Today's Hot Stories - February 27, 2014 - PT education

Today's Hot Stories - February 27, 2014

10 Headlines for Today

(1) Army jawan shoots dead 5 colleagues in J&K, kills self
(2) Rajiv Gandhi assassination case: SC stays release of 4 convicts
(3) Armed men seize 'govt buildings in Ukraine’s Crimea'
(4) Infy staff to get 5-7% hike; expect more change: Murthy
(5) Modi woos traders, advocates need to boost online trade
(6) Australian carrier Qantas to axe 5,000 jobs
(7) Kohli leads India to massive 6-wkt win
(8) Badminton: Prannoy stuns Kashyap in German Open
(9) Federer pushed to the limit by Stepanek
(10) Algae a viable source to produce cheaper biofuel

5 Stories for Today

(1) INS Sindhuratna docked in Mumbai
(2) US attorney probes Mt. Gox, bitcoin businesses
(3) Govt's austerity measure bleeds Air India
(4) Shift to mobile Internet hits Baidu profit
(5) Agriculture dependent population in India grew by whopping 50 per cent

(1) INS Sindhuratna docked in Mumbai


INS Sindhuratna, which suffered a mishap on Wednesday morning after heavy smoke filled one of its compartments, reached the Mumbai harbour on Thursday morning.

The Russian-made Kilo class submarine was forced to surface after the accident. The submarine was on a routine exercise when smoke engulfed it leading to the accident, Navy sources said.

"The Indian Naval Submarine Sindhuratna returned to harbour on the morning of 27 February. Search for two missing crew members is continuing and every effort is underway to locate them," the Navy press release on Thursday read.

Navy sources told The Hindu that the two Naval officers, who are still missing, might be inside one of the compartments of Sindhuratna and search operations are underway but as time passes, the chances of their survival becomes bleak.

'Condition of rescused sailors stable'

Meanwhile, the condition of the injured personnel, who had inhaled smoke and were airlifted to the naval hospital INS Ashwini, is reported to be stable.

INS Sindhuratna was at sea off Mumbai for routine training and workup (inspection) in the early hours of Wednesday when smoke was reported in the sailors’ accommodation, in compartment number three, by the submarine.

“Two officicers are unaccounted for. They might have been left in the cabin or at some other place as various cabins and compartments are isolated as part of the emergency measures,” Navy officials had said.

Hours after the mishap and in the wake of a spate of accidents involving the Naval warships in the recent past, Navy Chief Admiral D K Joshi had resigned on Wednesday taking moral responsibility.

Source: The Hindu

(2) US attorney probes Mt. Gox, bitcoin businesses


Manhattan attorney Preet Bharara has sent subpoenas to Mt. Gox, other bitcoin exchanges, and businesses that deal in bitcoin to seek information on how they handled recent cyber attacks, a source familiar with the probe said on Wednesday.

In the attacks — known as distributed denial of service attacks — hackers overwhelmed bitcoin exchanges by sending thousands of phantom transactions. At least three exchanges were forced to halt withdrawals of bitcoins on February 7, including Mt. Gox, which was the largest at the time.

Mt. Gox never resumed service before going dormant on Tuesday, leaving customers unable to recover their funds. The Tokyo-based company's chief executive, Mark Karpeles, said earlier on Wednesday that he is working with others to solve the problems.

"As there is a lot of speculation regarding Mt Gox and its future, I would like to use this opportunity to reassure everyone that I am still in Japan, and working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues," Karpeles said in a statement posted on the Mt. Gox website.

A spokesman for Bharara declined to comment.

Bitcoin, a form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, relies on a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems as part of a process that verifies and permanently records the details of every bitcoin transaction that is made. At current prices, the bitcoin market is worth about $7 billion.

Investors deposit their bitcoins in digital wallets at specific exchanges, so the Mt. Gox shutdown is similar to a bank closing its doors — people cannot retrieve their funds.

While proponents of bitcoin hail its anonymity and lack of ties to traditional banking, regulators have become increasingly interested in the digital currency due to its usage by criminal elements and its volatile nature.

It has been a rough month for bitcoin investors, with cyber attacks on several exchanges, a sharp fall in bitcoin's value, and rising pressure from regulators. Bitcoin's price varies by exchange, but the losses were most dramatic on Mt. Gox, where it fell to about $135 from $828.99 before February 7.

