HIV. A pertinent point given the 65,000 under-fives with the condition in Malawi.

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Testing also http://dev.nowpublic.com/test9_

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Tags: ails | target | Series | Queen | interview | decision | Oprah | malawi | Madonna | Kirsty | Africa

Water problems could get 'even worse'

AUSTRALIA'S water problems could become at least seven times worse unless climate change is tackled, according to the author of a major international report on global warming.

Former world bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern released his Review on the Economics of Climate Change this week, saying global warming risked forcing the world into another depression on the scale of that of the 1930s.

Sir Nicholas said if temperatures were allowed to continue rising at the current rate, Australia's water problems would become more severe and coastal cities would be threatened by large sea level rises.

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Tags: worse | Warming | problems | depression | author | economics | Climate | Australia

Divorce could ruin Reese's bank balance

Reese Witherspoon may pay dearly for her split from husband Ryan Phillippe as the couple allegedly have no prenuptial agreement.

The actress now earns $20 million a movie while her husband only commands $2.5-million, but under California law earnings during a marriage are split 50/50 if no prenup is in place.

In 2005 alone Reese earned $30 million dollars for her two films Just Like Heaven and her Oscar-winning role in Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, while Ryan has only appeared in two hit films in the last six years - Gosford Park and Crash.

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Tags: prenuptial | prenup | Gosford Park | split | ruin | Role | movie | HUSBAND | COUPLE | balance | agreement | ryan | Reese | Oscar | Heaven | DIVORCE | crash | California

U.S. names kidnapped soldier

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military on Thursday identified the American soldier kidnapped in Baghdad as 41-year-old Ahmed Qusai al-Taai.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the soldier left the Green Zone on October 23 to visit his Iraqi wife, and then was handcuffed and taken away by gunmen. Al-Taai is an Iraqi-American translator.

Caldwell said along with significant military activity, there is a "tremendous amount of political activity" and "ongoing dialogue" to find al-Taai.

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Tags: Al-Taai | TRANSLATOR | names | Kidnapped | amount | Activity | zone | U.S. | thursday | October | Iraq | Baghdad

NASA to repair Hubble despite potential risks

Undaunted by the dangers that almost led NASA to eliminate his mission, the space agency's most experienced visitor to the Hubble Space Telescope was named Tuesday to a new astronaut team for the final overhaul of the flying observatory.

"I feel like a mission to Hubble is worth risking my life for," said John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist who is headed back to the Hubble as a spacewalking repairman for the third time. "This is really important for our country."

NASA chief Michael Griffin announced Tuesday as anticipated that the agency will go forward with the $900 million mission in 2008 after years of debate about the risks.

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Tags: VISITOR | RISKS | repair | potential | Mission | astrophysicist | agency | tuesday | TELESCOPE | NASA | Hubble

Highway kidnappings: 40 Iraqi Shiites snatched

Police on Wednesday confirmed the kidnapping of more than 40 Shiites along a notoriously dangerous highway just north of Baghdad, as the death toll from a suicide bombing at a wedding party rose to 23, including nine children.

The abductions on Tuesday near the town of Tarmiyah marked a further outbreak of sectarian violence in a region where scores were killed last month in bloody attacks and reprisal killings among formerly friendly Shiite and Sunni neighbours in the city of Balad.

Unarmed men checked identification cards and seemed to be looking for familiar faces among travellers stopped in heavy traffic, said an eyewitness, who asked to be identified only by the pseudonym Abu Omar for fear of reprisals.

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Tags: Tarmiyah | suicide | kidnappings | Highway | bombing | Shiites | IRAQI | Balad | Baghdad | ABU

A Stern warning about warming

This week comes news of a 700-page document delivered by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank, to the British government on the costs of climate change. In a nutshell, he writes that if we don’t forgo 1 percent of global income now in order to control pollution, future generations will lose 20 percent of global income.

It’s a serious alert from an acknowledged expert who’s not given to sensationalism. In a radio interview with the BBC, Stern explained a bit of his methodology. He used scientists’ predictions of the number of extra extreme weather events due to global warming, and also the general changes in temperature, and added up the known economic costs of those occurrences.

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Tags: Warming | Economist | Climate | alert | Stern

Apple makes it official: New iPod Shuffle on Friday

Apple Computer announced on Tuesday that the second generation of its iPod Shuffle will be available globally on Friday, Nov. 3. The 1-gigabyte screenless iPod, which retails for $79, has been the subject of much fan speculation because of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' claim that it's the world's smallest digital-audio player--it's half a cubic inch in volume.

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North Korea wants bank accounts unfrozen

North Korea said Wednesday it would return to nuclear disarmament talks in an effort to get access to frozen overseas bank accounts, a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished and isolated communist nation.

The North's Foreign Ministry make only indirect mention of its headline-grabbing atomic test last month, saying in a statement that it hoped to resolve U.S. financial restrictions by going back to six-nation arms talks that it has boycotted for a year.

Confirming U.S. and Chinese reports of the agreement Tuesday, the North's Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang decided to return to the arms talks "on the premise that the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be discussed and settled between the (North) and the U.S. within the framework of the six-party talks."

Washington had banned transactions between American financial institutions and Banco Delta Asia SARL - a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau - saying it was being used by North Korea for money-laundering.

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Tags: nuclear disarmament | bank | U.S. | South Korea | North Korea

Top Gun to save Hubble

MIAMI: A former Top Gun stunt pilot is to lead a shuttle mission 515km above Earth to rescue the Hubble space telescope.

Reversing a previous ruling that such a voyage would be too dangerous and costly, NASA head Michael Griffin has announced that seven astronauts would be sent to repair the $US1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) telescope, which has been responsible for solving some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.

"While there is an inherent risk in all space-flight activities, the desire to preserve a truly international asset like the Hubble space telescope makes doing this mission the right course of action," he said.

Without new batteries and an instrument upgrade, the 16-year-old deep-space observatory will go into meltdown within two to three years, depriving scientists and spacewatchers of what is considered the finest eye in the sky since Galileo perfected the invention of the telescope 400 years ago.

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Top Gun to save Hubble

MIAMI: A former Top Gun stunt pilot is to lead a shuttle mission 515km above Earth to rescue the Hubble space telescope.

Reversing a previous ruling that such a voyage would be too dangerous and costly, NASA head Michael Griffin has announced that seven astronauts would be sent to repair the $US1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) telescope, which has been responsible for solving some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.

"While there is an inherent risk in all space-flight activities, the desire to preserve a truly international asset like the Hubble space telescope makes doing this mission the right course of action," he said.

Without new batteries and an instrument upgrade, the 16-year-old deep-space observatory will go into meltdown within two to three years, depriving scientists and spacewatchers of what is considered the finest eye in the sky since Galileo perfected the invention of the telescope 400 years ago.

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Tags: TELESCOPE | Shuttle | Mission | NASA | Miami | Hubble

U.S. Economy: Growth Slows to 1.6% Rate as Homebuilding Slumps

The U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate last quarter, the slowest pace in more than three years and less than economists forecast, as housing slumped and the trade deficit widened.

The first estimate of the quarter's gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., compares with a 2.6 percent gain from April through June, the Commerce Department reported today in Washington. A gauge of inflation watched by the Federal Reserve eased.

Stocks declined and bonds advanced after the report, which showed homebuilding fell by the most in 15 years and the trade gap worsened as consumers bought more foreign-made goods. A drop in energy prices that gathered momentum late in the quarter is sustaining spending and restraining inflation, helping persuade Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to leave interest rates alone.

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Tags: inflation | forecast | economy | Washington | U.S.