| You have searched for: traffic |
| |
 |
|
Somali pirates achieved a new milestone in their seemingly unstoppable rise this weekend when they seized a Saudi Arabian supertanker laden with two million barrels of oil worth almost 100 million dollars.
It seems that every month there is a new first for the pirates, who have dramatically increased the frequency of their attacks...
 |
|
|
Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, which last month ordered the closure of Mogadishu's main airport, said Thursday it may allow air traffic to once again land.
"Our decision to close the airport is not Holy Koran verse; we can change our decision to close the airport if the people come to negotiate," Sheikh...
|
|
|
Rainstorms wreaked havoc Monday in Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta, forcing the closure of schools, disrupting maritime traffic and damaging the border fence separating the autonomous city from surrounding Morocco, officials said.
Police patrols were increased on the border to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants, who...
|
|
|
 At least 29 people were killed inside a Sudan Airways burning plane, while
171 managed to escape, said Sudan Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Abdel
Hafez Abdel Rahim Mahmoud, according to The Press Association.
Authorities are currently examining the wreckage in order to determine the
cause of the crash, police spokesman Major...
|
|
|
 Chaos descended on parts of Kenya Wednesday as the first of three days
of rallies saw opposition backers clash with police who fired tear gas
and live rounds into crowds to thwart the demonstrations over disputed
presidential polls.
A sense of normalcy returned to some areas of the capital Nairobi
in the morning, with Kenyans...
|
|
|
 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock on Wednesday at the
reports of 300 civilians killed in the wake of presidential elections
in Kenya and the deteriorating humanitarian situation there.
He reminded leaders of the Kenyan government, religious and
political parties of their "legal and moral responsibility" to...
|
|
|
 According to local media reports, security forces were patrolling Senegal's
capital Thursday, where streets were reopened to traffic a day after hundreds
of young men protesting a move to clear the city of hawkers clashed with police
throughout Dakar.
The government late Wednesday agreed to allow vendors back onto certain
streets,...
|
|
|
 According to local officials, a bus and a lorry collided in
southern Tanzania
on Sunday killing 28 people.
The accident took lace near the town of Mbeya, 630 km southwest of Dar el Salaam.
“The bus with registration number T443 APF owned by SABCO
Company was heading to Dar el Salaam
from Tunduma when the accident occurred...
|
|
|
"We are trying to determine the cause of the
accident," spokesman Maj. Felix Kulayigye said after a truck transporting
more than 100 soldiers and their families crashed. The accident took place on
Monday in the eastern part of Uganda,
Kampala, after
the truck hit the concrete side railing. The cause of the event is...
|
|
|
Kenyan Airways confirmed that the Nairobi-bound airliner
that was lost after issuing a distress signal shortly after takeoff from Cameroon has
been found after a two full days of searching.
The crash site of the Boeing 737-800 was in a mangrove
swamp, 20 kilometres southwest of Douala, a
business centre on the Cameroon
coast....
|
|
| |
 |
|
 The recently elected president of the United States, Barack Obama, is the subject of a malicious malware campaign designed to steal information from infected computers. Malware authors created a Trojan that exploits the high volumes of Web traffic around Obama, 60 percent of all spam messages using his name in what has become a...
|
|
|
 Wikia has confirmed that about 30 percent of its workers have been laid off, but points out that it is still trying to hire for open positions. Co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, officially launched at the beginning of this year an attempt at a human-powered search engine (Wikia Search). It looks like the experimental search engine is...
|
|
|
 The Federal Communications Commission might sanction Comcast for blocking traffic in what is supposed to be an arbitrary manner. The complaint was filed to the commission at the end of 2007 by the consumer group Free Press, which said that the internet service provider was blocking some users’ access to some peer2peer applications among...
|
|
|
 Wednesday night, in-browser social network Me.dium took the next step in developing its service as it launched a new social search tool. The new system, called Crowd Rank, combines regular Yahoo results with separately obtained social ones, taken from Me.dium users. According to David Mandell, Me.dium founder, the novelty of Wednesday’s...
|
|
|
 A Florida judge has given a rather surprising sentence when he made the two YouTube pranksters upload a video apology on the same website that made them famous. As they thought what they did was hilarious, the two boys, aged 15 and 16, posted a video of themselves throwing a soft drink at a Taco Bell employee, at a restaurant in Merritt...
|
|
|
 This week, Comcast will start trying out a new method of traffic management in three U.S. markets. The novelty of the company’s move consists of a protocol-agnostic approach that will cover all traffic, as opposed to the current strategy of peer-to-peer traffic targeting. According to Comcast officials, the company is considering the...
|
|
|
Comcast lost control of its Web mail portal for more than five hours on
late Wednesday night, when two hackers unleashed chaos on the site. The
hackers, two groups from the Kryogeniks, redirected the site traffic, shut down the service and did not allow the users to access their personal e-mails. Two hundred
domain names were breached...
|
|
|
 On Wednesday, Facebook finally talked openly about the
soon-to-be-deployed website redesign, which will clean up profile pages and
improve the website’s organization. Now that it has over 20,000 applications,
things are getting a bit crowded visually and some feel that a change is really being called
for.
