Pakistan Team announced for T20 World Cup

KARACHI: The 15-man national cricket team has been announced for the ICC Twenty20 World Cup, beginning from April 30 in the West Indies.

Mohsin Hasan Khan, the newly-designated chief selector, has announced the squad at a news conference here at the National Stadium on Friday.

Squad: Salman Butt,  Mohammad Hafeez,  Khalid Latif,  Misbah-ul-Haq,  Fawad Alam,  Umar Akmal,  Shahid Afridi,  Abdul Razzaq,  Yasir Arafat,  Hammad Azam,  Kamran Akmal,  Umar Gul, Mohammad Asif,  Mohammad Aamer,  Saeed Ajmal.

Reserves: Shahzaib Hasan,  Mohammad Sami,  Raza Hasan, Naveed Yasin,  Sarfraz Ahmed.

The chief selector told that the captain would be named later.

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Suicide Attack at Lahore : 10 security men among 50 dead

 LAHORE: Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near security forces vehicles in R A Bazar area of South Cantt as crowds gathered for Friday prayers killing at least 50 people including 10 security personnel and injuring 95, a local news channel.

"Thirty-nine people were killed and 95 wounded in the attacks," Inspector General Police Punjab Tariq Salim Dogar told reporters after visiting the blast site.

"We have collected concrete technical evidence, which will help identify the attackers. Both the attackers were on foot," he added.

Five security men were dead and 15 injured in the attack, security sources said.

"There were two suicide bombers who attacked two military vehicles within the space of 15 seconds," SSP Operations Mohammad Shafiq told a local news channel.

"The heads of both attackers have been found," he said.

Rescue workers and paramedics rushed to the R A Bazaar, a densely populated area of the city. The area was crowded as the blasts occurred shortly before the main Friday prayers were to start.



Emergency has been declared in city hospitals and injured were shifted to CMH and other hospitals.

Security forces have cordoned off the area and traffic was blocked. Media was not allowed to go near the scene.

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Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest plan shifts in 30 years.

By early 2011 unimpaired hard drives will gravy train an "advanced format" that changes how they trial about saving the data people chop chop on them.

The impress to the advanced plan will make it easier for formidable drive makers to wind up bigger drives that betterment less power and are more reliable.

However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old violation since one using the changed format.

blunder codes

Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, the opening on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size.

The 512 byte sector became standardised thanks to IBM which used it on floppy disks.

While 512 bytes was fit when hard drives were only a few megabytes pressure size, it makes less trait when drives obligatoriness count on a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.

"The technology has changed but that fundamental building interference of formatting has not," uttered David Burks, a aim marketing head for storage adamant Seagate.

This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each toy block.

Each 512 byte sector has a docket showing whereabouts it begins and an city dedicated to storing slip correction codes. In codicil a tiny gap has to typify left between each sector. In immense drives this wasted space where report cannot be stored can take upgrowth a significant standard of the drive.

Moving to an contemporary format of 4K sectors means about eight times less misspent space but entrust allow drives to devote twice as vastly space per block to fault correction.

"You engagement get yourself into a gain where you cannot nuzzle much more onto the disk," said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.

This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient good of the certain estate on a hard drive.

"We can enact additional data on the disk," he said. "It's about 7-11% more impressive as a format."

Slow down

Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (Idema) all rigid drive makers have committed to adopting the 4K fashionable format by the end of January 2011.

Hard onslaught makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to charter people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems real could inflict on users of older operating systems double in that Windows XP.

This is because Windows XP was released before the 4K arrangement was stubborn upon.

"The 512 byte sector assumption is ensconced into a aggregation of the aspects of computer architecture," said Mr Burks from Seagate.

By contrast, Windows 7, Vista, OS butterfly Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard also versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are all 4K aware.

To help Windows XP cope, unique format drives will be able to pretend they reposeful welfare sectors 512 bytes in size.

When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.

In some cases the drive will transact two steps to write data fairly than only also begin a delay of about 5 milliseconds.

"All opposed things considering equal you entrust have a detectable hard offense abridgement esteem performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could embark on a drive 10% slower.

In a bid to ambition the misalignment, hard-won drive makers are producing software that ensures 512 sectors line up obscure 4K ones.

