Valuable Information about Computers And Internet, Consumer Electronics And More

Bangalore is hosting an international film festival on wildlife and environment. The five-day long festival kicked off on Monday.

The festival aims to encourage films on nature world and to increase public awareness on nature conservation. Hary Marshall, an organiser of the festival said some of the best films on nature were being screened at the festival.

“The films that are being shown during this program are the winning films that are short-listed. Over 45 different countries are represented. 45 different nationalities making film on natural history of environmental subjects,” he added.

”The Mountain of the Monsoon” of Indian environmentalist Sandesh Kadur, was the opening movie at the festival. Kadur said his film attempted to explore the various hues of nature.

The event is organized by Wildscreen and British Council in partnership with Hotel Taj West End, ActNow and Flaunge Media Production. BBC natural history unit is also a Collaborator.

The current festival is taking place simultaneously in New Delhi. It is also slated to take place in Mumbai, Guwahati and in Sri Lanka.

An Indian woman in Bahrain has not been home for 13 years because of her fear of flying.

The aerophobic 43-year-old woman, who has not been named, told the Gulf Daily News that the last time she flew was 13 years ago when she and her husband took a flight from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain.

‘I flew for the very first time just after I got married 24 years ago,’ the woman, who teaches dance at a school in Bahrain, was quoted as saying.

‘It was a flight from Chennai, where we were settled, to Delhi. I was scared to fly even then but I managed to do it, probably because I was younger and braver,’ she said.

The woman and her husband later flew to Saudi Arabia after her husband got posted there.

‘Then we came to Bahrain around 13 years ago by flight and that was the last time I took one,’ she said.

‘My children were just 10 and 11 then and it was for their further education that we chose to come to Bahrain. But the problem just became worse after I saw a couple of movies that showed planes crashing.’

The woman hoped making her condition public would result in finding someone with a similar condition so that they could sort out the problem together.

‘My husband used to fly to India once every year to visit relatives and friends,’ she said. ‘But the children and I never did.’

In December last year, the family had booked air tickets for a trip to India but the woman returned from the airport overcome by her fear of flying.

‘My husband and I cancelled our tickets, though our children travelled to their home for the very first time after 13 years,’ she told the newspaper.

‘I know we have to leave Bahrain for good one day, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it.’

Norbert dissipated into a tropical depression over the northern mountains of mainland Mexico on Sunday, after ripping off roofs, flooding streets, and forcing thousands to seek shelter in Baja California.

The storm’s remnants dumped moderate rain in areas across West Texas on Sunday afternoon, but there were no immediate problems, according to officials with the National Weather Service in Texas.

Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton said Texas officials were waiting for rain reports from Mexico to know if they should expect floodwaters later this week in Presidio, where an earthen levee is struggling to hold back the swollen Rio Grande.

Civil Protection officials in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua warned of possible freezing rain because of Norbert’s remnants and a cold front.

Norbert hit mainland Mexico’s Sonora coast early Sunday as a Category 1 hurricane with winds near 85 mph (140 kph) after crossing the Baja California peninsula on Saturday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Sonora Civil Protection Director Willebado Alatriste said authorities were still evaluating the damages, but they did not appear to be widespread.

The storm weakened rapidly as it moved inland. But the hurricane center warned it could dump up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain over northwestern Mexico — possibly producing flash floods or mudslides — and up to 2 inches (5 centimeters) over the portions of the U.S. southern high plains.

Norbert barreled through Baja California as a Category 2 hurricane Saturday, uprooting trees, tearing roofs off of homes, and causing widespread flooding. Thousands of residents fled to shelters in school buses and army trucks as floodwaters rose in their homes.

Off the southwest coast of Mexico, Tropical Storm Odile also weakened into a depression. The storm had flooded about 200 homes in the Acapulco area.

The hurricane center said it would not issue additional advisories on Norbert and Odile.

The Consumer Electronics Association said Tuesday that sales of gadgets are thriving as people hunker down in their homes to weather the brutal economic storm battering world markets.

Sales of flat-panel televisions are up an unwavering 40 percent from last year and the videogame industry is poised to do more business this year-end holiday season than it did in 2007, said CEA economist Shawn DuBravac.

