World Cup: Tendulkar's 6th, debut for 7 players

click here

Hackers celebrate North Korea heir's birthday

Seoul: Hackers have attacked North Korea's official Youtube and Twitter accounts, posting a cartoon showing Kim Jong-il's heir apparent driving a sports car into a crowd of starving countrymen.

The cyberattack on Saturday, believed to be leader-in-waiting Kim Jong-un's birthday, also called for an uprising against the communist nation's ruling dynasty.

The online embarrassment comes at a time when North Korea has called for dialogue with South Korea to defuse tensions aggravated by an exchange of artillery fire and the sinking of a South navy ship last year.

One of the messages posted on the North's official Twitter account said the ailing Kim Jong-il and his son were sworn enemies.

Another called for the removal of Kim Jong-il for hosting drinking parties at his lavish cottage while 3 million countrymen starved to death.

Several people on a South Korean internet forum, Dcinside, claimed responsibility for the attack.

A two-minute spoof posted on the North's official youtube account showed Kim Jong-un running over a group of starving people and a train, laden with birthday gifts for him, derailed after hitting children on the tracks.

The Youtube account is often used by the North to communicate with the outside world.

There was no immediate comment from the North on the cyberattack. The North Korea's official mouthpiece, KCNA news agency, also did not report any public events or festivals to mark Kim Jong-un's birthday.

Very little is known about Kim Jong-un outside North Korea, who is the youngest son of Kim Jong-il.

Facebook overtakes Google

San Francisco: Facebook passed Google as the most visited website in the US in 2010, according to a survey by the web tracking firm Experian Hitwise.

The social networking site also claimed the top search term of the year, with variations on its name filling four of the 10 most popular searches, the survey found. In all, Facebook searches accounted for 3.48 per cent of all web searches in the US in 2010, a 207-per cent increase over 2009.

The study found that Facebook accounted for 8.93 per cent of all US website visits in the year, ahead of Google.com's 7.19 per cent and third-placed Yahoo Mail with 3.85 per cent.

However if all Google's various properties are taken into account, the web search giant did overtake Facebook with 9.85 per cent of all website visits. Microsoft's msn.com and bing.com also made it into the list of top ten websites, as did myspace.com.

Other terms in the top 10 searches included "youtube", "craigslist", "myspace", "ebay" and "yahoo".

'Missing Link' following the Big Bang

London: Astronomers have uncovered the 'missing link' in the evolution of the universe following the Big Bang.

For years the scientists knew nothing about the 'dark ages' of space - a period between the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, and the creation of the first stars.

But Cambridge University researchers have now captured light emitted from a massive black hole to peer into this unknown portion of the history of the universe.

They discovered remnants of the first stars and evidence of the aftermath of an exploding star, which was a staggering 25 times larger than the sun, the Daily Mail reported.

Max Pettini of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy believes the discovery of these gases could help reveal the origin of the universe.

He said: "We have effectively been able to peer into the dark ages using the light emitted from a quasar.

"The light provides a backdrop against which any gas cloud in its path can be measured."

The Cambridge scientists teamed up with researchers at the California Institute of Technology to carry out the ground-breaking research.

Microsoft sold over 8 mn Kinects in 60 days

Las Vegas: Microsoft Corp sold more than eight million of its Xbox Kinect motion-sensing game system in its first 60 days since launch, outpacing its target of five million and outshining Sony Corp's competing Move.

The Japanese electronics maker sold 4.1 million units of its Move, which like the Kinect tracks body gestures for video games, in its first two months. However, that figure did not take into account the peak December holiday shopping month.

Sony launched the Move controller - a wand-like device that allows users to control on-screen gaming action - in September in North America and in October in Japan. The device costs $50 for the controller or $400 bundled with a PlayStation 3. Microsoft's Kinect, launched in early November, costs $150 or $300 bundled with a 4 gigabyte Xbox console.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer also told the Consumer Electronics Show that Sprint and Verizon Wireless will begin carrying phones based on its fledgling Windows Phone 7 operating software from this year's first half.

Benzema, Ronaldo hat-tricks in Real win

Madrid: Karim Benzema cemented his return to form with his second hat-trick of the month and Cristiano Ronaldo also netted three goals as Real Madrid crushed lowly Levante 8-0 in their King's Cup last-16 first leg on Wednesday.

France striker Benzema is profiting from the absence through injury of first-choice centre forward Gonzalo Higuain and followed up on his Champions League triple against Auxerre on Dec. 8 with another impressive performance.

He opened the scoring against Levante in the sixth minute at the Bernabeu when he robbed Miquel Robuste, bamboozled Xavi Torres with a couple of stepovers and lashed a low shot past Gustavo Munua.

Ronaldo set up Mesut Ozil for the home side's second in the 10th minute and Benzema made the most of another defensive error to make it 3-0 in the 31st.

The former Olympique Lyon forward, who has struggled to settle in Spain, bagged an assist moments before halftime when he played in Ronaldo for Real's fourth.

Tempers flared briefly at the start of the second half. Benzema clashed with Robuste off the ball and ended up with a bloodied lip. Both players were booked by the referee.

The Frenchman, who turned 23 on Sunday, completed his hat-trick in the 69th and Ronaldo added two more in the 72nd and 74th as Levante, who held Real to a 0-0 draw in La Liga in September, were overwhelmed.

Substitute Pedro Leon added the eighth in the 90th.

Assange's right hand man launches rival site

History

Domscheit-Berg said the intention of OpenLeaks was to be more transparent than WikiLeaks as "In these last months, the organisation has not been open any more. It lost its open-source promise." It planned to start in early 2011.^openleaks


Instead of publishing the documents, OpenLeaks will send the leaked documents to various news entities.
At the time of its announcement, WikiLeaks was facing a number of threats: founder Julian Assange had been arrested in connection with sexual assault charges; the site had issues finding safe DNS and web hosting; and many companies had blocked payment to the site. According to Domscheit-Berg's initial statements, he expected OpenLeaks to bypass WikiLeaks problems by serving only as a safe conduit for whistleblowers to leak information, which would then be passed on to the press, instead of acting as a publisher itself. The organization also intends to be democratically governed, rather than being run by one person or a small group. "Our long term goal is to build a strong, transparent platform to support whistleblowers—both in terms of technology and politics—while at the same time encouraging others to start similar projects," says a colleague wishing to remain anonymous.

An outstanding milestone in cricket history

The little master reached the coveted landmark when he completed his ton in 197 balls.

Real test for india starts today

first test between india and sa starts today

Another milestone by saina

saina won the hong kong series gains top spot in singles