The user’s information...
|
|
|
 According to a study from the German-based Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, U.S. cable broadband providers Comcast and Cox Communications are not slowing down BitTorrent traffic during peak hours alone, but all throughout the day. The study, conducted between March 18 and May 15, involved around 8,000 users from all over the...
|
|
|
 Ask.com and Lexico Publishing Group, owner of the three very popular websites Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com, have announced that an agreement was reached and thus the first will acquire the latter for an undisclosed price. There is however some available information that can roughly point out what the company is worth:...
|
|
|
 On Friday, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Matt Cutts, Google engineer, head of Google's Web spam team, kept a very informative speech ("What Google Knows About Spam") on spam and ways to go around it. Keyword spam, widely covered by the session, represents the use of words, oftenly having to connection what so ever with...
|
|
|
 Google's Urchin Web analytics server software has finally received that very important upgrade it has been waiting for. Urchin 6, initially announced for late 2004, can now be purchased from authorized resellers for the price of US$2,995 per license for up to 1,000 domains. Users who had already paid for Urchin 5 can redirect the sums...
|
|
|
 Microsoft announced on Thursday its plan to introduce a service for driving directions that would help users stay away from traffic jams. The new web-based service’s software technology is called Clearflow and it has been developed by an artificial-intelligence research group for the past five years.The Clearflow system will be made...
|
|
|
 Comcast Corp. promised yesterday that it would not
discriminate against specific Internet traffic. With more than 24 million
subscribers, the company is the largest cable TV and Internet provider in the U.S. The
announcement comes after criticism received by the company last year on the
alleged blocking of a software program utilized...
|
|
|
 Google’s highly
popular video sharing web site YouTube had some problems this week following
Pakistan’s trying to block access to the web site only inside its borders. Pakistan’s
action was caused by a so-called “blasphemous” video clip about the Koran made
by a Dutch politician and lawmaker called Geert Wilders. The movie...
|
|
|
 According to a
spokesman’s recent announcement, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority
ordered the country’s Internet service providers to restore access to YouTube,
Google’s popular video sharing web site. Pakistan’s telecommunications
regular lifted the ban, after it had disrupted worldwide access to the popular
web site during...
|
|
|
 Search engine king Google Inc. has joined other companies to lay a new data cable between the United States and Japan. Five other telecommunications companies are involved in the bold project, which will eventually see a new 6,200 mile undersea fiber optic cable installed on Pacific's bottom.A consortium was formed, Unity, which...
|
|
|
 Pakistani ISPs were ordered to block access to the popular video sharing website YouTube after several anti-Islam videos were posted on the site. Apparently, this was improperly done and it disrupted access to YouTube across the world due to routing errors.YouTube said in a statement that users around the world could not access the site...
|
|
|
 The Federal Communications Commission has grilled Comcast Monday over their policy of slowing down or canceling certain types of data transfers, which are using peer-to-peer technology. Although initially the company has denied such accusations that it violates the "net neutrality" principles, it was eventually forced to admit...
|
|
|
 CBS Mobile announced on Wednesday
that it had joined forces with Loopt, a mapping and communications provider. Thanks
to this new deal, CBS Mobile will be able to offer its users location-based
mobile ads on its news and sports web sites.
CBS Mobile and Loopt are very
proud of their project, which is reportedly the first of its...
|
|
|
 According to the statement of industry officials on Friday, another Internet carrying undersea cable was cut, following the disruption of the Internet and telephone traffic in India and the Middle East. This is actually the third cable that is being damaged over the last three days.The first two undersea cables were cut on Wednesday off...
|
|
|
 Millions of Internet users in India and countries across the
Middle East had to cope with slow connections after two undersea cable systems
in the Mediterranean Sea were damaged, officials informed.
