Hitachi Ready To Launch 1-TB Drive

Hitachi Ready To Launch 1-TB Drive

Hitachi's soon-to-debut Deskstar 7K1000 will offer a full terabyte of storage that might seem enormous to those who can remember when hard drives were still measured in the megabytes; but at $399, Hitachi's new terabyte drive will cost just under 40 cents per gigabyte, on par with other drives on the market.
In a neck-and-neck race with Seagate Technologies, Hitachi has announced not one but two terabyte-sized hard drives for home users whose thirst for storage space never ends.

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 is designed for gaming and high-end PCs, such as those found in home entertainment systems where high-def videos chew up a hard drive's space as quickly as broadband connections can download them.

The drive will debut at next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where almost every gizmo- and gadget-maker on the planet will show off the latest cutting-edge toys. At a suggested retail price of $399, the Deskstar costs just under 40 cents per gigabyte.

Hitachi also has announced the CinemaStar 7K1000 for DVRs and computers that record TV directly to hard drives. Like the Deskstar, it can hold up to 1 TB of storage and will be released to consumers in the first half of 2007. Hitachi plans to release a business model later this year, too.

How Much Is Enough?

A full terabyte of storage -- 1,000 or 1,024 gigabytes, depending on which definition you use -- might seem enormous to those who can remember when hard drives were still measured in the megabytes.

"We all know that the demand is growing for digital content storage like audio and video downloads, home movies, pictures, etc., but would one really need or want a 1-TB drive?" asked Shawny Chen, analyst and storage expert at research firm Current Analysis.

But Chen and her firm track a national retail panel that includes Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, RadioShack, and Staples -- and the data is surprising.

"The 500-GB to 999-GB capacity band for internal desktop drives is the only one showing significant growth year-over-year," she said. "It still represents about 6 percent of hard drive unit sales; but a year ago, that figure was a mere 0.3 percent and this is the only capacity band that shows significant year-over-year unit growth."

And the Answer Is...

"Yes, eventually consumers will get to 1 TB," said Chen, who herself remembers when her mother bought a 1-GB external drive that, years ago, seemed huge.

Yet Hitachi's new drives beat older models in more than just space. The Deskstar offers increased shock protection and three "idle" modes designed to help the drive consume less power. In turn, the CinemaStar boasts Smooth Stream Technology designed to maximize the performance of audio and video applications.

When all is said and done, the terabyte mark remains the drives' best selling point, of course -- and a true beachhead.

In a published statement, Hitachi's Shinjiro Iwata, the company's chief marketing officer, said, "The industry's first one-terabyte hard drive represents a milestone that is 50 years in the making."

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But not without at least some cause.

'Proof' of methane lakes on Titan

'Proof' of methane lakes on Titan

The Cassini probe has spotted what scientists say is unequivocal evidence of lakes of liquid methane on Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

Radar images reveal dark, smooth patches that range in size from three to 70km across (two to 44 miles).

The team says the features, which were spied in the moon's far north, look like crater or caldera lakes on Earth.

The researchers tell the journal Nature that everything about the patches points to them being pools of liquid.

"They look very similar to lakes on Earth," explained Dr Ellen Stofan, a Cassini radar team member from Proxemy Research in Washington DC, US.

"They have channels feeding into them just like you have rivers feeding into lakes on the Earth. Their shapes, their shore-lines, all of those geologic aspects are actually very familiar."

Northern strip

The atmospheric chemistry on Titan is dominated by nitrogen and carbon-based compounds.

And with temperatures on the Saturnian satellite rarely venturing above -179C (-290F), it has long been hypothesised that abundant volumes of methane should pool on the surface into lakes, and even large seas.

But evidence for current bodies of liquid material on the surface has until now been sparse and equivocal.

Cassini must use radar to pierce the photochemical haze that obscures Titan's surface from its optical camera system.

The latest data was obtained last July, when the probe made its most northern radar pass of Titan to date.

The spacecraft imaged a narrow strip about 250km wide and over 1,000km long. It was found to contain more than 75 lakes.

Everything scientists know about the atmospheric chemistry on Titan suggests the liquid in the lakes should be predominantly methane, with some ethane also mixed in.

Some of the liquid would be expected to rain out of the sky, some could have welled up from below the surface.

