“Drive-by attacks” in which hackers booby-trap legitimate websites with malicious code continue to be a bane, the US-based anti-virus vendor Symantec said in its Internet Security Threat Report.

Websites with religious or ideological themes were found to have triple the average number of “threats” that those featuring adult content, according to Symantec.

“It is interesting to note that websites hosting adult/pornographic content are not in the top five, but ranked tenth,” Symantec said in the report.

“We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free; it’s not good for repeat business.”

The report was based on information gathered last year by the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, which monitors cyber attack activity in more than 200 countries through its services and sensors.

Symantec said that it blocked 5.5 billion attacks in 2011 in an increase of 81 percent from the prior year.

In keeping with trends seen by other Internet security firms, Symantec reported surges in hacks aimed at smartphones or tablet computers and in attacks targeting workers in companies or government agencies.

Cathy Hutchinson is unable to move her limbs or speak after a severe stroke 15 years ago, but was able to steer the robotic arm using her brain activity to lift up a cup of coffee and bring it to her lips.

“We’ll never forget that smile,” neuroengineer Leigh Hochberg said.

Ms Hutchinson and a paralysed man known as Bob had tiny recording devices implanted into the motor cortex of their brains by neuroscientists at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The implants pick up neural signals which are then converted into digital commands.

The latest development follows a trial in which participants were able to move a cursor on a computer screen just with the power of their mind.

The technology offers hope to those suffering severe paralysis but scientists warn there is still a lot of work to go.

Source: Nature. Author: Nick Pearson @nickpearson87. Approving editor: Fiona Willan.

The sense of an east coast rising raged in Manhattan this week, where some 45,000 people are expected to attend the festival through next Monday

As David Karp, the 25-year-old, New York-raised founder of internet phenomenon Tumblr, said on Wednesday: “I couldn’t imagine doing this anywhere else.”

New York already has 25,000 tech jobs and prides itself as the new hot spot for start-ups, whether Tumblr or Etsy, Foursquare, Gilt, OMGPOP, Boxee or Codecademy – a sector that attracted almost $500 million in venture capital last year.

“New York City is the place to be if you’re growing a tech start-up,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Tuesday.

The mayor, the multi-billion dollar founder of the high-tech Bloomberg media and data company, unveiled a website MappedinNY.com to show the location of city tech companies and those with job openings.

“Our tech companies are looking for talent and we want to make sure that everyone – no matter where they live today – knows about these jobs and is able to apply for them,” he said.

And with the announcement last December of plans to build a brand new science research college with Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology on an island in Manhattan’s East River, the city is backing up the big talk with big projects.

Tumblr’s Karp says the advantage of New York over northern California is twofold.

First, when it comes to recruiting ambitious, hard-living young staff, New York is cooler than Palo Alto, Karp said, prompting cheers from an audience gathered in a huge loft space in the trendy Manhattan neighbourhood of SoHo.

“We can say, ‘Hey, come over for a weekend,’” he explained. “We’ve had a fair bit of luck just bringing them to hang out here.”

The business side to the equation is just as important. With web presence becoming ever more integrated in other industries, it does no harm to run your tech product just down the block from eventual clients.

That’s certainly true for Tumblr, which has forged close links with media giants like the New York Times and with the fashion industry, which, like publishing, has a major presence in the city.

Yes, the west coast is the unrivalled stronghold for geeks, but New York has variety and that “keeps us closer” to the public, said Karp, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt, sneakers and jeans. “Being in a city that’s at the heart of the creative world is wonderful.”

Another New York start-up, Buddy Media, has gone from its husband and wife founders to a staff of 300 today with a headquarters in SoHo.

Focused on software to build social networks for another Big Apple mainstay – the advertising and PR industry – Buddy Media is thriving in New York.

“All our partners like Facebook and Twitter are here, they all have offices here. Our clients are here in New York, our investors are here,” said Alexandra Rolnik, a spokeswoman for the company told AFP at Internet Week.

Although Buddy Media has now expanded to Singapore, London and San Francisco, “New York has everything you really need to grow a business. We have a great client base,” she said. “We don’t really need to be anywhere else.”

Apple had ordered screens measuring at least 4.0 inches (10.2 cm) diagonally from its Asian supplier, according to people familiar with the situation, the report said.

The current iPhone 4S model has a 3.5 inch (8.89 centimetres) screen.

The move is seen as an effort to emulate the larger screens of rivals such as Samsung, whose smartphones use Android technology. It would be the first increase in screen size since Apple launched its iPhone range in 2007.

Earlier in May, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S3 model with a diagonal screen size of 4.8 inches (12.19 centimetres).

