Intel and $100 laptop join forces

Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop.

The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.

In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine his initiative.

He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate PC - below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world.

"What happened in the past has happened," Will Swope of Intel told the BBC News website. "But going forward, this allows the two organisations to go do a better job and have a better impact for what we are both very eager to do, which is help kids around the world."

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: "Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children."

Intel inside

The new agreement means that Intel will sit alongside the 11 companies, including Google and Red Hat, which are partners in the OLPC scheme.

It will also join rival chip-maker AMD, which supplies the processor at the heart of the $100 laptop.

"Intel's apparent change of heart is welcome, and we're sure they can make a positive contribution to this very worthy project for the benefit of children all over the world," read a statement from AMD.

nitially there are no plans to switch the processor to one designed by Intel. However, the servers used to back-up the XO laptops, as they are known, will have Intel technology at their core.

Decisions about the hardware inside the XO laptop would be made by OLPC, said Mr Swope.

"OLPC will decide about which products they choose to offer or not offer," he said.

OLPC, however, indicated that it would consider using Intel chips in its machines in the future.

Walter Bender, head of software development at OLPC, told the BBC News website that he believed OLPC would eventually offer different computers with different hardware.

"I think we will end up with a family of products that run across a wide variety of needs," he said. "Intel will be part of that mix."

Price test

In addition, the partnership will have a practical pay off for software developers.

"Any software you build is going to run at least on our two platforms," said Mr Swope.

An application developed for the XO laptop should work on the Classmate and vice versa.

"That's the exciting thing for me," said Mr Bender.

Currently both laptops are being tested in schools around the world. In parallel, OLPC is finalising orders for the first batch of computers.

Participating countries are able to purchase the XO in lots of 250,000. They will initially cost $176 (£90) but the eventual aim is to sell the machine to governments of developing countries for $100 (£50).

Intel says it already has orders for "thousands" of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).

Like the OLPC machine, Intel expects the price to eventually fall.

N Korea reactor 'to shut in days'

The US has said the key North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon will close by Monday, as a UN team arrived to oversee the shut-down.

US envoy Christopher Hill said the closure was only the first step of a deal agreed in February but since subjected to numerous delays.

Pyongyang has now begun to receive the heavy fuel oil shipments it agreed to take in exchange for the closure.

The UN nuclear team is making its first trip to the North in five years.

Mr Hill, the chief US nuclear envoy, said in Tokyo: "We understood [that Yongbyon would shut down] this weekend, so I don't know whether it's Saturday, Sunday or Monday. I do know it's very soon."

But he added: "I don't want people to think this shutdown is the biggest and only event. It's just the first step."

Mr Hill said he expected a full list of the North's nuclear facilities within months - as agreed in the February deal.

Funds wrangle

The 10-member UN team will verify the shutdown at Yongbyon, 90km (56 miles) north of Pyongyang.

The International Atomic Energy Agency members are to decommission and seal equipment at the reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant.

It may take the inspection team up to three weeks to complete the task, says the BBC's Kevin Kim in Seoul.

In nuclear talks held in Beijing in February, North Korea was promised heavy fuel oil in exchange for the initial nuclear shutdown.

The deal was delayed amid a wrangle over North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank account.

But the first shipment of oil has now arrived in North Korea.

The ship - No 9 Han Chang - docked at the North Korean port of Sonbong at 0920 on Saturday (0020 GMT), loaded with 6,200 tonnes of heavy fuel oil.

Talks involving South and North Korea, Russia, Japan, the United States and China are set to resume in Beijing on Wednesday to map out the next stage of disabling the North's nuclear programme.

North Korea tested an atomic bomb for the first time last year, and has repeatedly said it needs nuclear weapons to fend off a US attack.

Russia suspends arms control pact

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suspended the application of a key Cold War arms control treaty.

Mr Putin signed a decree citing "exceptional circumstances" affecting security as the reason for the move.

Russia has been angered by US plans to base parts of a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) limits the number of heavy weapons deployed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Urals mountains.

'Cornerstone'

The Russian suspension will become effective 150 days after other parties to the treaty have been notified, President Putin's decree says.

The suspension is not a full-scale withdrawal - but it means that Russia will no longer permit inspections or exchange data on its deployments.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said Moscow was not "shutting the door to dialogue".

"We have submitted to our partners proposals on ways out of the situation. And we continue to wait for a constructive reaction," Mr Kislyak said.

But a Nato spokesman said the alliance "regretted" Russia's decision.

"The allies consider this treaty to be an important cornerstone of European security," James Appathurai said.

He added that the move was "a disappointing step in the wrong direction".

Russia's suspension of its application of the treaty is yet another sign of a worsening relationship between the US and Russia, says the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus.

An informal meeting earlier in July at the Bush family's Maine home seems to have done very little to improve ties between the two leaders, he says.

It is also yet one more sign of a more assertive Russian foreign policy, our diplomatic correspondent says.

The CFE agreement of 1990 was one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War years.

It set strict limits on the number of offensive weapons - battle tanks, combat aircraft, heavy artillery - that the members of the Warsaw Pact and Nato could deploy in Europe, stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.

