Clashes as strike grips Lebanon

Explosions and gunfire rang out across the Lebanese capital Beirut as opposition supporters held a one-day general strike calling for higher pay.

Strikers set up barricades of burning tyres on key routes to the port, airport and Beirut’s commercial centre.

The cause of the explosions was not clear, but reports say armed opposition and pro-government groups may have fired rocket-propelled grenades.

The country is witnessing its deepest political crisis since the civil war.

Lebanon has been without a head of state for five months because of a power struggle between the Western and Saudi-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition which is supported by Syria and Iran.

Protestors burn tyres and cars in Lebanon

Pro-government supporters exchanged rifle and grenade fire with Hezbollah sympathisers in three neighbourhoods, security sources said.

There was no immediate word of casualties but ambulances where seen heading towards the areas.

High tension

Earlier in the day a stun grenade was detonated in a crowd in West Beirut, causing minor injuries. It was not known who threw the grenade.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says although this is ostensibly a workers’ strike, it was a highly politicised affair reflecting the acute polarisation and tension between the government and opposition.

Protesters say wages have not kept up with fuel and food prices

Labour unions cancelled Wednesday’s main event - a march through Beirut - a few hours before it was scheduled to take place, because of conditions along the route.

Tensions rose on Tuesday after the government announced it would shut down Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network.

The head of airport security was also dismissed amid allegations he had allowed Hezbollah to set up spy cameras at the airport; Hezbollah strongly denied the claim.

Unions are demanding that the government triple the minimum monthly wage, which currently stands at $200.

Prices have been rising in Lebanon, especially food and fuel, with the situation exacerbated by the weakening of the US dollar, but Finance Minister Jihad Azour has warned that big pay rises would lead to rampant inflation.

Aid arriving in cyclone-hit Burma

Foreign aid is beginning to arrive in Burma, devastated by a cyclone that left more than 22,000 people dead.

Neighbours China, India and Thailand have been flying in supplies and some foreign workers are on the ground.

But there have been complaints that Burma’s ruling generals are hampering the foreign aid operation.

The UN has urged the authorities to let foreign aid workers into Burma. A UN assessment team is due to fly in on Thursday followed by a funds appeal.

A vast swathe of the southern Irrawaddy delta, which bore the full force of the cyclone, remains under water.

Reports from the area speak of traumatised survivors emerging from floodwaters littered with bodies.

Survivors are hungry, thirsty and vulnerable to disease - but given the vast area affected, and blocked roads, the challenge for aid workers is enormous, say reports.

Advertisement

Footage of the aid operation in Burma from state-run TV

‘Right direction’

Speaking to reporters, the UN’s humanitarian chief John Holmes said the crisis was a “major catastrophe” and said aid had started to arrive.

He conceded aid agencies had faced difficulties accessing the disaster zone, and said rapid issuing of visas and customs clearance would be helpful.

Forget politics. Forget the military dictatorship. Let’s just get aid and assistance through Australian PM Kevin Rudd Keeping a lid on chaos

But, he said, co-operation from the Burmese authorities was “reasonable and heading in the right direction”.

The BBC’s Paul Danahar, in Burma, says this is the biggest challenge to the generals since the height of the pro-democracy movement in 1989.

Under pressure to open the doors to foreign aid operations, they approved the UN aid flight - carrying 25 tonnes of aid - which is being prepared now in Italy and is due to leave within days.

Chinese media say a plane carrying 60 tonnes of aid has landed in the biggest city, Rangoon, and planes from other countries in the region are on their way.

Reports say the UN’s World Food Programme has begun to distribute existing food aid stocks in and around Rangoon, and the Red Cross has a handful of expatriate and many local staff on the ground.

But Burmas has refused to waive visa requirements for many waiting aid workers.

They have also so far failed to respond to a US offer to divert three naval ships exercising in the Gulf of Thailand to the aid operation, the US says.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) - the party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi - has urged the junta to accept international aid in a statement.

