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Lights go out across planet for Earth Hour

Lights were going out across the world on Saturday as millions of homes and businesses in major cities went dark for one hour in a symbolic gesture to highlight concerns over climate change.

In Australia, floodlights of the Sydney Opera House were extinguished as the city’s iconic harbor kicked off events for Earth Hour, a day-long energy-saving marathon stretching through 88 countries and 24 time zones. The event’s Web site reported that hundreds of people lined the harbour for a glimpse of the dimming skyline at 8:30 pm — the local time that nearly 4,000 participating cities around the world were expected to switch off non-essential lights. Sydney became the birthplace of the Earth Hour campaign in 2007 when 2.2 million turned off their lights, igniting a grass roots movement that has become a global phenomenon. In China, illuminations at major buildings including the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube were extinguished as 20 cities joined in, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

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Other landmarks around the world expected to join the World Wildlife Fund-sponsored event were the Egyptian pyramids, Vatican, Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Acropolis in Athens and the Las Vegas casino strip. Earth Hour events got off to an unofficial start in the remote Chatham Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean where locals switched off their diesel generators, organizers said. Shortly afterwards, 44 New Zealand cities and town joined in the event. Organizers say they hope this year’s event will send a message to world leaders meeting Copenhagen in December for a major summit on climate change. “We are asking one billion people to take part in what is essentially the first global vote for action on climate change by turning off their lights for one hour and casting a vote for earth,” said executive director Andy Ridley.

Meningitis epidemic strikes Nigeria, Niger

A health care worker vaccinates a child during an earlier outbreak of meningitis in Niger.
More than 200 people have died of meningitis in the past week alone in Niger and Nigeria, according to the World Health Organization.

The disease is an epidemic in 76 areas of the two countries, the health agency reported Wednesday. A spokesman for W.H.O. in Nigeria, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, said Saturday that the outbreak is bigger than usual and stretches across the African meningitis belt from east- to west-sub-Saharan Africa. The outbreak began around the start of the year, Soyinka told CNN. It usually peaks in the dry season because of dust, winds and cold nights, before dipping around May when the rains come, he said. A shortage of vaccines means officials are relying on “effective prevention,” in which they watch for outbreaks and then vaccinate people in the epicenter and surrounding areas, Soyinka told CNN. There have been nearly 25,000 suspected cases and more than 1,500 deaths in the meningitis belt in the first 11 weeks of the year, W.H.O. reported. More than 85 percent of those cases happened in northern Nigeria and Niger.

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Nigeria’s Ministry of Health has reported 17,462 suspected cases of meningococcal disease, including 960 deaths, the world health agency said. In the past week, it reported 4,164 suspected cases with 171 deaths. Sixty-six local government areas in Nigeria have crossed the epidemic threshold. Epidemic thresholds are a way the W.H.O. confirms the emergence of an epidemic so it can step up vaccinations and other management measures. Niger’s Ministry of Health has reported 4,513 suspected cases of meningococcal disease, including 169 deaths, since the start of the year. In the past week, 1,071 suspected cases and 30 deaths have been reported, the W.H.O. said. Ten of Niger’s 42 districts have crossed the epidemic threshold. By comparison, other countries are reporting fewer than 50 cases a week. Meningitis is an infection of the meninges, the thin lining that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord. Several different bacteria can cause meningitis but Neisseria meningitidis — which is to blame for this outbreak — is one of the most significant because of its potential to cause epidemics. Health authorities have released 2.3 million doses of vaccine to Nigeria and 1.9 million doses to Niger, the W.H.O. said.

Obama: We’re watching rising rivers

Volunteers at a Fargo, North Dakota, city facility continue to fill and stack sandbags Friday.
President Obama said his administration plans to keep a close watch on and help fight the rising waters in the Dakotas and Minnesota.