In the wake of the collapse of communism, the treaty was revised in 1999, in part to address Russian concerns.

But this revised treaty has never been ratified by the Nato countries who want Russia to withdraw all of its forces from two breakaway regions with Russian-speaking majorities - Abkhazia in Georgia and Trans-Dniester in Moldova.

"The CFE treaty and missile defence are the two major irritants between Russia and the West. It would have been easy, it still is easy, I think Nato allies feel, to move closer to ratifying the CFE treaty," the Nato spokesman added.

Motorola issues profit warnings

Motorola has warned that it will report a loss for the last three months, blaming weak sales in Asia and Europe.

The US-based firm added that its main mobile phone business was likely to make a loss for the whole of 2007.

The twin profit warnings have increased speculation that the firm's chief executive Ed Zander might step down soon, analysts say.

The world's second largest mobile phone-maker, Motorola has already announced 7,500 job cuts this year.

In April it blamed losses on price competition and unpopular handsets.

Going, going?

Motorola said sales for the second quarter period, from April to June, would now be less than $8.7bn (£4.3bn).

It had previously forecast sales for the period would be around $9.4bn.

"With this type of performance and the bleak prospects facing the company for the rest of the year, I don't think Zander's tenure is going to go much further," said Ed Snyder, analyst with Charter Equity Research.

"He's toast. I think it's really close now."

"BBC Newspaper, 11 July 2007,"

Soldiers killed in Algerian bomb

A suicide lorry bomber has killed at least eight soldiers at a military barracks in Algeria - on the opening day of the All-Africa Games.

More than 20 people were injured in the blast near Bouira, 120km (75 miles) east of the capital, Algiers.

Al-Qaeda's North Africa wing said it carried out the bomb at the barracks in the village of Lakhdaria.

The attack came as 8,000 athletes from more than 20 sports gathered in the capital for the opening ceremony.

The bomber also died after detonating a refrigerated truck packed with explosives at the military encampment in the mountainous Kabylie region at 0530 local time (0530 GMT).

The owner of a coffee shop in Lakhdaria said: "I heard a terrible explosion.

"I first thought it was an earthquake but soon I found out it was an attack against the barracks."

The All-Africa Games are one of the continent's biggest sporting events.

The BBC's Inas Mazhar in Algiers said there is an unprecedented security presence for the Games.

Some 8,710 police officers and soldiers have been deployed at about 90 locations in the city.

It is the second time that the North African country has hosted the games - the first being in 1978.

Some athletes had expressed concern about going to the games given recent insecurity in the country.

The suicide blast came a day after new French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Algiers, in his first trip outside Europe since coming to power.

In April, an organisation calling itself al-Qaeda in the Maghreb claimed responsibility for two blasts in Algiers which killed more than 20 people ahead of elections.

"BBC Newspaper, 11 July 2007"

Bodies found at Pakistan mosque

The Pakistani army says it has found 73 bodies inside a mosque compound in Islamabad, after fierce battles between soldiers and gunmen inside.

Officials said the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, complex had been cleared of militants but troops were combing the area for booby traps and explosives.

The mosque's radical chief cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was among the dead, the army said.

The operation followed a week-long siege of the compound by troops.

The mosque had been the focus of spiralling tensions between the government and radical students, who had waged a campaign for the adoption of strict Islamic sharia law.

It had been feared that women and children might be among the casualties, but army spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said none had been found among the bodies.

Map of Red Mosque siege area

Scores of civilians, and some militants, emerged from the complex after troops launched an all-out assault in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Ten soldiers were killed in the fighting, which went from room-to-room.

Some 1,300 people managed to leave the compound during the stand-off, but at least 21 people, including an army commander, were killed.

It is not clear how many people were inside the complex when it was stormed.

Unexploded grenades

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says the mosque is still off-limits and there is no independent story of what happened there.

Questions, such as how many people died, still need to be answered, our correspondent says.

The army says that will only be known after the clean-up operation.

"This whole area needs to be sanitised because we don't want unexploded grenades or mines or any other explosives lying around," said Gen Waheed.

The troops took control of the complex during the fighting, which lasted for some 36 hours.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said Mr Ghazi was killed as troops were flushing out militants still inside a madrassa (religious school) for women and girls inside the compound.

Mr Ghazi's body was being sent to his home village in Baluchistan for burial.

Our correspondent says many Pakistanis supported the operation, saying the government had no choice but to confront the Islamic extremists.

But, she adds, the authorities fear a violent reaction from other radicals, and the country is on high alert.

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a videotape calling on Pakistani Muslims to launch a "holy war".

In Karachi and Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where support for militants is rife, hundreds of angry demonstrators protested against the storming of the mosque.

Thousands of extra troops have been sent to the border area with Afghanistan amid fears of an Islamist backlash.

An opposition Islamic alliance, the Mutahida Majlis Amal, has declared three days of mourning in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Meanwhile, pro-Taleban militants in the border tribal region of North Waziristan have told the government to withdraw troops from checkpoints or face renewed attacks.

"BBC Newspaper, Wednesday, 11 July 2007"