Five senior officials from Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party resign amid attempts to revive a defunct liberation movement, Zapu.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/84036?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+TUC+and+IoD+join+forces+in+calling+for+City+bonus+reformch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Executive+salaries+%28Business%29%2CBanking+sector+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CUnions%2CUK+newsc5=Investments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=David+Henckec7=2008_11_19c8=1120610c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Executive+salariesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FExecutive+salaries" width="1" height="1" //divpThe TUC and the Institute of Directors joined forces today to call for a reform of City bonuses in the wake of the banking crisis which has led to the nationalisation of Northern Rock and taxpayers bailing out HBOS, Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland./ppBrendan Barber, TUC general secretary, and Miles Templeman, director general of the Institute of Directors, surprisingly agreed more than disagreed on the need for major reforms to the system, when they gave evidence to the Commons Treasury committee this afternoon. The committee took evidence from both as part of its inquiry into City bonuses./ppTempleman told MPs that the system had to change after the banking crash and backed the case for the reform of remuneration committees that decide top bankers' pay, the disclosure of big bonuses paid to other senior staff and the need for a tough code of guidance from the Financial Services Authority on the future running of the banking system./ppBarber went further when he condemned remuneration committees as "a cosy club often employing the same people who work on boards of other big companies". Templeman - while disassociating himself from describing them as cosy clubs - backed Barber's call for more independent and knowledgeable people on the committees. He also said that there should be " external disclosure" of bonuses and salaries paid to other senior staff in banks - though he emphasised this should not apply to other businesses./ppBarber wanted tougher sanctions from the FSA to ensure that banks had enough capitalisation to prevent further collapses in the banking system. Templeman did not want the FSA to lay down specific figures but backed them taking action against individual banks if they were seriously undercapitalised./ppBarber, after denouncing the "wild" salaries paid to bankers, was caught out by Labour MPs on the committee when asked whether he thought footballers and pop stars were also overpaid. He defended multi-million salaries paid to premier league players and to England's former captain David Beckham adding " the remuneration paid to David Beckham is part of a system which does not apply to the rest of the human race". The TUC's members include the Professional Footballers Association which negotiates on behalf of some star players and lower league players./ppEarlier this afternoon a team of experts gave evidence to the committee, including Carol Arrowsmith, a partner with accountants Deloitte and Ronnie Fox, principal of the City law firm Fox./ppFox clashed with Labour MPs George Mudie, MP for Leeds, East and the chairman, John McFall, when he said the level of salaries and bonuses paid to City traders and bank directors had "nothing to do with the financial crisis". He blamed the crisis on the "economic situation" and said he was believer in the free market./ppWhen challenged by Mudie over what action should be taken he said "that is up to politicians". Fox has negotiated many of the deals for City traders.br /In evidence to the committee, Deloitte and Touche, said it did not believe that the remuneration system had caused the entire crisis./pp"It is apparent that there is no one remuneration structure in place across all the companies that are experiencing problems ... Performance linked remuneration is undoubtedly a good thing but it is possible to have too much of a good thing and we believe that a model where bonus forms such a very large proportion of an individual's annual pay may encourage risk taking."/ppDeloitte also said that changes that led to the publication of top executive pay had "undoubtedly been a contributing factor in increases in executive pay and to some extent has influenced the design and operation of incentive plans."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/executivesalaries"Executive salaries/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/tradeunions"Trade unions/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227123459852111919442539079"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227123459852111919442539079" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

via Eurogamer


Epic has made fixing Gears of War 2's skill-based matchmaking its top priority, and hopes to have a solution soon.
"We're aware that some folks are experiencing longer-than-ideal wait times while using the skill-based public matchmaking in Gears 2 multiplayer," said senior producer Rod Fergusson on the official forums.

"We're working on some solutions but it's a complicated issue as there isn't any one problem; it's a combination of factors. Clearly, scale is one of them as we've had millions of successful matches played online so far, [but] a small percentage of players are having issues, which is unacceptable.

"We're working closely with Microsoft to address the matchmaking issues, I promise you that it is our number one priority, and we hope to have an update soon," he said.Until then, he suggested a few workarounds. Trying different playlists can reduce delays, as can having at least two people in the party before matchmaking; a full team of five, incidentally, is the fastest way.