“Consumers are cocooning; hunkering down,” DuBravac told AFP.

“And since they are not traveling to see grandma this holiday season they might as well be able to talk to her on the mobile telephone of their choice.”

While cutting back on nights out at movie theaters, people are evidently rewarding themselves with electronics that provide more cinematic viewing experiences at home, according to the CEA.

“It seems that part of the story here is that people cutting back and living with ‘good enough’ everywhere else in their lives figure they might as well enjoy flat-panel televisions and other electronics.”

Some industry forecasts cited by the CEA project that consumer electronics sales will be more robust this year-end holiday season than they were last year.

Laptop computers, mobile telephones and satellite-linked navigation devices are among the electronics selling strong as portability remains a lure for gizmo buyers.

“During the past two recessions consumers did cut back on CE (consumer electronics) spending,” DuBravac said. “I think we are clearly in the midst of a recession right now and yet we haven’t cut back on our CE purchases.”

People appear to be shifting discretionary spending from cars, travel or other big ticket items to home electronics gadgets, particularly those that promise to last a few years.

In a promising sign for electronics makers, retailers’ inventories are running lean so increases in sales will trigger needs for ordering stock.

DuBravac expects online stores to benefit as people staying at home turn increasingly to the Internet for shopping bargains.

“People spooked by the headlines will be seeking value in online stores,” he said. “As people cut back on things like travel and stay at home, some online retail fits nicely into that.”

The top U.S. diplomat for Latin America says Washington has “no intention” of reviving Cold War rhetoric despite Russia’s deepening relations with Venezuela and Bolivia.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon says Washington sees no “military or geopolitical threat” in Russian arms sales to Venezuela, or in its sending of a naval squadron to join exercises there.

Shannon told The Associated Press Wednesday he believes Russian-Venezuelan ties aren’t likely to endure.

Russia has been troubled by U.S. efforts to help its neighbors join NATO.

The country’s ambassador to Bolivia says Russia wants to demonstrate that Latin America is not the United States’ backyard.

Jonny Wilkinson looks set to miss England’s November meetings with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa after suffering a dislocated left knee.

The flyhalf was forced off the field 25 minutes into his club Newcastle’s Premiership defeat at Gloucester on Tuesday evening and it was confirmed the following morning that the injury is, as feared, a serious one.

Newcastle director of rugby Steve Bates said: “It is obviously disappointing for Jonny to receive an injury just when he was back playing fantastic rugby, but he has enormous strength of character and I am sure he will come back stronger despite this blow.”

The knee dislocation is the latest in a string of injury setbacks for the player who kicked the winning drop goal in the final seconds of the 2003 World Cup final.

The 29-year-old hardly played between the 2003 and 2007 World Cups and only returned from a six-month lay-off in September following shoulder surgery.

In the wake of England’s 2003 triumph, Wilkinson was initially sidelined by a shoulder problem but knee, bicep and groin injuries have afflicted him since then and he has also required surgery to cure kidney and appendix problems.

The latest injury came after he twisted his knee at a ruck that had formed following one of his trademark tackles on Gloucester’s Olly Morgan.

England are due to begin their November Test series against the Pacific Islanders on November 1 before facing all three Tri-Nations sides on successive weekends.

Ironically, the injury to Wilkinson will make life easier for England’s head coach Martin Johnson, who looks set to have 20-year-old Danny Cipriani available to him in November.

Cipriani, who last season displaced Wilkinson as England’s first choice number ten, was due to make his earlier-than-expected comeback from a serious ankle injury on Wednesday, when his club Wasps face Bath.

But Wilkinson’s heir apparent cannot be called into the England squad unless someone is injured or suspended as he was left out of a 32-man elite squad named by the Rugby Football Union back in July.

At the time, it was anticipated that Cipriani would not be back in action before mid-November and he was effectively ruled out of the November series.

Now it seems Wilkinson’s misfortune will open the door for him to take on the Wallabies, Springboks and All Blacks.

Europeans held captive by bandits for 10 days along with other hostages returned home from Egypt on Tuesday amid conflicting accounts of their liberation.

