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Last Friday, IBM announced a seven-year contract with the UK’s National Biometric Identity Service (NBIS) and Identity and Passport Service (IPS) to provide biometric passports as part of their enhancement plans for the UK border security. IBM will also provide a replacement for the UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) Immigration and Asylum Fingerprint System, which holds [...]

Nabors Industries, the world's largest onshore oil and natural-gas driller, said second-quarter results were cut as lower gas prices reduced demand for its services.

twitter writes 'The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment.' The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are 'significant.' of this story at Slashdot.

Interested in buying a stove or refrigerator that transmits data back to the utility company regarding power usage information? That’s what’s coming, and that’s what’s here today via a new partnership between Generic Electric and Tendril (a smart grid software/service company embracing open source standards). The idea is to have a host of consumer GE appliances [...]

Blockbuster OnDemand as seen on the 2Wire MediaPoint Player(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET) Blockbuster OnDemand is coming to a long list of Samsung TV and home theater products later this fall. The online pay-per-view streaming service will be added to Samsung's online-enabled HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and Blu-ray home theater ...

A new program lets subscribers view images of unopened envelopes and specify which ones they want opened and scanned so they can read them via the Internet.

Ambitious proposals to set up a national care service, on an equal footing with the National Health Service and dedicated to providing care for our ageing population, will be unveiled in the government's green paper on care and support later today.The aim is to address the postcode lottery that sees elderly people receiving different services in neighbouring authorities, or paying a wide range of fees for care homes depending on where they live.The new national care service - described by a charity head who advised on the proposals as a 'new frontier in the welfare state' - will try to streamline access to care, providing one port of call for people trying to find a care home for themselves or a relative.On the issue of how to pay for care, the paper will set out four or five options, ranging from levying a care duty on people's estates after their death to the state footing the bill. Part of the green paper's aim is to stir up a debate on how the soaring costs of care for the elderly

. Ex-CIA officials say foreign leaders were also in dark. Investigation demanded into post-9/11 strategyDick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials. Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the

. Ex-CIA officials say foreign leaders were also in dark. Investigation demanded into post-9/11 strategyDick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials. Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the

The WWII code-breakers are to be given a badge for their innovative cryptographic work, which until recently was still being used by UK intelligence services