 |
| Apple's nano sim |
Apple, the pioneer of Micro SIM, is currently using the micro SIMs in most of its new devices like the iPhone 4 and New iPad. The nano SIM, which is smaller than the Micro SIM, might result in the manufacturing of slimmer devices.
This new standard has managed to beat a proposal from Nokia. The European Telecommunication Standards Institution (ETSI), which sets technology standards across Europe, has selected the nano SIM over a proposal from Nokia.
"ETSI agreed to pick Apple's SIM card standard, beating a proposal from Nokia", MacWorld said on its website, citing SIM card maker Giesecke and Devrient.
ETSI had said that this standard could be implemented within a year if there is a broad consensus on the topic, now with broader consensus emerging, it is likely to be the new SIM standard soon.
Open interest, or the number of contracts outstanding, in the Nifty futures on the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. totaled 321,725 on June 1, the lowest since Feb. 2, 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It was at 338,313 yesterday. The index rose 0.5 percent to 4,869.85 at 9:38 a.m. in Mumbai.
A private survey showed on June 1 that manufacturing in India slowed, a day after the government said economic growth slowed to a nine-year low in the March quarter. Foreign funds turned net sellers of domestic shares for a second month in May, reducing their holdings by $273 million, data from the market regulator show.
“Weak economic conditions are weighing on sentiment and affecting investments in stocks,” Siddarth Bhamre, head of derivatives at Angel Broking Ltd., said by phone from Mumbai. “Investors are scared to take longer-term bets.”
The value of index futures contracts held by foreign investors was 67.54 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) on May 31, the lowest level since February 2009, the data show. It was at 78 billion rupees yesterday.
‘Staring at Losses’
The 50-stock Nifty index fell 13 percent from its Feb. 21 peak as the rupee fell 6 percent versus the dollar last month, Asia’s worst-performing currency.
India’s record trade deficit “has weakened our balance of payments and the rupee is beginning to fall, as a consequence of which overseas investors are staring at losses and pulling out,” P. Jayendra Nayak, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley (MS) India, told Bloomberg UTV yesterday. The withdrawals weaken the currency further and “it is important that we have a policy that gets us out of these vicious cycle,” he said.
The total derivatives turnover on the National exchange totaled 798 billion rupees on June 1, the lowest level since May 14, and reached 815 billion rupees yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Nifty has climbed 5.3 percent this year and trades at 12 times estimated profits, the lowest level in more than three years. That compares with a multiple of 9.7 times for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.
China opposes the comment, Liu said. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement yesterday encouraging China to publicly account for all those killed and “end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families.”
Yesterday, searches for “Shanghai Composite” were blocked from China’s most-used microblogging service after the stock index’s drop on the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown corresponded to the date of the event.China strictly prohibits references to the crackdown, in which hundreds of protesters were killed by troops, as part of the government’s censorship of websites, newspapers and television that bars criticism of the ruling Communist Party. This year, authorities are also trying to ensure a smooth leadership transition scheduled for later in 2012 and seeking stability after the suspension of Politburo member Bo Xilai.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped by 64.89 (SHCOMP) points yesterday, matching the date on which Chinese authorities crushed student-led protests on June 4, 1989. Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo service returned a message that said results can’t be displayed “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies.”
“It’s difficult to orchestrate but the coincidence is just mind-boggling,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a phone interview yesterday.
Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on the website of Baidu Inc. (BIDU), China’s most-used Internet search engine, returned results that showed the index’s decline. Other websites including Sina’s financial news portal and that of China Finance Online Co. also carried stock market reports with the index’s drop in points.
“We didn’t see anything abnormal in the market,” said Chen Ji, spokesman for the Shanghai Stock Exchange. “We don’t have any further comment.”
Weibo Scrutiny
Sina’s Weibo service, with more than 300 million registered users, has been subject to increased scrutiny. The company, along with rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), were ordered to disable the comment function on their microblog services for 72 hours in March after authorities detained six people accused of spreading rumors of a coup attempt in Beijing.
Cathy Peng, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Sina, didn’t immediately answer calls to her office after normal work hours.
In December, China began requiring microblog users in cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to register their real names. That rule will be expanded to other regions, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, said in January.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped by 64.89 (SHCOMP) points yesterday, matching the date on which Chinese authorities crushed student-led protests on June 4, 1989. Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo service returned a message that said results can’t be displayed “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies.”