Methane cycle

"The methane-ethane would become transparent, the way water is on Earth; it would be behaving like water, the lakes could have small waves on the surfaces," speculated Dr Stofan.

"So if it was possible for you to stand on Titan and look at the lakes, you wouldn't really know it's this weird chemistry."

On Earth, the cycling of water between the atmosphere, the land and oceans is known as the hydrological cycle. Titan would appear to be the only other place in the Solar System to have a similar, active fluid cycle. Scientists have already dubbed it the "methane-ologic cycle".

Last month, it was announced that the radar instrument on Cassini had found an enormous mountain range on Titan.

The range lies south of the equator and is about 150km long (93 miles), 30km (19 miles) wide and about 1.5km (nearly a mile) high.

Scientists told the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting that the range was probably as hard as rock, but made of icy materials.

The mountains appeared in the radar images to be coated with layers of material that researchers thought could be methane "snow".

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (Asi).

Boeing Sets Record for Airplane Orders

Boeing Sets Record for Airplane Orders

SEATTLE — Aerospace giant Boeing Co. on Thursday said it recorded 1,044 net commercial airplane orders during 2006, setting a new record for the second straight year.

Boeing recorded 1,002 net orders in 2005.

Gross orders last year, which exclude cancellations and conversions, totaled 1,050, compared with 1,029 gross orders in 2005.

The 737 program achieved a record with net orders of 729 airplanes, up from 569 in 2005.

Seventy-six different customers ordered Boeing airplanes in 2006, including passenger airlines, cargo carriers, leasing companies and private customers, according to a company release.

Shares of Chicago-based Boeing added 12 cents to $89.29 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Patent Lawsuit Filed Over Bluetooth

Patent Lawsuit Filed Over Bluetooth

Three major electronics makers have been accused of violating patented work from the University of Washington with their use of the Bluetooth wireless technology found in millions of computers, cell phones and headsets.

Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. and Finland's Nokia Corp. were accused of illegally incorporating unlicensed Bluetooth chip sets in a variety of products. The federal lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring the companies from selling those products.

Matsushita, known globally for its Panasonic brand products, and Samsung produce a wide range of electronics products, while Nokia is the world's largest manufacturer of cellular telephones. Bluetooth, whose products feature a distinctive, blinking blue light, enables wireless exchanges of data between cell phones, computers, headsets and other devices.

The lawsuit was filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Seattle by the Washington Research Institute, a nonprofit group that seeks commercial uses and enforces patents for technology developed at Washington's public universities.

Analysts said Wednesday that consumers likely won't be affected by the legal wrangling.

Defendants would be quick to settle if it appeared the case was immediately threatening their product lines, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.

But Enderle said Broadcom Corp. of Irvine, Calif., the only chip manufacturer that has licensed the technology, stood to profit mightily until the dispute is resolved.

"This is like a blazing advertisement for Broadcom," he said. "As long as this is in play, they can say, 'If you want to do Bluetooth products without problems, we're the only guys you can license it from.' This is a huge potential competitive advantage."

He also said timing was fortuitous, coming just ahead of next week's International Consumer Electronics Show, when many buyers and sellers are making design decisions about future products.

Nokia officials, following long-standing policy, would not comment on the lawsuit early Wednesday. A Samsung representative acknowledged that the lawsuit had been filed but would not comment further. No one answered a telephone call to Matsushita after business hours.

According to the lawsuit, Bluetooth-based computers, cell phones and headsets made by the companies have violated four patents, including one issued for research done in the mid-1990s by Edwin Suominen when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Washington. All four patents are now held by the Washington Research Institute.

The institute's principal lawyer, Michael Lisa, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the court filing followed three years of informal attempts to resolve the issue.

Any damages received will go to the university and to Suominen, who is serving as a technical adviser in the case, John D. Reagh, the institute's manager of business development and legal affairs, told The Seattle Times.

Institute officials did not immediately return a call Wednesday from The Associated Press.

The three manufacturers use chip sets made by CSR PLC of Cambridge, England, which has not licensed the disputed technology. CSR said in a filing with the London Stock Exchange that the suit is without merit and that the company will "vigorously" defend its products. CSR shares fell 2.9 percent to close Wednesday at 640 pence ($12.60) on the LSE.

Lisa said the institute was targeting the product manufacturers rather than the chip makers because "their products sell for more and yield higher profits and royalties."