Re-inviting the nine other people in the game immediately after one finishes is also a top tip from Fergusson, although this will turn the match into a private affair. There's benefits to this, such as being able to pick maps and modes, although the outcome will not be recorded or ranked.

He suggests double-checking the NAT settings with your router, too.

Still, little of this seems to have put people off playing Gears of War 2, which continues to attract the most unique users on Xbox Live according to Major Nelson's charts.

Fergusson added that there have been 3 million ranked multiplayer matches played and over 1 million screenshots uploaded to the official website.

And from those stats he has worked out that Horde is the most popular multiplayer mode, River is the map of choice, and the Gnasher weapon has notched-up the most kills.

via Joystiq


Well, we extended the courtesy to the PS3 on its special day, so it seems only fair that Nintendo's little guy should get his own day in the sun. Two years ago today you either discovered that you really could have fun flailing around looking like a dork or, if you're a senior citizen, discovered that video games had been invented.

In those two years the Wii has carved its own niche, bridging gaps between different gaming audiences and (occasionally) leaving some feeling left out of the fun. What do you think of the first 24 months and what are you looking for in the Wii's next 12?

Societe : A2MP - Lieu de travail : Hauts de Seine - Type de contrat : CDI - Salaire : à négocier - Detail : Dans le cadre du lancement de nouvelles activités stratégiques en mode « start Up », nous recherchons pour l'un de nos clients du secteur monétique, plusieurs Analystes d'exploitation et Techniciens Help Desk juniors et seniors pour encadrement. MISSION : Cette mission requiert que l'Analyste d'Exploitation sache faire, faire faire, piloter, diagnostiquer, contrôler. Le SI transactionnel dont il s'occupera est critique : il subit de très fortes charges, il est Transactionnel, et doit être disponible en 24/7. Les grandes tâches sont : 1) Assurer l'Exploitation, et le Pilotage de l'exploitation du SI transactionnel (SI critique) en Open Source et architecture - gestion des incidents ( Reporting , suivi et information ), avec une exigence business pour résoudre ou contourner le problème très rapidement (quelques minutes ou dizaines de minutes), et rétablir le service. Des incidents nécessitent une compréhension large : architecture du SI, couches de sécurité, interconnexions réseaux. - Actions de progression de la qualité. Disponibilité applicative de 99,99% en 24/7 sur 365 jours - Analyser les batchs quotidiens, et les Logs Applicatifs (monétiques) pour la surveillance préventive, ou le diagnostic de dysfonctionnements systèmes ou applicatifs. 2) Gérer les changements (Change Management) : - une livraison applicative + patchs si nécessaire. Livrer en Pré-Production et Production - Projets de Production : renforts matériels pour répondre aux nouvelles exigences business, évolutions technologiques réseaux - Participer à l'évolution de l'architecture de nos plateformes systèmes et réseaux. 3) Planification en 3*8 avec des Astreintes à faire sur site. 4) Assurer un niveau 1 aux clients, et 2 aux Help Desk locaux. ENVIRONNEMENT TECHNIQUE : * Linux, Postgresql. * Réseaux : WAN / LAN, IP, NAT Routages, VPN. *Gprs, Telecom, Radius, PROFIL : Formation supérieure : BTS/DUT , Bac+2/Bac+3, Informatique et Réseaux. Une forte compétence technique est requise. 2 ans d'expérience minimum au poste d'analyste d'exploitation en environnement Open Source. Une expérience réussie en tant qu'Analyste d'exploitation sur un SI critique est indispensable. Des connaissances avancées et une très bonne pratique sont nécessaires sur : * Linux RedHat. * SGBDR ( Ex : MySQL/Postgress/Oracle/Sybase ), Serveur d'Applications : logiciels Open * Réseaux : Wan / Lan La connaissance ou la pratique de méthodes de qualité (ITIL...) serait un plus.