“Even as we face an economic crisis which demands our constant focus, forces of nature can also intervene in ways that create other crises to which we must respond and respond urgently,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly webcast. “For the people of North and South Dakota and Minnesota who live along rivers spilling over their banks, this is one such moment.” Troops and aircraft were being sent overnight to North Dakota to assist state and local officials ahead of record flooding, as residents along the Red River nervously eyed shored-up dikes and levees. As of 3 a.m., the river stood at 40.79 feet, nearly 22 feet above flood stage and almost a foot above the previous record of 40.1 feet, set in 1897. Watch a family fight to save their home » Above-freezing temperatures, followed by heavy rains this week, have caused the Red River and its tributaries to swell, but Fargo’s mayor vowed to “go down swinging.” “Right now, we think the river is beginning to crest,” Mayor Dennis Walaker said. “As long as we stay under 42 feet, I think we got a chance; if we go over 42, there’s going to be some more evacuations.” Watch Fargo’s mayor explain why disaster could be averted »

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Furious sandbagging operations continued Friday, drawing praise from local and state officials, including North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven. “North Dakotans have come together in a big, big way. Our volunteers are doing a magnificent job building this flood protection and we want to say thank you to them,” he said. “There’s a sense of perseverance and resolve and determination.” Buses and evacuation staging areas have been put in place west of Fargo, Hoeven said, and hundreds of people have evacuated Fargo neighborhoods, hospitals and a nursing home. Watch how volunteers are battling the rising water » Fargo Deputy Mayor Tim Mahoney said authorities were evacuating the city’s vulnerable areas and were asking for voluntary evacuations in sites near retaining dikes. The National Weather Service predicted the river would reach 42 feet Saturday, and forecasts indicated it would remain there into next week. But the weather service warned the river might reach 43 feet — the height to which most of the city’s dikes have been raised — if warmer temperatures expected in the middle of next week melt the record snowfall. Watch Fargo residents fight back » “What’s going on here really is an inspiration for the country,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota. “The eyes of America are on Fargo, North Dakota, and they’re getting a very good impression of what the people of North Dakota are like.” Authorities would not try to raise the city’s dikes above 43 feet, Walaker said. Sandbags are used to bolster dikes in residential areas around the city, while the city dikes are reinforced with clay. “We have most of the south side of Fargo, and along the river, good to 43, so we’re not going to proceed with trying to get it to 44,” he said at a news conference Friday morning. “Now is that a gamble We don’t think so.” See map of affected area » National Weather Service spokesman Patrick Slattery in Kansas City, Missouri, said the river’s level means uncertainty for officials and volunteers who are scrambling to mitigate the flooding. Emergency responders cannot know for sure how accurate predictions are because they have never seen the river so high, he said. “At some point, especially when you’re dealing with record levels, you reach a point when there’s nothing else you can do,” Slattery said. “Start alerting people to be ready to get out of there.” Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who led the military response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2007, warned that sandbags can only buy time. “You cannot depend on a sandbag dike to save your life; you put it up to try to save your property,” he said. “Once you put it up, you need to leave, because that sandbag dike could break at any given time.” Sandbags also are less effective against cold water, Honore said. Read the full interview with Honore Water began seeping Friday under a dike that runs across a partially submerged athletic field, prompting officials to ask volunteer sandbaggers to come help. About 150 people showed up as the water on the other side of the dike rose. “We’re going to be OK. We’re going to be fine,” Melanie Engel Unger said as she passed along 40-pound sandbags. Daryl Braham said he was confident the volunteers would be able to maintain the dike’s integrity. He was hopeful the cold weather — temperatures were well below freezing Friday — remained. “It’s kind of a blessing in disguise because it’s slowing things down,” he said. Fargo officials early Friday evacuated a neighborhood of about 150 homes after they found cracks in a levee, according to a city news release. Capt. Tod Dahle said the residents were evacuated because the neighborhood lies between a primary and contingency levee. About 100 people were evacuated Thursday from a nursing home, as were 40 others from a nearby neighborhood. No one was in immediate danger, officials said. See photos of flooding » “We were disappointed yesterday and early this morning about the two areas that we had to evacuate,” Walaker said. “Is that going to be it [for evacuations] We don’t know. We don’t have any real crystal ball to look into.” MeritCare Hospital and MeritCare South University had evacuated 177 patients as of Friday, MeritCare Health System spokeswoman Carrie Haug said. Some were taken to hospitals elsewhere in North Dakota; others were taken across the river to Minnesota, she said. Across the Red River from Fargo, a U.S. senator said some homes had been lost in Moorhead, Minnesota. Emphasizing that there are two states dealing with the river’s rise, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said, “This is a time at which the forces of nature, of the Red River, will meet the forces of the human spirit.” Clay County emergency center spokesman Dan Olson said some residents in Moorhead were being asked to evacuate. He called it a “directed evacuation,” rather than a mandatory one. It also applied to large parts of nearby Oakport Township, he said. The emergency center is setting up a call center where evacuees can register to be tracked. A spokeswoman at the city’s emergency call center said she would put the number of evacuees in the “high hundreds.” “We know our highways are pretty congested” with people leaving, Kasey Cummings said.

