News Network

At least nine people are reported to have been killed in north-west Pakistan in a suspected US missile strike. One or two missiles targeted a compound in the village of Dande Darpa Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan, Pakistani officials said. The village is believed to be frequented by associates of an Afghan Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani.
There have been dozens of such drone strikes in the past year in the restive region, which borders Afghanistan.
Residents of the main town in the region, Miran Shah, reported hearing a huge blast which shattered windows and blew out doors, said the AFP news agency. Officials said some people had also been wounded in the attack. The US military does not routinely confirm drone attacks but the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are believed to be the only forces capable of deploying drones in the region.
Pakistan has been publicly critical of drone attacks. The government says that they fuel support for the militants. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, is though to have died in a similar drone strike on 5 August. But some Taliban elements have denied he is dead.
source: bbc.com

Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.
Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive.
They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.
"If this deal goes ahead, they're making a real shot at being 'the' library and the only library."
Back in 2008, the search giant reached an agreement with publishers and authors to settle two lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books.
In that settlement, Google agreed to pay $125m (£76m) to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation. Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.
Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923. Comments on the deal have to be lodged by September 4th. In early October, a judge in the Southern district of New York will consider whether or not to approve the class-action suit. In a separate development, the US Department of Justice is conducting an anti-trust investigation into the impact of the agreement.
'Open access'
Critics have claimed the settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books. The Internet Archive scans around 1000 books a day at 30 cents a page
"The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways - all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach," warned Mr Kahle. source: bbc.com

A Michael Jackson film built around rehearsal footage shot before his death will be released in a limited two-week run worldwide, Sony Pictures has said.
The distributor added it had brought forward the release date of This Is It by two days, anticipating huge demand.
The film, directed by Kenny Ortega - the choreographer of Jackson's planned shows at London's O2 arena - offers a behind-the-scenes look at preparations.
This Is It will be released in cinemas on 28 October. "This film is Michael's gift to his fans," Ortega said. It would give them a "very private, exclusive look" into the world of a "creative genius", he added.
"For the first time ever, fans will see Michael as they have never seen him before, this great artist at work. "It is raw, emotional, moving and powerful footage that captures his interactions with the This Is It collaborators that he had personally assembled for this once-in-a-lifetime project." source: bbc.com

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Brad Pitt gets top billing in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," but Austrian actor Christoph Waltz may have turned in the most memorable performance as a Nazi "Jew Hunter."
Christoph Waltz attends a special screening of "Inglourious Basterds" in New York. Waltz, a 52-year-old veteran of German television, was hardly known outside of Europe, until now.
Tarantino, insisting on actors with geographic origins similar to their characters, chose Waltz to play a complex and unforgettable villain: Nazi Col. Hans Landa.
Landa mixes charm, humor and intelligence with great cruelty and opportunism as he travels through Tarantino's unpredictable screenplay.
Waltz calls Landa "one of the great villains in dramatic literature."
His performance earned Waltz the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, but the actor credits the writer for creating a "multifaceted and layered" character.
"It's what Quentin [Tarantino] has written, and let me tell you, that's plenty," Waltz said. "Because I could still be sitting there trying to figure out what else is in there. And it's bottomless."
The opening scene of "Inglourious Basterds" is itself a short film in the style of a spaghetti western, starring Waltz as "The Jew Hunter."source: cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he successfully countered an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise the nation's terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.
Ex-Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge says he was pushed to raise the terror alert before the 2004 election.
"An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government" after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of President George W. Bush, writes Ridge in his new book, "The Test of Our Times."
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to "orange" -- even though Ridge believed a threatening message "should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level."
The former Pennsylvania governor also writes that he saw no reason for the move, which he now calls a bad idea, because additional security precautions had already been taken in advance of the election.
"We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," Ridge said of the push. "... I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'" Watch panelists discuss Ridge's allegations »
The idea that an attack might take place had been discussed, he says. "But at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm. ... It also seemed possible to me and to others around the table that something could be afoot other than simple concern about the country's safety."
In the end, the threat level was not raised.source: cnn.com

The Chelsea building society has revealed it has lost £41m as a result of mortgage frauds by some of its buy-to-let borrowers.The frauds are the main reason for the society staying in the red, with overall losses of £26m in the first half of the year. Last year, the Chelsea lost £39m, the largest annual loss yet recorded by any building society. Its finance director has now joined its chief executive in agreeing to resign.
"The society has been through a difficult period and reporting a loss in the first half of the year is disappointing," said Stuart Bernau, the Chelsea's chairman and interim chief executive. "However, the underlying performance is strong, even though we have had to make provision for impairment and fraud losses."
The Chelsea explained that the fraudulent loans it had discovered were mainly among buy-to-let loans made between 2006 and 2008. It said the frauds were mainly due to "the artificial inflation of property values by third-party professionals involved in the transactions".
Experts have now combed through all the society's mortgages, searching for actual or suspected frauds, and have come to the conclusion it has lost £41m.
The society said it was now trying to recover the money "vigorously."
The Chelsea stopped making any new buy-to-let, sub-prime, self-certification or commercial loans at the end of last year.
The Chelsea is the fourth largest building society in the UK, with 606,000 savers and 34 branches. Mortgage arrears and falling house prices led the Chelsea to write off a further £12m in the first half of 2009, in addition to the money set aside for the mortgage fraud.
Its directors said the society was "comparatively well-placed" to deal with the problems of potential further losses and the difficulty of attracting savers, amid fierce competition from other societies and banks.
But the directors said they would "continue to review the strategic options available to the society", a phrase often used by managements when they are considering seeking a buyer or a merger partner. source: bbc.com

Usain Bolt broke his own world record in the 200 meters as he completed the sprint double at the world championships in Berlin in sensational style.
Bolt crosses the line in the 200m final in a world record 19.19 seconds.
The remarkable Jamaican took gold in 19.19 seconds, shaving just over a tenth of a second off the mark he set in winning the 200m at last year's Beijing Olympics.
Bolt also smashed his own 100m world record with a 9.58 seconds clocking in claiming gold in the shorter sprint on the second day of the championships.
Bolt, who celebrates his 23rd birthday on Friday, made a fine start and was well clear of the field coming around the bend, clearly pushing to the line as he eyed his old mark of 19.30 seconds.
Alonso Edward of Panama claimed a fine silver in 19.81 seconds with Wallace Spearmon of the United States taking the bronze in 19.85 seconds.
Bolt will bid to emulate his triple gold medal tally from Beijing in the sprint relay for Jamaica in the final day of the championships on Sunday.
Earlier, Jamaica's gold rush in Berlin continued with victory for Melaine Walker in the women's 400m hurdles.source: cnn.com