Multan: Police kill man; injure another

TrendPK.com

MULTAN: A youth died and another injured after being knocked down by a speedy police mobile van in Multan on late Saturday, reports TrendPK.

The driver responsible for the crash has been taken under arrest while the violent protestors smashed the windows of ill-fated police mobile, sources said.

Furious mob placed the dead body on the middle of a main road, blocking the way for traffic and staged protest against police department for many hours.

Deceased, identified as Asif, who worked in Cardiology Institute as Operator, was heading to home along with his brother on motorbike but a speeding police mobile van, went out of control, trampling the duo on Masoom Shah Road. Asif died on the spot while brother sustained critical injuries.

Subsequently, plenty of people gathered around the mobile and started a fierce assault on driver. Meanwhile, heavy police contingents arrived on the spot and secured custody of alleged driver.

Later, angry people protested against the accidental death of Asif and smashed window glasses of police mobile.

Driver is under arrest and the needful action has been initiated against him, police confirmed. TrendPK

Karachi: 3 killed in firing incidents

 Another man was injured during a clash between two rival groups in Landhi.

In the first incident, unknown motorcyclists killed Saleem and Sohail in the jurisdiction of Garden Town police station. Panic gripped the area after occurrence of mishap.

According to police, the deceased belonged to a political worker.

In another incident, an innocent man Saleem was killed by the firing of unknown armed men.

On the other hand, clash erupted between two rival groups in Landhi No-6. Both of the groups targeted each other with stones, breaking windows of four police mobile vehicles.

 

A man was also injured by an aerial firing, causing tension in the area. The shopping centres were closed.

Australian PM stumbles before rowdy protest crowd

 

Riot police helped her force a path through a crowd of rowdy protesters following a ceremony to mark Australia s national day Thursday.

 

She appeared distressed as she was pulled away from the protesters but was unharmed. She later remarked that she was made of “pretty tough stuff” and commended police for their actions.

 

Some 200 supporters of indigenous rights had surrounded a Canberra restaurant and banged its windows while Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were inside officiating at an award ceremony.

 

Around 50 police escorted the political leaders from a side door to a car.

 

Gillard stumbled, losing a shoe. Her personal security guard wrapped his arms around her and supported her to the waiting car, shielding her from the angry crowd.

 

The protesters had been demonstrating for indigenous rights nearby at the so-called Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a ramshackle collection of tents and temporary shelters in the national capital that is a center point of protests against Australia Day.

 

Australia Day marks the arrival of the first fleet of British colonists in Sydney on Jan. 26, 1788. Many Aborigines call it Invasion Day because the land was settled without a treaty with traditional owners.

 

Abbott appeared to be the target of protesters, who chanted “shame” and “racist” outside the restaurant.

 

The Tent Embassy celebrated its 40th anniversary on Thursday. Abbott had earlier angered indigenous activists by saying it was time the embassy “moved on.”

 

Gillard was unharmed and later hosted another Australia Day function for foreign ambassadors at her official residence.

 

“The only thing that angers me is that it distracted from such a wonderful event,” Gillard told reporters.

 

“I am made of pretty tough stuff and the police did a great job,” she added.

 

Reaction from protesters afterward was mixed, with some saying police assaulted them and that Gillard and Abbott were never in danger. They also made conflicting claims over who had Gillard s shoe a Midas high-heeled blue suede and if it would be returned. –AP
 

Apple in record growth over iphone sale

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple blew past forecasts and reported record quarterly net profit and revenue in the first quarter since the death of founder Steve Jobs, driven by strong sales of the new iPhone.

Apple said its net profit more than doubled in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 to a record $13.06 billion while revenue soared to an all-time high of $46.33 billion from $26.74 billion a year ago.

Earnings per share of $13.87 easily surpassed the $10.08 per share expected by Wall Street analysts.

Apple said it sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter which ended on December 31, up 128 percent from a year ago, and 15.43 million iPads, a 111 percent increase.

The California-based gadget-maker sold 5.2 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, up 26 percent, and 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent decline from a year ago.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in a statement.

“Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline,” Cook said.

Apple’s previous quarterly highs for iPhone, iPad and Macintosh sales were 20.34 million, 11.12 million and 4.89 million respectively.

Investors applauded the blockbuster quarter, sending Apple shares up 7.5 percent to $452.00 in after-hours trading.

It was the company’s first full quarter without its visionary co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs, who died of cancer a day after the October 4 launch of the iPhone 4S.

Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, was a guest in the box of First Lady Michelle Obama as US President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

The hot-selling iPhone 4S was the “fastest iPhone rollout” in the company’s history, Cook said in a conference call with financial analysts.

“We made a very bold bet on demand” but the company was “still short” in some markets due to pent-up demand, he said.

“As it turned out we didn’t bet high enough,” said Cook, who took over as CEO from Jobs in August.

Growth in iPhone sales in the United States and Japan was “great,” he said. “We could not be happier.”

The fiscal 2012 first-quarter included a 14th week, the important holiday shopping week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Apple said it ended the quarter with a cash pile of $97.6 billion, compared with $81.6 billion for the September quarter.

