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Inside a global cybercrime ring

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON, Mar 31 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Hundreds of computer geeks, most of them students putting themselves through college, crammed into three floors of an office building in an industrial section of Ukraine's capital Kiev, churning out code at a frenzied pace. They were creating some of the world's most pernicious, and profitable, computer viruses.

According to court documents, former employees and investigators, a receptionist greeted visitors at the door of the company, known as Innovative Marketing Ukraine. Communications cables lay jumbled on the floor and a small coffee maker sat on the desk of one worker.

As business boomed, the firm added a human resources department, hired an internal IT staff and built a call center to dissuade its victims from seeking credit card refunds. Employees were treated to catered holiday parties and picnics with paintball competitions.

Top performers got bonuses as young workers turned a blind eye to the harm the software was doing. "When you are just 20, you don't think a lot about ethics," said Maxim, a former Innovative Marketing programer who now works for a Kiev bank and asked that only his first name be used for this story. "I had a good salary and I know that most employees also had pretty good salaries."

In a rare victory in the battle against cybercrime, the company closed down last year after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit seeking its disbandment in U.S. federal court.

An examination of the FTC's complaint and documents from a legal dispute among Innovative executives offer a rare glimpse into a dark, expanding -- and highly profitable -- corner of the internet.

Innovative Marketing Ukraine, or IMU, was at the center of a complex underground corporate empire with operations stretching from Eastern Europe to Bahrain; from India and Singapore to the United States. A researcher with anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc who spent months studying the company's operations estimates that the business generated revenue of about $180 million in 2008, selling programs in at least two dozen countries. "They turned compromised machines into cash," said the researcher, Dirk Kollberg.

The company built its wealth pioneering scareware -- programs that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tell the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying $50 to $80 to "clean" their PC.

Scareware, also known as rogueware or fake antivirus software, has become one of the fastest-growing, and most prevalent, types of internet fraud. Software maker Panda Security estimates that each month some 35 million PCs worldwide, or 3.5 percent of all computers, are infected with these malicious programs, putting more than $400 million a year in the hands of cybercriminals. "When you include cost incurred by consumers replacing computers or repairing, the total damages figure is much, much larger than the out of pocket figure," said Ethan Arenson, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission who helps direct the agency's efforts to fight cybercrime.

Groups like Innovative Marketing build the viruses and collect the money but leave the work of distributing their merchandise to outside hackers. Once infected, the machines become virtually impossible to operate. The scareware also removes legitimate anti-virus software from vendors including Symantec Corp, McAfee and Trend Micro Inc, leaving PCs vulnerable to other attacks.

When victims pay the fee, the virus appears to vanish, but in some cases the machine is then infiltrated by other malicious programs. Hackers often sell the victim's credit card credentials to the highest bidder.

Removing scareware is a top revenue generator for Geek Choice, a PC repair company with about two dozen outlets in the United States. The outfit charges $100 to $150 to clean infected machines, a service that accounts for about 30 percent of all calls. Geek Choice CEO Lucas Brunelle said that scareware attacks have picked up over the past few months as the software has become increasingly sophisticated. "There are more advanced strains that are resistant to a lot of anti-virus software," Brunelle said.

Anti-virus software makers have also gotten into the lucrative business of cleaning PCs, charging for those services even when their products fall down on the job.

Charlotte Vlastelica, a homemaker in State College, Pennsylvania, was running a version of Symantec's Norton anti-virus software when her PC was attacked by Antispyware 2010. "These pop-ups were constant," she said. "They were layered one on top of the other. You couldn't do anything."

So she called Norton for help and was referred to the company's technical support division. The fee for removing Antispyware 2010 was $100. A frustrated Vlastelica vented: "You totally missed the virus and now you're going to charge us $100 to fix it?"

AN INDUSTRY PIONEER

"It's sort of a plague," said Kent Woerner, a network administrator for a public school district in Beloit, Kansas, some 5,500 miles away from Innovative Marketing's offices in Kiev. He ran into one of its products, Advanced Cleaner, when a teacher called to report that pornographic photos were popping up on a student's screen. A message falsely claimed the images were stored on the school's computer.

"When I have a sixth-grader seeing that kind of garbage, that's offensive," said Woerner. He fixed the machine by deleting all data from the hard drive and installing a fresh copy of Windows. All stored data was lost.

Stephen Layton, who knows his way around technology, ended up junking his PC, losing a week's worth of data that he had yet to back up from his hard drive, after an attack from an Innovative Marketing program dubbed Windows XP Antivirus. The president of a home-based software company in Stevensville, Maryland, Layton says he is unsure how he contracted the malware.

But he was certain of its deleterious effect. "I work eight-to-12 hours a day," he said. "You lose a week of that and you're ready to jump off the roof."

Layton and Woerner are among more than 1,000 people who complained to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about Innovative Marketing's software, prompting an investigation that lasted more than a year and the federal lawsuit that sought to shut them down. To date the government has only succeeded in retrieving $117,000 by settling its charges against one of the defendants in the suit, James Reno, of Amelia, Ohio, who ran a customer support center in Cincinnati. He could not be reached for comment.

"These guys were the innovators and the biggest players (in scareware) for a long time," said Arenson, who headed up the FTC's investigation of Innovative Marketing.

Innovative's roots date back to 2002, according to an account by one of its top executives, Marc D'Souza, a Canadian, who described the company's operations in-depth in a 2008 legal dispute in Toronto with its founders over claims that he embezzled millions of dollars from the firm. The other key executives were a British man and a naturalized U.S. citizen of Indian origin.

