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Friday, October 30, 2009

Google gets its groove on with music search



Google stepped onto the Internet music stage, unveiling a service for finding, listening to or buying songs online. Google announced an alliance with Lala.com and MySpace-owned iLike at Capitol Records headquarters in Los Angeles that could cut down on the number of mouse clicks it takes to sample or purchase a song on the Web. "We are very excited today to be introducing a music search feature,"Google vice president of search Marissa Mayer said before a demonstration of the new service known as OneBox. "The search results will allow you to do a whole song play to verify it is the song you are looking for," rather than just the 30-second stream typical of most major online music providers. Google music search lets people search using song artists, titles, and even snippets of lyrics. A pop-up widget powered by iLike or Lala instantly appears with OneBox search results and offers to play the sought-after song. The MySpace box provides links to buying MP3 downloads of songs, matching music videos and upcoming concerts by artists, if any are planned. Google began rolling out OneBox on Wednesday, with availability limited to the United States. Google hopes to find partners in other countries to take the music model international.

Army finds unlikely Taliban ally in battle for South Waziristan


As it battles the main Taliban forces holed up in the country's mountainous South Waziristan province, the Pakistani army has found an unlikely ally in independent Taliban groups opposed to their rivals' campaign of terrorist attacks. Qari Nasir Mehsud leads one of the many independent Taliban factions in north-western Pakistan’s rugged tribal zone, from where they target international forces across the border in Afghanistan. For Pakistani authorities, Mehsud and his 10,000-strong contingent are allies in a fight against a common enemy: the Pakistani Taliban led by Hakimullah Mehsud, who claimed responsibility for a series of attacks across Pakistani cities in recent weeks. The Pakistani army launched a massive operation earlier this month to root out Pakistani Taliban insurgents from South Waziristan. “Today we support the army because we are against these terrorists who are harming our country. There are 10,000 of us in total but we have 3000 men based in South Waziristan who are watching and reporting back to the Pakistani secret services about the activities of the TTP,” a Taliban member told. For now the army seems to have turned a blind eye even though it knows Qari Nasir Mehsud and others like him will try to establish Taliban rule in Pakistan once they have succeeded in Afghanistan - for their ultimate goal is to see Pakistan adopt Islamic law.

China invites Kim Jong Il to visit



China has invited reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to visit at his convenience, state media in both countries reported.The invitation was extended as an official from North Korea's Workers' Party visited China and attended a Wednesday meeting, in which the countries pledged to strengthen ties, according to China Daily. 

Clinton doubts Pakistan on al-Qaeda



Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has questioned Pakistan's commitment to the fight against al-Qaeda, saying she found it hard to believe that no-one in the government knows where senior figures are hiding. "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in the city of Lahore on Thursday. "Maybe that's the case. Maybe they're not gettable. I don't know." Top al-Qaeda leaders are widely believed to be holed up in a remote mountainous region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Clinton said that al-Qaeda had enjoyed a "safe haven" in Pakistan since 2002. Clinton is on a three-day visit to Pakistan, where one of her principle objectives is to tackle the anti-American sentiment which is said to be undermining its allies in the Pakistani government. "I am more than willing to hear every complaint about the United States," Clinton said. "But this is a two-way street. If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together" then "there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment." Clinton was keen to hail the US relationship with Pakistan. "What we have together is far greater than what divided us," she told students at Lahore University, referring to her relations with Barack Obama, the US president. "And that is what I feel about the United States and Pakistan."

New US policy to raise aid for Pakistan



The new US policy for the Pak-Afghan region will be a combination of continued military presence in Afghanistan and an increase in military and economic assistance to Pakistan, officials and lawmakers say. US President Barack Obama holds his final meeting with his senior military advisers on Friday to finalise the policy. Mr Obama has already held six such meetings with senior military and political advisers since late last month. ‘We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,’ said Mr Obama while defining the strategy he is expected to announce soon. But even after weeks of review, administration officials say a range of options is still under consideration, including whether additional US forces could be deployed in phases. At 3.40am on Thursday, Mr Obama visited Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base to attend the transfer of 15 soldiers and three drug enforcement agents killed in Afghanistan this week. The solemn visit underscores the enormity of the president’s decision as he has to choose between saving American lives and defeating the terrorists to prevent future attacks. Meanwhile, the US media reported that President Obama had asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions were being managed effectively by local leaders and which required international help. The media interpreted this as indicating that the administration was now shifting its attention away from Kabul and was seeking to deal directly with strong provincial and tribal leaders. The reports claimed the Obama administration had now concluded that the Taliban could not be eliminated as a military and political force, regardless of how many more troops were deployed. The clearest outline of the new US policy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, however, came from Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, who underlined the key position Pakistan enjoys in the new strategy: No front is more important in the US fight against international terrorism than nuclear-armed Pakistan -- and chaos next door in Afghanistan would have enormous repercussions there. Pakistan is not only the headquarters of Al Qaeda today but could eventually become the epicentre of extremism in the world. If the United States and its allies are perceived as incapable of doing the job, it would help extremists recruit and raise doubt -- not just in the region, but globally -- about America’s resolve and its effectiveness.