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urged the junta to “forget politics”.

Meanwhile, France has suggested invoking a UN “responsibility to protect” clause, which it says could pave the way for aid to be flown in without the approval of the military - something Mr Holmes said would “not help at the moment” and could be seen as confrontational.

Before and after: extent of flooding clear in Nasa satellite images Enlarge Image

The UK’s envoy to Burma, Mark Canning, said progress was being made.

“The authorities have been… very open in calling for supplies of various kinds,” he said, adding that teams of people had been allowed entry.

“More is needed in terms of access, but a lot of people are working on that now.”

The Burmese junta has also attracted criticism for its decision to plough ahead with a referendum on a proposed constitution on Saturday, with the possible exception of the worst-hit regions.

Homeless

Burmese state media reported on Tuesday that 22,464 people had now been confirmed dead and another 41,054 people were missing as a result of Cyclone Nargis, which saw swathes of Burma hit by high winds and a tidal surge.

Up to a million people are thought to have been left homeless in the crisis, which has left thousands of square kilometres of the Irrawaddy delta under water.

EXTENT OF THE DEVASTATION UN map showing worst-hit areas, based on satellite imagery [1.13MB] Most computers will open PDFs automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here See how satellites tracked cyclone Send us your comments

Haggard refugees are said to be gathering in wrecked towns in the area, including Labutta.

In Bogalay, the bodies of people killed by the storm “drifted into the sea with the tide, and are now resurfacing on the shore,” a survivor who has been travelling in the region told the BBC’s Burmese service.

“The storm was followed by tidal waves and ships are marooned. You can see the boats near the main market. Ninety percent of Bogalay town is destroyed.”

Rotting bodies were also floating in Hlaing river, in a slightly less affected area east of Rangoon, the survivor said.

Survivors face poor sanitation and a lack of access to clean water.

Flooding could lead to outbreaks of mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever, while water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery are also a threat.

Luminaries look to the future web

Exactly 15 years ago the directors at the lab where the web was first developed signed a document which said the technology could be used by anyone free of charge.

That decision was instrumental in making the web truly world wide. BBC News talks to some of the leading figures in the web community about their hopes for the future of the web.

1. Sir Tim Berners-Lee 3. Professor Wendy Hall 5. Dr David Belanger, AT&T 7. Mark Bernstein, Parc 9. Robert Scoble, blogger

2. Professor Nigel Shadbolt 4. Kai-Fu Lee, Google China 6. Mitchell Baker, Mozilla 8. Robert Cailliau, Cern 10. Tim O’Reilly

 

 

SIR TIM BERNERS LEE

Let me first say that I am extremely optimistic. The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there. The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience. That experience continues.

The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities, that continues.

To look back on the web after 15 years is in fact wrong. We have to get a foothold on this 15 years and look forward.

The future is always in the past and for the web particularly. In a hundred years, 15 years will seem to be just the infancy of the web, when the semantic web wasn’t even completely deployed.

You couldn’t even find all the data in the world immediately at your fingertips.

What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance. My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed the web while at the physics lab Cern.

Return to top of page

PROFESSOR NIGEL SHADBOLT

What we’ve seen in the last 15 years is this extraordinary growth year on year, doubling and doubling of content, of users.

And that has incredible implications for everybody from individuals themselves, government, hardware providers, just the sheer amount of user generated content now.

The estimate is that 80% of all content now generated on our databases in our computers is user generated and only 20% is enterprise. So how are we going to manage that tsunami, that overwhelming avalanche of information?

The future is the Semantic web, or web 3.0. Rather than at the moment what you have to do is do some smart searching, and integrate through a lot of documents that are offered up to you, Web 3.0 will be able to do a lot of that information brokering for you.

Nigel Shadbolt is professor of computer Science at the University of Southampton.