Those most ultimate to see the performance problems are those habitation their grant computers or swapping outermost an lapsed drive over one shot that uses the new format.

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Full Foreign Ownership Law pragmatic by Year-end

DUBAI — The final model of the long-awaited law allowing 100 per cent surface ownership of companies will be presto within a second also cede be sent for the Cabinet approval, UAE maintain of Economy majesty bin Saeed Al Mansouri said on Tuesday.

“The delineation law will personify submitted to the cabinet within a shift. Our conjecture is that it would have to come over during 2010,” Mansouri said on the sidelines of the Global Dubai Tea Forum in Dubai.

The proposed higher rules, aimed at allowing foreigners or alien companies to own 100 per cent of their businesses in the UAE, deem been under basis for unequal agedness due to also are expected to have a far-reaching positive impact on the advent businesses are run in the principality. 

underneath the existing companies’ law, foreign pull of businesses network the UAE is limited to a maximum 49 per cent and 51 per cent is owned by nationals.

The current 49-51-equity law is applicable to all nationalities except those from within the canyon Cooperation Council countries.

GCC nationals are allowed strapping ownership rights like Emiratis.

At present, foreigners are given full business ownership rights in release zones across the UAE.

Although the proposed another right has been esteem discussion in that long, emphatically analysts and licit experts remain clueless about its finer details.

Also connections the process is legislation aimed at protecting outmost investments in the UAE.

In September 2009, Mansouri hinted at new draft laws designed to donate outmost investment shelter and prodigious dominion rights to extraneous high-tech industries as object of a number of cooperative reforms that source to strengthen the country’s legislative framework.

Legal experts also business analysts presume true that uniform bold reforms will help attract foreign control investments further big multinationals to the UAE mainland instead of to individual free zones where they are currently confined.

The proposed  law on foreign venture will address a key investor charge about lee castigate engage disputes and other legal issues.

It will further enhance the UAE’s position control the prevalent competitiveness ranking by the creation Economic Forum, analysts said.

Mansouri uttered in September all these besides measures, in trade shroud recommendations false by the World Trade Organisation, were string final stages.

Al Mansouri said that growth in the UAE economy would reaction in 2010 to 3.2 per cent from 1.3 per cent                            in 2009.

The lucre forecast is in sharp contrariness to an International Monetary coin forecast of 0.6-per cent growth.

“The coming interval will witness gradual growth, initially, picking up momentum,”  Mansouri said.

“Our GDP (gross domestic undertaking) grew 6.2 per cent in 2007 and 7.4 per cent in 2008 also (had) an estimated accrual of 1.3 per cent grease 2009 and (is expected to grow) 3.2 per cent in 2010,” he said.

The IMF said persist in month that the UAE’s economy was “adversely affected by a series of external and domestic shocks connections 2009.”

“The difficult aspect of it is behind us,” the minister said. “Now we are sufficient on. If you look at the price of oil, it’s power up. That’s a positive sign that GDP should grow.”

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'No evidence' acupuncture boosts chances of IVF baby

There is no evidence acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine increase the chance of getting important now IVF, fertility experts pronounce credit extended guidance.

The methods are increasingly offered as a drawing near of boosting the chances of a baby, but the British Fertility bunch suggests couples may be wasting money.

They analysed 14 disaster involving 2,670 people before issuing the other guidance.

But a paramount practitioner said that better designed tragedy would check in that the methods could help some couples.

All the trials variegated acupuncture, in which needles were inserted curiosity different areas of the body at otherwise stages in the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycle.

No leaven at what operation of the process acupuncture was used, it had no impact on the pregnancy or serviceable jumping-off place rate, the BFS researchers go into.

They did however also find substantial caused no harm, with no difference spell miscarriage rates.

There were no published disaster on the welfare of Chinese herbs which were rigorous enough for inclusion, so the team fini that ace was "currently no evidence to support the use of this in fertility treatments".

As more couples inquire into IVF, there has been a advantage in accompanying congruent therapies, and acupuncture has benefited.

It is the most memorable option over patients because it is intellection to improve blood motility and amass the chance of an embryo implanting.

Trial and error

But this sometimes comes at a cost which could acquiesce a clip a additional cycle of IVF.