"Mt Gox has been broken and it was obvious there was something really bad going on there for nearly a year. They were processing withdrawals very slowly and generally being very opaque about what was going on there," said Mike Hearn, a bitcoin developer in Zurich, Switzerland.

A second source familiar with the case said US federal law enforcement is investigating Mt. Gox. A third source said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring the situation.

Japan's finance ministry and police are also looking into the abrupt closure of Mt. Gox, according to the Japanese government's top spokesman.

Malleability

Bitcoin has gained increasing acceptance as a method of payment and has attracted a number of prominent venture capital investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.

The digital currency has also caught the eye of hackers. The recent cyber attacks exploited a process used by some bitcoin exchanges that introduced "malleability" into the code governing transactions, experts said.

Simply put, this allowed hackers to slightly alter the details of codes to create thousands of copies of transactions. These copies slowed the exchanges to a crawl, forcing them to independently verify each transaction to determine what was real and what was fake.

A document circulating on the Internet purporting to be a crisis plan for Mt. Gox, said more than 744,000 bitcoins were "missing due to malleability-related theft," and noted Mt. Gox had $174 million in liabilities against $32.75 million in assets. It was not possible to verify the document.

If accurate, that would mean approximately 6 percent of the 12.4 million bitcoins minted would be considered missing.

Developers are working on fixes to bitcoin's software to guard against cyber attacks, though many larger service providers have already implemented such changes, according to Gregory Maxwell, one of the bitcoin software's core developers.

He said some malleability in the software protocol was necessary — for example, in transactions where multiple people can put in money, but the transaction is not valid until enough funds are contributed.

"None of these fixes are especially complicated, but because the correctness of the software is important we use a conservative release process that avoids rushing anything out," Maxwell said, adding that the bulk of the recent work on the software is being done by four people.

Bitstamp

Jacob Dienelt, who trades bitcoins and sells paper bitcoin wallets, said people he knows in the bitcoin community in New York stopped using Mt. Gox when the exchange halted dollar withdrawals several months ago and said all withdrawals had to be in bitcoin. Dienelt said has not been subpoenaed.

With Mt. Gox's shutdown, Bitstamp has handled the most volume in the last two days, with more than 165,000 US dollar transactions, according to Bitcoincharts.

Bitstamp had temporarily halted customer withdrawals earlier this month, citing "inconsistent results" and blaming a denial-of-service attack.

The price of bitcoin was lately at $588 on Bitstamp, up about 7% on the day.

"Right now is a sweet buying opportunity. I don't think you're going to see bitcoin go this low for awhile — if ever again," said Jordan Kelley, chief executive of Robocoin, which launched the world's first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, Canada, in the fall. "The more that bitcoin is on the front pages, the more that people are discussing it and educating one another, the better for the currency."

Kelley said Robocoin has not been subpoenaed in the US regulatory probe; nor has New York-based exchange Coinsetter, according to a spokesperson.

Bitstamp did not respond to requests for comment.

Source: The Times of India

(3) Govt's austerity measure bleeds Air India


Government's austerity measures are punching a hole in the 'Maharaja's' pocket. Air India has urged the Centre to restore business class travel for officials of the rank of joint secretary and above, complaining that 'compulsory' economy class travel for them is hurting the revenues of the national carrier.

Last September, the finance ministry issued cost—cutting measures barring senior officials from travelling business or first class on domestic tours.

It seems the government did not realize that Air India is heavily dependent on government use of its services for revenues as officials have instructions to prefer the national carrier while on work.

Barely five months after the finance ministry's diktat, chairman and managing director of Air India Rohit Nandan has written to the government to reverse the order.

"It is requested that the matter may kindly be taken up with the department of expenditure, finance ministry, for restoration of business and first class travel to the senior officials of the government at the earliest so that the loss of revenue on this account to Air India could be minimized," Nandan wrote to Prabhat Kumar, joint secretary, civil aviation.

Air India has argued that the bar on business class travel hurts its serious attempts to make the high—end travel more appealing. Nandan said the carrier has created "huge capacities" in first and business class by inducting new aircraft including B—787 Dreamliner in its fleet. The capacities have been added "to achieve higher seat utilization than from the present achievement of 50—55%", Nandan said.