Shares in Matsushita slipped 6 cents to close at $20.03 on the New York Stock Exchange, while Nokia shares rose 34 cents, or 1.67 percent, to finish at $20.66 on the NYSE.

Bird flu raging in Vietnam’s Mekong delta

Bird flu raging in Vietnam’s Mekong delta

Nguyen Hien Trung, head of Hau Giang’s animal health department, said a new site had been identified in Vi Thuy district yesterday after a dead bird had tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus strain.

A total of three communes in two districts had bird flu, he said.

Luong Ngoc Lan, head of Bac Lieu’s department of agriculture and rural development, said more poultry deaths had been reported in Hong Dan, Hoa Binh, Vinh Loi, and Gia Rai districts on Sunday.

The dead birds had tested H5N1 positive in Hong Dan and Hoa Binh while results were awaited from the other two districts, Lan said.

In Ca Mau many poultry reportedly died Monday.

The peidemic has hit at least 13 districts in the three provinces, prompting the slaughter of tens of thousands of fowl. Four people in Bac Lieu and two in Soc Trang provinces have been hospitalized with bird flu symptoms.

Last week Vietnam launched a national anti-bird flu campaign to stamp out the epidemic.

The World Bank has approved a US$10 million grant for a program to combat bird flu.

At least 42 people have died of the H5N1 virus in Vietnam since 2003 with the latest case reported in November 2005.

The disease has killed 157 of the 261 people infected globally since 2003.

Bungee-Powered Backpack Can Lighten Your Load

Bungee-Powered Backpack Can Lighten Your Load

December 30, 2006 Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced details for a suspended-load ergonomic backpack that reduces the force of a backpacks load on the wearer by 86%, allowing wearers to run far more comfortably with heavy loads. The backpack was created with soldiers and emergency workers in mind and could prevent the sort of muscle and joint injuries associated with running while carrying heavy items. The backpack will also benefit schoolchildren, since heavy school bags have been linked to muscle and orthopedic injury. "For the same energetic cost, you can either carry 48 pounds in a normal backpack or 60 pounds in a suspended-load ergonomic backpack," Larry Rome, a professor in Penn's Department of Biology, said. "It is like carrying an extra 12 pounds for 'free.'"

The backpack is based on a rigid frame pack, much like the type familiar to hikers everywhere; however, rather than being rigidly attached to the frame, the sack carrying the load is suspended from the frame by bungee cords.

Last year, Rome, an expert in the physics of muscle movement, introduced a power-generating backpack that converts mechanical energy from walking into as much as 7.4 watts of electricity, more than enough energy to power a number of portable electronic devices at once. His findings were published in Science.

The suspended-load ergonomic backpack has a similar sliding motion as the electricity generating-backpack, but it is tuned differently. Rather than having stiff springs, the load is suspended by very compliant bungee cords.

"The ergonomic backpack reduces the force of the load on the wearer by reducing the effect of the load as it shifts up and down," Rome said. "What is striking is that you can feel the 86% reduction in force with every step."

With a normal backpack, the peak force exerted by the load on the body during walking is twice as high as the static force, and during running its three times as large, exerting extreme forces on the joints.

The backpack shifts the timing of how force is applied as the wearer takes a step.

Essentially, the bungee cords permit the load to stay at nearly constant height from the ground while the wearer walks or runs around it, Rome said. The pack actually reduces the metabolic cost of walking from one point to another by about 40 watts, or the equivalent of carrying 12 extra pounds.

Penn researchers involved in development and testing of the Suspended-load Backpack at the Rome laboratory at Penn are Louis Flynn, an engineer, and postdoctoral fellow Taeseung D. Yoo. Funding for this research comes from the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Naval Research.

Rival to IVF 'is safer and cheaper'

Rival to IVF 'is safer and cheaper'

Women who have difficulty conceiving will be able to benefit from a new method of IVF that is cheaper and safer than conventional fertility treatments, doctors say.

Clinical trials in Denmark have shown that a pioneering technique known as in-vitro maturation (IVM) has a success rate of 30 per cent, comparable to standard IVF procedures. The patient, however, does not have to take expensive fertility drugs that can carry serious side-effects.

With conventional IVF doctors stimulate the release of mature eggs using hormone drugs and collect them during a woman’s monthly cycle before fertilising them in the laboratory with a man’s sperm.

