China joins supercomputer elite

China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world.

China:  Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.
It has taken the top slot from another US machine, nicknamed Roadrunner.

The IBM computer is owned by the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and was the first machine to push through the petaflop barrier.

It is currently able to run at 1.042 petaflops and uses the powerful "cell" chip designed for the PlayStation 3.

It is used to monitor the US nuclear stockpile, as well as conduct research into astronomy, genomics and climate change.

The Top 500 list is dominated by machines in the US, which is home to 277 of ranked systems. It has eight of the top 10 machines.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world's fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops.

The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

Algerians attack Egyptian firms after football loss

Twenty Algerians injured in Cairo clashes before playoffs

ALGIERS:  Thousands of Algerians held a spontaneous rally Sunday in the capital Algiers in support of their national football team, which degenerated into attacks on Egyptian businesses.

The rally in central Algiers began with fans chanting "One, two, three, Go Algeria!" as they thronged Air Algeria's city-center offices trying to get tickets to travel to Sudan for the second leg World Cup football qualifying match against Egypt in Khartoum on Wednesday.

But it later descended into violence when fans broke through the metal shutters to smash the window and ransack the offices of EgyptAir, an AFP journalist said.

The offices of mobile telephone company Djeezy, part of the Egyptian telecommunications group Orascom, was also ransacked, the website of al-Watan daily reported.

The company also said one of its employees was assaulted at Algiers airport.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif called his Algerian counterpart Ahmed Owehi on Sunday to appeal for the Algerian government to protect Egyptians in the country, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hussam Zaki said that the Egyptian-Algerian ties are quite strong and would never be affected by any kind of riots launched by fans in both countries.

Zaki denied all the rumors that circulated about the death of Algerian football fans in clashes in Cairo after Saturday's match. "We are now contacting the Algerian security authorities to guarantee the security and safety of all the Egyptians in Algeria," he said.

The Algerian Ambassador to Egypt Abdul Qader Haggar, meanwhile, said that the Algerian security authorities are trying their best to provide all the needed security to the Egyptian businesses operating in Algeria. He denied all the allegations about the death of Algerian fans in Cairo clashes.

Twenty Algerians were injured in clashes in and around Cairo after Saturday's first round match, according to Egyptian police, which Egypt won 2-0 to keep alive its hopes to travel to South Africa next year.