Google's free online mapping service is bringing the world into better focus with an updated version of Earth that takes advantage of photos from a US Landsat 8 satellite.
	The Internet giant introduced a "cloud-free mosaic" of this planet three years ago at Google Earth, and on Monday began rolling out a new version that uses new techniques to process sharper images gathered by the satellite sent into orbit in 2013, as part of a collaboration between NASA and the US Geological Survey.
	Google Earth previously relied on images from a Landsat 7 satellite, which encountered a hardware problem that resulted in large diagonal gaps in pictures, according to program manager Chris Herwig.
	"Landsat 8 captures images with greater detail, truer colors and at an unprecedented frequency," Herwig said in a blog post.
	Google Earth creates unobstructed views of the surface of the planet by analyzing millions of images and stitching together the clearest bits, according to Herwig.
	Google Earth is .

Google brings Earth into better focus

PTI Automatic

Florida today reported its first case of a baby born with the birth defect microcephaly after the child's mother, a Haitian citizen, was infected with the Zika virus while pregnant, officials said.
	The mother contracted Zika in Haiti and came to Florida to deliver the baby, said a statement from Governor Rick Scott's office.
	The Florida Department of Health confirmed the case.
	Zika is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes but can also be spread by sexual contact.
	"It is heartbreaking to learn that a baby has been born with Zika-related microcephaly in our state and my thoughts and prayers are with the mother and child," Scott said in a statement.
	The Florida governor said he has allocated USD 26.2 million in state funds for Zika preparedness, prevention and response, as federal funding has stalled in Washington.
	"The Olympics will begin in less than 40 days and millions of Americans will travel through our state to and from Brazil, a country where the Zika virus is rapidly ...

Florida reports first baby born with Zika virus defects

US-backed rebel fighters in eastern Syria said they launched an offensive today to sever a vital supply route of the Islamic State group to neighbouring Iraq.
	The New Syrian Army's fighters are first aiming to cut the route before targeting Albu Kamal, a town in the oil-rich eastern Deir Ezzor province mostly held by the jihadists.
	IS militants seized the town and nearby border crossing in mid-2014, just as the Sunni extremist group declared a self-styled "caliphate" in territory it controlled across both Syria and Iraq.
	If the NSA's fighters manage to seize Albu Kamal, it would be the second border point they have captured from the jihadists this year after overrunning Al-Tanaf.
	The operation launched on Tuesday is backed by air strikes from the US-led coalition.
	Its aim was to "cut Daesh's military supply lines between Syria and Iraq," said NSA spokesman Muzahem al-Sallum, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
	"We began our attack in full coordination with the Iraqi side, ...

US-backed Syrians bid to cut IS route

Brazil's security forces unveiled a terrorism awareness campaign today one month ahead of the Rio Olympics in a bid to educate ordinary Brazilians over a novel threat to the Latin American country.
	Although subject to rampant violent crime, Brazil has no history of jihadist attacks and is not involved in any of the many conflicts featuring Islamic extremists around the world. However with Rio staging South America's first Olympic Games from August 5-21, there are worries that the country's inexperience could make it vulnerable.
	"As our country does not have a tradition of this kind of threat, we need people to be more aware," General Luiz Felipe Linhares, spokesman for the defense ministry on major events, said in a statement.
	"The message we want to pass on is: if you are suspicious and find a suspicious situation, then it's de facto suspicious," he said.
	The government is distributing leaflets and posters through the city, especially at tourist sites like hotels and bars, with ..

Brazil educates public on terror dangers

France's BEA air safety agency sent to Cairo today the data file from one of the black boxes from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, authorities said.
	Terrorism has not been ruled out as a cause of the crash on May 19, when the Airbus A320 operating Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo went down killing all 66 people on board.
	The two black boxes from the aircraft were retrieved damaged from the bottom of the Mediterranean and sent to Paris, where the electronic board from the flight recorder was repaired yesterday.
	The file was "transferred to Cairo for decoding, validating and studying" at the civil aviation ministry, said the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee.
	The process "might take several days to ensure the accuracy of reading the data recorded," it said in a statement.
	The repair work of the cockpit voice recorder, the second black box, had also begun.
	"A meeting was also held today between the investigation committee members ..