The IVM method involves taking undeveloped eggs from ovaries and maturing them in the laboratory before fertilisation, while using hardly any drugs or no drugs at all.

More than 400 healthy babies have so far been born to women using the technique, which could reduce the cost of fertility treatment by up to half and give thousands more women the chance to conceive.

Professor Svend Lindenberg, a Danish scientist who has helped more than 1,000 women become pregnant using IVM, told a London fertility conference that the process had now achieved “stunning results”.

“We have demonstrated that it is possible to take an egg and fertilise it without having to use the heavy-duty drug approach,” he said. “We are achieving results that are better than nature and as good as high-stimulation IVF, without the risk of potentially life-threatening ovarian hyperstimulation and, of course, saving thousands of pounds per cycle in the cost of drugs.”

Professor Lindenberg, who works at the Nordica Fertility Centre in Copenhagen, explained: “We give a very low dose of a stimulating drug for three days early in the cycle and rescue up to ten eggs. For the first 24 hours a tiny amount of stimulating hormone is added to the culture, in fact one hundreth of the dose the woman would receive, and after that the eggs go on to mature in the culture alone.”

Under present IVF methods many women have been reluctant to donate their eggs for IVF because the drugs they must take can lead to life-threatening complications and an increased risk of cancer.

The demand for donor eggs is huge — potential recipients outnumber donors by two to one in Britain. In Denmark the move to IVM has been driven by women who are reluctant to take drugs, often because the problem lies with the male partner and not themselves, Professor Lindenberg said.

The technique is not suitable for all women; it works best in those who are under 37 years of age, have regular cycles or polycystic ovary syndrome, where women frequently fail to ovulate naturally. “This is part of a worldwide move against high-dose stimulation IVF,” Professor Lindenberg said. There was now no excuse to continue giving women high dosages of stimulation to the detriment of their health and their financial and emotional wellbeing.

IVM has previously been successful in creating animal embryos but the process has only recently been tried on human eggs. It was originally developed by Bob Edwards who, with Patrick Steptoe, were resposible for Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby.

It has been made easier by the development of finer needles to aspirate the eggs from an ovary and new scanning techniques that now show doctors the best follicles to select when seeking eggs to remove.

Bush Delights at Hussein Execution

Bush Delights at Hussein Execution

Washington, Dec 30 (Prensa Latina) The execution of ex Iraqi president Saddam Hussein pleased US President George W. Bush, after a difficult year for his troops in the Arab country.
In brief declarations to the press at his ranch Crawford in Texas the leader said the Hussein death is a milestone for the nation of the Persian Gulf.
Bush recognized that things have gone wrong since the ex chief of the Iraqi government was defeated by the English-US invasion on March 2003.
Hussein s execution won t end violence in Iraq, noted the president, in agreement with analysts that the sentence could bring about armed actions of rebel groups against the occupying forces.
The New York Times daily news said Bush is considering increasing the number of Pentagon soldiers in Iraq from 17 to 20 thousand.
The White House is also looking at new economic initiatives for the Middle East nation, which along with the increase of soldiers will help stabilize the country.
The republican leader held a closed-door meeting with his National Security team this Thursday to consider strategy changes in Iraq.

Bush reports 'good progress' on new Iraq plan

Bush reports 'good progress' on new Iraq plan

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) -- President Bush said Thursday he was making "good progress" in coming up with a fresh strategy on Iraq, as he met with top advisers at his Texas ranch.

Bush, who plans to unveil his plan next month, gathered with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley. Gates and Pace reported their findings from a trip last week to Iraq, Bush told reporters.

"Success in Iraq is vital for our own security," Bush said. He said he was "making good progress toward coming up with a plan that we think will help us achieve our objectives. As I think about this plan, I always have our troops in mind."

He said that he has "more consultations to do" and said his administration would be speaking with members of Congress.

As criticism mounts over his handling of the war, among the options Bush has been considering is a short-term "surge" in U.S. forces to help contain rampant violence. There are currently 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Democrats say November elections in which they took control of Congress from Bush's Republican Party reflected public discontent with the Iraq war and desire for change.

But Bush, who prides himself on sticking to decisions, has brushed aside a proposal from a bipartisan panel to ask U.S. foes Iran and Syria for help in stabilizing Iraq and is said to be looking closely at a temporary troop increase.