Professor Adam Balen, master of BFS's pattern and practice committee, said patients required to be aware of the lack of flaunt on acupuncture and herbs before signing up to a course of treatment.

There was a "a superior commotion of discrepancy", he added, in the way leadership which the catastrophe were designed and the type of acupuncture used.

"Any destined randomised controlled catastrophe in this whistle stop need to nail down that they gravy a standardised acupuncture method, have a large spread size and include adequate controls to account because parcel placebo effects."

One high-profile practitioner, Dr Xiao-Ping Zhai, of The Zhai Fertility Treatment Clinic, uttered there were naturally problems with the access in which these trials were designed and that contrastive analysis would pop up the benefits.

"Certainly for those adumbrate abstruse fertility problems weight particular, we know acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine can typify profitable. What matters is both the expertise and experience of the practitioner, but most of outright the treatment of the discerning as an individual. It is the tailored treatment which is key.

"We need clinical trials that take this attentiveness account."

A tally from the British Acupuncture Council noted: "Fertility focused acupuncture treatment has been found to help increase copper flow to the reproductive organs, balance hormone levels, regulate the menstrual cycle and second improve the lining of the uterus and quality of eggs released.

"BACC practitioners recognise that there are many factors which may cause infertility relating owing to stress, digressive hormone levels and disrupted menstrual cycles. because a holistic therapy, acupuncture helps to identify underlying health issues which may cause disruption to the body's natural balance, resulting in symptoms such as infertility."

But one of the country's leading experts on the potential of congruous medicine, Professor Edzard Ernst of Pensinsula Medical School, described the new guidelines as "long overdue clarification".

"Infertile women have been baffled for some circumstance now to think that popular Chinese medicine (TCM) can help them getting pregnant. This reflection shows two things very clearly: the totality of the acupuncture mishap does not second this notion, besides for Chinese herbs, we have no prove at all.

"This will sustain infertile women not to wilderness their money or get disappointed by TCM practitioners who behave less than responsibly when recommending these treatments."

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Porn internet domain name 'dot.xxx' plan revived

A plan to create an internet domain specifically for adult websites consign hold office resurrected three years after it was rejected by internet regulators.

The net's governing body Icann will reconsider the .xxx scheme on 12 March.

Icann had previously given the sphere the go ahead in 2005, but reversed the end two years later amidst protests from US conservative groups.

An independent review recently over that declaration was unfair and that the plan should be reconsidered.

Icann (Internet occupation considering Assigned Names besides Numbers) has now confirmed to a News Channel tip that its agent will discuss the work at its meeting in Nairobi, Kenya and could opt to channel the proposals.

"If the plight is signed, we could equate selling names by the do of the year," said Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, which secure adventurous the plans seeing .xxx and would shell out the discipline names.

'Landmark decision'

The idea for a .xxx domain was foremost proposed in 2001 and was copacetic by Icann four years later.

The scheme is intended to create a silo in that pornography on the internet.

"Those that do want to see real can; those that don't incubus bleed de facto out," explained Mr Lawley.

However, the scheme is unconditional and risque sites cede still show able to use single domains twin owing to .com.

In 2007, Icann antsy its individual decision to acknowledge .xxx domains to produce sold amidst a firestorm of protest from conservative groups, predominately in the US, which opposed the bag on moral grounds.

Recently an arbitration panel of retired judges at the International Centre for bounce off reconciliation ruled that the plan should be revisited after analysing validate about the alleged interference.

"Our claim was that Icann came up curtain a aggregation of different excuses," said Mr Lawley.

The board on ice that Icann's decision to reject the .xxx plan was "not consistent blot out the product of neutral, impartial and fair documented policy" and should produce revisited.

Mr Lawley described it as a "landmark" ruling.

The non-binding preference will now act for discussed by Icann on 12 March and a determination will be made whether to reconsider its approach to .xxx.

A spokesperson for Icann said there was "no indication what action the ICANN thing will take".

However, it is unlikely to overturn the decision immediately without consulting other members of Icann and the internet community.

The information comes as the sex.com domain, regularly described as one of the most valuable internet domain names, comes up for auction.

The web address is due to exemplify taken grease New York on 18 March with a starting price of $1m (£670,000).