Apple did not comment on the report, nor has it named a date for the launch of the new iPhone, expected later this year.

The production of the new screens is to begin in June, the report said.

The effect could impact weather and climate, making sub-tropical regions drier and creating wetter and stormier conditions further north.

Scientists already knew the tropics were widening by around 0.7 degrees of latitude per decade.

Ozone depletion in the stratosphere is thought to be the main driver of this expansion in the southern hemisphere.

But the new findings indicate that tropic widening in the northern hemisphere is mainly due to black carbon and ozone lower in the atmosphere.

While stratospheric ozone provides vital protection against harmful solar radiation, the same gas in the lower troposphere is a man-made pollutant and harmful to health.

Professor Robert Allen, from the University of California at Riverside, who led the climate modelling study, said: “Both black carbon and tropospheric ozone warm the tropics by absorbing solar radiation.

“Because they are short-lived pollutants, with lifetimes of one to two weeks, their concentrations remain highest near the sources: the northern hemisphere low-to-mid-latitudes. It’s the heating of the mid-latitudes that pushes the boundaries of the tropics poleward.”

The research is reported in the journal Nature.

“If the tropics are moving poleward, then the sub-tropics will become even drier,” said Dr Allen.

“For example, the southern portions of the United States may get drier if the storm systems move further north than they were 30 years ago. Indeed, some climate models have been showing a steady drying of the subtropics, accompanied by an increase in precipitation in higher mid-latitudes.

“The expansion of the tropical belt that we attribute to black carbon and tropospheric ozone… is consistent with the poleward displacement of precipitation seen in these models.”

Dr Allen added: “We need to implement more stringent policies to curtail their emissions, which would not only help mitigate global warming and improve human health, but could also lessen the regional impacts of changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation in the northern hemisphere.”

Charles Dallara, who as head of the International Institute of Finance (IIF) spent months in Athens negotiating the largest ever sovereign debt restructuring, also said he had seen evidence that more people were moving their cash out of Greece.

“There has been a pick up of deposit flight from Greece,” Dallara told reporters, but added he thought this could be stabilised “once you get a new government in place, if that government reaffirms its intention to remain in the eurozone.”

He was speaking on a visit to Ireland, which followed Greece into an international bailout in 2010 but has been far more successful in boosting exports to keep the economy afloat while slashing government spending.

Policymakers have begun to speak openly of the risk that Greece might leave the euro.

“I think that it (a Greek exit) is possible, but I wouldn’t call it inevitable and I wouldn’t even call it likely because the costs for Greece, for Europe and for the global economy are likely each in their own way to be immense,” Dallara said in a speech.

“The pressures on Spain, Portugal, even Italy and conceivably Ireland could be immense and the need for Europe to step up with much greater support for the banking systems would be substantial.”

Dallara said there was no game plan for an orderly Greek departure and that its rescue programme should instead be “adjusted to new realities” with a stretching out of fiscal targets by a year or 18 months, something that would cost Europe another €6bn to €10bn.

He recommended easing the pace of budget reform elsewhere, particularly in Spain and Portugal, saying Europe needed to focus less on short-term cuts and more on implementing difficult labour market reforms.

He also proposed Europe’s rescue funds should invest directly in weak financial institutions, particularly in Spain which he praised for “heroic efforts” to manage the crisis.

On Greece’s decision on Tuesday to pay bondholders who rejected an earlier debt exchange, Dallara said such a move raised concerns but reflected “the most extraordinary set of political uncertainties”.

The UN data showed one in three adults worldwide has raised blood pressure — the cause of around half of all deaths from stroke and heart disease — and the condition affects almost half the adult population in some countries in Africa.

In its annual report on global health, the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) also said one in 10 adults worldwide has diabetes, kidney failure, and blindness.

While the average global prevalence of diabetes is around 10%, up to a third of the population in some Pacific Island countries have the condition, the report said.

Chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are often thought of as illnesses which affect people in wealthy nations, where high-fat diets, alcohol consumption, and smoking are major health risks.

However, the WHO says almost 80% of deaths from such diseases now occur in low- and middle-income countries.

In Africa, rising smoking rates, a shift towards Western-style diets and less exercise mean chronic or non-communicable diseases are rising rapidly and expected to surpass other diseases as the most common killers by 2020.

“This report is further evidence of the dramatic increase in the conditions that trigger heart disease and other chronic illnesses, particularly in low- and middle-income countries,” WHO director general Margaret Chan said.

“In some African countries, as much as half the adult population has high blood pressure.”