“It’s difficult to orchestrate but the coincidence is just mind-boggling,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a phone interview yesterday.
Queries for “Shanghai Composite” on the website of Baidu Inc. (BIDU), China’s most-used Internet search engine, returned results that showed the index’s decline. Other websites including Sina’s financial news portal and that of China Finance Online Co. also carried stock market reports with the index’s drop in points.
“We didn’t see anything abnormal in the market,” said Chen Ji, spokesman for the Shanghai Stock Exchange. “We don’t have any further comment.”
Weibo Scrutiny
Sina’s Weibo service, with more than 300 million registered users, has been subject to increased scrutiny. The company, along with rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), were ordered to disable the comment function on their microblog services for 72 hours in March after authorities detained six people accused of spreading rumors of a coup attempt in Beijing.
Cathy Peng, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Sina, didn’t immediately answer calls to her office after normal work hours.
In December, China began requiring microblog users in cities including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to register their real names. That rule will be expanded to other regions, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, said in January.
The online poll also found that 34 per cent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the website than six months ago, whereas only 20 per cent were spending more.
The findings underscore investors' worries about Facebook's money-making abilities that have pushed the stock down 29 per cent since its initial public offering last month, reducing its market value by $30 billion to roughly $74 billion.
About 44 per cent of respondents said the botched market debut has made them less favourable toward Facebook, according to the survey conducted from May 31 to June 4. The poll included 1,032 Americans, 21 per cent of whom had no Facebook account.
Facebook's 900 million users make it among the most popular online destinations, challenging entrenched Internet players such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. But not everyone is convinced that the company has figured out how to translate that popularity into a business that can justify its lofty valuation.
Shares of Facebook closed on Monday's regular trading session down 3 per cent at $26.90. Facebook did not have an immediate comment on the survey.
While the survey did not ask how other forms of advertising affected purchasing behaviour, a February study by research firm eMarketer suggests that Facebook fared worse than email or direct-mail marketing in terms of influencing consumers' purchasing decisions.
"It shows that Facebook has work to do in terms of making its advertising more effective and more relevant to people," eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said.
Those concerns were exacerbated last month when General Motors Co, the third largest advertiser in the United States, said it would stop paid-advertising on Facebook.
Measuring the effectiveness of advertising can be tricky, particularly for brand marketing in which the goal is to influence future purchases rather than generate immediate sales.
And the success of an ad campaign must be considered in relation to the product, said Steve Hasker, president of Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen.
"If you are advertising Porsche motor cars and you can get 20 per cent of people to make a purchase, that's an astonishingly high conversion rate," said Hasker.
"If you are selling instant noodles, maybe it's not," he said.
Wanting engagement
About two out of five people polled by Reuters and Ipsos Public Affairs said they used Facebook every day. Nearly half of the Facebook users polled spent about the same amount of time on the social network as six months ago.
The survey provides a look at the trends considered vital to Facebook's future at a time when the company has faced a harsh reception on Wall Street.
Facebook's $16 billion IPO, one the world's largest, made the US company founded by Mark Zuckerberg the first to debut on markets with a capitalisation of more than $100 billion.
Its coming out-party, which culminated years of breakneck growth for the social and business phenomenon, was marred by trading glitches on the Nasdaq exchange. A decision to call certain financial analysts ahead of the IPO and caution them about weakness in its business during the second quarter has triggered several lawsuits against Facebook and its underwriters.
Forty-six per cent of survey respondents said the Facebook IPO had made them less favourable towards investing in the stock market in general.
While Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, mostly from ads on its website, sales growth is slowing.
Consumers' increasing use of smartphones to access Facebook has been a drag on the company's revenue. It offers only limited advertising on the mobile version of its site, and analysts say the company has yet to figure out the ideal way to make money from mobile users.
Facebook competes for online ads with Google, the world's No 1 Web search engine, which generated roughly $38 billion in revenue in 2011. Google's search ads, which appear alongside the company's search results, are considered among the most effective means of marketing.
The most frequent Facebook users are aged 18 to 34, according to the Reuters/Ipsos survey, with 60 per cent of that group being daily users. Among people aged 55 years and above, 29 per cent said they were daily users.
Of the 34 per cent spending less time on the social network, their chief reason was that the site was "boring," "not relevant" or "not useful," while privacy concerns ranked third.