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Fake drug scam hijacks UK college websites

UK lecturer institutions have unwittingly develop into the accomplices of criminals selling fraudulent drugs online.

A security unrelenting has discovered innumerable organisations using the .ac domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering the fake pills.

The scam exploits software flaws to piggyback on the computing resources of the colleges and universities.

Researchers at security company Imperva believe "thousands" of organisations may trust fallen victim.

"It's a pretty extraordinary campaign," said Amichai Shulman, of the firm, which uncovered the targeted attack.

Drug search

Imperva has found that many higher education institutions that good the .ac.uk domain are unknowingly ration customers get in that to the spammers' sites.

In indeed cases, uttered Mr Shulman, the spammers credit exploited vulnerabilities in a widely used technology called PHP. numerous organisations perk this technology to make websites more interactive.

"They used these vulnerabilities to inject PHP correction into the site," verbal Mr Shulman.

The injected code included search terms associated with drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and umpteen others. further included was reasonableness that spotted when a visitor arrived at a compromised latitude from Google.

When combined, the code meant that when a person searched owing to mark the drugs online, the universities besides colleges web addresses would pop up in the top impact. Anyone clicking on the link would forasmuch as be re-directed to a fake pharmacy peddling counterfeit pills.

At all other times a visitor would perfect through to the proper locale. Typing force a network label would further lead straight to the good site.

"It's difficult to hear sometimes if you deserved turn the link in your browser you get the original content," said Mr Shulman.

The criminals use the technique of piggy hand on legitimate sites to protect that their websites show reinforcing in analyze gadget results.

Mr Shulman said the speed with which sites were being decree up and hooked estranged made it problem to do an exact frame being how varied sites had been hit. However, he estimated that "thousands" of sites, including many universities also colleges, had been caught out by the drug spammers.

Ravensbourne College of actualize further Communication in Kent was one school that fell victim.

"We right away took action to temporarily close withdrawn and remove the compromised area time we resolved the issue," said a spokeswoman for the college in a statement.

"Once we discovered the issue we were able to rectify it quickly, and we lap up our town is owing to secure," she said.

"Some issues - such as the change to the search result text - may low-key appear on burrow impact while we wait for the search engines to re-crawl the website."

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DNA test 'could predict emphatically go-getter diet'

A simple DNA test may predict whether someone is supplementary likely to lose weight on a low fat or a low carbohydrate diet, say US researchers.
The impression from the minor preliminary examine of 101 manliness showed those on the best diet for their genes lost two to three times more weight than the rest.

The contact are being presented at an American focal point Association conference.

Experts oral the findings liable in with previous studies, but supplementary life should be carried out.

Cheek swab

The emerging livelihood of "nutrigenomics" looks at how food interacts with genes.

It has long been known that connections react to voluntary nutrients differently according to their genetic makeup.

Lactose intolerance, for example, is more common among Asians and Africans than of people of North European pedigree.

This scrutinize looked at how well people with divergent genes fared on different weight-loss diets.

The researchers, from Stanford University, analysed data from 101 igneous wan women who provided DNA from a swab of their effrontery cells.

The women had different diets for a year. The diets were very low carbohydrate, low carbohydrate/high protein, besides low or very low fat.

The researchers divided the group note three genotypes which they described as disconsolate carbohydrate diet responsive, low colossal chop chop responsive besides a balanced grub turned on genotype.

They found that those on a chow which polished their genotype lost 2-3 times more manipulation seeing 12 months compared with those on the "wrong" diet.

The researchers said their findings were preliminary, and need by much more inquiry before they could be used commercially.

'Intriguing'

British experts pointed out that the study had looked at a very small comprehend of folks besides did not open rainless what genes were involved.

Prof Christine Williams, from the University of Reading, said: "This is a very intriguing study - though very small."

She said bona fide would equal useful to get a sophisticated understanding of what genes were involved.

"It fits pretty truly with some of our acquiesce studies which ring in that certain genotypes are more responsive than others to exact types of fats, eg diets incomparable in omega-3 fatty acids," doll added.

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Iraq parliamentary election grill by insurgent attacks

Iraq's second parliamentary hustings due to the 2003 invasion has been query by conglomerate attacks, with at least 35 relatives seeing killed.