In wealthy countries, widespread diagnosis and treatment with low-cost drugs have significantly reduced average blood pressure readings across populations — and this has contributed to a reduction in deaths from heart disease, the WHO said.

But in Africa, more than 40% of adults in many countries are estimated to have high blood pressure.

Obesity is another major issue, with data showing rates of obesity doubling in every region of the world between 1980 and 2008.

Hollande, sworn in on Tuesday as France’s first Socialist president in 17 years, named Pierre Moscovici as finance minister and Laurent Fabius as foreign minister, under Prime Minister Jean- Marc Ayrault, like them a social democrat.

Ayrault said the team of 17 men and 17 women, the vast majority of whom have not been ministers before, was the first in French history to respect total gender balance, and their first meeting today would deliver on a promise to cut their own salaries by 30%.

“We’re already well-oiled and up and running,” Ayrault told France 2 TV.

Moscovici takes charge of a stagnant economy, lumbered with a jobless rate of almost 10% and the challenge of cutting heavy debts as Hollande launches his campaign against excessive austerity in Europe.

The new lineup, which could change again after parliamentary elections finish on June 17, holds its first meeting today — a public holiday in France — before Hollande heads to summits in the US of the G8 and NATO.

The withdrawal of Aubry, beaten by Hollande last year in the contest to run for president on the Socialist ticket, removes from the team an experienced former minister with a reputation as a fist-thumping left-winger.

Aubry, daughter of former European Commission chief Jacques Delors and architect of the 35-hour week as labour minister in the last French left-wing government of 1997-2002, told Le Monde newspaper she would stay away rather than settle for a consolation post.

“I talked with Francois Hollande. He said he had settled for Jean-Marc Ayrault. We agreed that under this configuration my presence in the government made little sense.”

Ayrault played down the affair, saying relations with Aubry remained friendly and that she was committed to playing a key role in the looming parliamentary election campaign.

Laurent Fabius, a veteran Socialist and former prime minister, was named as foreign minister, replacing conservative Alain Juppe.

Fabius was prime minister at just 37 in 1984 under Francois Mitterrand and was finance minister in 2000- 2002 under Lionel Jospin’s premiership.

He has been more of an enemy than a friend of Hollande in the past. Fabius, 65, treated Hollande with disdain when the two clashed over Europe in 2005, and campaigned for a no vote in a referendum on a European Constitutional treaty that Hollande, then Socialist Party leader, supported.

“I heard screaming but I couldn’t make out the words,” Ingvild Leren Stensrud, 17, who was shot in the leg and shoulder, said.

Ms Stensrud, who survived after another victim fell on her, knocking her to the floor and thus creating the impression that she was dead, said she initially thought Breivik was not acting alone.

“I thought they (the attackers) were exchanging messages but realising he was alone, I think the scream was actually a battle cry,” she testified. Breivik made sure that his victims were dead by delivering a control shot to their heads one by one, she added.

Breivik killed 77 people on July 22, first detonating a car bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, which killed eight, and then shooting 69 people, most of them teenagers, at the ruling Labor Party’s summer camp on Utoeya Island.

He admits the killings but denies criminal guilt, arguing the killings were necessary since his victims were “traitors” who promoted Muslim immigration and multiculturalism.

Ms Stensrud said she sought refuge in the summer camp’s cafe, hiding behind a piano, only to get trapped as Breivik walked from room to room in the small building, killing over a dozen people.

Another survivor Glenn Martin Waldenstroem said Breivik appeared both joyous and angry.

“His face looked distorted,” said Waldenstroem, 20. “He looked angry and smiled simultaneously,” he added, after asking the court to escort Breivik out of the room, saying he was unable to testify with him present.

Five judges will take a decision on Breivik’s sanity at the end of the trial.

Experts from Newcastle University have teamed up with a professional game studio to create the first in a set of titles which will train patients to regain hand or arm movement.

Usually this takes months of intensive and expensive therapy, but the designers hope the Circus Challenge game could prove a fun, cheaper alternative.

Players use wireless controllers to try their hand at virtual circus acts such as lion-taming, being a trapeze artist or juggling.

Former ship-builder Danny Mann, from Dudley, Northumberland, tried the game and was impressed.

The 68-year-old, who had a stroke in February said: “This is the first time I’ve ever played a video game — I mean, I don’t even own a computer.

“It was good fun though it did feel like I was doing exercise and I worked up a sweat. The therapy exercises I normally have to do are dull but necessary, but this game is something different which encourages me to keep going with my therapy.”
This is the first game designed as a therapy to be played at home while still being fun, Newcastle University said.

