Washington, September 8 : Japan’s largest shipping line are developing a system of solar panels capable of generating 40 kilowatts of electricity for use on a 60,000 ton cargo ship, thus reducing the ship’s emissions.

According to a report in ENN (Environmental News Network), Nippon Yusen KK, has teamed with Nippon Oil Corporation in developing the solar panels for use on a
60,000-ton cargo ship for Toyota Motor Corporation.

Unlike the solar panels soon to be offered on the tops of the Toyota Priusthat, these panels are designed to assist with the ship’s motive power.

Solar panels aren’t new on ocean-going ships, but until now they’ve only been used to power crew cabins and living quarters.

Washington, September 8 : Japanese researchers have come up with a new approach to user authentication and security that is based on a person''s reflexes that could never be copied, forged, or spoofed.

Though electronic fingerprinting, iris scans, and signature recognition software are all becoming commonplace biometrics for user authentication and security, they all can be spoofed by a sufficiently sophisticated intruder.

According to Masakatsu Nishigaki and Daisuke Arai of Shizuoka University, Japan, biometric information can easily be leaked or copied. It is therefore desirable to devise biometric authentication that does not require biometric information to be kept secret.

Washington, Sep 8 : The Indo-US civil nuclear agreement approved by the 45 nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is a “foolish and risky deal” that will make every country free to sell nuclear technology to India while “asking virtually nothing from India in return”, said an US based expert.

Mira Kamdar, a fellow at Asia Society, New York, writes in the Washington Post that the deal in the process will undermining the very international system that India so ardently seeks to join.

Washington, Sep 8 : Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani, has contacted American state department and pentagon officials to seek the repatriation of five Pakistani prisoners kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Haqqani said that the Pakistani prisoners should be released and handed over to the authorities so that they could be prosecuted in Pakistan if there were any charges against them.

The Daily Times reported that Ume Amaar Al Balochi, Majid Khan, Abdul Rabbani, Muhammad Ahmed, Ghulam Rabbani and Saifullah are the Pakistani detained at Guantanamo.

Washington, Sep 8 : Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden has drawn up a long-term plan for the US to help Pakistan economically, in a bid to strengthen the state against Islamist extremism.

But the problem is that Pakistan may not be able to wait that long for the aid, The News reported.

America should give emergency aid to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Pakistani military offensives in Bajaur in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Swat in the North West Frontier Province.

Hanoi - US and Vietnamese experts and officials opened a weeklong meeting Monday in Hanoi on US aid to remediate the effects of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant the United States sprayed during the Vietnam War.

US Ambassador Michael Michalak welcomed the fact that the Vietnamese had "begun to focus on facts and answers rather than blame," and hailed their "desire to find mutually acceptable solutions."