 

Return to top of page

PROFESSOR WENDY HALL

Everything is going mobile. And I think the big issue about access was you need a computer at the moment to access it properly. Well in the next two or three years that’s not going to be the case. You will be able to access it. The technology and the interfaces will change so that it’s much more accessible on a mobile device.

People who couldn’t possibly afford a computer will have a mobile phone and I think that’s amazing. I think that’s going to be a huge transformation.

Wendy Hall is professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, UK.

Return to top of page

 

KAI-FU LEE

The web captures the feelings of the crowd, of the users, and in some cases we see that a small minority of people are able to distort and amplify their voice.

To we make sure the web continues to properly, democratically capture what most people believe we tune into the wisdom of the crowd, rather than being manipulated by fewer number who may have louder voices.

I think that’s one challenge. Technically, I’m very optimistic that cloud computing will make the web easier to use.

I do believe that cloud computing needs to overcome the challenge that people have to feel comfortable sharing their private data online and that online companies have to continue to be responsible to not betray the trust that users have placed in them.

Kai-Fu Lee is VP of Engineering at Google and president of Google Greater China.

Return to top of page

 

DR DAVID BELANGER

I think that the big challenge that the web has, much as the internet has faced before and is still facing, is the sheer diversity of the number of types of applications that want to run on it.

So where we’ve moved from browsers that were primarily text based, to now browsers that are image and many have videos, the amount of traffic generated by them is enormous.

We’re moving towards real time communication, voice and interactive media.

All of these things have different characteristics in the networks and in the web that is on top of them, and figuring out how to manage all of these new things, without losing the performance, I think is the largest challenge.

Dr. David G. Belanger is AT&T Labs’ chief Scientist and vice president, information and software systems research.

Return to top of page

MITCHELL BAKER

The web is an extraordinarily hopeful part of life and wildly exciting. So I sometimes say I have been bitten by the bug.

I had Malaria once so I know what its like to have something in your blood that is there and you cannot get rid of and that personally is what the web is for me.

And the reason is that the possibilities are so great and they are so individual and so personalised and they lend themselves to building communities.

And so I don’t believe the web is a panacea and it’s going to change human nature and we will only do wonderful things with it.

Humanity is humanity and we will see the whole scale of human activities on the web, even the parts we would rather not see.

But the reason it is exciting is that it makes these connections so much easier. Some of them are educational, some of them are entertainment but they are the things that make human life worth living.

In 15 years the web will be everywhere; in ways we don’t know

The web in that sense will be informational and the presentation of information will be in a way “we” like it.

It will be in places we cant even imagine right now. That’s why Mozilla is important going forward; to make sure that the web and information about us and created by us moves into every scope of life.

We need an organisation and a voice and a focus for keeping a human being, you and me, at the centre of it.

Mitchell Baker is chairman of the Mozilla Foundation.

Return to top of page

 

MARK BERNSTEIN

 

It is a communication revolution. The internet connected resources and what the web has enabled is for people to both communicate with each other and communicate with groups of people and it’s allowed the sharing of a common interest that would have no other way of connecting.

It’s is going to become a very refined electronic community and a set of communities that will operate at many different levels; individual interests as well as broad social efforts.

You’ve seen a lot of that take place in the American elections that are gong to be taking place later this year. All the candidates have become very effective at being able to use the web as a way to both communicate and connect with their communities.

Mark Bernstein is president and director of the Palo Alto Research Center.

Return to top of page

 

ROBERT CAILLIAU

We mustn’t forget we chose the name WWW before there was even one line of code written.

We could do that because the internet as an infrastructure was already there.

Either we were going to fall on our faces or we would have something that would be truly worldwide. There was nothing in between.

We were certainly convinced it was going to be big in the academic world. But it was never our aim, I think, to extend it beyond the academic community, not really.

Over the next 15 years, assuming we have infinite energy and the planet isn’t going to explode…I’d like to see a set of laws governing the web worldwide.

Since the web is totally worldwide we need a set of behavioural rules, laws they are commonly called, that are accepted worldwide.

