Free Republic

Tehran, 11 Nov. (AKI) - Massoumeh Shafii, the wife of jailed Iranian journalist, Akbar Ganji, cries continuously. Her husband, a well-known writer and dissident, has been in jail for more than five yeards. But for the past 25 days, Shafii has not seen her husband, who has been in solitary confinement in a section that is not under the control of the Evin prison, but instead directly under the control of Iran's intelligence ministry. "One must doubt the humanity of anyone who remains silent in front of what is happening to Ganji," said Shafii in an interview with Adnkronos International...

APPLE PUNDITS are predicting that the entertainment gear maker is set to take on Microsoft in an operating system war again. According to Architosh, an Apple insider has told it that Apple's Messiah Steve Jobs is planning to make an announcement about expanding the Macintosh market share soon.

WASHINGTON, (AFP) - US military intelligence warned the Bush administration as early as February 2002 that its key source on Al-Qaeda's relationship with Iraq had provided "intentionally misleading" data, according to a declassified report. ADVERTISEMENT Nevertheless, eight months later, President George W. Bush went public with charges that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein had trained members of Osama bin Laden's terror network in manufacturing deadly poisons and gases. These same accusations had found their way into then-secretary of state Colin Powell's February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council, in which he outlined the US rationale for military action...

Benjamin A. Reitzes of UBS Investment Research raised his price target and earnings estimates for Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) and maintained a "buy" rating on the company after checks revealed strong sales of the new video iPod and iMac G5. "We believe sales of new iPods are picking up steam into calendar year-end, with new video iPod sales stronger than we expected," said Reitzes. "Also, we believe that the story has more legs as the 'iPod hand-off' to the Mac story continues to takes shape." The analyst said Apple would introduce more video content and...

The version of OS X that Apple is developing in preparation for its transition to Intel hardware has caught up with the publicly available version for its Power PC-based Macs. OSx86 Project reports that: 'This marks the first time that Apple has released a copy of the OS for the Developer Transition Kits which is identical to the PPC version.' The website adds that this reflects the change in emphasis within Apple's engineering resources toward the Intel (x86) version of OS X. The latest x86 version is said to have much stronger security controls than before, designed to prevent the...

As Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs leads his company to record quarterly revenue and earnings, competitor Dell Inc., led by Michael Dell, will miss its third-quarter revenue guidance. Dell company officials blame lower than expected sales for the shortfall, which will be the second straight financial quarter the company will miss its revenue projections. In addition to dropping sales, Dell said that it would take a US$450 million charge to replace broken Optiplex desktops and restructure its workforce. Dell now expects revenue for the company's third quarter, which ended last Friday, to be about $13.9 billion. In August, Dell predicted...

BERLIN: Iran is providing refuge to around 25 leading members of the Al Qaeda terror group including three of Osama Bin Laden’s sons, a German magazine reported on Wednesday. Cicero magazine said Saad, Mohammed and Othman Bin Laden as well as other Al Qaeda members from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, north Africa and Europe were living in and around Tehran under the protection of Iran’s Republican Guard. The magazine quoted a “top-ranking Western secret service agent” as saying the Al Qaeda members were free to move around. “They are not under arrest or house arrest,” the unnamed source told the...

Intel is to spend $650m upgrading its Rio Rancho, New Mexico 300mm-wafer plant the chip giant has announced. The expansion of Fab 11X will create more than 300 new jobs at the facility, the company added. The cash will be used to increase the fab's capacity, allowing Intel to punch out even more 90nm and, soon, 65nm processors than before. It's all about increasing chip volumes which, in turn, allows Intel to reduce prices. Intel said the work will see the construction of new clean rooms taking place next year with a view to beginning production early in 2007. That...

Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen, says Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek. "There is endless debate among security experts about whether the paucity of successful assaults on Apple's OS X is attributable to better security or attackers' lack of interest in an operating system whose share of the market is in single digits. I think it's some of both." Wildstrom says one reason Mac OS X offers inherently better security is that it was designed with relatively little concern for compatibility with earlier...

PARIS, 19 Oct. (IPS) On the eve of the trial of the toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, some former members of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organsation (MKO) demanded that the leader of the outlawed Organisation and some of his close associates be also tried for “crimes against both the Iraqi and Iranian peoples”. “The toppled regime of Saddam Hussein actively supported international terrorism and committed crimes against Iraqi and Iranian peoples and the Mojaheedin Khalq Organisation, led by Mas’oud Rajavi, were at the top of the list of these terrorist organizations”, Behzad Alishahi, a former member of the group said in...