Telecommunications companies said damaged cables near
Alexandria, Egypt, and Marseille, France, were to blame for the massive...
|
|
|
 Last month, Radiohead announced the release of a new album, In Rainbows. Nobody would have guessed that this album would be such a great surprise and a blast of publicity, through its unusual marketing strategy.The well-known band’s album was available online, for download at a price that was set by the fans. Thus, Radiohead asked their...
|
|
|
 Having no less than 11 million
customers, Comcast represents the second largest high-speed Internet provider
from the United States.
Any move that Comcast would theoretically make for favoring or blocking certain
types of content moving over its network would practically have serious, large
consequences. The Internet principle of...
|
|
|
 Despite an American blog has
posted that the users from Shanghai and Beijing have not been
able to access Google Inc.’s search engine on Friday, the users themselves have
just denied the news. They have said that they have been able to successfully access
Google’s search engine, as well as other search engines, and that the...
|
|
|
 According to a researcher’s
report that has been made public on Tuesday, the brilliant dark minds behind
the risky and persistent Storm trojan have started to sell pieces of the botnet
that their malware has been creating. This way the hackers are selling in fact access
to the compromised personal computers that have been infected by...
|
|
|
 The famous company Yahoo Inc. has
announced today that it is to sell display ads for one of the most popular social
networking web sites. The deal that Yahoo Inc. has signed with Bebo Inc.
represents the first one that Yahoo has ever had with a social networking web
site. However, this move is welcomed and represents as well an...
|
|
|
 Although some of us might have
not even noticed yet, starting with Friday Google has started to host The
Associated Press’ news material on its own web site and has stopped to send
only readers to other destinations. Google has signed this deal not only with
The Associated Press, but also with Agence France-Presse, with The...
|
|
| |
 |
|
The Indian Navy has been given formal approval for "hot pursuit" of pirates in Somali waters and will be deploying another warship to tackle piracy in the region, officials and news reports said Friday.
The United Nations has recently authorized the Indian Navy to enter Somali territorial waters to take anti-piracy measures,...
|
|
|
Police in Vietnam have shut down the country's largest pornographic website, arresting a dozen people, most of whom are students, a high-ranking police official said Tuesday.
"This is the first time we have arrested so many people involved in spreading pornography in Vietnam," said Senior Lieutenant Colonel Tran Van Hoa,...
|
|
|
Airlines in the Asia-Pacific are preparing for increasingly difficult times as passenger and cargo traffic dips in the global economic downturn, a regional airline group said Friday.
In response, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines appealed to governments, airports and aviation service providers in the region to refrain from...
|
|
|
Shi Han Min, who led the Beijing's effort to clean up its air for the 2008 Olympic Games, on Wednesday won the first Kong Ha Award for excellence in air quality management.
The award, which included a 10,000-dollar purse, was granted to Shi at the Better Air Quality 2008 workshop in Bangkok, which has drawn 900 delegates from the...
|
|
|
A consortium of Indian engineering major Larsen and Toubro and Malaysian firm Scomi International have been awarded the contract to build India's first monorail in business hub Mumbai, a company release said.
The consortium will implement the 24.6-billion-rupee (519-million-dollar) project for the Mumbai Metropolitan Development...
|
|
|
Malaysia proposed Tuesday to limit the number of vessels plying the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest waterways, in a move to ensure the safety of seafarers.
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said 70,718 ships passed through the straits last year, a sharp 40 per cent increase from 43,965 in 1999.
"Malaysia believes...
|
|
|
Thai prime minister Somchai Wongsawat on Friday rebuffed intense pressure to resign following a violent police crackdown against anti-government protestors.
Somchai, elevated last month, rejected a strong suggestion on Thursday by army commander Anupong Paojinda that he step down.
"This government was produced by the...
|
|
|
Authorities in Bangladesh have given the nod to launch a feasibility study for constructing a 60-kilometre subway system for Dhaka to ease the capital's nagging traffic congestion, officials said Tuesday.
The military-backed interim government, led by Fakhruddin Ahmed, on Monday asked an inter-ministry panel to launch the study by...
|
|
|
Typhoon Hagupit targeted Vietnam over the weekend, killing at least 42 people, while Typhoon Jangmi left two people dead in Taiwan before weakening to a tropical storm, officials reported Monday.
Flash floods, heavy rain and landslides triggered by Hagupit also left four missing and 61 injured in northern Vietnam, the National...
|
|
|
Typhoon Hagupit targeted Vietnam over the weekend, killing at least 42 people, while Typhoon Jangmi left two people dead in Taiwan before weakening to a tropical storm, officials said Monday.