There is a big difference as to how things are treated in the US and Europe and Asia. A lot of practices are treated differently in these areas - from extremist sites, to paedophilia and phishing.

We need that as fast as possible.

We should also be able to break the vicious cycle of author, reader and advertiser. I’d like the reader to decide if he is willing to pay minute sums for content.

I’d like the economics of web to be controlled between authors and readers, not advertiser.

In much less than 15 years I think we need to figure out what the social impact is going to be of the Semantic web. I am not sure this is a good thing.

I don’t know who is controlling it. And because it works by ontologies, who decides on what basis I am going to see things?

Robert Cailliau worked on the development of the web with Sir Tim Berners-Lee at Cern.

Return to top of page

 

ROBERT SCOBLE

The web means everything to me: I use the web to talk to my friends, to keep in touch with people around the world, to buy things, to look things up, to do research.

I can’t think of a part of my life that isn’t touched by the web in some way.

The next 15 years is so hard to predict. One thing I would expect to see is human augmentation.

For instance, the brain researchers I met at Davos are doing some fascinating work understanding how your brain talks with your limbs so if you were a soldier in Iraq who loses a limb, how do you replace that limb and how do you give a more lifelike experience to that limb?

That’s really interesting and I think that is going to spin off a whole lot of things; for instance, why couldn’t I have a little glass behind my eye that tells me your Facebook page and tells me a little bit about you on Wikipedia while I am looking at you?

I would imagine in 15 years we are going to have something like that; some sort of visualisation lens or some way to jack into your optic nerve to put imagery on what you are actually seeing and augment your human experience.

But that might be 30 years away… I don’t want to sign up for the beta test of that one in case they get it wrong.

Everything is moving so fast. If you look at what I am doing with my cell phone now, transmitting live video around the world, that’s really different from just five months ago.

It’s even going on with Twitter. There is a new tweet coming into my account every 15 seconds and 15 years from now what’s that going to feel like? You are going to be able to do a lot more than 140 character messages.

I will be Twittered out by then but there will be something new that comes along that will let me communicate with other people and that is what the web is all about ultimately.

Robert Scoble is a well-known blogger and head of Fast Company TV.

Return to top of page

 

TIM O’REILLY

We created the first commercial website with a special dispensation from the National Science Foundation. We were interested in online publishing and we were thinking of how to get books online and then the web came along and we thought: ‘Oh my god this is the answer to our prayers’.

The web was this promise of a universal platform for information and it was just transformative and so exciting to see that potential come into play.

The fact that Tim Berners-Lee gave it away was so critical to that. l imagine if someone tried to commercialise it, maybe it would have taken off but that was what Microsoft and AOL tried to do.

Free is such a powerful force in innovation.

When I look at the future of the web as a concept as opposed to a specific technology we are really moving into a world where we live with display surfaces everywhere, independent devices all connected to the cloud, sensors everywhere.

There are already sensors everywhere but they are just not connected yet.

So we are going to see the phone network merge with the web, sensor networks merge with the web. I think we will even see the power network merge with the web.

What we are really building is a global brand where all the computers in the world are connected, where all the devices in the world are connected, sometimes intermittently off and on, and all the people are connected.

This is going to be a very different thing. It’s ironic that back in the 70s there was all this talk about global consciousness, ‘blah blah blah’, and it really is going to happen.

Except it’s going to happen mediated by computers. We are connected now to this network of devices and computers and they augment our intelligence and our ability to share, to communicate, and we as a culture are changing as a result.

It’s the most profound change since the advent of literacy. And it’s bigger than the industrial revolution.

We are on the front of a new renaissance; and that doesn’t mean all good things, there could be a lot of bad things there too.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder of O’Reilly media.

Baskin Robbins co-founder dies at 90

Irvine Robbins, who was co-founder of Baskin-Robbins brought Rocky Road, Pralines ‘n Cream and other exotic ice cream concoctions to every corner of America, has died at age 90.