The survey has a "credibility interval" of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Leading into the gameplay demo of Master Chief coming to aid a downed spacecraft, the company screened a live action trailer that focused on the ship and the marines aboard. "We begin like the story of the Titanic, a very uplifting commissioning of this new starship the UNSC Infinity," says Xbox Global Group MarCom Manager Ryan Cameron. "We then juxtapose that hope and promise with the terror of it being ripped out of the sky by the new threat that is in Halo 4."
The two-and-a-half-minute trailer is titled "The Commissioning" and was created out of McCann Erickson agency twofifteenmccann and 343 Industries, the Microsoft group behind the Halo franchise. The spot was filmed in Bucharest, Romania by director Nicolai Fuglsig, known for his award-winning Bravia commerical featuring balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco. The trailer was scored by Neil Davidge, of the band Massive Attack, who also created the music for the Halo 4 game. Even Mark Rolston, the actor who does the voice of Captain Del Rio in the game, actually gets a turn in front of a camera for the trailer. "Everything is completely seamless between the live action work and the gameplay," says Cameron.
This live action trailer is just the start. In October, leading up to the November 6 release of the game, Microsoft will also launch Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, a live action web series of five 15-minute episodes focusing on the Marines of UNSC Infinity. Though today’s short and the web series share common elements, different teams worked on the films. "Because it’s a world that people always want to see more of, Halo lends itself to live action execution," says Halo 4's executive producer Kiki Wolfkill.
Microsoft has used live action trailers in the past for the Halo series, from a veteran talking about the war in Halo 3, to a commercial directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) showing the life of a Spartan supersoldier for Halo 3: ODST, to the short film from director Neill Blomkamp (District 9 and the upcoming Elysium) as a test for a Halomovie that never made it past planning. So how did the XBox team approach this latest live-action short to differentiate it? Wolfkill says, "It’s less a conscious decision of 'What are the things we need to do better?' so much as 'What is really the exact story that we want to tell?' "
Using a live-action short that leads directly into an action-packed sequence in the game does seem to ramp up the visceral quality of theHalo 4 portion of Microsoft’s event. Wolfkill says, "[Viewers] will experience the same confusion, shock, and awe that the characters in the live action trailer, and as well as the gameplay, are going to experience."
Below is the Halo 4 game play sequence also released at E3.
News Release:
Cleveland BioLabs, Inc. today announced strong survival results for its randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled efficacy study of CBLB502 in 179 non-human primates (NHPs) conducted under Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) with elements of Good Clinical Practice (GCP), as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Animal Rule. The study demonstrated with a high degree of statistical significance the dose-response relationship between the administration of CBLB502 and the survival of lethally irradiated animals, the study's primary endpoint.
Animals in the study received a 70% lethal dose of total body irradiation (TBI) followed by a single injection of a range of doses of CBLB502 or a placebo, in each case, 25 hours after irradiation. In addition to determination of 60-day survival, the study measured multiple pharmacodynamic parameters which the Company believes are essential for animal-to-human dose conversion.
A minimal efficacious dose of CBLB502 was determined and doses above the minimal efficacious dose formed a plateau at approximately 75% survival, compared to 27.5% survival in the placebo treated group. These results demonstrated with a high degree of statistical significance (p < 0.0001 for the trend up to the 40 ug/kg dose and p = 0.0021 for the trend up to the 10 ug/kg dose) that a single administration of CBLB502 given 25 hours after TBI led to a nearly three-fold increase in overall survival in the subject animals.
Ann Hards, Ph.D., Executive Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance, stated, "We are very pleased with the compelling survival data reported in this study. In addition to demonstrating CBLB502's effect on survival, we believe this study supports our methodology for dose conversion between animals and humans. We plan on using the findings from this trial as a basis for finalizing our remaining development steps with the FDA and, ultimately, submitting our Biologic License Application."
Yakov Kogan, Ph.D., MBA, interim Chief Executive Officer, commented: "I congratulate our team on the rigorous execution of this study. To our knowledge, this trial is the first ever GLP/GCP compliant, randomized, blinded study done with any radiation countermeasure. CBLB502 continues to exceed our expectations and we are as committed as ever to moving this program forward."
 |
| Hansie Cronje |
Cronje was the central figure in the biggest crisis in international cricket in 2000 when he admitted to match-fixing during a game in India.
In his subsequent testimony at the Commission of Inquiry, set up by the South African government, Cronje tearfully admitted that "the devil made me do it." He was banned for life from the sport after that.
