Do the world top personalities do thier own signatures in hand on every document? Did you ever receive an autograph of a celebrity by post?

Well it seems that, one can put his signature onto a document, even if he is miles away from it.

Apparantly thats what President Obama did.

Well, President Barack Obama has been in Europe for the annual G-8 summit and Congress was racing to pass legislation extending the authorization of key surveillance methods used to try to thwart attacks on the United States, which were due to expire Thursday night at midnight. Congress came through just hours before midnight but Obama was in France.

According to a White House spokesperson, Obama used a device called an autopen, which mechanically reproduces a human signature.

That prompted at least one lawmaker, Georgia Republican Representative Tom Graves, to question whether that was legal or not, writing Obama a letter seeking clarification.

“I thought it was a joke at first, but the President did, in fact, authorize an autopen to sign the Patriot Act extension into law. Consider the dangerous precedent this sets.  Any number of circumstances could arise in the future where the public could question whether or not the president authorized the use of an autopen,” Graves said in a statement.

Well, for those who may question the use of the auto-pen, there is a legal opinion issued during the Bush administration that gave the green-light to using it.

“We conclude that the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it within the meaning of Article I, Section 7″ of the U.S. Constitution, the 29-page opinion said.

“We emphasize that we are not suggesting that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill, only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to the bill,” it said.

It looks like the World War 3 – Iran v/s Rest of the World has started at the UN conference.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entered into a war of words, calling the other nation’s nuclear capability as the principal threat to international stability.

Ahmadinejad fired the first salvo at a special UN conference on the global nuclear non-proliferation regime Monday, accusing the US of leading a skewed international system that seeks to deny peaceful nuclear power to developing nations while allowing allies such as Israel to stockpile atomic arms.

Demanding that the world’s nuclear-weapons states agree to a clear timetable for the disbandment of their arsenals, Ahmadinejad said: “The possession of nuclear bombs isn’t a source of pride; it is disgusting and rather shameful.”

“And even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons, which isn’t even comparable to any crime committed throughout the history.”

Sadly rather than confronting him with a suitable reply, the leaders walked out.

SHAME! SHAME!! SHAMEFULL!!!

What he said is a fact, that he made explicit to the UN & the world. US may be a superpower and maybe the other nations lookup to it for something. But the fact remains that the US has the largest stockpile of Nuclear War heads and is strategically supporting Israel (who has some nuclear warheads and is the main bone of contention in the Middle East peace process).

It is a great opportunity for brokering world peace, given the initiative taken by Ahmadinejad to come to the UN Nuke meet and clarify Iran’s stand on nuclear power vis-a-vis the world.

Rather than grabbing the opportunity to break the ice and arrive at a consensus on nuclear weapons and energy, it is very much shameful, that the world leader, walked out on him, rather than putting their defense.

It this opportunity is lost, the nuclear issue across the world will be pushed back into troubled waters, with Iran carrying back bitter memories of the UN meet.

Is it that the leaders are bribed by Arms Lobby into derailing the UN Nuke meet, so that their business does not suffer?

Well what ever the reasons, I think President Obama should attend the meet and shake hands with Ahmednijad & understand Iran’s stand negotiate peace. Afterall, he has always said that “Dialogues are better ice-breakers, rather than swords”.

The world is going to blame the world leaders for walking out rather than coming to a table to arrive at a consensus which can foster world peace.

Lord, GOD, Allah – give the world leaders sense to make the world a peaceful playground, as YOU had intended.

Since the inception of IPL, it has acted as a magnet for people with big money (with or without any due credentials) and looking for a quick road to fame. Over the last 3 years, everybody joined the bandwagon of the IPL circus.

All those who did, made good money, exploiting the passion of the cricket hungry India and business of all sorts related to IPL cropped up over these years. And all of them shared the booty.

Now with the Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor spat gone sour on the Kochi team owners, that the IPL circus elephant has turned into a hydraheaded monster, all those even vaguely or remotely profited from the IPL name, no wonder, want to ditch it like a leech.

Day by day, the IPLGate is getting wider and wider and opening up new players with hidden agendas.The IT dept has gone full force into the scandal and much heavy steam is expected in the coming days. Many top notch people will find their faces scalded by this. Everybody who got money in the name of IPL is currently under the IT scanner; right from players, organizers, sponsors, team owners, fund managers, telecast & media rights owners, associated IPL brand companies.