Robbins had been ill for some time and died on Monday at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California, said his daughter Marsha Veit.

While the company advertised that it offered 31 flavors, in fact it has created more than 1000 flavors, according to its website.

Generations of kids trooped to Baskin-Robbins stores to buy ice cream flavors like Jamoca, Daiquiri Ice, Pink Bubblegum, Nuts to You and Here Comes the Fudge.

”Frankly, I never met a flavor I didn’t like,” Robbins told The New York Times in 1973.

Some were short-lived and created to mark specific events, such as Lunar Cheesecake for the moon landings and Valley Forge Fudge for the 1976 bicentennial.

When the Beatles were to arrive in the United States in 1964, a reporter called to ask whether Baskin-Robbins was going to commemorate the event with a new flavor.

Robbins didn’t have a flavor planned but quickly replied, ”Uh, Beatle Nut, of course.”

The flavor was created, manufactured and delivered in just five days, according to the Web site.

Robbins opened his first ice cream store in Glendale, California, in December 1945, following his discharge from the Army. He used $6000 from a cashed-in insurance policy his father had given him for his bar mitzvah.

Robbins offered 21 flavors at the store.

”In light of what Baskin-Robbins was to become, that first store was incredibly amateurish,” according to a biography by his daughter Veit.

”It was called ‘Snowbird’ because Robbins couldn’t think of anything else. The opening was delayed for a day because the paint on the floor hadn’t dried.”

His cousin Sybil Hartfield bought $39 of the first day’s sales of $53, according to the biography.
His brother-in-law, the late Burton Baskin, opened his own ice cream store in neighboring Pasadena a year later. By the end of the 1940s, they had joined forces to create Baskin-Robbins. Robbins recalled they used a flip of the coin to decide which name came first.

They also decided to sell their stores to managers, pioneering the franchise concept for ice cream stores.

As corporate policy, employees were allowed to eat all the ice cream they wanted, because, Robbins said, ”I don’t want my employees stealing.”

Robbins was dedicated to upholding the quality of his ice cream regardless of the cost, his daughter said.

”Everybody has a proprietary interest in ice cream,” Robbins told the Times for the 1973 story. ”All you have to do is mention ice cream and everybody has a flavor.”

Baskin-Robbins was sold to United Fruit Co in 1967, but Robbins continued to work for the company until retiring in the 1970s.

Today, Baskin-Robbins is part of Dunkin’ Brands Inc. and has more than 5800 franchises worldwide.

Palm oil wiping out key orangutan habitat: Activists

One of the biggest populations of wild orangutans on Borneo will be extinct in three years without drastic measures to stop the expansion of palm oil plantations, conservationists said on Wednesday.

”For Central Kalimantan, the species will be gone as soon as three years from now,” Centre for Orangutan Protection director Hardi Bhaktiantoro told a press conference.

More than 30,000 wild orangutans live in the forests of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province, or more than half the entire orangutan population of Borneo island.

Experts believe the overall extinction rate of Borneo orangutans is nine per cent per year, but in Central Kalimantan they are disappearing even faster due to unchecked expansion of palm oil plantations.

”The expansion of palm oil plantations is wiping out entire habitats and unless the government takes drastic measures to protect these orangutan sanctuaries there is no way to reverse the trend,” Bhaktiantoro said.

Orangutans are listed as endangered by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, the paramount scientific authority on imperilled species.

It says numbers of the ape have fallen by well over 50 per cent in the past 60 years as a result of habitat loss, poaching and the pet trade.

Indian eatery is London’s best nightout venue

An Indian restaurant ‘Tamarai’, owned by a New Delhi based owner, has won the award for the ‘Best London Late Night Venue’.

The restaurant, regarded as one of the London’s most stylish venues, won laurels at the Theme Bar and Restaurant Awards where the judging panel was impressed its original concept and design.

‘Tamarai’ is part of Indian entrepreneur Rohit Khattar’s chain of themed restaurants such as ‘Chor Bizarre’ and ‘Sitaaray’.