Flash floods, heavy rain and landslides triggered by Hagupit also left four missing and 61 injured in northern Vietnam, the National Steering...
|
|
|
Typhoon Jangmi lashed Taiwan with powerful winds and torrential rains Sunday, forcing a standstill in domestic air traffic and some railway services.
The typhoon packed center winds of up to 184 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 227 kilometres per hour, making landfall in the north-eastern county of Ilan in the afternoon, the...
|
|
|
Hundreds of Catholics massed Friday in downtown Hanoi, singing and praying, after the government sent police and earthmovers to clear a disputed piece of property and turn it into a public park.
Priests said construction crews arrived at 4 am Friday to break down walls and clear structures on the site of Hanoi's former papal...
|
|
|
Pakistani lawyers, backed by human rights activists and political workers, staged countrywide sit-ins Thursday to press the government to reinstate dozens of senior judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf.
The powerful legal community resumed protests three days after the 6-month-old ruling coalition collapsed on...
|
|
|
Police found three more bodies Wednesday of people killed in clashes between Hindus and Christians in India's eastern state of Orissa, bringing the death toll to 11, news reports said.
A few fresh incidents of rioting and arson led authorities to impose shoot-on-sight orders in parts of the curfew-bound Khandamal district, where the...
|
|
|
Police found three more bodies Wednesday of people killed in clashes between Hindus and Christians in India's eastern Orissa state, bringing the death toll to 11, news reports said.
Large parts of Kandhamal district, where the death of a Hindu leader has sparked an orgy of violence since Monday, were under curfew and police called the...
|
|
|
Hundreds of homeless residents from East Java province demanded compensation for their properties destroyed by a massive mudflow caused by an industrial accident.
More than 14,000 homes, 33 schools, 65 mosques and an orphanage have been buried since May 2006 when a "mud volcano" began oozing to the surface following an...
|
|
|
Shouting "We want freedom," tens of thousands of protestors joined a rally called by Muslim separatist groups in Jammu and Kashmir state capital Srinagar on Friday.
At least 50,000 people from Srinagar and its outskirts gathered at the Idgah, a historic prayer ground in central Srinagar, which also has a cemetery where many...
|
|
|
Police in Vietnam have arrested two of their colleagues accused of accepting a bribe of 1 billion dong (60,000 dollars), an official said Friday.
The Police Department of the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau arrested Major Vo Van Ly, 43, and Lieutenant Vo Chi Thanh from the provincial Marine Police Department Thursday, said the...
|
|
|
Indian capital Delhi and other major cities were placed on high security alert on Thursday amid threats of terrorist strikes ahead of the country's Independence Day, officials and news reports said.
The area around Delhi's Red Fort, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to deliver the annual Independence Day speech on...
|
|
|
Bomb disposal experts carried out two controlled explosions on suspicious objects in busy areas of Hong Kong Thursday.
The first, a mobile phone wrapped in wires, was found in the Tsim Sha Tsui area shortly after midday and was detonated by experts.
The second, found in the Mongkok area at around 2:30 pm, caused traffic chaos for...
|
|
|
Singapore's Changi Airports International (CAI) and its Russian partner Basic Element have cleared the initial round of the bidding process to develop and operate St Petersburg's main airport, CAI said Thursday.
The Pulkovo International Airport development is Russia's first public-private partnership project for an airport.
The...
|
|
|
 Typhoon Fung-Wong lashed Taiwan Monday, bringing strong winds and heavy rains which triggered landslides and floods. Schools, offices, banks and the local stock exchange had to be closed. Moreover, the railway traffic was stopped due to the powerful winds of up to 126 kilometers (90 miles).The typhoon made landfall on the east central...
|
|
|
One of the worst suicide attacks ever to strike the Afghan capital, as the Los Angeles Times reported, happened today and killed nearly 41 people, wounding 140 others, just outside the Indian Embassy.It all took place so quickly, that afterwards all became chaotic. Ambulances tried to rush to the place where the accident took place, but...
|
|
|
 More than 44 school children and three adults were killed on
Wednesday when their bus veered of a bridge and plunged into a canal in western
India,
police said, according to Reuters. Some witnesses say the driver may have been
driving too fast and lost control of the bus.