Societe : LCD CONSULTANTS - Lieu de travail : paris - Type de contrat : CDI - Salaire : 55000 - Detail : Rattaché au Responsable du département d'un des principaux acteurs du secteur bancaire, vous êtes en charge de l'Assistance à maîtrise d'ouvrage concernant les projets relatifs à la refonte du Système titre : recueil des besoins, spécifications, Suivi des Développements, tests, recettes ? De formation Bac +5, avec une expérience d'au moins 5 Ans dans le domaine des titres, vous connaissez bien les différents processus Middle et Back Office ainsi que la comptabilité des Opcvm. Force de proposition, vous avez un bon relationnel et la force de conviction suffisante pour convaincre vos interlocuteurs d'adhérer à vos objectifs. La pratique de l'Anglais vous est familière.

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"Citing the weak economy, SAP has cut the cost of developer subscriptions for its NetWeaver platform by roughly 50 percent, according to a post this week on an official company a target="_blank" href="https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/12057"blog/a ./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/02/SAP-offers-NetWeaver-subscription-for-developers_1.html"SAP began offering individual developer subscriptions/a #160;for the technology about a year a target="_blank" href="http://www.sap.com/about/press/press.epx?pressid=8341"ago/a , in an apparent effort to draw additional interest. The company has been trying to move customers still on older systems onto NetWeaver-based platforms like ERP 6.0, and also working to resolve an SAP skills shortage in the job market./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld#39;s a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/fatalexception?source=fssr"Fatal Exception/a and a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/stratdev/?source=fssr"Strategic Developer/a blogs. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;You may be curious as to the reasons behind this reduction,quot; wrote Claudine Lagerholm, senior product manager for SAP Developer Network subscriptions, on Monday. quot;Since the launch, many of you have been vocal about the subscriptions program, particularly how it should evolve over time, the geographical expansion needed, and to some extent the pricing. We#39;ve heard some subscribers say that they#39;ve received a great deal of value for the money; however, we#39;ve also received feedback from others that the financial burden for individual subscribers was rather high.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;As you are all aware, the economic landscape has changed very drastically in the last few months, so we#39;ve decided now was a good time to adjust the pricing,quot; she added./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"NetWeaver Development License subscriptions now cost $1,170 and #8364;1,071, down from $2,300 and #8364;2,082.50. A lesser-featured NetWeaver Composition License is now priced at $520 and #8364;476, a reduction from $1,100 and #8364;1,011.50./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The reduced-cost subscription package includes the same features and components as before, Lagerholm wrote. Customers who signed up or renewed on or after Sept. 1 will get a six-month extension to compensate for the price change./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Subscriptions are still only available to users in Germany and the United States. SAP is not ready to give a date for other country launches, Lagerholm said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"SAP#39;s move brought a thumbs up from the U.K.-based SAP consulting firm Pixelbase. quot;On the whole a very good move by SAP, enabling more developers to gain access to the full dev suite at a much reduced price,quot; states a post on the company#39;s a target="_blank" href="http://www.pixelbase.co.uk/"blog./a quot;The only remaining fly in the ointment now is the restriction to Germany and the US.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Additional comment from SAP could not immediately be obtained on Wednesday./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"#160;/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ img alt= style=border: 0; height:1px; width:1px; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=2da5570e76c27a75026699311db164df height=1 width=1/ img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2da5570e76c27a75026699311db164df style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

With Yahoo now looking for a new leader, Silicon Valley’s favorite parlor game is picking a new CEO for the embattled company. Plenty of names are being bandied about, from former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller (whose non-compete with Time Warner expires next March) to OpenTable CEO and former eBay superstar exec Jeff Jordan. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is also being thrown out as a possibility, but she is not interested.

Other strong candidates include Google senior VP Tim Armstrong (who heads up North American ad sales), former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig (as we’ve noted before), and Marc Andreessen. Mark Cuban would have been interesting too, but he has other things to worry about right now.

Less likely names, in my opinion, are current president Susan Decker, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson (who tried to buy Yahoo when he was at Microsoft), or Carl Icahn’s hand-picked board members Frank Biondi, Jr. and John Chapple. News Corp president Peter Chernin is also mentioned as a perennial candidate, but he seems better off where he is running Murdoch’s empire.