”It is a great honour to be recognised by the leading industry magazine as the best among your peers. The whole ‘Tamarai’ team has worked tirelessly to make every visit to our venue an unforgettable experience. We are thrilled that Theme
Awards have acknowledged our efforts,” Anshuman Saxena, General Manager of the restaurant said.

Tamarai (which means Lotus in tamil), has already received praise for ‘Best Wine List In London’ from The Independent and ‘Best Pan Asian Fusion Food In London’ from The Evening Standard.

A Pan Asian restaurant, bar, late nightclub and an art gallery, it is also regarded as one of West End’s most inspiring venues. Launched in November 2006, ‘Tamarai’ is the third London venue of the New Delhi-based Old World Hospitality.

Now in their seventh year, Theme Bar and Restaurant Awards are the industry standard designed to honour excellence among bar professionals and their venues and to bring together the best of design, technology and modern drinks.

Obama sweeps North Carolina, Hillary wins Indiana

Democratic front-runner Barack Obama swept to victory in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday night and lengthened his lead in the delegate race.

While, Hillary Rodham Clinton won in Indiana as she struggles to stop her rival’s march toward the party’s presidential nomination.

”Tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from winning the Democratic nomination for president of the United States,” Obama told a raucous rally in Raleigh, NC - and left no doubt he intended to claim the prize.

Returns from 33 per cent of North Carolina precincts showed Obama was winning 60 per cent of the vote to 40 per cent for Clinton, a triumph that mirrored his earlier wins in Southern states with large black populations.

Obama won at least 40 delegates and Clinton at least 31, with 116 still to be awarded in the state.

That made Indiana a virtual must-win Midwestern state for the former first lady, hoping to counter Obama’s persistent delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries.

There, returns from 70 per cent of the precincts showed Clinton with 53 per cent of the vote to 47 per cent for Obama. Indiana had 72 delegates at stake.

The economy was the top issue by far in both states, according to interviews with voters as they left their polling places.

Medvedev takes oath as Russian President

Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as Russia’s president on Wednesday, pledging to bolster the country’s economic development and civil rights, in what may signal a departure from his predecessor’s heavy-handed tactics.

Medvedev took the oath of office in the Kremlin’s golden-hued Andreyevsky Hall, bringing to an end Vladimir Putin’s eight years as president. But Putin is sure to continue to wield huge influence in the country.

Though Medvedev has pledged to continue the policies pursued by Putin, his six-minute inaugural address referred to civil rights issues several times, a possible indication that his presidency would take a different course from his mentor’s.

Under Putin, Russia’s economy soared from near-disaster to astonishing prosperity. But the role of civil society came under question, as opposition groups were marginalized and non-governmental organizations came under heavy pressure.

In his address, Medvedev said that one of his most important tasks would be ”the development of civil and economic freedom.”

The March election of Medvedev was seen by many as one of the most marked signs of Russia retreating from democracy. Most of the prominent opposition aspirants to the post were kept off the ballot, and Putin hand-picked Medvedev to succeed him.

But Medvedev highlighted civil rights on Wednesday.

”Human rights and freedoms … are deemed of the highest value for our society and they determine the meaning and content of all state activity,” he said.

The 42-year-old, formerly a first deputy prime minister and chairman of the state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom, also pledged to fight endemic corruption, a problem that Putin has been unable to stifle.

”I’m going to pay special attention to the fundamental role of the law. We must achieve a true respect in law, overcome the legal nihilism which is hampering modern development,” Medvedev said.

He pledged to help make Russia ”the best country for the comfortable, confident and secure life of its citizens” and to modernize industry and agriculture, encourage the development of new technologies and attract investment.

Russia’s economic boom has been driven largely by soaring world prices for its vast oil and gas exports, and concerns are high that the country is vulnerable to a downturn in commodities prices unless it diversifies its economy and expands its manufacturing and services sectors.