The Commission ended inconclusively and Cronje was killed when a goods plane in which he hitched a ride crashed close to his home in 2002.
The investigation into that crash also ended inconclusively, with speculation still rife that Cronje's death may have been arranged by bookmakers who believed that he knew too much.
Ewie Cronje, Hansie's father, said he still could not believe that his son was gone.
"It feels as though he will appear at any moment," Cronje told the Afrikaans daily 'Beeld'.
Facebook fans declared Cronje the best captain the Proteas had ever had while former teammates said they had forgiven him.
Pat Symcox said the Cronje saga had divided South Africa but that was in the past and people should now move on.
Former paceman, Fanie de Villiers, believed that Cronje had done 90 per cent good and 10 per cent bad: "Anyone who influenced the scales like that, will be forgiven.
"I celebrate and embrace today only the good memories (of Cronje)," another retired fast bowler, Makhaya Ntini, told the daily.
A special service was held at Cronje's former school, Grey's College in Bloemfontein, where a wall of remembrance was erected in his memory.
Microsoft kicked off E3 with a packed list of announcements this morning across its mobile and gaming platforms.
First up: music. Microsoft announced the launch of their new music service--Xbox Music. After the demise of the Zune player, it looks like Microsoft is refocusing its energies in a different direction.
Microsoft also announced a new partnership with Nike to create a fitness training system on the Kinect. The motion capture technology is rigged to provide better performance statistics and record and report feedback on workout techniques.Xbox Smart Glass was the third product announced today--one that would integrate TV watching on the Xbox with all major mobile platforms--iOS, Android, and of course, Windows devices. TV on a device will pick up where you left off watching on the Xbox, and will be enhanced. For example, while watching Game of Thrones, a map will track the dense and well-dispersed narrative through the series' fictional setting of Westeros.
Facebook Tests Access For Pre-Teens
Facebook is testing features which could allow kids under 13 to access Facebook under parental supervision. The Wall Street Journal reports that among the features in the works are those that would allow kids to create an account that was linked to, and managed by their parents' accounts. Facebook may even charge parents for the additional features. Though Facebook has a strict age restriction on the users that sign up to use it, kids under 13 circumvent the barriers in place and slink in. Rather than try to stem the pre-teen ingress (a tricky problem because many parents don't know about the age restriction and a high percentage of those who do help kids set up accounts anyway), and though it brings up numerous privacy concerns, a more effective method to keep the social network safe for kids would be to let them in supervised, Facebook sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Nintendo Officially Reveals Wii U Controllers, Key To Next-Gen Console Gaming
Nintendo has revealed the final-configuration hardware that'll control its Wii U next-negeration gaming console, the company's great white hope to win the next-gen console game market from Microsoft and Sony. The hardware has been subject to much speculation since it was shown in prototype form as a tablet-like device with game controls around the edge. Now the controller is known to have NFC tag read and write skills, the ability to act as an independent TV remote, gyro sensors, and has more conventional analog stick inputs--much like its competition. Nintendo is hoping to gain the sort of sales popularity that it saw with its original Wii gaming device, which has long since ceded dominance to its traditional competition and the rising threat of casual gaming on devices like the iPhone and iPad--the last two capturing a market which, alone, is predicted to rise to $7.5 billion worldwide by 2015.
Nintendo made the unusual move to tease us with what may be the most innovative part of its Wii U console ahead of its bigger press event at E3 2012 this week.
SwaggSec Hacks China Telecom And Warner Bros.
A group that calls itself SwaggSec ("Hacking Today for an Entertaining Tomorrow") has owned up to breaking into China Telecom and, in an apparently unrelated move, Warner Bros. as well, CNET reports. Post-hack, on Twitter, SwaggSec goaded Warners Bros. to fix the gaps in their security infrastructure. SwaggSec's last high-profile coup was in early February this year, when the group hacked Foxconn's servers and extracted and published usernames and passwords of employees.
China Blocks Tiananmen Square Searches On 23rd Anniversary
On the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, China has censored search terms related to the crackdown. Banned search terms include the Chinese translations of "23," "six four," "never forget" and according to some,"today," the BBC reports. China's government has a track record of blotting out search terms related to politically sensitive topics, which has led Chinese political activists to express themselves on microblogging platforms like Sina Weibousing representative metaphors and images. As censor-defying memes for protest are getting more popular, the government is getting better at spotting them and snuffing them out too--the candle emoticon, usually used to mourn deaths on Weibo, is also blocked today. Google, which has long opposed the China government on the subject of search engine censorship last week, announced a new feature that would alert users when search terms they entered were censored. Chinese search engines like Baidu are previously "sanitized" for sensitive information, but since Google's servers are out of reach, their service is simply disrupted when a banned search term is entered, the New York Times explains.