Match-fixing and betting is another angle that is being investigated, with tons of money going into it. Being illegal, nobody wants to officially comment on it.

Even the BCCI officials and ministers are believed to be hand-in-gloves with those high profile IPL managers. Some heads have already rolled out and many more are likely.

Much heat is being generated from the politicians and are blaming the government, probably because they did not get the share of the booty. All those tainted parliamentarians, who made a killing with the earlier scandals are now raising their voices to blame those connected to IPL.

Well, in the whole deal, the game of cricket has been sullied. The perception in the minds of the people has changed, though a bit temporarily. Given the time, the fans will forget all this and clamor to cling to the stadiums and the TV screens to enjoy a good game of cricket.

The end result in this game is still awaited and will surely be a long bloody final.

Insurance companies in the UAE are refusing to cover damage to vehicles caused by the heavy rainfall of the last few days, according to reports.

Insurance firms have dismissed claims on the grounds that the policyholder standard imposed by the UAE Ministry of Economy does not cover natural disasters, including the widespread flooding which has afflicted the Emirates this week, reported Arabic daily Emarat Al Youm. link

So friends, be sure to check your car insurance papers (all the fine prints), to ensure that the policy takes into consideration such calamities. If the UAE is flooding today, Kuwait is not far.

So protect your pretty vehicles.

Dear All,

You should be alert during next few days.

Don’t open any message with an attachment entitled “POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK”, regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc “C” drive of your computer.

It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the zero sector of the Hard Disc.

It was apparently checked by Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!

Apparently, the confusion and rumours of MJs cause of death is becoming murkier, day by day.

A new report now says that MJ was murdered and that his death certificate is also being modified accordingly.

Jackson died on June 25 last year from “acute Propofol intoxication” due to an “intra-venous injection by another”.

His personal doctor Conrad Murray has been at the centre of the probe after he confessed injecting the star with Propofol and other drugs in the hours before his death.

There is so much info that is kept hidden that speculations and rumours are getting wings and everybody has his own version of the cause of MJs death.

For GOD’s sake, please conclude the chapter and let MJ rest peacefully in his grave or if he is up there with GOD, then GOD knows everything. So let the rumours bury.

In the “Hopenhagen”- the World Climate Summit in Copenhagen, if the world leaders, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, don’t make a sincere-to-heart commitment, their very future may look like  these.

For the moment, they are the GODs that can save the climate for our future generations to live, survive and thank us. Let the Almightly give them the conviction and courage to commit to save the earth.

The TARSHEED program has cost a whopping 35 million dollars.

The Ministry of Energy launched, inAug 2007,  an all-encompassing conservation campaign at the start of the summer season in Kuwait. The campaign is called ‘Tarsheed’ which is the Arabic word for “guidance”.  residents in Kuwait were been bombarded with SMS messages, TV & Radio ads, fliers taped to car windshields and stuffed into mailboxes as well as giant placards scattered all over the roads pleading with residents to conserve energy. The Ministry has even ensured that all the languages in Kuwait, from Urdu to Hindi, are included in the campaign. And there is even a hotline that residents can call to report abuses of energy in the country. This was a perfect example of the famous saying ‘ There is darkness below the lamp that glows”. What nobody saw, noticed or reported, is the blatant abuse of power in the government and bank offices, where you can see for yourself, that the lights for all the rooms in the whole building are on 24 x 7. It does not mean that the staff is working round the clock (to raise the productivity index of Kuwait, which is abysmally low). Let the chairman of the Tarsheed campaign take on this education campaign to educate the staff in those government offices to put of the lights & other electrical equipment, when not needed.

Kuwait is the richest country in the World due to its’ mass oil reserves. So, why would a country like this have a problem with energy? Over consumption is the answer. Electricity is cheap in Kuwait. As a result, the public wastes energy because they are not in dire want of it. They take it for granted.

The Tarsheed campaign has been successful in getting the word out and scaring the public silly. No one wants a power shortage. Life comes to a halt in Kuwait when there is no electricity to turn on the AC or even a fan. All you can do is ‘bake’ and pray for the electric to come back on! The public has been very receptive and so far my electricity has not gone off once this summer. And the campaign rolls on. They even installed a few Tarsheed meters around the country. It shows, in real time, the current amount of electricity being used by the country as a whole. The meter has 3 colors…green, orange and red. Motorists passing by the meters can visualize the rate of consumption and (if the meter is in the red area) when they go home they can take appropriate measures to conserve energy and avoid a debilitating power cut.