“We are actively discussing the best use of our cash balance,” Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, said in the conference call.

“We don’t have anything to announce specifically today,” he added.

Cook indicated the priority for iPhone expansion was China.

“We have a ton more energy in the China market today,” he said.

The iPhone was sort of a “catalyst” in spurring sales of other Apple products, much like the iPod’s “halo” effect on the Macintosh in 2003-2004, he said.

The iPad, which runs on Apple’s operating software, is benefiting from competition among other tablets and there is even some “cannibalization” of Windows personal computers by the Apple tablet computer, Cook said.

“We’re just going to innovate like crazy in this area,” he said.

More than 55 million iPads have been sold since its launch in April 2010.

Apple’s forecasts for the current quarter leaped over Wall Street expectations: $32.5 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.50 per share. The market had penciled in $32 billion and $8.03, respectively.

Apple’s iCloud, launched a few months ago, now has more than 85 million subscribers.

That was an “incredible” response from customers that marked a fundamental shift in recognition of the need to have numerous devices integrated online, Cook said.

He said iCloud is “not a product, it is a strategy for the next decade.” AGENCIES

20 killed as 6.9 quake rocks India, Nepal

A strong 6.9-magnitude earthquake hit northeast India on Sunday, killing at least 20 people, including three caught in a wall collapse at the British Embassy in neighbouring Nepal.

The US Geological Survey said the quake struck the small, landlocked Himalayan state of Sikkim — which borders Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet — at around 6:10pm.

The epicentre was just over 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of the Sikkim state capital Gangtok, which was plunged into darkness by a power cut after the quake.

“There is no electricity. Everybody is out on the road,” Gangtok resident C.K. Dahal told the CNN-IBN television news channel. “We all ran out our houses, some even jumped out of their windows. You can see some buildings that have developed cracks,” Dahal added.

Powerful tremors were felt across a wide region, including Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Indian cities of Guwahati and Kolkata, and even as far away as the Indian capital New Delhi.

In Nepal, police said three people were killed, including a motorcyclist and his eight-year-old daughter, when a wall collapsed at the British Embassy compound in the capital Kathmandu, 270 kilometres west of the epicentre.

“Another two died in a separate incident in eastern Nepal,” national police spokesman Binod Singh said. A budget debate in Nepal s parliament was stalled for 15 minutes while lawmakers leapt to their feet and fled the chamber as the entire building shook.

Telephone landlines to Sikkim, India s least populous state, were knocked out and mobile networks were swamped, making communication with the affected area difficult.

The quake was followed by two strong aftershocks, one with a magnitude of 6.1. Sikkim Chief Secretary Karma Gyatso told AFP that five people had been killed and 60 injured in and around Gangtok as the result of mudslides, building collapses and falling debris.

“We have reports of dozens of collapsed houses, and roads to many towns have ben blocked by landslides,” Gyatso said.

Another person was reported killed in a stampede by panicked residents in a town in the eastern state of Bihar. Manish Sharma, a doctor attending a conference in Gangtok, told the NDTV news channel that guests in his hotel had all run for the doors as soon as the first tremors were felt.

“I am standing in front of the legislative assembly and I can see one of the outer buildings… the upper side is in two parts,” Sharma said. “I can see light coming out of that particular portion. It has not collapsed but it is in two parts. One part has moved aside,” he said. “The police are trying to calm people down.”

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an emergency meeting of the National Disaster Management Authority, and Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth said that air force planes carrying rescue teams and relief supplies had been despatched to Sikkim.

Strong tremors were felt in Guwahati, the main city in Assam state, some 600 kilometres away, sending panicked residents running into the streets. “Our apartment block was literally swaying,” said housewife Anamika Das.

In Kathmandu, traffic came to a standstill as hotels and bars were evacuated. Hundreds of anxious tourists and residents waited for news in car parks and on the streets as the seasonal monsoon rain lashed down.

In Bhutan, buildings in the capital Thimphu were also rocked. “Our wooden house is safe. Jars fell in kitchen, books fell from shelf,” Thimphu resident Aby Tharakan, a media consultant, said in a message posted on the microblogging website Twitter.

India s seven northeastern states, joined to the rest of the country by a narrow sliver of land, are located in an area of frequent seismic activity.

The death of the paid text message

The smartphone boom is a mixed blessing for wireless companies. While the devices have boosted data plan sales considerably, they are threatening to kill another revenue stream dead in its tracks: text messaging.

Dozens of smartphone applications offer “free” text messaging services, which allow wireless customers to send and receive texts by piggybacking on their existing data plans. That means people who download those apps — such as GroupMe, Google Voice, Disco, Beluga, Kik and WhatsApp — are able to bypass the expensive texting plans offered by wireless companies.

What s more, an increasing number of free text messaging services are being baked into the smartphones themselves. Research in Motion (RIMM) offers BlackBerry Messenger, which allows BlackBerry users to text one another over their data plans. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) plans to introduce its similar iMessage app in the fall for the iPhone.