Five Germans were greeted by their families and senior officials when they landed in a chartered plane at Berlin’s Tegel airport from Cairo after being released with 14 other hostages Monday, the foreign ministry said.

“The state secretaries expressed their relief about the safe return of the holiday makers,” the ministry said in a statement.

Also on board were special forces from the German army, members of the GSG 9 special operations unit, federal police officers, staff from the Federal Crime Office and logistical support staff from the THW federal relief agency, the ministry said.

Five Italians also returned home safely early Tuesday.

The Europeans were part of a group of 19 hostages that also included a Romanian and eight Egyptian drivers and tour guides seized by bandits while on safari in a lawless area of Egypt’s southwestern desert on September 19.

Officials in Cairo had said the hostages were freed unharmed in a pre-dawn raid Monday by Egyptian special forces.

Defence Minister Hussein Tantawi said “half of the kidnappers were eliminated” in the raid by about 30 Egyptian special forces with Italian and German special forces on standby.

However this was disputed by European officials who said there had been little or no violence.

“I say with great clarity that there was an operation that led to the release of our hostages. I never spoke of a raid, I never spoke of a violent incursion,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters Tuesday.

“The release of the hostages came about through an international operation that saw our men and our special forces collaborate with the Germans, Sudanese, Egyptians, and I will add, Libyans for a brief period.”

The German foreign ministry said its troops had not been needed in the operation.

“The Egyptian government had expressed its willingness to integrate security forces offered by the German side as support,” it said. “However these forces did not need to be deployed.”

Italy’s ANSA news agency also quoted an unnamed official as saying that the rescue took place “without bloodshed because when they were freed by Egyptian security forces the kidnappers had already left.”

Frattini denied a ransom had been paid. The kidnappers had demanded Germany take charge of a six-million-euro (nine-million-dollar) payment to be handed over to the German wife of the tour organiser, who was also a hostage.

German officials refused to comment.

The Italians who returned home said they were not mistreated by their captors but that they were terrified and at one point lost all hope of being rescued, the ANSA news agency reported.

The hostages were first moved across the border to Sudan to the remote mountain region of Jebel Uweinat, a plateau that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan, before the bandits took them into Chad, according to Sudanese officials.

Khartoum says the kidnappers belong to a splinter Darfur rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army-Unity (SLA-Unity) but an SLA-Unity spokesman denied his group’s involvement.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said in an interview aired Sunday that the international approach to Iran’s disputed nuclear program should focus on negotiations and avoid piling pressure on Tehran.

Wen, in his first interview with the American media in five years, said major powers should pursue peaceful talks with Iran “rather than resort to the willful use of force or the intimidation of force.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Wen told CNN television: “It’s like treating the relationship between two individuals. If one individual tries to corner the other, then the effect will be counterproductive. That will do nothing in helping resolve the problem.

“Our purpose is to resolve the problem, not to escalate tensions.”

China believes Iran “has the right” to develop nuclear energy in a peaceful way under international norms but should not build atomic weapons, the prime minister said.

“Such efforts should be subject to the safeguards of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency),” Wen said, referring to the UN atomic watchdog.

Iran, however, “should not develop nuclear weapons,” he said.

Wen, who was in New York last week to attend the 63rd annual general debate of the UN General Assembly, compared the issue to North Korea’s nuclear program. China is a leader in the six-nation negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear activities.

“Don’t you think that the efforts made by China in resolving the Korean nuclear issue and the position we have adopted in this regard have actually helped the situation on the Korean Peninsula move for the better, day by day?” Wen asked interviewer Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and host of CNN’s “GPS.”

“It still takes time to see a thorough and a complete solution to the Korean nuclear issue,” Wen said. “But what I would like to stress is that the model that we have adopted, and the efforts we have made, proved to be right in this direction.”

A meeting among major powers at the United Nations to discuss further sanctions against Iran was cancelled last week after Russia opposed the move.

The cancellation appeared to be a retaliatory move by Russia after the United States called for Moscow to be penalized for its five day war with Georgia last month.

China, along with Russia, has often resisted calls for sanctions against Iran, although it has voted in favor previously.