Sen. Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who will be the next chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other Democrats already have expressed opposition to a troop increase.

John Edwards, who announced his presidential candidacy Thursday and has called his vote for the Iraq war a mistake, said the United States should begin withdrawing troops rather than "escalating" the conflict by sending more troops. (Watch Edwards explain during his announcement why leaving Iraq is the solution )

The White House suggested Democrats and other critics should hold their fire until they hear Bush's recommendations.

Former Republican President Gerald Ford, who died on Tuesday, said in a 2004 interview embargoed until after his death that he thought Bush and his top advisers made a "big mistake" in their justification for invading Iraq.

Ford told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward he would have "maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer." (Full story)

US Board Probes Incident of Plane Carrying Blair (Update2)

US Board Probes Incident of Plane Carrying Blair (Update2)

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. safety board said it's investigating an incident in which a British Airways Plc jet carrying U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair overshot a runway after landing at Miami International Airport yesterday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said statements will be taken from the flight crew and damage to two runway lights has been documented. While the NTSB doesn't always examine such incidents, ``this involved a jumbo jet at a major airport'' with a government leader on board, spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said today in an interview.

No one was hurt when Flight 209 from London, with 343 people on board, rolled off the runway at 6:15 p.m. Miami time, the NTSB said in a statement. The Boeing Co. 747 returned to London after an airport inspection found no damage to the jet, the board said.

The plane after landing ``taxied beyond the end of the runway and went into the paved runway overrun area,'' the NTSB said. British Airways spokesman John Lampl in a telephone interview yesterday disputed that the aircraft overshot the runway, saying there was ``no emergency, no overrun.''

After landing, the pilot couldn't see the correct taxiway because of poor lighting, Lampl said. The pilot stopped the plane, radioed for help and was guided to the gate, he said.

Lopatkiewicz said the incident doesn't count as a runway overrun because the plane had already landed successfully and was taxiing to the gate when it ran over the lights. The plane was towed from the overrun area to a taxiway and then went to the gate under its own power.

Brendan O'Grady, a spokesman for Blair's office in London, said the prime minister was on vacation and occasionally uses commercial flights.

A call to British Airways' press office today wasn't immediately returned.

Sudan Agrees To Hybrid Peacekeeping Force

Sudan Agrees To Hybrid Peacekeeping Force

The Sudanese government agreed in a letter to the United Nations to accept a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping effort in the country's war-torn Darfur region, according to a copy of the document obtained Tuesday.

In a letter to outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan obtained by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, Sudan's President Omer Hassan Ahmed Al- Bashir said his country is ready to accept the conclusions of a November conference in Addis Ababa, in which the UN offered to send military advisers and logistical support to the AU mission in Darfur.

Al-Bashir urged the UN Security Council to endorse the plan and authorize financial support for peacekeeping in the region.

The cash-strapped AU mission comprises a force of around 7,000 soldiers patrolling an area the size of France. Critics charge it cannot adequately protect civilians under its mandate.

Sudan last month reportedly agreed to the joint mission, but later sent conflicting signals with some top officials suggesting UN troops would be allowed on the ground, while others said Sudan would only accept UN financial and logistical support.

Bush's Bold Plans To Exterminate Bald Eagle

Bush's Bold Plans To Exterminate Bald Eagle

Because it’s important to destroy the symbols of liberty, too, the White House will formally remove America’s Magical Bird — the majestic fish-eating Bald Eagle — from the Endangered Species list next month.

But this is one of those rare situations in which the Bush Administration isn’t really to blame and the change is actually for the good, not bad. Hooray! While it’s hard to even remember back when the United States was a rich and powerful country beloved by the world, it was only seven years ago when our prosperous, peaceful America happily realized the bald eagle had recovered magnificently from near extinction.

The eagles are plentiful now, but Washington is still mourning the loss of Martha, the famous Wilson Bridge bald eagle named for Rep. John Murtha. Government forces euthanized the loyal bird in October.

Comptroller Pleads Guilty and Resigns Over Use of Driver
ALBANY, Dec. 22 — After calmly assuring a judge that he was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs and agreeing to pay a $50 fee so that his DNA could be included in a statewide database of convicted felons, State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi pleaded guilty Friday morning to defrauding the government and resigned from office.