What Yahoo really needs is new blood, most likely someone not on the list below. Picking an old-media executive like Biondi or Chernin would risk repeating the same mistake Yahoo made when it put former Warner Brothers CEO Terry Semel at the helm. But it can’t pick a green startup executive either. Yahoo is a huge organization that requires a leader with at least some serious management experience. Vote below for who you think is the best candidate, or nominate your own in comments with your reasons why he or she should be considered.

(Flickr photo by Paul Fisher).

Who Should Be Yahoo’s Next CEO?
( surveys)

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Alisa Leonard-Hansen is a Senior Social Media Analyst within the strategy group at iCrossing. She can also be found blogging at both the iCrossing Great Finds blog and her own blog, The Web is Social.com.

With speculation around how you should monetize mostly a topic of conversation within the tech community, it always surprises me that a marketing perspective isn’t thrown into the mix. After all, it’s marketing dollars that you (and just about every other online entity) are relying on. So, taking a digital marketing perspective, I thought I’d throw a few thoughts into the discussion.

Note: this is not intended to be a “how to use Facebook to develop a social marketing strategy” discussion, but rather the intent is to explore how you could build a business model around your rich user data given what marketers desire in terms of effective marketing and what they’ll pay for (effective marketing= happy marketers who spend more $ on what works).

Your focus is flawed

So, you have one thing right: marketers pay to reach consumers, and the more targeting a platform can offer, the more marketers are willing to spend because of the promise of greater ROI. There is one flaw in your approach, however: you have been entirely focused on monetizing Facebook.com itself.

Now, while it may seem counter-intuitive, you ought to focus on monetizing your rich user data, and not necessarily the site itself. Wait–isn’t that the same thing? What is she saying? Just hear me out: You are not a content platform. You’re a communications utility, and while you’re a platform for UGC, you don’t provide a rich content experience. Users aren’t on your network to experience any kind of particular content–they are there to connect with friends and to essentially store personal data (whether they consciously know this or not).

Although some could argue that explicit and implicit user outputs (all that stuff you see in your newsfeed) IS the new “content,” we still have yet to see that this kind of UGC can be successfully monetized through advertising (translation, ROI for ad spend around UGC tends to be low).

Now, marketers have deployed lots of successful marketing initiatives within Facebook, but a majority of these involve leveraging your free Business Pages to drive conversation and engagement (read: free marketing). You’ve had it in your heads that if you let marketers set up free Business Pages, and draw in communities of brand enthusiasts who “Fan” these Pages, you can then upsell these brands into media buys. But the problem is that while great for engagement initiatives and fostering conversation around a brand (great for marketers!), Facebook is still not an optimal place for ad-spend, no matter how much attention is aggregated there. ROI from your ad spends tend to be relatively low for marketers. Again, it goes back to user intent and behavior.

So what should you do?

Essentially, Facebook is this giant data storage silo. It contains consumer data nearly as valuable as the credit card companies have (the kind of data marketers would pay nearly through the nose to have). It’s user data, not the dot com itself that you should consider your golden ticket.

Now, before anyone starts jumping up and down about the notion of “monetizing user data”– I’m not advocating that private user data be mass-harvested and sold ad hoc to marketers. Rather, what I am suggesting is that with the dawn of Facebook Connect, there may be a viable, ethical way to leverage this user data.

With Facebook Connect, you can essentially create a content network (and note the launch partners, major media companies) that could also support an ad-network. So now, with a Facebook Connect-enabled content/ad network, you have the holy grail of targeted advertising: contextually relevant content experience AND the kind of granular targetability based on user graph data that made the initial promise of social networks so huge for marketers. Basically, participating FBC sites could not only sell targeted ad inventory based on their content, but based on Facebook’s (opt-in) user data as well. This would not only give marketers what they want in terms of targeting, but you would get a cut of the ad revenue for being the arbiters of that valuable graph data.

Of course, even without a potential FBC ad-network, Facebook Connect helps brands and publishers provide a socially enhanced experience for their customers with a lower barrier to adoption than current one-off branded social networks. Not to mention, FBC enables the potential to drive a lot of new traffic to their site as a result of opt-in user actions (including purchases) being broadcast through the Facebook network.

