Microsoft and Yahoo! Link-Up Targets .......?

Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced a web search deal to rival Google.

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The agreement ends years of negotiations and gives Microsoft access to the internet's second-largest search engine audience.
It adds a potentially potent weapon to Microsoft's Internet arsenal as the software maker girds for an online assault against Google.
Yahoo is teaming up with Microsoft following years of financial decay.
In the process, Yahoo hopes to recover some of the money that was squandered in 2008 when it turned down a chance to sell the entire company to Microsoft for £29bn.
Microsoft wants to process more search requests because the inquiries have become a critical lever for selling Internet ads.
The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people.
The Washington-based software maker believes Bing is just as good, if not better, than Google's search engine.
Taking over the search responsibilities on Yahoo's highly trafficked site gives Microsoft a better chance to convert Web surfers who had been using Google by force of habit.
In return for handing over the keys to its search engine, Yahoo will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal.
Yahoo estimated the deal will boost its annual operating profit by £305m.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said: "Microsoft and Yahoo know there's so much more that search could be.
"This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search."
Analysts hailed the deal as big news.

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China Internet users soar to 298 million

BEIJING: The number of Internet users in China jumped nearly 42 percent to 298 million by the end of 2008 from the previous year, cementing the country's position as the world's largest Internet population, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said.
The number of mobile Web surfers surged 113 percent to 117.6 million in 2008 and mobile Internet is expected to grow explosively in the next few years after the recent issuance of third-generation (3G) licenses, the state-run agency said.
The Internet penetration rate in China has risen to 22.6 percent, slightly higher than the world's average of 21.9 percent, CNNIC said in a report on Tuesday.
In addition, the number of Internet news readers has risen to 2.34 million and websites have become a crucial area for publicity, the report said.
News portals in China, such as Sina Corp and Sohu.com Inc, are the major sources of information for a large number of Internet users across the country.
Wary of threats to its grip on information, Beijing launched a crackdown on "vulgar" Web content this month after conducting numerous censorship efforts targeting pornography, political criticism and web scams in the past.

India launches nuclear submarine

India has launched its first nuclear-powered submarine, becoming only the sixth country in the world to do so.

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The 6,000 tonne Arihant was launched by India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a ceremony on the south-east coast.
It was built entirely in India with Russian assistance and a second one is due to be constructed shortly.
It will undergo trials over the next few years before being deployed and will be able to launch missiles at targets 700km (437 miles) away.
Until now, only the US, Russia, France, Britain and China had the capability to build nuclear submarines.
'China threat'
Launching the INS Arihant, Mr Singh said India had no aggressive designs on anyone.
But the sea was becoming increasingly relevant to India's security concerns, he added.
"It is incumbent upon us to take all measures necessary to safeguard our country and to keep pace with technological advancements worldwide," he told the ceremony in the port city of Visakhapatnam.
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says until now India has been able to launch ballistic missiles only from the air and from land.
Nuclear submarines will add a third dimension to its defence capability.
When it is eventually deployed, the top-secret Arihant will be able to carry 100 sailors on board.
It will be able to stay under water for long periods and thereby increase its chances of remaining undetected.
By contrast, India's ageing conventional diesel-powered submarines need to constantly surface to recharge their batteries.
Our correspondent says the launching of the Arihant is a clear sign that India is looking to blunt the threat from China which has a major naval presence in the region.

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China launches Arabic TV-channel

BEIJING: Chinese state television launched an Arabic-language channel beamed to the Middle East and Africa on Saturday as part of efforts to expand the communist government’s media influence abroad.
The 24-hour channel will air in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, reaching a total population of nearly 300 million people, China Central Television said in a statement.
The channel “will serve as an important bridge to strengthen communication and understanding between China and Arab countries,” said a CCTV vice president, Zhang Changming, in the statement. Beijing is carrying out a multibillion-dollar effort to raise the profile of its state media abroad by expanding CCTV, the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily and the official Xinhua News Agency.

Swine flu 'reaches 160 countries'

The swine flu virus has reached 160 countries and could infect two billion people within the next two years, the World Health Organization has said.

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A senior WHO official, Keiji Fukuda, said the virus was still in its early stages and would continue to spread for some time.
Mr Fukuda said work on a vaccine was intensifying but safety could not be compromised by rushing the process.
The virus is thought to have killed almost 800 people in recent months.
Mr Fukuda, the WHO's Assistant Director General for Health Security, said the agency had been reporting only laboratory-confirmed cases, but that this was always going to be "only a subset of the total number of cases".
"Even if we have hundreds of thousands of cases or a few millions of cases, we're relatively early in the pandemic," he told the Associated Press news agency.
"One of the things that is relatively clear is that we will continue to see spread of the virus; even though we are now three to four months into the pandemic, this is still pretty early into the overall period," he said.
Mr Fukuda said the WHO estimates two billion people, one third of the global population, could eventually be infected.
He said the figure was a reasonable prediction, based on analysis of previous pandemics, but that it was "really impossible to predict what the future will hold".

Pregnancy risk, Mr Fukuda said officials and drug manufacturers were investigating how to speed up the process of developing a vaccine against the H1N1 swine flu strain.
But he said there could be no doubt over the safety and efficacy of the drug before it was publicly distributed.
"There is always a balance in this sort of situation. You of course want to get out vaccine and as much vaccine as possible, as quickly as possible. On the other hand there are certain things which cannot be compromised," he said.
"There are certain areas where you can make economies, perhaps, but certain areas where you simply do not try to make any economies."
The WHO says that in most affected countries, the majority of cases appear to be occurring in young people, around the ages of 12 to 17, although some reports suggest it is mainly older people who have required hospital treatment.
The organisation also said there was "accumulating evidence suggesting pregnant women are at higher risk of more severe disease".
But Mr Fukuda said the WHO "certainly has no recommendations on whether women should try to have children now".
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