France sends fixed EgyptAir black box to Cairo

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said today that after Britain's vote to leave the European Union, the bloc needs to "lance the boil" and reform to remedy a pervasive malaise.
	Valls said the shock vote proved that many citizens of the European Union had deep doubts about the bloc.
	"They don't understand what it does, they cannot see what it brings them. To them, Europe is invasive on minor issues, and absent on the essential," he told the French National Assembly.
	"Worse, they feel it imposes its choices and systematically acts against their interests. The pro-Brexit slogan 'take back the power' says things very clearly. And we cannot ignore it."
	"We must lance the boil, this vote shows the malaise of the people," Valls said, adding that if Europe did not work with its people, it would "disintegrate".
	"The alternative is simple: either we do as we have always done, avoiding the evidence and trying to plug the gaps ... Or we finally pluck up the courage to go all out, turn this .

Brexit shows Europe's need to 'lance the boil': French PM

Google faces fresh EU anti-competition charges, this time targeting the search engine giant's advertising business.
	Margrethe Vestager, the powerful EU Competition Commissioner, could open two new in-depth investigations against Google as early as August, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
	The first case would involve the Silicon Valley giant's lucrative advertising business, while the second would deepen an existing case targeting online shopping practices.
	The EU in 2014 accused Google of abusing its dominance in the Internet search market to steer European consumers to its own shopping service.
	A spokesman for the European Commission refused to comment on the report.
	In April, Brussels also charged Google with abusing the dominance of its Android mobile phone operating system. The Android operating system accounts for about 80 percent of the world market for mobile phones, far ahead of Google's closest rival, Apple.
	The EU has accused Google of obstructing innovation 

Google faces new EU anti-trust charges: sources

British entrepreneur Richard Branson today said his Virgin Group had pulled out of a deal involving 3,000 jobs after Britain voted to leave the EU.
	In a television interview, the billionaire businessman added that Britain was heading for recession after the pound slumped to its lowest level against the dollar in more than three decades in the immediate aftermath of last Thursday's referendum result.
	And he urged the public to sign a petition calling for a second vote.
	"We were about to do a very big deal and we cancelled that deal that would have involved 3,000 jobs and that's happening all over the country," Branson told a show on the independent ITV network.
	"When Brexiteers told the public that people were exaggerating that there would be a financial meltdown I think that it's been proven that they were not exaggerating.
	"We're heading towards disaster and therefore in business if you realise you made a bad decision you change it. And we're not saying to overrule it, just let .

Branson says cancels deal after Brexit vote

UN chief Ban Ki-moon today urged Benjamin Netanyahu to take "courageous steps" toward peace as he met the Israeli premier on what is expected to be his farewell visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
	Ban also condemned a recent wave of Palestinian attacks, which he called "terrorism", and criticised the Israeli blockade against the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
	In a statement alongside Netanyahu at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, Ban called for efforts to keep the possibility of a two-state solution alive.
	While acknowledging the threats facing Israel, Ban said "we must not allow difficulties to become excuses for inaction".
	"I encourage you to take the courageous steps necessary to prevent a one-state reality or perpetual conflict that is incompatible with realising the national aspirations of the Israelis and Palestinian people," he said.
	"We cannot ignore key underlying causes of violence: growing Palestinian anger, the paralysis of the peace process, the nearly a .

UN chief urges Netanyahu to make tough choices in farewell

Republican lawmakers today released a long-awaited report on the deadly assault on the US mission in Benghazi, accusing then secretary of state Hillary Clinton of underestimating then misrepresenting the extremist threat.
	Clinton's Democratic supporters on the Congressional panel probing the attack and its political aftermath denounced their colleagues' response, and the State Department said it provides few new facts about the September 2012 tragedy.
	But there is some material in the report that will feed the narrative of those who believe the US administration was too slow to react to mounting danger in Libya and too quick to blame unconnected protests about a US-made video.
	This in turn will further raise the temperature in an already bitter campaign to succeed US President Barack Obama in the White House -- a campaign in which Clinton herself is now the Democratic frontrunner.
	Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, who chaired the select committee set up to probe the attack, ...