The newest installment in the rigorous Tarsheed campaign is, what some are calling, the ‘Tarsheed Police’. The Ministry had hired 100 inspectors to ensure that energy is being conserved in Kuwait.

Unfortunately, only recently has Kuwait explored alternatives to deal with the demand for energy for its’ populous. According to the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), a recent study conducted by German scientific research centers have found that if Kuwait utilizes only 10% of its’ total area to generate solar energy from the sun it would be the equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil per day. The Kuwaiti government is vigorously investing in the renewable energies sector. KISR predicts that Kuwait will be a mass exporter of electricity generated by the Sun by 2050 and will export renewable energy to countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Somebody please remind them that ‘Money can’t buy everything’.

Leaving your email as plain text in forums, on Twitter or on classified sites makes you an easy spam target: spam robots and email harvesters constantly browse these sites to collect new victim emails.

Don’t share your email on public sites. Instead, use our free service that will convert your email address (joe@email.com) into a safe and short URL (for instance http://scr.im/joe). People willing to email you will go to this URL that will reveal your email address, after a simple test that automated scripts and bots cannot pass.

Don’t share your email. Don’t make yourself an easy spam target. Instead, share your safe scr.im URL.

Conficker has gone on to become one of the most widespread internet worms in recent years.

The conficker computer worm, also known as downup, downandup and Kido first surfaced in 2008 but as of January 17, various reports declare that 6.5 million computers have already been infected by this virus. It also states that 3 in 10 windows PC are vulnerable to conficker attacks.

It could be the biggest April Fool’s joke ever played on the internet, or it could be one of the worst days ever for computers connected to the network. Security experts can’t work out whether the Conficker virus will wreak havoc on Wednesday , or just let the day pass quietly.

Experts have worked out that from midnight on 1 April, the Conficker program will start scanning thousands of websites for a new set of instructions telling it what to do next. The infected machines thus comprise one of the biggest “botnets” – a network of “robot” computers – in internet history. And if they were all given a target, such as simultaneously sending search queries to Google or trying to connect to a gambling site, they could knock it offline through the sheer volume of connections – a “denial of service”. Victims usually discover that they have been locked out of their computers or have very slow-running internet connections.

Careful study of infected machines has revealed that from midnight on Wednesday they will seek new instructions from a randomly generated list of thousands of websites that changes every day. Just one needs to be under the virus writers’ control to turn Conficker into a newly configured botnet – making the task of catching the exact site a search for a needle in a computing haystack.

Experts admit that they have little idea of where Conficker might be headed next. “It’s a brave man who puts his neck out like that,” said Graham Cluley, an analyst with internet security company Sophos. “For what it’s worth, we have never seen earlier versions of the Conficker worm downloading a malicious payload.”

It is also rumoured that Conficker may not activate immediately, preferring to lie in wait before receiving further orders to avoid scrutiny. The main purpose of Conficker is to provide the authors with a secure binary updating service that effectively allows them instant control of millions of PCs worldwide.

The identity of its creator remains unknown, despite Microsoft offering a bounty of $250,000 (£176,000) for the information. Usual methods of unpacking the virus code to examine its workings have been thwarted because the authors have encrypted it, using algorithms that render it almost uncrackable.

Symptoms –

• Users being locked out of directory
• Access to admin shares denied
• Scheduled tasks being created
• Access to security related web sites is blocked.

Method of Infection –

• This worm exploits the MS08-067 Microsoft Windows Server Service vulnerability in order to propagate.
• Machines should be patched and rebooted to protect against this worm re-infecting the system after cleaning.
• Upon detection of this worm the system should be rebooted to clean memory correctly. May require more that one reboot.
• Scheduled tasks have been seen to be created on the system to re-activate the worm.
• Autorun.inf files have been seen to be used to re-activate the worm.

Removal –

• Users infected by W32/Conficker.worm should perform an On Demand Scan to remove remnants of the worm in memory using the latest DATs.
• Upon detection of W32/Conficker!mem and REBOOT, the W32/Conficker.worm malware components will be removed.

More information – http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_153464.htm

But beware of the other malware and virus creeping into your system by means of fraudulent software claiming to be an anti-dote to Conrficker. Microsoft is behind it and will do an appropriate press release for it. So trust only well known names for the cure.