There is also the opportunity for e-tailers to capitalize on social graph data as part of their merchandising model. The benefit of graph data to the e-tailer includes the implicit endorsement of products by your users whose purchases are broadcast to their Facebook friends (again, only if the user opts-in to have their actions published), driving significant traffic, tapping into the power of consumer advocacy, and providing a more socially enhanced and user-friendly experience. Given the significant value this kind of data offers, you could leverage some kind of rev-share program for supplying this graph data to e-tailers (but again, users would have to opt-in!).

Create a value exchange!

Now, this brings me to one last point that my dear friend and brilliant colleague Ben Bose has suggested be baked into all of this– a value exchange for the end user. If it’s consumers’ graph data that is benefiting both supplier/marketer and Facebook, then it should also work for the benefit of the consumer. Perhaps users may be assigned “influence” scores based on their network, and the degree of influence they have over that network. These influence scores could earn them rewards– not unlike our credit card rewards. Of course, some services already have types of user rewards, including ThisNext and imeem, but this is something that could be propagated to a much larger degree with initiatives like Facebook Connect.

Yes, there are many counterpoints to these ideas, including the argument that open Web enthusiasts (myself included) would pose around the idea of Facebook (or MySpace) being proprietors of graph data versus users themselves. But rather than examining the differences between FBC and true data portability, this was a look at possibilities for Facebook Connect as a means to increase Facebook revenue.

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, danleap

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Facebook To Offer Credit Cards
Social Network Ad Spending to Reach $2.5 Billion in 2011
Hear Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott at the Inbound Marketing Summit
Hear Chris Brogan Speak at the New Marketing Summit
Why Beer Companies Don’t Have Facebook Photo Contests
Fueling the Facebook Music Rumors
Facebook’s Management Shuffle Open to Interpretation

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/wii/" rel="tag"Nintendo Wii/a/pdiv align="center"img hspace="0" border="0" vspace="4" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/wiibday.jpg" alt="" /br //div Well, we extended the courtesy to the PS3 on a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/18/happy-second-birthday-to-the-ps3/"its special day/a, so it seems only fair that Nintendo's little guy should get his own day in the sun. Two years ago today you either discovered that you really could have fun flailing around looking like a dork or, if you're a senior citizen, discovered that video games had been invented.br /br /In those two years the Wii has carved its own niche, bridging gaps between different gaming audiences and (occasionally) leaving some feeling left out of the fun. What do you think of the first 24 months and what are you looking for in the Wii's next 12?p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/19/happy-second-birthday-to-the-nintendo-wii/"Happy second birthday to the Nintendo Wii/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/19/happy-second-birthday-to-the-nintendo-wii/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1376813/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/19/happy-second-birthday-to-the-nintendo-wii/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FCz6HI9Q4m6ZhsTQSV5D1i9HFjI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FCz6HI9Q4m6ZhsTQSV5D1i9HFjI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=zr1IHnNA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=zr1IHnNA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=0A2j0V9e"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=0A2j0V9e" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/jApDaw89S9M" height="1" width="1"/