Janet Eyre, professor of paediatric neuroscience said: “The brain can re-learn control of the weak arm but this needs frequent therapy over many months and there are not enough therapists to provide this on a one-to-one basis.

“80% of patients do not regain full recovery of arm and hand function and this really limits their independence and ability to return to work.

“With our video game, people get engrossed in the competition and action of the circus characters and forget that the purpose of the game is for therapy.”

Circus Challenge gets more difficult as players’ strength improve. The tasks require both gross and fine motor skills and can be played by wheelchair users.

The company now hopes to develop games to assist in therapies for other conditions such as cerebral palsy, chronic lung disease and dementia.

The project received £1.5m (€1.87m) from the health innovation challenge fund, a partnership between the WellcomeTrust and the department of health, to allow further development.

In Britain, 150,000 people have a stroke leading to a cost of care and loss of income of £4bn every year.

Taylor — the first head of state to be found guilty by an international tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg — described the international court system as a tool of the West.

Taylor told the war crimes court in The Hague that Washington had used the case to achieve regime change rather than justice.

“Witnesses were paid, coerced, and in many cases threatened with prosecution if they did not co-operate,” he said at a sentencing hearing where his defence team hopes to minimise a possible 80-year jail term.

Taylor’s trial made headlines around the world, partly because of the grisly accounts of murders and mutilations, many carried out by child soldiers, and partly because of Taylor’s alleged gift of “blood diamonds” to supermodel Naomi Campbell who was called as a witness for the prosecution.

Taylor was convicted of aiding and abetting on 11 counts of murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in which more than 50,000 people were killed.

But he was acquitted of ordering and planning the atrocities.

Dressed in a pin-striped suit, he lay his gold watch beside the lectern to keep to his assigned 30-minute time limit at the stand.

Taylor said the US and other powers involved in military actions in Africa and the Middle East were using the court to pursue colonial aims against smaller countries.
“Regime change in Liberia became a policy of the US government,” he said. “I never stood a chance. Only time will tell how many other African leaders of states will be destroyed,” he said and questioned the way his trial had been funded.

“The prosecution received millions of dollars from the US government outside of the official funding process to the court administration.

“The prosecution has never fully accounted for how those monies were spent… who received how much and for what purpose or purposes,” he said.

The prosecution has called for Taylor to serve jail terms amounting to 80 years, arguing his position as president, his level of education and the duration of the conflict are aggravating circumstances.

Taylor’s defence asked the court to consider a more lenient sentence, saying 80 years amounted to life for the 64-year-old.

He is due to serve any sentence in Britain.

VenaSeal is injected into diseased veins so blood is re-routed into healthier veins. Quicker than existing treatments, it requires less local anaesthetic, and patients can immediately resume normal activities, specialists claim.

Clinical trials of the medical adhesive, developed by US-based firm Sapheon, have so far yielded a 100% success rate.

Now a Europe-wide study on 120 patients is being led by specialists at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College, London.

Professor Alun Davies, who has treated 12 patients with his colleague Ian Franklin at Charing Cross Hospital, said: “It does seem to work.

“So far it has been very straightforward and all the patients have been fine. One had a complication of inflammation on the skin but that soon settled down.

“However, these are very early results, and how it will compare with other procedures longer-term is difficult to tell.”

Varicose veins are caused by faulty valves that stop the body from pumping blood up the legs against gravity.

The VenaSeal Sapheon Closure System involves injecting tiny amounts of a specially formulated non-toxic medical adhesive directly into diseased veins using a very fine catheter guided by ultrasound.

It seals shut the inner walls of the vein so that blood is re-routed through healthier veins.

Dr Rodney Raabe, Sapheon’s chief medical officer and the consultant radiologist who invented VenaSeal, said: “Patients are not required to wear compression stockings afterwards because compression is not part of the action used to close the vein.”

London taxi driver Peter Bryant, 73, underwent the procedure in March at Charing Cross. Mr Bryant, who had suffered four bouts of the infection in as many months, said: “I went for the new treatment because I could be seen within a few days.

“It was marvellous. I lay on a tilted bed with my feet about two feet higher than my head. Then they put the glue in; I couldn’t really see what was going on but I didn’t feel any pain.

“Afterwards they put some plasters on my leg and I had to sit down with my leg raised for half an hour to rest it.

“The whole visit was over in an hour and I walked out feeling absolutely fine with just very slight bruising that soon disappeared.”

Dr Haroun Gajraj, a vascular surgeon, said: “I need to be sure this new technique will stand the test of time, but I’m certainly impressed by the science behind it and the results so far.”