Clinton foes in Congress release Benghazi report

Intensified fighting and air strikes over the past 24 hours in Yemen have left 80 people dead, including 37 civilians, as lengthy peace talks in Kuwait made no headway, officials said.
	In the largest toll, warplanes from the pro-government Saudi-led coalition killed 34 people, including 19 civilians when they targeted Shiite rebels in the southwestern region of Taez, a Yemeni military official said.
	The pre-dawn air strike hit a lorry transporting weapons for the Huthi rebels as it crossed a busy road, a provincial official said, adding that four women were among the dead, as well as 15 rebels.
	In the flashpoint city of Taez, 11 civilians and a soldier were killed when rebels bombed a residential area, a military official said.
	Meanwhile, 12 rebels and three loyalist soldiers were killed in clashes in Nahm, northeast of Sanaa, while six other rebels were killed in fighting in Marib, east of the capital, the official said.
	In the same province, a coalition warplane hit a vehicle ..

Yemen clashes, air strikes kill 80 including 37 civilians

New research in lab animals, including Zika vaccines successfully tested on mice, boosted hopes today for a jab to shield humans against the brain-damaging virus.
	Two prototype vaccines tested on lab mice "provided complete protection against the Zika virus" with just a single shot, reported the first team.
	"These findings certainly raise optimism that the development of a safe and effective vaccine against Zika virus for humans may be successful," said Dan Barouch, director of the Harvard Medical School's Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, who co-authored a paper in Nature.
	His optimism was echoed in a separate study into Zika infection in rhesus macaques -- close genetic relatives of humans and well-matched animal models for medical testing.
	In a study in sister journal Nature Communications, a US-based team said they managed for the first time to infect lab monkeys with the Zika virus.
	And they found that a single infection, mostly symptom-free as in humans, provided ...

Vaccines block Zika in mice, boosting hopes for human jab

British health minister Jeremy Hunt today raised the possibility of holding a second referendum on the terms of Britain's departure from the European Union, but stressed Britain "must" leave the bloc.
	The minister, who said he was considering running for the leadership of the Conservative party following the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, insisted that Britain must maintain access to the EU's free-trade zone, but that a deal needed to be struck to limit the free movement of people.
	Free trade "is not just at the heart of our economic success -- it is also at the heart of our identity as one of the most open, liberal, outward-looking societies anywhere," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
	"But... It is clear that the country has rejected the free movement of people as it currently operates. The EU faces collapse unless they reform free movement rules," he said.
	The minister called for a "Norway plus" option, comprising "full access to the single market with a sensible ..

UK minister suggests referendum to set terms of EU break-up

Political extremism rose sharply in Germany last year - among far-right but also far-left and Islamist radical groups - the domestic intelligence agency said today.
	"Extremist groups, whatever their orientation, are gaining ground in Germany," said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, presenting the 2015 report.
	The security agency had "observed not just a rise in membership but also an increase in violence and brutality," he said in a statement.
	Some 1,408 acts of far-right violence were recorded last year against 990 the previous year, said the service called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
	The sharp rise in racist hate crimes came as Germany took in a record number of more than one million refugees and migrants asking for political asylum, and as jihadist attacks in Paris and Brussels stoke terrorism fears in Europe.
	"The intensity of right-wing extremist militancy started in early 2015 and increased steadily -- from threats against politicians and .

Extremism on rise in Germany: security service

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said today it had suspended the accreditation of the athletes' doping control laboratory in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for four months.
     The suspension, which took effect on Wednesday, prohibits the laboratory from carrying out any anti-doping activities including all analyses of urine and blood samples, WADA said in a statement.
     "The decision to suspend the laboratory is a direct result of the more stringent quality assessment procedures enacted by WADA to ensure laboratories maintain the highest standards," WADA added.
     During the period of suspension, "samples are required to be transported securely to another WADA-accredited laboratory, ensuring that athletes can have full confidence in continued high quality sample analysis and the wider anti-doping system".
     The Almaty laboratory has 21 days to appeal the WADA decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

WADA suspends Kazakh doping lab

Irish no-frills airline Ryanair will put the brakes on new UK connections for the coming months given the uncertainty caused by the British vote to leave the EU, its CEO said today.
	"I don't think we'll open up many new lines in the UK for the next twelve or eighteen months, until this current uncertainty is removed," chief executive Michael O'Leary told AFP in Brussels.
	Ryanair earns more than a quarter of its sales in Britain and is particularly at risk to turbulence from the shock vote.
	O'Leary said the entirety of an upcoming delivery of 50 Boeing aircraft would be used for routes outside Britain.
	"Most of those, if not all of those aircraft, will be allocated to European Union countries: Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, central European countries," he said.
	O'Leary said he hoped Britain would remain in the European single market despite the shock vote on Thursday.
	"That has delivered enormous benefits for not just UK citizens but for European citizens," he ...