• Flagship Biosciences LLC Acquires IHCtech, a Leading Provider of Research Immunohistochemistry and Histology Services More...
• Hi-Tech Pharmacal (HITK) Acquires Cormax Brand Rights from Watson Laboratories, Inc. (WPI) for Undisclosed Amount More...
• Orexo AB Acquires All US Rights for ProStrakan Group's Abstral and Receives a Net Cash Consideration of £55 Million More...
• Alize Pharma Closes EUR 3.3 Million Funding Round More...
• Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) Secures Additional Funding from Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to Pursue Post-Exposure Prophylaxis Indication for BioThrax More...
• AcelRx Pharmaceuticals Completes Private Placement of $10.0 Million More...
• Astellas Pharma Inc. (YPH.BE) and Drais Pharmaceuticals Partner to Develop Second Astellas Compound Through Seldar More...
• Baxter International, Inc. (BAX) Announces Collaboration with Chatham Therapeutics for Factor IX Hemophilia B Gene Therapy Treatment More...
• New Agreements to Give Quintiles, Inc. (QTRN) Access to De-Identified EMR Data Representing 40 Million Patient Lives More...
• Nouveau Life Pharmaceuticals (NOUV) Announces New CEO More...
• Codexis, Inc. (CDXS) Appoints John J. Nicols as President and Chief Executive Officer More...
• Targacept, Inc. (TRGT)'s Chief Executive deBethizy Steps Down in Shake-Up More...
• Apricus Biosciences (APRI) Announces Appointment of Paul V. Maier to Its Board of Directors More...
• Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Appoints Paul L. Berns to Its Board of Directors More...
• Simulations Plus (SLP) Reports Preliminary Third Quarter FY2012 Results More...
• GenScript Corporation Completes $40 Million R&D Center in Nanjing More...
• New Roche (RHHBY) Drug Slows Breast Tumor Growth More...
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY) Immune Drug Shows Promise in Three Cancers, Success May Spur Industry Race More...
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) Prostate Cancer Drug So Effective Trial Stopped More...
• Bayer AG (BAY.F) Drug Stalls Stomach Tumors After Standard Treatment More...
• GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Melanoma Drugs Beat Chemo in Pivotal Trials More...
• FDA Asked to Ban Lice Shampoo for Kids More...
• FivePrime Therapeutics, Inc. Announces That Human Genome Sciences Files U.S. IND for HGS1036/FP-1039 FGF Ligand Trap More...
• Premature Babies May Have Increased Risk of Psychosis, Archives of General Psychiatry Reveals More...
• Open-Fire Cooking May Affect Child Cognitive Development, University of California, Riverside Study More...
• University of Maryland Medical Center Study Questions Fruit Sugar Role in Hypertension More...
• More Vitamin D Might Help Older People Stay Active, Wake Forest University School of Medicine Study More...
• Antidepressant Helps Relieve Pain From Chemotherapy, University of Michigan School of Nursing Study More...
“All points in the direction that this is actually the man,” Martin Steltner, a spokesman for prosecutors in the German capital said today in an interview. “Once we have ascertained that, we will release more information.”
The arrest comes five days after Canada’s police sent out a nationwide warrant for Magnotta, who is also known as Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, after severed body parts were mailed to Canada’s governing Conservative Party headquarters. Interpol had since listed him as a wanted person.
A foot was found at the Conservative Party’s office a few blocks from Parliament on May 29; a hand was found by the postal service in Ottawa, and a torso was found near an apartment building in Montreal, according to Montreal police department spokesman Ian Lafreniere.
The victim of the killing was Jun Lin, a 33-year-old Chinese student studying in Montreal, the CBC reported June 1, citing Montreal police. Montreal police believe Magnotta killed Lin and videotaped a sequence of repeated stabbing and dismemberment before mailing the body parts, CBC reported.
German authorities are still checking “last questions” about his identity and will release more details tomorrow, Steltner said. Canadian Press reported that police stopped Magnotta after someone recognized him outside an Internet café in Berlin.