The revenue hit that the national airline seems to be taking just part of the drama involving the bar on business travel for senior bureaucrats.

The officialdom has been seething over the finance ministry's diktat since it was issued. Officials claim economy travel causes great deal of discomfort for those headed for meetings apart from consuming additional time at the airports. A senior bureaucrat claimed there has been a dip in official travel since the austerity measures kicked in.

Source: The Economic Times

(4) Shift to mobile Internet hits Baidu profit


Baidu Inc., which operates China’s leading search engine, said on Thursday its quarterly profit edged down 0.4 percent as it spent heavily to promote mobile services amid an industry wide scramble to keep up with users who increasingly surf the Web on smartphones.

Baidu earned 2.8 billion yuan ($459.9 million) in the three months ending Dec. 31, the Beijing-based company announced. Revenue rose 50.3 percent compared with a year earlier to 9.5 billion yuan ($1.6 billion).

Marketing and administrative costs surged 135 per cent, which the company said was due to higher spending to promote mobile services. Research and development spending jumped 80 per cent.

Baidu and rivals are spending heavily to attract users who are migrating rapidly to surfing the Web on smartphones, tablet computers and other wireless devices.

China has the world’s biggest Internet market, with 618 million people online at the end of 2013, according to an industry group, the China Internet Network Information Centre. That included some 500 million people or more than 80 percent of the total who go online wirelessly.

Mobile accounted for more than 20 percent of Baidu’s quarterly revenue, according to chairman Robin Li.

“Our efforts to drive mobile adoption among customers gained significant traction throughout the year,” said Mr. Li in a statement. “Building out our platform to capture the huge opportunities ahead remains our focus for 2014.”

Baidu’s market share in traditional personal computer-based search is more than 80 percent. But in mobile it faces intense competition from companies such as Qihoo 360.

Baidu has expanded into music downloads, online video and other services. In July, it announced the acquisition of a smartphone apps distributor, 91 Wireless, for $1.9 billion.

Baidu’s latest revenue growth “suggests some of the heavy investment is starting to yield some returns,” said Barclays analyst Alicia Yap in a report.

For the full year, profit edged up 0.6 percent over 2012 to 10.5 billion yuan ($1.7 billion). Revenue rose 43.2 percent to 31.9 billion yuan ($5.3 billion).

Source: Hindustan Times

(5) Agriculture dependent population in India grew by whopping 50 per cent


Agricultural population of India grew by a whopping 50 per cent between 1980 and 2011, the highest for any country during this period, followed by China with 33 per cent, while that of the United States dropped by 37 per cent as a result of large scale mechanisation, a latest report has said.

"Between 1980 and 2011, the economically active agricultural populations of China and India grew by 33 and 50 per cent, respectively, due to overall population growth," the Worldwatch Institute said in its report yesterday.

"The economically active agricultural population of the United States, on the other hand, declined by 37 per cent as a result of large-scale mechanisation, improved crop varieties, fertilisers, pesticides, and federal subsidies--all of which contributed to economies of scale and consolidation in US agriculture," it said.

The global agricultural population--defined as individuals dependent on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and forestry for their livelihood--accounted for over 37 per cent of the world's population in 2011, the most recent year for which data are available.

This is a decrease of 12 per cent from 1980, when the world's agricultural and nonagricultural populations were roughly the same size.

Although the agricultural population shrunk as a share of total population between 1980 and 2011, it grew numerically from 2.2 billion to 2.6 billion people during this period, writes Worldwatch Senior Fellow Sophie Wenzlau in the Institute's latest Vital Signs Online trend.

According to the report, between 1980 and 2011, Africa's agricultural population grew by 63 per cent, and its nonagricultural population grew by 221 per cent.

Oceania's agricultural population grew by 49 per cent, and its nonagricultural population grew by 65 per cent.

Asia's agricultural population grew by 20 per cent, and its nonagricultural population grew by 134 per cent, it said.

The combination of movement to cities and agricultural consolidation caused agricultural populations to decline in Europe and the Americas between 1980 and 2011: by 66 per cent in Europe, 45 per cent in North America, 35 per cent in South America, 13 per cent in Central America, and 7 per cent in the Caribbean, the report added

Source: The Indian Express

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