Minnesota State University at Moorhead and Concordia College had voluntarily closed, she said. To the west, about 1,500 people who evacuated North Dakota’s capital, Bismarck, on Wednesday were able to return home Thursday, after the Missouri River dropped more than 3 feet, the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services said.

Thousands expected for London G-20 protest

Running out of space? Web cafe users in China
The first major protest ahead of next week’s G-20 summit got underway in a cold and rainy London on Saturday, but police said they expected the event to be largely peaceful despite fears of violence in coming days.

Such has been the Internet’s phenomenal and dizzying growth that much of the technology which supports it has grown organically and without much forward planning. But what if the Internet was to run out of space This isn’t just a theoretical debate, but something experts warn could become a real issue within a few years. Now, one business school professor studying the issue believes he may have come up with a solution. The problem isn’t one of storage, but of location, the so-called IP addresses which are handed out to new sites. These are all given a unique number based on something called the IPv4 (Internet protocol version 4) standard, the system under which the web first expanded globally. IPv4 assigns main host addresses using a system which gives around 4 billion possible combinations, a figure which at the time seemed greater than could possibly ever be used. But now the numbers are running out. A new system, IPv6, has been developed, but technical issues and a reluctance among Web companies to begin using it means it could be years before this is widely adopted. Benjamin G. Edelman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, is warning that such a bottleneck could seriously hamper the Internet, saying the Web is in danger of becoming “a victim of its own success.”

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If new technology businesses can’t acquire sufficient IP addresses it will be difficult for them to get a foothold in the industry, he said. “Entry and potential entry are an important part of competition. We need to make sure new firms can easily begin operations so that existing providers can’t hold customers hostage.” Edelman believes he has come up with an interim solution — a free market in defunct or unused IP addresses, of which there are many millions, which can be transferred, at a price, to new owners. “It’s unlikely that other networks would return their space for free. Why would they” he said. “But if the price is right, they may be willing to transfer the space to someone who needs it more.” In the Web’s early days, Edelman explains, when the number of IP addresses seemed inexhaustible, some networks were allocated huge numbers by the non-governmental independent regulators which control this. Some of these companies later scaled back their Internet activities or even went out of business altogether.

Fact Box FT MBA Rankings 1= London Business School, U.K. 1= Wharton, U.S.3. Harvard, U.S.4. Columbia, U.S.5. Insead, France/Singapore6. Stanford GSB, U.S.6= IE Business School, Spain8. Ceibs, China9. MIT Sloan, U.S.10. NYU, Stern, U.S.Source: Financial Times 2009

These unused addresses could attract a market price, bringing not only what economists call “allocative efficiency” — moving resources to where they are most needed — but also another benefit. “By putting a positive price on IPv4 space, a market mechanism would remind current v4 users that their v4 space is valuable, and that they might want to try to vacate it, to the extent they can, perhaps by moving to IPv6,” he said. “A market basically tells networks: ‘We will pay you to use v6 instead.’ That’s a transition incentive quite different from anything we’ve seen to date. That’s a transition incentive that just might work.” Economically efficient it might be. But would this mean ordinary Web users having to pay in order to surf Edelman believes not. “If this transition goes smoothly, consumers should never notice. To date, IP addresses have been a trivially small part of the cost of Internet access and Web site hosting. Even if IP address prices increased 100 times, consumers still probably wouldn’t notice,” he said. “The bigger worries come if Internet Service Providers just cannot expand, or just cannot enter the market. If that were to come to pass, I wouldn’t be surprised to see effects on service price and quality.”

