Computer viruses make it to orbit

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

Orbital outbreak

Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS.

Nasa told SpaceRef that no command or control systems of the ISS were at risk from the malicious program.

The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth.

The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection.

Once it has scooped up passwords and login names the Gammima.AG worm virus tries to send them back to a central server. It targets a total of 10 games most of which are popular in the Far East such as Maple Story, HuangYi Online and Talesweaver.

Nasa is working with partners on the ISS to find out how the virus got on to the laptop in the first place.

The ISS has no direct net connection and all data traffic travelling from the ground to the spacecraft is scanned before being transmitted.

It is thought that the virus might have travelled via a flash or USB drive owned by an astronaut and taken into space.

The space agency also plans to put in place security systems to stop such incidents happening in the future.

Nasa told Wired News that viruses had infected laptops taken to the ISS on several occasions but the outbreaks always only been a "nuisance".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7583805.stm

Published: 2008/08/27 10:00:44 GMT

Fish eat away at malaria in India !!

Fish eat away at malaria in India
By Richard Black, BBC science correspondent, Chandigarh

Fish are being used to control malaria in India with remarkable success, according to researchers from the Indian Council for Medical Research. The mosquitoes which transmit malaria have virtually been eradicated from some areas. Scientists presented the results of several pilot projects at the Indian Science Congress in Chandigarh.

Malaria control takes up a substantial slice of India's health budget, largely through buying insecticides.

The theory is simple: find fish which like eating mosquito larvae and put them in ponds, rivers and wells where mosquitoes lay their eggs. The eggs hatch, and the fish eat the larvae.

Dr VP Sharma, a former director of India's Malaria Research Institute who now works with the Council for Medical Research, told the meeting that pilot projects in four states have met with remarkable success.

Introducing fish like guppies, he said, was one of the main reasons why the number of malaria cases each year in India was falling.

"They were more than two million," he said. "Now, actually, they have gone down to 1.8 million. The World Bank has a programme in 100 districts using the fish and it will take another five years before the real impact would be known."

Dr Sharma told the meeting that fish had virtually eliminated malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes from some districts, though he cautioned that the strategy did not work everywhere.

Using fish in this way used to be a standard approach to malaria control, but when insecticides like DDT were introduced during the last century with apparently magical success, it fell into disuse.

Now mosquitoes have become resistant to many of these chemicals and fish are back on the menu.

The other attraction is cost. Supplying ponds with guppies is a cheap alternative to buying insecticides.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3369341.stm

Termites feast on trader's money !!

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7334033.stm

Termites feast on trader's money
By Amarnath Tewary Patna

A trader in the Indian state of Bihar has lost his life savings after termites infesting his bank's safe deposit boxes ate them up. Dwarika Prasad had deposited currency notes and investment papers worth hundreds of thousands of rupees in a bank safe in the state capital Patna.
The bank says it put up a notice warning customers of the termites.

Mr Prasad says he did not see it in time as he did not go to the bank for months after the notice went up. Bank officials admit they did not inform the customers individually about the termite problem.

'Shattered' "I'm shattered. I do not know what to do as I had kept the money for my old age," Mr Prasad said.

The trader says he had deposited 450,000 rupees ($11,000) in currency notes, investment papers worth 232,000 rupees ($5,660) and some gold and silver jewellery in a safe deposit box of the government-owned Central Bank of India.

Mr Prasad says that relations with his wife and children were strained and he wanted to put the money in the safe box to keep it safe from them. He started using the safe box in September 2005.

He says when he opened it on 29 January, there was nothing in the safe except termite dust and remains of currency notes and that his investment papers were "badly perforated".

The white ants did not even spare the ornaments and their sheen has vanished, he says.

"I wrote to the head office of the Central Bank of India and the regional offices of the Reserve Bank of India," Mr Prasad says. "Even after two months, I'm waiting for a response from them."
'Not liable' Bank authorities say they put up a notice, dated 8 May 2007, outside the locker room warning customers about the termite infestation.

They advised customers to remove their documents and papers from their safe.

"We received a few complaints of termites in safe deposit boxes so after putting on the notice, we got pesticides sprayed in the bank," said bank manager YP Saha. Mr Saha says the customer cannot blame the bank because he did not find his locker broken or damaged.

"The bank is not liable for the deposits kept inside the safe as it is only when a locker is found broken that the bank is answerable," he said.

Bank authorities say they have forwarded Mr Prasad's complaint to higher authorities but they say he is not entitled to any compensation for his loss.

Stranded in Airport for 16 years !!

Claim: A man has been living at a Paris airport since 1988.

Status: True.

Origins: Mehran Karimi Nasseri born 1942 in Masjed Soleiman, Iran, also known as Sir Alfred Mehran, is an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 8 August 1988 until August 2006, when he was hospitalized for an unspecified ailment.

Nasseri was reportedly the inspiration behind the 2004 movie The Terminal.

Read more about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri&printable=yes
http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/airport.asp
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1298104,00.html