The cancellation of the meeting came after a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had not frozen uranium enrichment activities as instructed by the United Nations. Such enrichment work can be a key step towards making nuclear weapons.

The IAEA said Iran had installed additional uranium-enriching centrifuges, and was testing more advanced centrifuges as well.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested Friday that his county would not offer its banks a U.S.-style bailout.

Brown, who was in Washington for a meeting with President Bush, told British Broadcasting Corp. television that the best way of dealing with the British aspect of the global financial crisis was to increase liquidity.

“The American plan is designed for a large number of banks and institutions across America,” Brown told the BBC. “We have a smaller banking system … I think what we’ve done is the right thing. We have put cash into the system…. That, in Britain, is the better way of deal with it.”

Brown said Britain’s central bank, the Bank of England, had made over 100 billion pounds ($180 billion) available to lenders and that the government was prepared to do more to tackle instability in its financial markets.

Brown said the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion banking bailout was something “quite unique.”

“The American plan is designed for a large number of banks and institutions across America,” Brown said. “We have a smaller number of banks.”

Bandits who kidnapped 19 tourists and Egyptians in the desert have moved them from Sudan to Libya, shadowed by Sudanese forces who have said they will not put the hostages’ lives at risk.

“The kidnappers and the tourists have moved to Libya, about 13 to 15 kilometres (eight to nine miles) across the border,” Ali Yousuf, director of protocol at the Sudanese foreign ministry, told AFP.

“All hostages are well, according to our information, and we are monitoring the situation… Military forces are in the area, but we are not going to make any move that puts the lives of those being held in any risk.”

The group of five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian as well as eight Egyptian drivers and guides was snatched by masked bandits while on a desert safari to view prehistoric art in Egypt’s remote southwest on September 19.

An Egyptian official has said the bandits want Germany to pay a six-million-euro (8.8 million dollar) ransom.

“Germany is in contact with the kidnappers, and Sudan is remaining in close contact with the Egyptian, Italian, German and Romanian authorities,” Yousuf said.

An Egyptian source quoted by the official MENA news agency said that the group had moved “most probably because of water shortage in the place where they were kidnapped.”

The group’s latest displacement means they are heading west around Jebel Uweinat, a 1,900-metre-high (6,200-foot-high) plateau roughly 30 kilometres (20 miles) in diameter that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

In August, two hijackers of a Sudanese plane surrendered to Libyan authorities after landing in Kufra, an oasis in southeast Libya and some 300 kilometres (200 miles) away.

In contrast to the undeveloped Egyptian and Sudanese territory around Jebel Uweinat, the Libyan side has access to roads and also has a continuous military presence.

Egypt has said Germany is heading negotiations through the German wife of the Egyptian tour operator who is among the missing. Berlin has only said it has set up a kidnap crisis team.

“The six million euros are to be given to the German wife” to bring to the kidnappers, the Egyptian official said.

Several different ransom figures have been cited since the group was first reported missing on Monday.

The group was taken from Egypt’s Gilf el-Kabir 25 kilometres (17 miles) into Sudan to Jebel Uweinat, where Sudanese forces were “besieging the area.”

Khartoum has said the hostages have not been harmed and it has no intention of storming the area “so as to preserve the lives of the kidnapped persons.”

Travellers in their 70s are among the hostages being held in the desert, where daytime temperatures can hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) even in September.

The area of the kidnapping is a desert plateau famous for prehistoric cave paintings, including the “Cave of the Swimmers” featured in the 1996 film “The English Patient.”

Authorities only became aware of the abduction on Monday when the tour group leader phoned his wife to tell her of the ransom demand.

An Egyptian security official has said the kidnappers are “most likely Chadian” after Sudan said they were Egyptians.

Other officials have suggested the kidnappers rebels are from one of Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, although several rebel groups have denied this.

The tourism ministry in Egypt — which relies heavily on earnings from foreign visitors — has stressed that the kidnapping is “an act of banditry not of terrorism.”

Kidnappings of foreigners are extremely rare in Egypt, although in 2001 an armed Egyptian held four German tourists hostage for three days in the Nile resort of Luxor, demanding that his estranged wife bring his two sons back from Germany. He freed the hostages unharmed.