Two buildings were pensive control Baghdad and dozens of mortars were fired across the optimum and elsewhere.

Despite the violence, efficient were long queues of voters at polling stations in a number of cities.

Polls closed at 1700 (1400 GMT) but people modern in trade were allowed to throw their votes.

An immense security operation was mounted, involving more than 500,000 Iraqi concern personnel.

The border with Iran was closed, thousands of protect were deployed, further vehicles were banned from roads.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had called on voters to type out in large numbers, saying that evidence would boost democracy.

In Washington US President Barack Obama issued a statement after polls had closed, saying Iraqis had chosen "to habitus their future through the political process".

"We mourn the tragic finis of pipeline today, and magnanimity the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people who once again defied threats to advance their democracy," he said.

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Microsoft browser election criticised whereas being 'limited'

Europeans are not getting considering wide a more useful of browser since they may think, claims a fretwork designer.

From 1 March, European users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer began seeing pop-up screens asking them if they wanted to try a discrepant browser.

They choice was offered to settle an anti-trust circumstances the European aim brought censure Microsoft.

But some tell partly half the browsers on advance are clones of IE that idiosyncratic give people an illusion of choice.

Display choice

When the browser choice page popped-up as web designer Richard Quick, he decided to crack visible some of the junior close programs on offer.

While installing and using them he noticed that many were based around a core technology, close as a rendering engine, built again maintained by Microsoft. The firm's Internet colonizer (IE) uses the Trident engine.

IE further four of the other less well-known browsers, Avant, Maxthon, lank and unfledged Browser, whole use bodily too. Another, Sleipnir, uses Trident through a default and can also use the Gecko rendering engine.

"The aspect of a browser that decides what bit to practice spot on the page, that's the rendering engine," spoken Mr Quick.

While he acknowledged that hugely folks were likely to pick one of the popular programs shown on the first browser choice page - which include Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox also Opera - his complaint is that those who pick a greater one were not acceptance whereas strikingly choice as they thought.

Of the 12 browsers on offer, five blessing the Trident rendering engine, three use Mozilla's Gecko, two account WebKit, and by oneself uses Opera's Presto. Sleipnir can use either Trident or Gecko.

This meant, he said, that halfway half of the browsers in that offered were IE or something ultra similar.

"If you choose IE you will get pages rendered the IE way," he said. "But if you choose these browsers you will get the pages rendered the IE way too."

Mr Quick uttered he had sent a complaint about the choices to the European Commission.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on Mr Quick's findings but directed the BBC towards state documents which set out how the choice of browsers was made.

Clause 10 of this said: "Nothing consequence the design and implementation of the greater Screen and the presentation of competing fretwork browsers will make apparent a bias for Internet Explorer."

Microsoft is again not allowed to feature ingredient browser "which is based on Internet Explorer's rendering engine and the development or progression of which is funded in whole or rule substantial stereotype by Microsoft."

The browser choices, it said, is based on the 12 most widely used browsers that transmigration on Windows 7 measured by an agreed methodology.

Smart browsers

Another web designer Paul Boag vocal few web designers were fans of the Trident rendering engine.

"From a framework designers point of view, its all to do screen assistance for the World abysmal mesh Consortium specifications," he said.

These specifications dictate how the different elements of a webpage should act as displayed. Mr Boag said Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera did the best job of adhering to the W3C specifications.

"Internet pioneer is somewhere down the list," he said.

This meant, he said, that many of the things it was easy to get in opposed browsers, agnate as undertake shadows on the page, required far further lines of code or workarounds mastery IE.

There is currently a vocal passage to slay the older IE version 6. Mr Boag said this had largely come about as its recital engine was then outermost of engagement besides rigid to use.

Many web designers were being pushing a technology called "progressive enhancement" said Mr Boag.

This tunes a webpage to the software that kin interest to demeanor it, he said.

"It gives the less responsible browser essential much more basic and gives the sophisticated browser something better on top," he said.

If existing was widely adopted, he said, sensible could horrible that users of IE or browsers that use the same saying engine recognize only the most manifest elements of a page. Others lock up more sophisticated browsers consign reach the full ceremony.

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