Radioactive cat mistaken for bomb

A US driver was stopped on suspicion of being a terrorist after his radioactive cat was mistaken for a bomb.

Anti-terror cops using specialist radiation detectors on motorway traffic flagged down the man.

But a search of his car revealed only his cat who had undergone radiotherapy for cancer three days earlier.

Deputy chief border agent Joe Giuliano revealed details of the incident to a meeting of San Juan Islanders, reports the Seattle Times.

"Vehicle goes by at 70mph," he said. "Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope."

The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot. The agent questioned the driver, then searched the car.

"Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier," Giuliano said.

"That's the type of technology we have that's going on in the background. You don't see it. If I hadn't told you about it, you'd never know it was there."

Ghanaian national attacked in St. Petersburg

A student from Ghana is in hospital in St. Petersburg after being attacked in the city center by unknown offenders, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

The Ghanaian student at the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance sustained blows to the head and stab wounds during the attack in the center of Russia's second-largest city on Wednesday.

Police are searching for the offenders in what is believed to be a racial attack.

This year has seen a rise in the number of attacks on foreigners in Russia.

An Uzbek national was stabbed to death in St. Petersburg Tuesday and another was found dead in the Leningrad Region on Wednesday.

Seven-year-old girl loses legs in train tragedy in south Russia

A seven-year-old girl lost both legs when a rail car hit her as she crawled over the tracks in Taganrog in southern Russia, the regional railway press service said on Monday.

The accident occurred Friday when the girl's mother, who was drunk, decided to take a short cut under a stationary wagon rather than walk round the train. As the mother and daughter crawled under the train, it started moving crushing the girl's legs.

The girl was rushed to hospital where doctors fought to save her life.

The mother sustained slight injuries in the tragedy.

Microsoft offers free support for Vista SP1 installs

Microsoft Corp. is offering free support to any Windows Vista user experiencing problems with installing Service Pack 1 (SP1), according to a company spokesman.

"[Anyone] needing technical support regarding your installation of Windows Vista SP1, please go to the following URL and choose the bottom option that says, 'Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (All Languages),'" said Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft employee who posted several comments to the company's Vista blog. The link LeBlanc pointed users to led to a Vista SP1-specific support site.

"You have a variety of options you can choose for support, all of which will not cost you any support fee," said LeBlanc. "I repeat: Support for SP1 will not cost you anything."

"That's a good move on their part," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.

The SP1 site offers support via e-mail, online chat and telephone, and it lists hours of operation for the last two options. Free phone support, for instance, is available from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time on weekdays and from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific time on weekends. The free support will be available for one year, and it covers installation and compatibility issues.

Normally, Microsoft offers no-cost support only to users who bought Windows at retail. Users who obtained the operating system already installed on a PC are referred to the computer manufacturer or reseller; the company's for-fee support runs $59 per request unless the user or business has a prepaid support plan with Microsoft.

That policy, as well as the wording of the Vista SP1 support site as late as last Friday, confused one user commenting on the same thread. "You cannot get free support from [Microsoft] if Vista came preloaded on your HP. At least, that is what the Web site indicates," said "romroyer."

LeBlanc quickly replied. "You are incorrect. We are offering free-of-charge support to anyone who is having issues installing Windows Vista SP1 -- even folks like 'pat' [an earlier commenter on the thread] who may be using a [reseller] copy of Windows Vista that came with their HP laptop," he said. "Again, anyone can get free support for installation issues of SP1."

By Sunday, Microsoft had modified the Vista SP1 support site and removed references directing users to contact their resellers if they had acquired Vista on new computers. The site's wording had been altered to read: "No charge: Unlimited support requests."

That's Microsoft's standard support policy for service packs, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "The no-fee support is actually part of our Windows Service Pack policy, not something specific to Windows Vista SP1," she wrote.

Microsoft, however, has done little to broadcast news of the free SP1 support. The home page for the Windows Vista Solution Center, the operating system's help and support starting point, makes no mention of it, nor does Microsoft's main Windows Vista SP1 site.

Washington State Agency Takes Steps to Plug Flash Drive Security Gap

Workers in the state of Washington's Division of Child Support are getting state-owned USB flash drives as part of a move to eliminate the use of unsanctioned thumb drives.

External flash drives used by field workers hold the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of children served by the agency. They may also hold client tax documents, employer records, criminal histories and passport data.