Police officers are still looking for other...
|
|
|
 At least four people were killed and 16 other badly wounded in two suicide bomb attacks that took place at Pakistan's Navy War College. The attacks brought panic across Lahore, a city relatively tranquil until now, compared with the rest of the country.This is the fifth day of attacks carried out by the Pakistani pro-Taliban militants...
|
|
|
Internet cables providing service for the Middle
East and several parts of Asia were
mysteriosuly severed, and Internet service was interrupted for nearly two
weeks. The incident has given birth to several theories that explain the
causes, including terrorism. It has been believed that someone might have
wanted to stop...
|
|
|
 Severe winter weather struck China, stranding thousands of people ahead of next week's Lunar New Year holiday.Heavy snowfalls stopped trains in their tracks across southern provinces, snapped power lines and disrupted the transport of coal, the primary fuel used at most Chinese power plants.Entire cities were left in the dark by...
|
|
|
 Power outages, flash floods and landslides hit the northern Philippines
Monday amid heavy rains and strong winds brought by a powerful typhoon
that has already killed eight people.
The National Disaster Coordinating Council said more than 140,000
people were evacuated in the northern Philippines, which was suffering
the brunt of...
|
|
|
 At least 20 people lost their lives in the Indian city of
Hyderabad, when the overpass they were taking shelter under during a rainstorm
collapsed on top of them Saturday.
Rescue workers have managed to recover two bodies crushed
under the ruble and twisted steel. Pedestrians were injured and near parked
vehicles were...
|
|
|
 China's
parliament gave the executions sentence today to former delegate to the
National People's Congress, Duan Yihe.
Duan was executed today for killing his mistress with whom
he had been having an affair since 1993.
According to Chinese media, this has been the harshest
sentence given to a corrupt official.
Chen Zhi ,...
|
|
|
 City officials have pulled hundreds of private cars off the streets of Beijing in a attempt to test whether such a ban could help ease the smog levels and traffic gridlock during forthcoming 2008 Olympic Games. The car ban will last four days and the selection method uses the odd-even license plate number, so only vehicles with...
|
|
|
 The powerful typhoon Man-yi lashed out at southern Japan on Saturday with strong winds and torrential rains, 44 people reportedly being injured and thousands displaced due to the intense storm.After ravaging the southernmost islands of Okinawa on Friday, the tropical storm struck Kyushu, the third-largest island of Japan and is moving...
|
|
|
 China is battered by torrential rain which caused flash floods and landslides in seven provinces, 94 people being reported dead and 25 missing over the last week, as no amelioration is in sight, authorities informed Monday.Southern China was the most affected, thousands of houses collapsing under the heavy rain or were swept away by...
|
|
|
 Saturday was supposed to be a national holiday in Nepal, as King Gyanendra celebrates his 61st birthday, but opponents of the king’s regime staged mass protests and ended up clashing with supporters and security forces.The Narayanhity royal palace was prepared to greet the loyal subjects on Saturday, but pro-democracy activists blocked...
|
|
|
 Karachi is battered by fierce storms for the past two days, more than 200 people being killed in Pakistan’s largest city, the authorities reported Sunday.Most of the fatalities were caused by fallen power lines and crumbling buildings, that trapped hundreds under piles of rubble and mud.The powerful winds trampled trees, billboards and...
|
|
|
 India’s southern region is under water after the monsoon season came with heavy rains that fell incessantly in the past days, causing floods and landslides that took at least 49 lives since Friday.Indian authorities informed that 45 persons died in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh in the past 24 hours, most of them drowning or falling...
|
|
|
 Two soldiers were killed in Kashmir by
a hand grenade, while 25 other were injured by a roadside bomb in the same
region, government officials reported.
Unknown persons threw a hand grenade into a military camp belonging
to the Indian paramilitary troops, gravely injuring five soldiers. Two of the
injured servicemen died at the...
|
|
|
 The northern Indian state of Rajasthan is ravaged by a series of demonstrations that degenerated into riots, as the protestors clashed with security forces which didn’t hesitate to open fire on the rage-driven crowd.Protests actions were initiated Tuesday by the ethnic Gujjar community, which demanded they have a special status in order...
|
|
|
 The Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea remains open despite several calls from the US and IAEA to close the facility and permit the visit of nuclear inspectors in the country.North Korea refused to shut down the main reactor at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center after the United States blocked some funds in a Macau...
|
|
|
 Road accidents claim more lives, as 51 people died and several others were injured in two brutal crashes on the unsafe Indian roads. A first accident occurred in the southern Andhra Pradesh state when a van carrying several people that were attending a weeding collided with a speeding truck. 23 persons were killed and 25 others...
|
|
| |
 |
|
Swedish heavy-vehicle maker Scania Wednesday said it has inked a deal to assemble trucks and buses with the government of Iraq.
The deal was announced in connection with a visit to Iraq by Swedish Trade Minister Ewa Bjorling and a delegation of Swedish businesses, including Scania and telecommunications equipment maker...
|
|
|
| | |