Rock star: That’s not me drinking on Google

Liam Gallagher says the figure captured on Google Earth outside a pub in London is not him.
Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher on Saturday denied that he is the man shown pointing at the Google Street View camera as it drove past his local pub in London last summer.

“Just saw google earth apparently that’s meant to be me, who … wears legwarmers with reeboks Not this kid!! LG,” he wrote on Twitter. Though available for a while in the United States, Google Street View only launched in Britain last week. As in America, the launch in Britain prompted people all over the country to try to find themselves or spot funny images and famous faces on the service. Gallagher was apparently spotted outside The Queens pub in Camden, in north London, a place he’s known to frequent. The picture shows a man dressed in a dark T-shirt and long shorts sitting at an outdoor table. He points at the camera, obviously having seen the Google car and its Street View camera drive by. The service blurs people’s faces so it is hard to confirm whether it is Gallagher. Though the man isn’t wearing legwarmers, Gallagher is apparently talking about the man’s ankle-high shoes and thick black socks.

Could the Internet run out of space?

Running out of space? Web cafe users in China
When a small group of university scientists began linking computers on different campus sites at the very end of the 1960s, they had no idea that their work would one day spiral into a globally-accessible network in which the total number of pages is measured in the tens of billions.

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2 arrested over Pakistan mosque bombing

Friday's blast brought the roof of the mosque down on worshippers attending prayers.
Two suspects were arrested in connection with the bombing of a mosque that killed at least 51 people, Pakistani authorities said Saturday.

The two were arrested about 30 minutes after the Friday bombing after police spotted them fleeing the scene, said local official Rahat Gul. The suspects were being questioned about the deadly blast that also wounded more than 100 people. The blast occurred at Jamrod in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. This is the latest assault in a region populated by Islamic militants in Pakistani safe havens along the Afghan border, where NATO and the U.S.-led coalition have been battling Taliban and al Qaeda militants. The bombed-out mosque had been frequented by Pakistani security officials who work at checkpoints along the route used by NATO to carry supplies from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

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The strike came hours before President Barack Obama explained his new urgent strategy for fighting Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the latest in a long line of attacks in the region that have been staged on days of political importance in the volatile Afghan and Pakistani region.

The two-story mosque had been packed with about 250 worshippers attending Friday prayers when the bomber, thought to be among the worshippers, detonated the explosive, authorities said. The building collapsed as the explosion rippled through the structure, and rescue crews deployed to the scene were searching through the rubble for more victims.

Virgin moves into Formula 1 sponsorship

Virgin has secured a partnership with the Brawn Grand Prix team in Formula One racing, Virgin boss Richard Branson announced Saturday.

The move, which had been the subject of speculation, marks Virgin’s first foray into F1 racing. Branson made the announcement from Melbourne, Australia, where he is attending Saturday’s Australian Grand Prix. He announced it just before the Brawn team secured the first two grid positions after qualifying, with Jenson Button in pole position. “I have always said I would love to have a Virgin car on the circuit,” Branson wrote on his blog. “I am thrilled to be involved with people as skilled as Ross Brawn and his team.” Branson added, “We are very confident that the Virgin Car driven by Jenson Button and Reubens Barrichello will go from strength to strength this season and look forward to a great future for the Brawn GP team.” Brawn Grand Prix is a newcomer to the F1 world. Run by former Ferrari technical guru Ross Brawn, the group was formed after Honda pulled out of Formula One because of the global economic downturn. Brawn kept the same driver line-up of Brazil’s Barrichello, the most experienced driver on the F1 grid, and Button, who has had to play second fiddle with the emergence of world champion and fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton, who races for McClaren, will start 15th. Saturday’s qualifying positions marked the first time a new team have started their first race from the front row since the 70s, according to Formula1.com.