A senior Rwandan presidential aide is extradited to France from Germany in connection with the killing of a former Rwandan president.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/72787?ns=guardianpageName=UK+news%3A+Flight+attendant+helps+steer+passenger+jet+to+safetych=UK+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Transport+UK%2CUK+news%2CCanada+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CNorth+America+Travelc6=Dan+Milmoc7=2008_11_19c8=1120375c9=articlec10=GUc11=UK+newsc12=Transportc13=c14=h2=GU%2FUK+news%2FTransport" width="1" height="1" //divpA flight attendant helped steer a Heathrow-bound passenger flight to safety after the co-pilot suffered a breakdown in mid-air, investigators have revealed./ppThe flight attendant was temporarily promoted to the cockpit after the captain of the Air Canada service ordered his colleague to be handcuffed and dragged from his seat.br / br /The flight attendant, a qualified commercial pilot, came forward after the captain asked the 155 passengers and crew if there were any professional pilots onboard. /ppThe unnamed attendant sat in the co-pilot's seat of the Boeing 767-333 jet as the Toronto to Heathrow service was diverted to Ireland's Shannon airport on January 28./ppThe report by the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) said: "The commander requested that the flight attendant occupy the right-hand (first officer's) seat for the remainder of the flight to assist as necessary. /pp"The flight attendant provided useful assistance to the commander, who remarked in a statement to the investigation that she was 'not out of place' while occupying the right-hand seat." /ppThe AAIU said the flight captain noted that his first officer was "quite harried" when he entered the cockpit before take-off. /ppOnce the plane was in the air, the senior pilot became "increasingly concerned" with his colleague's behaviour, prompting him to order the co-pilot to rest ahead of arriving at Heathrow, where difficult weather conditions were expected to make it a difficult landing./ppThe break did not improve the first officer's behaviour and it soon deteriorated. "The first officer began conversation which was rambling and disjointed in nature and not at all in character," said the report. /ppIt added that the pilot then became belligerent and uncooperative, "which convinced the commander he was now dealing with a crew member who was effectively incapacitated."/ppThe report indicated that a struggle took place as the pilot was taken from the cockpit by cabin crew, with one crew member sustaining a wrist injury. /ppAccording to one passenger, whose testimony did not appear in the AAIU document yesterday, the pilot was yelling and "invoking God" as he was dragged from the cockpit. /ppThe unnamed pilot was taken to a psychiatric unit and was flown home 11 days later. The Air Canada flight resumed its journey after the diversion and arrived eight hours late./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/transport"Transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/canada"Canada/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227108907797111915362546276"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227108907797111915362546276" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

Christian Sautter, adjoint chargé de l'emploi, du développement économique et de l'attractivité internationale à la mairie de Paris et Liliane Capelle, adjointe au maire chargée des seniors et du lien intergénérationnel, inaugureront demain, le 20

A senior Rwandan presidential aide is extradited to France from Germany in connection with the killing of a former Rwandan president.

On Thursday November 6th when Egyptians were celebrating Obama's Victory, Al Ghad Party went up in flames. You can read about the initial blogosphere reactions here and here. Today I am sharing with you Wael Nawara's statements regarding the incident.

Nawara, who is a senior official at the party and among the detainees on the day of the fire, wrote in English and in Arabic about what really happened:

The so-called “National” newspapers, indeed all channels of the so-called “National” media, tried to portray the crime as a dispute between competing factions of El Ghad Party which ended up in smoke and flames. It was a cold-blooded communication strategy which aimed at discrediting the opposition and scaring the public. It also aimed at spreading a spirit of pessimism and apathy. They wanted to say, “... look how pathetic the opposition is. Look how dirty the tactics they use. How small the personal gains and political rivalry which motivate them.”

It was an intended message to the public. “You criticize the NDP so bitterly, look how pitiful the opposition is. You want to play politics, the only ‘clean' club in town, at least relatively-speaking, is the NDP.”

Wael Nawara cited incidents of how internal elections took place previously:

They failed to mention that El Ghad members have elected 3 different party presidents in the past 5 years. Ayman Nour was elected in Nov 2004, Ambassador Nagui El Ghatrifi was elected in Dec 2005, Attorney Ehab El Kholy was elected in March 2007, and El Ghad members were getting ready to elect a 4th president on 7th Nov 2008. I, and two other candidates, ran against Ehab El Kholy in the elections of March 2007. My friend and colleague, Ehab El Kholy, won by 16 votes, getting about 45% of the votes while I got 42% of the votes. I contested election results on the grounds that none of the candidates had a clear majority of 50% +1 vote, and requested another round between candidates of the highest votes, myself and Ehab El Kholy. I did so, peacefully, lawfully, inside the party, through the council of “Wise Men”, or El Ghad Senates, who act according to the Party's bylaws as an “Internal Court” to resolve internal disputes. The Senates took several weeks then announced their verdict in my favor. I waived my rights for a second round and conceded to Ehab El Kholy and worked under his command since then. I am telling this little story, just to show that we can compete and have differences, but we can choose to solve our differences amicably, peacefully, and lawfully. El Ghad is no utopian opposition party. It has its problems, internal conflicts and limitations. But to portray the massacre of Nov 6th as a confrontation between competing factions is a gross distortion of the matter.