Ryanair puts UK in holding pattern after Brexit shock

Russia's defence ministry today accused an American destroyer of coming dangerously close to a Russian frigate in the Mediterranean Sea, calling the incident a "gross violation" of international agreements.
	"On June 17, in the east of the Mediterranean Sea, the American destroyer USS Gravely came dangerously close to a Russian warship, 60 to 70 metres from the left side, and crossed the path of frigate Yaroslav Mudry at the dangerous distance of 180 metres from the bow," the ministry said in a statement.
	At the time of the incident, the Russian frigate was in international waters and was not "conducting dangerous manoeuvres" in respect to the American destroyer, the statement said.
	The ministry added that the crew abroad the USS Gravely had committed a "gross violation of international rules on the prevention of collisions at sea" and violated a maritime agreement signed in 1972 by US and then Soviet authorities.
	The Pentagon has reported a number of recent cases of Russian jets ..

US destroyer came 'dangerously close' to Russian ship: Moscow

US stocks surged today, rallying with European equity markets following deep losses the last two sessions due to Britain's surprise vote to leave the European Union.
	About 30 minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 17,348.09, up 1.2 per cent. The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 1.3 per cent to 2,026.12, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 1.8 per cent to 4,675.00.
	The gains in Europe were even stronger, with markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt all up around three percent as British Prime Minister David Cameron met with his counterparts from other EU countries in Brussels.
	US first-quarter economic growth was revised up to 1.1 per cent from the prior 0.8 per cent estimate, according to the Commerce Department.
	Analysts said today's market bounce was a response to two days of heavy selling that saw global markets lose some $3 trillion after Britons voted Thursday to exit the 28-nation EU.
	"There were outsized reactions in all capital markets ...

US stocks follow European markets higher; Dow +1.2%

Adidas, the German maker of sportswear and equipment, said today it plans to start collaborating with the Chinese conglomerate Wanda, including a sponsorship deal for the two Ironman triathlon events in China.
	Adidas said in a statement that its chief executive Herbert Hainer met Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin in Beijing "to discuss the prospect of a future strategic collaboration."
	As part of the agreement, Adidas would sponsor two of Wanda's Ironman events in China, "as well as work with the Chinese conglomerate to help develop football and basketball at all levels," the statement said.
	"Adidas and Wanda also agreed to deepen their commercial relationship," it added.
	Adidas would open sportswear stores "throughout Wanda's extensive portfolio of shopping malls and other commercial properties."
	"China is one of the most important markets for Adidas globally. We have strengthened our position in China considerably in recent years," said CEO Hainer.
	"We are now looking forward .

Adidas to collaborate with China's Wanda

Finance minister George Osborne warned today that Britain would face tax rises and further cuts to state spending after the country voted to leave the European Union.
	In an interview with BBC radio, the chancellor of the exchequer spoke of the need to provide Britons with "fiscal security" following Brexit.
	Asked if that meant taxes would rise and spending cut, Osborne replied: "Yes, absolutely. But that decision will come under a new prime minister. It's obviously not possible while the Conservative Party is having a leadership contest."
	Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron resigned in the wake of Thursday's shock referendum result. Both he and Osborne had been at the forefront of the Remain campaign to persuade the electorate to vote to keep Britain in the EU and avoid a recession.
	"It is very clear that the country is going to be poorer," Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme today, as he again insisted that Britain would need to face an emergency budget.
	"We are ...

Finance minister Osborne warns of British tax rises

Poland said today it would create a park for more than 200 Soviet-era statues and Red Army monuments scattered across the country that symbolise its decades-long communist era domination by Moscow.
	"There's no reason to glorify monuments devoted to the memory of the Red Army which twice invaded Poland (WWI, WWII) and is responsible for several post-war crimes," said Pawel Ukielski, head of Poland's state Institute for National Remembrance (IPN).
	Local authorities will be able to move the monuments to the northern town of Borne Sulinowo, once a massive closed Soviet base in Poland.
	Ukielski however insisted that monuments erected in cemeteries for war dead would not be touched.
	"The Polish state will continue to protect the tombs of Soviet soldiers fallen during the war with the utmost respect," Ukielski said.
	But endorsed by Poland's nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government, the plans to move other monuments have already triggered Moscow's ire.
	"We haven't consulted with the 

AFP

AFP

Page 1611 - Afp