Putin, in a short address to the crowd of Russian dignitaries and foreign ambassadors in the lavish hall, declared that when he became president in 2000 ”I made a commitment to work openly and honestly, to faithfully serve the people and the state. And I did not violate my promise.”

Microsoft weighs options on Yahoo

Microsoft has yet to decide if it will up its $41.8bn (£21bn) bid for Yahoo, go hostile or walk away from the deal.

A meeting of the Microsoft board on Wednesday ended without any decision, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft had given its rival until 26 April to accept its bid, which Yahoo has said is inadequate.

Buying Yahoo would be the biggest acquisition in Microsoft’s history and would give it a big boost in its battle with market leader Google.

Options on the table

Microsoft, which is still expected to make an announcement on the deal by the end of this week, has three options.

Steve Ballmer, the software giant’s chief executive has threatened to take the bid hostile and nominate directors to replace Yahoo’s board.

A shotgun marriage? Profiles: Microsoft and Yahoo

Alternatively, it could walk away from the deal but hints that this may happen have been dismissed by most analysts as negotiating tactics.

Withdrawing the bid could send Yahoo shares lower. The stock has jumped from $19.18 before the bid was announced in February to $27.41.

The value of the cash and stock offer has dropped from $31 per share or $44.6bn to $29.06 or $41.8bn, as Microsoft shares have fallen.

Microsoft may up its bid from $31 to $33 per share, but Yahoo shareholders are hoping for $35 to $37 per share.

Analysts have mixed feelings about the impact a tie-up with Yahoo might have. They say that while it makes strategic sense, Yahoo comes with a high price tag.

Last week, Microsoft reported an 11% fall in quarterly profits to $4.39bn in the three months to 31 March, from $4.93bn a year earlier. The results were in line with expectations.

Microsoft’s online services saw a 40% rise in sales to $843m in the quarter, but its online sales still fall far behind Google.

Electronics’ ‘missing link’ found

Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists.

The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as “memristors”.

The devices were proposed 40 years ago but have only recently been fabricated, the team wrote in the journal Nature.

They have already been used to build novel transistors - tiny switches that are the building blocks of all chips.

“Now we have this type of device we have a broader palette with which to paint our circuits,” Professor Stan Williams, one of the team, told the BBC last year.

Total recall

Memristors were first proposed in 1971 by Professor Leon Chua, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

They are the “fourth” basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors.

Getting more from Moore’s Law Future computing

“I never thought I’d live long enough to see this happen,” Professor Chua told the Associated Press.

“I’m thrilled because it’s almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it’s fundamental.”

The memristors are so called because they have the ability to “remember” the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off.

This could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would would not require powering up.

Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off.

But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge.

“If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off,” Professor Williams told Reuters.

“That is a very interesting potential application, and one that is very realistic.”

‘Industry anathema’

Professor Williams and his team have already shown that by putting two memristors together - a configuration called a crossbar latch - it could do the job of a transistor.

The team has built hybrid circuits using memristors and transistors

“A crossbar latch has the type of functionality you want from a transistor but it’s working with very different physics,” he explained.

Intriguingly, these devices can also be made much smaller than a conventional transistor.

“And as they get smaller they get better,” he said.

As a result, the new devices could play a key part in the future of the electronics industry, as it relentlessly pursues Moore’s Law.

This industry axiom, first stated by Gordon Moore, co-founder of chip-maker Intel, states that the number of transistors it is possible to squeeze in to a chip for a fixed cost doubles every two years.

However, according to some, it may be some time before the device is widely used.

“Even to consider an alternative to the transistor is anathema to many device engineers, and the memristor concept will have a steep slope to climb towards acceptance,” wrote Drs James Tour and Tao Heare of Rice University, Houston, in an accompanying article in Nature.

They said that some in the electronics industry would only accept the use of memristors “after the demonstration of a well-functioning, large-scale array of these densely packed devices”.

“When that happens, the race towards smaller devices will proceed at full steam.”