Anybody see the Intel Centrino laptop advertisement on the front page of The New York Times ?

If you want a real life example of how tax cuts boost the economy, take a look at the Homeland Investment Act of 2004. This law allowed U.S. corporations to repatriate earnings from foreign operations back to these shores for one year at a reduced tax rate of 5.25%. Supporters argued that this tax cut would lead to an "in-sourcing" of jobs by luring corporate income parked in foreign vaults back to America. Those repatriated dollars could then be put to work for R&D spending, plant expansions, capital and technology purchases, or merely to improve balance sheets to the benefit...

Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and the United States may find it less costly to deter a nuclear-armed Iran than to dismantle its weapons program, according to two U.S.-funded researchers who advise the Pentagon. "Can the United States live with a nuclear-armed Iran? Despite its rhetoric, it may have no choice," concluded the report by Judith Yaphe and Air Force Col. Charles Lutes, which was released on Thursday. The potential for rolling back Iran's program, once it produces a nuclear weapon, "is lower than preventing it in the first place and the costs of rollback may be higher...

Pentagon says it won't spy on 'innocent' Americans, but critics say past record shows this is false. Claiming it needs greater latitude for the war on terror, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a request from the Pentagon for the right to "covertly" gather intelligence on US citizens in order to determine whether they can recruit them as informants, without telling them that they are doing so on behalf of the US government. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon said the measure, which is aimed at the Muslim community in the US, could help them fight insurgencies in Iraq...

TheStreet provides an analysis of Apple's current market position with respect to its recent popularity. TheStreet also weighs in on potential product releases at tomorrow's Media event. Despite most recent rumors that the event will simply introduce upgraded regular iPods and new PowerBook/PowerMac (dual Core PPC) configs, the article still speculates on the possibility of a video iPod. That said, the article provides an interesting statistic from the NPD Group: Through August, Apple's share of the U.S. retail market for computers, excluding online sales, grew to 6.6% from 4.3% in the same period last year, according to market researcher NPD...

An Iranian group has killed American civilians, allied itself with Saddam Hussein, and holds a spot on the State Department’s terrorist watch list. So why might it become America’s newest friend in the Middle East? Hint: Tehran. In August 2002, intelligence reports revealed secret nuclear facilities in the Iranian cities of Natanz and Arak. The revelation left officials in Tehran speechless, in large part because the evidence was not gathered by the United States or any of its allies. Rather, the courier of such sensitive intelligence was the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a decades-old Iranian dissident group. In most cases, dissident...

Apple may not be able to roll out its Intel-based Macs on schedule as it had hoped, because Intel won't be releasing its Woodcrest and Merom processors until the third quarter of next year. A report from The Inquirer notes that "Apple is big, but not nearly big enough to bully Intel," and that the company is attempting to put pressure on Intel in the hopes that the chips will be delivered early. Intel is apparently not providing Apple with preferential treatment, despite the pressure, according to the report.

Vietnam’s communist government knows that it is impossible to monitor the country’s 5,000 cyber cafes, so it’s forcing the cafe owners to be its eyes and ears. Last July, a government directive informed cafe owners that they will have to take a six-month course so that they can better monitor their cyber customers. The Vietnamese government is justifying its move for reasons of “national security and defense” — that is, to protect itself against online journalists who, it says, “provide sensationalist news and articles while others even publish reactionary and libelous reports and a depraved culture.” Reporters Without Borders (RWB),...

Japanese Overclocker Sets SuperPI Record with 7.30GHz Pentium 4. Famous Japanese overclocker who calls himself Memesama has set a yet another world’s record in overclocking Intel Pentium 4 processor. This time the well-known computer enthusiast achieved 7.30GHz speed. According to the statement issued by Memesama in his blog as well as in XtremeSystems web-site’s forum, the system managed to calculate π (pi) number to 1 million decimal places in approximately 17 seconds, which is the world’s record of today. Core-clock of 7304MHz is also the highest speed Intel Pentium 4 processor ever achieved. Earlier clock-speed record breaking – 7.13GHz –...

ntel fired back at rival Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday in a legal response to AMD's lawsuit, denying it has violated antitrust laws. The 63-page response said AMD has fallen behind Intel because of its own business mistakes, not because Intel engaged in any antitrust activity. In the long run, Intel said, AMD's lawsuit will raise prices for consumers. Intel, based in Santa Clara, is the world's largest maker of semiconductor chips. AMD, a smaller rival based in Sunnyvale, filed suit in federal court in June contending Intel violated antitrust laws by using a combination of incentives and threats to...