And Verizon Wireless embeds Skype onto every one of its smartphones. Skype bought GroupMe on Sunday, in a deal valued at around $80 million, according to several reports. Since Microsoft s (MSFT, Fortune 500) deal to buy Skype will likely close in the coming months, GroupMe could soon appear on every Windows Phone device.

Android malware on the rise

All platforms, mobile or otherwise, are subject to malware. The bigger platforms, though, are the juicer target for criminals simply because the numbers are larger. After all, why go after a platform with 1 percent share?

Windows is the top desktop platform and a target-rich environment for criminals. It doesn t necessarily mean the operating system is any less secure than the competition. It s just getting attacked in far greater quantities. Android is king of the hill when it comes to mobility and it may be suffering a bit of the same fate.

With Android, though, it isn t just about market share. It is also how apps are loaded on the platform. With a model like Apple has with iOS and Microsoft has with Windows Phone 7, it is very difficult to get apps on the device without the app going through an audit to ensure it: does what it claims; doesn t violate a set of rules designed to protect the device, network, and user data; and most of all, doesn t contain malware. No process is perfect and surely somewhere in the 300,000-plus apps in the App Store there is some code that was written to cause some sort of mischief, but should that happen, Apple will just flip the kill switch and remove the app from your phone.

Android doesn t have those protections. First of all, the Android Market doesn t subject apps to the scrutiny that Apple does, and that has caused more than one app in the Market to be a source of infection. Just two months ago Google removed 26 malicious apps.

Secondly, even if Google tightened its application approval process, you aren t forced to use the Android Market exclusively. If you want an app on your iPhone, you are locked into the App Store. (This ignores those that jailbreak their devices. I ignore that group of people when it comes to security because they are deliberately bypassing built-in security features, so they re on your own there.) With Android, you can choose from a variety of markets, none of which are approved by Google, so who knows what you risk when downloading from those?

Smartphones: a new frontier for hackers

Hackers are out to stymie your smartphone. Last week, security researchers uncovered yet another strain of malicious software aimed at smartphones that run Google s popular Android operating system. The application not only logs details about incoming and outgoing phone calls, it also records those calls.

That came a month after researchers discovered a security hole in Apple Inc. s iPhones, which prompted the German government to warn Apple about the urgency of the threat.

“We re in the experimental stage of mobile malware where the bad guys are starting to develop their business models,” said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of mobile security software.

Wrong-doers have infected PCs with malicious software, or malware, for decades. Now, they are fast moving to smartphones as the devices become a vital part of everyday life.

Some 38 percent of American adults now own an iPhone, BlackBerry or other mobile phone that runs the Android, Windows or WebOS operating systems, according to data from Nielsen. That s up from just 6 percent who owned a smartphone in 2007 when the iPhone was released and catalyzed the industry. The smartphone s usefulness, allowing people to organize their digital lives with one device, is also its allure to criminals.

Quake-dreaded people rush out into streets

KARACHI: Various people voiced their feelings related with quake-unleashed panic in different ways after 7.4 magnitude tremor hit Pakistan.

Massive quake rocked the country across its frontiers reaching Indian capital New Delhi on side and Dubai on the other in the wee hours of Wednesday, forcing the people in cities including Karachi, Lahore and Hyderabad to come out of their houses, reciting verses from the Holy Quran.

An awe-stricken man said he was awake at this point at 1.30, when his bed shook and the windows rattled and then he woke my family.

Many residents in the country’s largest city, Karachi, ran out into the streets once the quake started, said the reports.

Las Vegas Gadget Show Ends

Gadgets revealed at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas flop more often than they pop.

Microsoft provided a sneak peek at a radical new version of Windows, Verizon showed the first consumer gadgets for a wireless network that’s faster in many cases than wired broadband, and many manufacturers showed tablet computers with the potential to give Apple’s iPad a run for its money. Touch-screen tablet computers crowded the show, as brand names large and small showed off a slew of devices meant to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPad. From a hardware standpoint, companies touted features that the iPad doesn’t yet have, such as front- and rear-facing cameras for video chatting and taking high-definition videos and the ability to operate over wireless carriers’ new and forthcoming high-speed networks, together known as 4G. As for software, the upcoming Honeycomb version of Google Inc.’s Android software seemed a popular choice. For now, only plug-in laptop modems can take advantage of it, but at the show, Verizon showed off smart phones from Motorola, LG Electronics Inc., HTC Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. set to arrive in the first half of year, along with two tablets. However, Verizon promptly stole its own thunder by inviting journalists to a second press conference on Tuesday in New York, less than a week after its big reveal in Las Vegas. It’s widely believed that Verizon will announce that it will start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone, now available in the U.S. exclusively through rival AT&T Inc. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that this is the case. Intel and AMD, whose processors are the brains of PCs, unveiled new chips with significant design changes, in part to help them hold off threats from tablets and smart phones. The idea is to make traditional, low-cost computers using their chips more competitive with the mobile devices. Last year’s big new thing in TVs, 3-D, didn’t catch on as manufacturers had hoped. One problem might be the bulky, expensive, battery-powered glasses the sets need. This year, LG Electronics Inc. is trying a different take on 3-D, with light, inexpensive glasses of the kind used in movie theaters.

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