U.S. plans to issue official protest to China over attack on Google

WASHINGTON:  The United States will issue an official protest to the Chinese government over a major espionage attack targeting Google's computer systems and rights activists' e-mail accounts that the search-engine giant said originated in China.

"We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early next week," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Friday.

The diplomatic message will "express our concern for this incident" and seek an explanation, he said. The move may signal a shift for an administration that has been reluctant, according to China experts, to press sensitive issues such as human rights, lest it offend a country whose cooperation it seeks in other areas.

On Tuesday, in a rare disclosure by a major firm, Google announced that its "corporate infrastructure" had been hacked and its intellectual property stolen. It said that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists in China, Europe and the United States were also penetrated and noted that other large companies were targeted, as well. Industry sources said 34 firms, including Google, were affected.

Google also said it will no longer filter Internet searches on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. Although it did not directly accuse China, the Silicon Valley technology titan threatened to pull out of the country if the government does not allow it to operate uncensored. Chinese officials said that their laws ban hacking and that China's Internet is open, although they also defended a policy of keeping certain types of information off the Web in China.

The State Department's planned action coincides with a speech on Internet freedom that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to deliver Thursday. She is expected to allude to the incident. "When she talks about this issue, China will be one of the countries she points to," an administration official said.

"You couldn't have picked a worse company to hack if you wanted to not irritate the Americans," said James A. Lewis, a cyber and national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They're their favorite child," he said of Google. The firm's chief executive advises President Obama on technology, and its Web applications are seen as the sort of innovation that will drive the new economy.

Officials said the administration has raised concerns about cybersecurity and Internet freedom with China before. But by formally protesting to the Chinese, the United States is elevating the issues to a new level, policy experts said. Richard N. Rosecrance, director of the Project on U.S.-China Relations at Harvard University, said, "I think this is the bottoming out of an extremely favorable policy toward China that might now begin to shift in another direction."

One analyst said Friday that he is not sure the attacks point to the Chinese government. Rob Knake, a cybersecurity expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said his analysis of results from a technology firm investigating the attacks suggests that they "were not state-sponsored or the work of an elite, sophisticated group such as the Chinese military."

Nonetheless, said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, "Google has not only forced China's hand, they have forced the U.S.'s hand" on human rights.

"What Google has done," she said, "is make it easier for the administration to come out swinging on this issue."

Damaged airport, dock hamper Haiti aid efforts

HAITI : Impassable roads, a damaged airport, an unreachable dock and not enough equipment to unload relief supplies continued to keep most of the world's help Friday from devastated Haitians.

International businesses and relief agencies struggled to get aid into the battered country via the bottlenecked airport in Port-au-Prince three days after Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake.

British Airways offered aid agencies a relief aircraft to fly more emergency supplies and equipment. The plane that can hold 50 tons of supplies will be ready to fly to Haiti on Saturday, the airline said. A volunteer British Airways crew will man the plane, and the company also pledged close to $900,000 in fuel and money for supplies.

The British firm joins agencies from all over the globe that are heading to Haiti or who are already there.

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is expected to arrive Friday, carrying 19 helicopters and 30 pallets of relief goods.

Belize, Brazil, China, Chile, Spain, Canada, Israel, Iceland, Ireland, the United States and Morocco were among the many countries offering aid.

But Friday morning, aid agencies were still struggling to get relief items from the airport, said Dave Toycen, a relief worker with the aid agency World Vision.

"The issue is obviously logistics. It is problematic to get the streets clear," Toycen said. "There was a milelong line to get gasoline. We are short the basics."

FBI releases age-enhanced picture of Osama

The US Government has released a new age-enhanced photograph of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as he may look now without his trademark long beard.

Digitally enhanced images show the world's most wanted terrorist with different grooming and clothing, which he may have adopted in a bid to evade capture.

It also shows him with more lined features and lacking the long beard which many people associate him with.

The images were released by the US State Department and the FBI as they renew their efforts to bring Bin Laden to justice.

His is one of 18 wanted terrorist suspects listed on the State Department's Rewards for Justice website.

The programme offers huge rewards for information leading to the capture and conviction of some of the masterminds behind international terror attacks.

Using sophisticated digital enhancement techniques, forensic artists at the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginia have age progressed old photos of the 18 most wanted terrorist suspects.

"It is our hope that these digitally enhanced images will help someone recognise these terrorist suspects and then contact the Rewards for Justice program with information that leads to their apprehension," said Robert Eckert, assistant director for Diplomatic Security’s Threat Information and Analysis Directorate, which oversees the Rewards for Justice program.

"These new images are powerful examples of how advances in technology and science can be used to help find and bring to justice wanted persons,” said Louis E. Grever, Executive Assistant Director for the FBI's Science and Technology Branch.

“The FBI has and will continue to apply cutting-edge forensic, biometric, and technical capabilities to our most challenging cases. Together with our many partners, both here and abroad, we now call on the public to help us locate and take into custody those who threaten us," he added.

Since its inception in 1984, the Rewards for Justice Program has paid more than £50 million people who have provided credible information that has resulted in the capture, prosecution, or death of terrorists or has prevented acts of international terror.

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Doomsday Clock moves a minute back

WASHINGTON : The Doomsday Clock, a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years has been moved one minute further away from the "midnight hour".

The concept timepiece devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) now stands at six minutes to the hour.

The group said it made the decision to move the clock back because of a more "hopeful state of world affairs".

The clock was first featured by the magazine in 1947, shortly after the US dropped its Atom bombs on Japan.

The clock had been adjusted 18 times before today since its initial start at seven minutes to midnight.

Most recently, in January 2007, the clock moved to five minutes to midnight, when climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.