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A daytime curfew is in force in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in an attempt to curb a surge in violence. Police have been ordered to seize any private vehicles that defy the ban, on what is the Muslim day of prayers. In continuing violence, the bodies of at least 18 people killed in a suspected sectarian attack were found near Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of people have died since a key Shia mosque was bombed last week in the city of Samarra. In the latest large-scale attack, police quoted residents as saying about 50 gunmen ambushed the small town of Nahrawan, south-east of Baghdad, at nightfall on Thursday. They said the attackers targeted a power station, killing an as-yet unknown number of people, before moving on to two brick factories, where they killed 18 workers, all believed to be Shia. Last week, the bodies of 47 factory workers, who had been dragged from their vehicles and shot, were also found in Nahrawan. Imams warned Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said he had o...

Computer experts have discovered two new viruses that target Apple computers, and they say more could be found in the future.That's the advice being passed to owners of Apple computers by computer experts. They are sharing those words of wisdom because two viruses written to target Apple computers were discovered on the Internet last month and a major security hole in OS X, the latest operating system for Apple computers, was found. While viruses and security weaknesses are almost everyday occurrences for owners of Windows-based computers, they are virtually unheard of in the world of Apple. But that world is changing. Computer security experts say more viruses and security flaws for Apple computers will be found in the near future. It's the price of popularity, they explained. ''You will start to see more exploits, but only because Apple has garnered a lot of attention in the past year,'' said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec. Symantec makes an...

From LATimes.com Study finds continent is shrinking faster than it can grow. Experts say changes to the global water cycle could hasten the pace of sea-level rise. The ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — are shrinking faster than new snow can fall, scientists reported Thursday in the first comprehensive satellite survey of the entire continent. Researchers at the University of Colorado determined that between 2002 and 2005 Antarctica lost ice at a rate of 36 cubic miles a year, rather than growing from heavier snowfalls as had been predicted. That amount of ice is equivalent to about 30 times the fresh water used by Los Angeles every year. "It is the first time we can say that if you look at the entire ice sheet, it is losing mass," said geophysicist Isabella Velicogna, whose findings were published online Thursday by the journal Science. This month, an independent research team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge...

BERLIN - The deadly strain of bird flu has been found in a cat in Germany, officials said Tuesday, the first time the virus has been identified in an animal other than a bird in central Europe. Health officials urged cat owners to keep pets indoors after the dead cat was discovered over the weekend on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, where most of the more than 100 wild birds infected by the H5N1 strain have been found. The cat is believed to have eaten an infected bird, said Thomas Mettenleiter, head of Germany's Friedrich Loeffler Institute. That is in keeping with a pattern of disease transmission seen in wild cats in Asia. Mettenleiter insisted, however, there was no danger to humans as there have been no documented cases of a cat transmitting the virus to people. However, Maria Cheng of the World Health Organization in Geneva said there was not enough information on how the disease is transmitted to be sure. She noted that tigers and snow leopards in a zoo in Thailand became i...

From Pocket-lint.co.uk Sony Ericsson has signed a deal with Google that will mean owners of the Sony Ericsson mobile phones will be able to file to a personal blog on the move as soon as they turn on their new phone. The company today announced that it will be integrating Google’s Blogger and Web Search features on all its future mobile phones. Owners of a blogger.com account will be able to file stories via their mobile phone on the move with the included software. It is the first time a mobile phone manufacturer has included tools to allow people to blog directly from their handset and shows that blogging is about to get a whole lot bigger. The first Sony Ericsson products to offer the new service are the recently announced K610 UMTS phone and new flagship imaging handsets, the K800 and K790, announced today and available sometime before the end of June. "We are seeing exponential growth in blogging and consumers are turning more and more often to the Internet as a means of shar...

Over the last two years, Google has lured some of the best and brightest minds in technology and science to join the search giant's lava lamp and snack-filled offices. Here's a rundown. Credit: CNET News.com Click the thumbnail

Russian anti-virus specialist Kaspersky Lab has discovered evidence of the first mobile phone Trojan targeting J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) devices. The sample Trojan, identified as Redbrowser.A, works on most phones with J2ME support, raising fears that malware writers are expanding the target beyond just Symbian-based smart phones. Redbrowser.A is a J2ME-based Java Midlet that pretends to be a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) browser that offers free WAP browsing. Instead, once a phone is infected, the Trojan sends text messages to premium rate numbers, saddling the victim with exorbitant messaging charges. The infected user gets charged between $5 and $6 for each text message sent by the Trojan, said Shane Coursen, Kaspersky Lab's senior technical consultant. In an interview with eWEEK, Coursen said the Trojan, which was not found in the wild, is further proof that the mobile malware threat "is expanding rapidly." Click here to read more abou...

Microsoft has shipped a new version of its Internet Explorer browser to permanently change the way multimedia content is rendered on Web pages. The cumulative non-security IE update was released Feb. 28 as an optional download for IE6 on Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and is a direct result of the multimillion-dollar patent spat with Chicago-based Eolas Technologies. The modifications mean that IE users won't be able to directly interact with Microsoft ActiveX controls loaded by the APPLET, EMBED, or OBJECT elements without first activating the user interface with an extra mouse click. Some widely deployed programs that use ActiveX controls within the browser include Adobe's Reader and Flash, Apple's QuickTime Player, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Sun's JVM (Java Virtual Machine). A Microsoft spokesperson said the changes will have "little to no impact on customer experience and partner applications...

SAN FRANCISCO-- Test versions of new Windows Live hosted services--Windows Live Expo and Windows Live Local--are now available. Windows Live Expo is an online classified service Microsoft plans to launch in the United States, the company said. In addition to traditional classified ads--such as listings of items for sale or apartments for rent--the service also will provide social networking and community features. Users can sign up for the beta of Live Expo . The new test version of Windows Live Local, formerly MSN Virtual Earth , which is a local search and mapping service already in beta, will include a new viewing feature called "street side," Microsoft said. Street side offers images in a split-screen navigation window. In the upper pane, Windows Live Local users can view street-level images of destinations, while in the lower pane, they can navigate using three view categories--race car, sports car, and walk--to travel to their local destinations. The Windows Live...

Technical glitches by Microsoft and the digital music device makers have hampered Napster Inc.'s (Nasdaq:NAPS - news) ability to close the gap with Apple's iTunes, the dominant online music service, Napster's chief executive said on Tuesday. "There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months," Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York. "Our business does rely on Microsoft's digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft's ecosystem of device manufacturers," he added. Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), he noted, had to grapple with the complexities of dealing with a number of different services and device makers. "It's a lot more complex to get organized properly than it is to build one device and one service as Apple has done," Gorog said. "It's always be...

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. unveiled several new online technologies Tuesday, including early versions of an Internet classified service and a local search function that provides extremely detailed pictures of local streets. Microsoft also said it plans to begin testing a desktop e-mail product designed to work with the company's online e-mail accounts, similar to Microsoft Outlook Express. The spate of online efforts are part of the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker's broader goal of improving its Internet-based offerings, to better compete with rivals such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - news ) The new search function, dubbed "street view," aims to give people a driver's view of downtown Seattle and San Francisco, using pictures detailed enough to make out cars and people. Available in test form, it's similar to Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine, which provides detailed street-level views of certain cities. Microsoft had previously a...