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Billionaire Branson is famous for his Virgin brand, which began with music shops and record label now includes airlines and interests in publishing, nightclubs, hotels, and a makeup line. Flight testing is under way for a new Virgin venture, Virgin Galactic, which will launch space tourists into sub orbit. Branson says the service could be ready within two years. Branson, who received a knighthood in 1999, is famous for his daredevil feats, including round-the-world balloon attempts and transatlantic boat races.

Facebook users wage condom campaign against Pope

Critics took to the social networking site Facebook to voice their fury over Pope Benedict’s remark that condoms do not prevent HIV.

Thousands have pledged to send the pontiff millions of condoms to protest the controversial comment he made to journalists as he flew to Cameroon last week. “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.” Pope Benedict XVI has made it clear he intends to uphold the traditional Catholic teaching on artificial contraception. The Vatican has long opposed the use of condoms and other forms of birth control and encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease. About a dozen Facebook groups have sprang up, mostly from European countries, criticizing the pontiff. “The clergy aren’t supposed to have sex at all, but they are free to tell people how to conduct themselves That’s like a girl who wears no make-up as the CEO of CoverGirl,” one member posted on the page, “Condoms for Pope Benedict XVI.” “It frightens me that a man who has devoted his life to moral guidance … and is undeniably a learned, intelligent man can be at the same time so narrow-minded, bigoted and irresponsible,” posted another person on a different page. The online campaign added another voice to a deluge of criticism, which includes the governments of France, Germany and Belgium. Aid agencies and other health organizations have also chimed in. The Lancet, a British medical journal, urged the pope Saturday to issue a retraction for the “outrageous and wildly inaccurate” statement to journalists aboard his plane. “When any influential person, be it a religious or political leader, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record,” The Lancet said in an editorial. “Anything less from Pope Benedict would be an immense disservice to the public and health advocates, including many thousands of Catholics, who work tirelessly to try and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide.” Some in the Catholic Church have rallied to the pontiff’s support. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, told Times Online in Britain that Benedict was simply pointing out that condoms “had not solved and could not solve the AIDS problem.” Despite the controversy, the pope’s pilgrimage spurred excitement in Africa. An estimated 1 million people turned out to hear him preach a Mass in Angola on Sunday, the last major event of his trip. He spoke of the need for reconciliation in the country, which has endured a brutal civil war. “Look to the future with hope, trust in God’s promises and live in his truth. In this way you will build something that will stand and endure,” he said.

Button claims pole for F1 new boys Brawn GP

Britain’s Jenson Button claimed pole position for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne — leading a sweep of the front row for Formula One new boys Brawn GP.

Button edged out teammate Rubens Barrichello of Brazil by three hundredths of a second to claim the fourth pole of his stop start career. But Saturday’s qualifying provided little cheer for reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton, who will start 15th on the grid as his McLaren again struggled for pace. Hamilton made the cut for the second session, but a drivetrain failure left him in the pits, while his teammate Heikki Kovalainen could only manage 14th fastest. Ferrari were also off the pace with Felipe Massa qualifying seventh best and Kimi Raikkonen in ninth. It is the first time in 38 races that neither a Ferrari of McLaren is on the front row for a grand prix. Sebastian Vettel will start from third on the grid on his debut for Red Bull, with Robert Kubica also performing superbly for BMW Sauber — the Pole joining the promising young German on the second row. Nico Rosberg, who topped the timesheets at the end of all three practice sessions, is fifth for Williams, followed by Timo Glock for Toyota as the established order of F1 was turned on its head. Button will be aiming for the second victory of his 154 grand prix career in a remarkable reversal of fortunes for the former Honda team whose future looked bleak when the Japanese car manufacturer pulled out of the sport late last year blaiming the global economic downturn.

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But a management buyout led by technical guru Ross Brawn rescued the team at the last minute and secured drives for Button and Barrichello. After taking a new team to pole for the first time since Tyrell in March 1970, Button gave his thrilled reaction. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a car that’s been very competitive,” Button told Press Association. “But there are a few people who stand by you, and a few people who don’t because they don’t believe. “Now we’ve a very good car, and although this is not the most important moment of the weekend, it’s still a very good start.”