He also clarified the positions of former party members Mousa Mostafa Mousa and Ragab Helal Hemida:

The attack on El Ghad party by a group of thugs had nothing to do with who heads the party. Mousa Mostafa Mousa and Ragab Helal Hemida were both dismissed from the party on 18th Sep 2005, as per the verdict of the party's Senate, ratified by the Higher Council, the president - then Dr Ayman Nour- and by the General Assemblies of 20th Sep 2005 and 30th Dec 2005.

The attack on El Ghad Party on 6th Nov 2008 was a campaign commissioned by Mousa but encouraged by the security apparatus, which strives to eradicate any form of real opposition in Egypt. Ragab Helal Hemida, who came hand in hand with thugs and criminals to burn down El Ghad building, supervised a similar campaign on Al Ahrar party several years ago. He is an expert, a special agent which the regime uses to destroy and splinter opposition parties.

Nawara goes on to narrate what really happened supporting his version of the story by pictures published in El Badeel Newspaper:

In the first few days, after the events of Nov 6th, the so-called “National” newspapers spared no efforts in smearing our reputation in a filthy character-assassination campaign. Leaders of the “real” Ghad party were made to look as criminals and arsons. But when El Badeel newspaper started to publish photos from the crime scene showing Mousa and Ragab heading a group of thugs who started burning El Ghad building down, throwing rocks at the party's headquarters, setting clothes on fire and throwing them at El Ghad, then wrestled with firemen trying to prevent them from putting out the fire, then started smashing cars parked under the building, then started to lute our offices and smash furniture and antiques stolen from inside, then started dancing in Talaat Harb Square celebrating their victory in setting the building ablaze, etc., etc., etc. …, all of this happening in broad daylight, in the busiest spot of downtown Cairo, under a total absence of police in uniform.

The police mysteriously disappeared, despite advance warnings and official complaints filed by El Ghad leaders asking for protection after Mousa bluntly announced that he will attack the General Assembly. Talaat Harb Square, which is usually packed with security forces, suddenly became a Thug-land. In fact, traffic police stopped traffic to allow the attackers to proceed and complete the job at hand.

When all those photos became public … when Gameela Ismail, Vice-President and spokesperson of El Ghad, came out on Orbit and Dream Channels and showed those photos to millions of Egyptian viewers … everyone wondered … how come that only El Ghad leaders, who were trapped inside, who luckily escaped death by a slim margin, were accused of causing the damage, when in fact they were the very victims facing possible death, just a few hours before?

Then, and only then, did the Attorney General decide to call Mousa for questioning. Only then, did the regime start to notice, that the crime is too embarrassing to shove under the rug. But calling Mousa for questioning is hardly an achievement. Mousa is just a pitiful “glove” to some other mysterious hand which is determined to crush all opposition.

At the end he wonders:

 … until when, will this invisible hand remain invisible and immune from questioning? Until when will this hand stay outside the realm of the law?

To those who are concerned I would like to ask a question. This pathetic lawlessness which ruled the streets of downtown Cairo on the day of November 6th, 2008; whose responsibility was it? Are we just going to throw the blame on poor Mousa, Ragab and a few other thugs? Come on. I am sure that the regime can do better than that. I think the crime deserves a bigger sacrifice.

Think a little. You can actually benefit from the situation. By putting the blame on some minister or another the regime can also get rid of him. This is a bonus at times like these. After all, let us face it, the “minister” in concern is becoming a burden on the regime and all too powerful to remain in office. After all, news of a likely cabinet shuffle is flying around. The regime is a survivor. I hope it will present a bigger lamb to the sacrifice this time.

Le gardien stadiste, qui a perdu sa place de titulaire, risque d'aller voir ailleurs. Dans le but de restructurer l'effectif de l'équipe seniors, le bureau directeur du Stade Tunisien compte prendre une série de décisions concernant le recrutement et la