The state began rolling out 200 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer drives late last year after recalling suspect devices used by workers in the agency's 10 field offices. Most of those had been purchased independently by employees, causing myriad problems for the agency, said Brian Main, the division's data security officer.

We do periodic risk analysis of our systems, and one of the things that came up is the use of thumb drives they were everywhere, said Main. We had a hard time telling which were privately owned and which were owned by the state.

The Cruzer Enterprise drives provide 256-bit AES encryption and are password-protected, Main noted.

The agency also plans to use SanDisk's Central Management and Control software in its Olympia headquarters. The Web-based management software can centrally monitor and configure the miniature storage devices and prevent unauthorized access to them.

Larry Ponemon, chairman of Ponemon Institute LLC, a Traverse City, Mich.-based research firm, said that most organizations are too enamored of the convenience, portability and low cost of USB flash drives to consider security issues.

I think a lot of organizations are asleep at the switch. They don't see this as a huge problem. It obviously has the potential to be the mother of all data-protection issues, Ponemon said.

Main said the agency first looked at Verbatim America LLC's thumb drives but ultimately chose the SanDisk technology because of its support for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system.

Workers in the agency's training operations are getting 4GB devices to store large presentations and screenshots, while enforcement personnel will get 1GB drives, Main said.

Protesters briefly disrupt Beijing torch event

Human rights demonstrators tried to disrupt the speech of the Beijing Games organising chief Liu Qi at the torch-lighting ceremony inside the ancient stadium of Olympia on Monday.
One of them, carrying a black banner with five interlocked handcuffs in the pattern of the Olympics rings, approached the BOCOG chief within a few metres but was quickly led away by police before unfolding it.

Liu continued his speech almost uninterrupted.

Free speech group Reporters Without Borders said they had staged the event to protest against human rights violations in China.

"If the Olympic flame is sacrificed, human rights are even more so," the group said in a statement on the French version of its website (www.rsf.org/).

"We cannot let the Chinese government seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without condemning the dramatic human rights in the country."

About two dozen protesters tried to push their way into the ancient site where the ceremony was taking place but were held back by police after minor scuffles.

Police said they had detained three people so far, including the Deputy Director of the Students for a Free Tibet who had pledged to stage a protest against China's occupation of Tibet, and a Greek photographer who had been with him since Sunday.

Tenzin Dorjee was detained by plain-clothes officers with the photographer in Olympia, away from the site of the ceremony, and shouted "Shame on China" as he was led away.

"I was just arrested by over 20 Greek undercover officers. I am now held at the police station," he told Reuters.

The globally televised ceremony launches a five-month torch relay that culminates with the opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Trial ends in violence as China jails activist for five years

Beijing - Court police restrained a rights activist with an electronic baton on Monday, his sister and lawyer said, shortly after he was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of subversion that were reportedly linked to a signature campaign calling for improvements in human rights ahead of this year's Beijing Olympics.

The sentence handed to Yang Chulin after a 30-minute hearing was 'harsh' and related to articles written by Yang that contained only 'scholarly discussion,' his lawyer, Li Fangping, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The trial in Jiamusi city, Heilongliang province, ended in chaos as Yang attempted to reach his wife, who had fainted in court, Li and Yang's sister said.

'At this moment, the police officer electrocuted Yang several times with an electric baton,' his sister, Yang Chunping, who was in court, told dpa by telephone.

Yang, 52, was holding his stomach and appeared in a lot of pain after the attack, his sister said.

'Then my brother was thrown into a police car,' she said.

Yang refused to sign the official record of the trial because he disagreed with the charges.

'He said that speaking freely is not committing a crime,' Yang Chunping said.

'As the lawyer of Yang Chunlin, (I think) he should be free of charges,' Li said.

'He didn't instigate violence,' he said of Yang.

'Even if he did commit a crime, the punishment of five years is still too harsh,' said Li, who was not at the trial.

Yang was formally charged with 'subversion of state power' last September.

The main reason for his arrest was a campaign to encourage thousands of local people to sign an open letter saying 'we want human rights, not the Olympics,' the group China Human Rights Defenders said.

Police also told Yang's family that the charges against him included accepting funding from 'overseas anti-China organizations.'

Yang, a laid-off state worker, was detained at least four times in 2006 for helping villagers with land disputes, the group said.