Mr. Hevesi, the state’s top fiscal watchdog, told the court in a hoarse voice that one of the state workers he had assigned as a driver for his wife, Carol, had done much more than provide security for her. Prosecutors filed court papers revealing that the worker had also watered her plants, driven her to Bloomingdale’s and dropped off her dry cleaning.

“I apologize to the court, but until this issue became a public matter, I did not plan to reimburse the state for his time,” Mr. Hevesi told the court under oath, in a reversal of the statements he made this fall during his successful re-election campaign.

In a deal with the Albany County district attorney’s office, Mr. Hevesi pleaded guilty to a single felony, agreed to pay a $5,000 fine on top of the more than $206,000 he has already reimbursed the state, and agreed to resign for the rest of his current term and for the term that begins Jan. 1. The agreement will spare him prison time.

City of Amsterdam announces experiment

City of Amsterdam announces experiment

The City of Amsterdam said Friday it will spend euro300,000 (US$400,00) testing open source software in two administrative districts in 2007, in a potential blow for the city's current main supplier, Microsoft Corp.

Open source software is developed for free by volunteer programmers, and leased by providers who usually only charge for service and support.

City spokeswoman Marjolijn van Goethem said Amsterdam's housing department and one of its borough offices _ Zeeburg _ would test a Linux-based operating system on city computers, and open-source document software, replacing Microsoft Windows and Office.

Numerous European towns and cities, notably Munich, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, have switched partially or mostly to open source systems but they remain a tiny slice of the overall market.

"Earlier this year, a study ordered by the (Amsterdam) city council showed that an 'open' software strategy leads to more independence from suppliers," the city said in a statement. "In addition, the use of open software can lead to better exchange and storage of information, without unacceptable financial or logistical risks."

The test is scheduled to run during the first half of 2007, and, if successful, the rest of the city may start using open source software, the city statement said.

It said it didn't plan to stop using Microsoft software entirely in any case, but "it is the expectation that a new contract with ... Microsoft will be smaller." The current contract expires in at the end of 2008.

The statement did not reveal further details of the Microsoft contract.

Nine other Dutch cities, including Haarlem, Groningen, Eindhoven and Nijmegen have joined in signing Amsterdam's "manifesto for open software in government," penned earlier this year.

But Van Goethem said it was up to each city individually to decide how it will honour that statement of principle.

The Muslims are coming, the Muslims are coming!

The Muslims are coming, the Muslims are coming!

One right-wing politician voiced his alarm that the election of more Muslims to high office could diminish American values. His solution was to severely limit immigration. This alarmism is not a political gaffe, but is rather a rabble-rousing way to stake out his corner of the right-wing circus.

Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) wrote a letter to select supporters opposing Muslim representative-elect Keith Ellison's (D-MN) choice to swear in on the Qur'an. He also warned that ignoring his immigration plan would result in "many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Qur'an." He wanted to end visas "allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country."

Ignoring FDR’s call to fear nothing but fear itself, he wrote: "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped."

We may never have come across this insight into the art of religion-baiting if the letter was not accidentally sent to the chair of the local Sierra Club chapter. This letter was revealed by Charlottesville's alternative newspaper, the C-Ville Weekly.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported that Members of Congress came out against his statement. Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. wrote him a letter saying he was "greatly disappointed and in fact startled" by the letter. Rep. Pascrell pointed out that they are both "committed to fighting extremism." However, this "’fight’ will not be confused or misdirected to discriminate against any race, religion or ethnicity."

Murdoch buys back News Corp shares

Murdoch buys back News Corp shares
News Corp is planning a $11 billion deal to buy back US media giant John Malone's 16.3% stake in the company.

The deal also includes Malone's Liberty Media taking News Corp's stake in the US satellite broadcaster DirecTV, three regional sports networks and $550 million of cash.

Though the buyback still needs the approval of the other shareholders, it will strengthen Murdoch and his family's 30% stake in the company. If approved the deal is expected to be completed in the second half of 2007.

When Malone took 19% of News Corp voting shares three years ago, the company moved to prevent him building his stake any further.

It is thought Murdoch eventually wishes to hand the running of News Corp to one of his sons, most likely James Murdoch, who is currently chief executive of BSkyB, which is 39% owned by News Corp.