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/ca.html"CA/a this week introduced a slew of product enhancements that industry watchers say reflect how enterprise IT executives want to buy management software now: as integrated bundles and via subscription./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The company, while hosting 5,000 attendees at its CA World 2008 conference in Las Vegas this week, unveiled upgrades across several product suites and expanded its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings by hosting more management applications and adopting subscription pricing options. Industry watchers says the company#39;s move toward advanced integration -- to the point of selling the applications as a cohesive package -- shows CA hears customer complaints and is working to address them./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ For more news from CA World 2008, see quot;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/18/CA_to_discuss_Mainframe_20_1.html?source=fssr"CA to discuss #39;Mainframe 2.0#39;/a.quot; And keep up on the latest tech news headlines at a href="http://www.infoworld.com/news/?source=fssr"InfoWorld News/a, or subscribe to the a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr"Today#39;s Headlines newsletter/a. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;CA is simplifying how companies can buy integrated capabilities. Instead of buying four different CA products, you have one package that incorporates the four products, you get everything at a lower per-user price point and you get the package implemented in a standardized way,quot; says Jasmine Noel, a principal analyst at Ptak, Noel and Associates./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"For instance, CA Service Desk Manager 12 unifies service desk, change management, configuration management database, application dependency mapping, knowledge management, remote support automation and reporting capabilities. The product should help customers looking to adopt best-practices and move away from ad hoc tasks to more streamlined processes./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;Customers are starting to buy all products related to a specific process, such as incident management, from a single vendor,quot; Noel says. quot;Customers are shifting from a task-based approach to managing IT to a process-based approach. They don#39;t want to deal with integrating a bunch of task-based tools into a cohesive solution supporting a repeatable process.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"CA has incorporated new features into the bundled product as well. Now the software includes role-based user interfaces based on the a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/042108-itil-v3-five-ways-to.html"ITIL best practice framework/a that can be personalized depending on an individual#39;s position. It also features a change management schedule that lets all users of the application see scheduled changes in a calendar view to better assess potential impact and minimize downtime due to changes. And the software now segregates data, processes and roles in a multi-tenancy manner to reflect IT support organizations that service multiple internal and external customers, CA says./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;We simplified the licensing of the product and included playbooks that detail repeatable methodologies based on years of experience to help companies support ITIL or other best practice frameworks,quot; says Kathy Shoop, vice president of CA Service Management./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Scheduled to be available in December, Service Desk Manager 12 will be priced quot;as an attractive upgrade for existing customersquot; of the previously stand-alone applications that are now bundled together./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"strongCA gets SaaS-ybr//strongCA also announced at the conference that it will broaden its SaaS offerings with the release of Clarity PPM (Project amp; Portfolio Manager) On Demand, a hosted pay-per-use version of the vendor#39;s Clarity PPM 12 enterprise project management software. This release marks the third application CA delivers via a SaaS model -- the other two being CA GRC Manager On Demand and CA Instant Recovery On Demand -- and company officials say a hosted services model currently works for more than 1,000 customers worldwide./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;Customers don#39;t want to operate a lot of infrastructure and don#39;t have the staff to learn new management applications or the time to maintain them,quot; says Jules Ehrlich, senior vice president of CA On Demand. quot;It provides a rapid time to value for customers and frees them from worrying about how to operate the application technically.quot;/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"The appeal of SaaS is amplified with the current economic climate, but industry watchers argue management software is an ideal candidate for hands-off implementation. That#39;s why CA -- along with competitors HP, IBM and BMC -- has ramped up its efforts in this market. According to Forrester Research, SaaS makes up a little more than 1 percent of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008. But by 2013, the research firm estimates SaaS will represent 10% of the same market./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;Incumbent software vendors are setting up new business units and adding SaaS offerings to existing portfolios,quot; Forrester#39;s quot;How big is SaaS in IT management Software?quot; a target="_blank" href="http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45857"report/a reads./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"The management heavyweights are on-board with the delivery model to ease deployment and maintenance of their suites, but still analysts say they will be challenged to compete with pure-play SaaS offerings./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;It will take more time and commitment from these vendors to replace their existing product architectures with a more typical SaaS-facing solution -- one that is truly multitenant, billable based on usage and with a Web 2.0-style user interface,quot; the report reads./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"ema target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/"Network World/a/em emis an InfoWorld affiliate/em/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ img alt= style=border: 0; height:1px; width:1px; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=e5168aa3c0ff7c75436cf8b20cd4d097 height=1 width=1/ img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e5168aa3c0ff7c75436cf8b20cd4d097 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/