According to D'Souza's account, Innovative Marketing was set up as an internet company whose early products included pirated music and pornography downloads and illicit sales of the impotence drug Viagra. It also sold gray market versions of anti-virus software from Symantec and McAfee, but got out of the business in 2003 under pressure from those companies.

It tried building its own anti-virus software, dubbed Computershield, but the product didn't work. That didn't dissuade the firm from peddling the software amid the hysteria over MyDoom, a parasitic "worm" that attacked millions of PCs in what was then the biggest email virus attack to date. Innovative Marketing aggressively promoted the product over the internet, bringing in monthly profits of more than $1 million, according to D'Souza.

The company next started developing a type of malicious software known as adware that hackers install on PCs, where they served up pop-up ads for travel services, pornography, discounted drugs and other products, including its flawed antivirus software. They spread that adware by recruiting hackers whom they called "affiliates" to install it on PCs.

"Most affiliates installed the adware product on end-users' computers illegally through the use of browser hijacking and other nefarious methods," according to D'Souza. He said that Innovative Marketing paid its affiliates 10 cents per hijacked PC, but generated average returns of $2 to $5 for each of those machines through the sale of software and products promoted through the adware.

ANY MEANS BUT SPAM

The affiliate system has since blossomed. Hackers looking for a piece of the action can link up with scareware companies through anonymous internet chat rooms. They are paid through electronic wire services such as Western Union, Pay Pal and Webmoney which can protect the identity of both the sender and the recipient.

To get started, a hacker needs to register as an affiliate on an underground website and download a virus file that is coded with his or her affiliate ID. Then it's off to races.

"You can install it by any means, except spam," says one affiliate recruiting site, earning4u.com, which pays $6 to $180 for every 1,000 PCs infected with its software. PCs in the United States earn a higher rate than ones in Asia.

Affiliates load the software onto the machines by a variety of methods, including hijacking legitimate websites, setting up corrupt sites for the purposes of spreading viruses and attacks over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

"Anybody can get infected by going to a legitimate website," said Uri Rivner, an executive with RSA, one of the world's top computer security companies.

A scareware vendor distributed its goods one September weekend via The New York Times' website by inserting a single rogue advertisement. The hacker paid NYTimes.com to run the ad, which was disguised as one for the internet phone company Vonage. It contaminated PCs of an unknown number of readers, according to an account of the incident published in The New York Times.

Patrik Runald, a senior researcher at internet security firm Websense Inc, expects rogueware vendors to get more aggressive with marketing. "We're going to see them invest more money in that -- buying legitimate ad space," he said.

To draw victims to infected websites, hackers will also manipulate Google's search engine to get their sites to come up on the top of anyone's search in a particular subject. For instance, they might capitalize on news events of wide interest -- from the winners of the Oscars to the Tiger Woods scandal -- quickly setting up sites to attract relevant search times. Anti-virus maker Panda Security last year observed one scareware peddler set up some 1 million web pages that infected people searching for Ford auto parts with a program dubbed MSAntispyware2009. They also snare victims by sending their links through Facebook and Twitter.

Some rogue vendors manage their partnerships with hackers through software that tracks who installed the virus that generated a sale. Hackers are paid well for their efforts, garnering commissions ranging from 50 to 90 percent, according to Panda Security. SecureWorks, another security firm, estimates that a hacker who gets 1 to 2 percent of users of infected machines to purchase the software can pull in over $5 million a year in commissions.

Hackers in some Eastern European countries barely attempt to conceal their activities.

Panda Security found photos of a party in March 2008 that it said affiliate ring KlikVIP held in Montenegro to reward scareware installers. One showed a briefcase full of euros that would go to the top performer. "They weren't afraid of the legal implications, " said Panda Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll. "They were fearless."

BANKING

One of Innovative Marketing's biggest problems was the high proportion of victims who complained to their credit card companies and obtained refunds on their purchases. That hurt the relationships with its merchant banks that processed those transactions, forcing it to switch from banks in Canada to Bahrain. It created subsidiaries designed to hide its identity.

In 2005, Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait severed its ties with an Innovative Marketing subsidiary that had the highest volume of credit card processing of any entity in Bahrain because of its high chargeback rates, according to D'Souza.

Innovative Marketing then went five months without a credit card processor before finding a bank in Singapore -- DBS Bank -- willing to handle its account. The Singapore bank processed tens of millions of dollars in backlogged credit card payments for the company, D'Souza said.

To keep the chargeback rate from climbing even higher, Innovative Marketing invested heavily in call centers. It opened facilities in Ukraine, India and the United States. The rogueware was designed to tell the users that their PCs were working properly once the victim had paid for the software, so when people called up to complain it wasn't working, agents would walk them through whatever steps it took to make those messages come up.

Often that required disabling legitimate anti-virus software programs, according to McAfee researcher Dirk Kollberg, who spent hours listening to digitized audio recordings of customer service calls that Innovative Marketing kept on its servers at its Ukraine offices. He gathered the data by tapping into a computer server at its branch in Kiev that he said was inadvertently hooked up to Innovative's website. "At the end of the call," he said, "most customers were happy."

Police have had limited success in cracking down on the scareware industry. Like Innovative Marketing, most rogue internet companies tend to be based in countries where laws permit such activities or officials look the other way.

Law enforcement agencies in the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Singapore are the most aggressive in prosecuting internet crimes and helping officials in other countries pursue such cases, said Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. "In the rest of the world, it's hit or miss," he said. "The cooperation is getting better, but the level of crime continues to increase and continues to outpace the level of cooperation."

The FTC succeeded in persuading a U.S. federal judge to order Innovative Marketing and two individuals associated with it to pay $163 million it had scammed from Americans. Neither individual has surfaced since the government filed its original suit more than a year ago. But Ethan Arenson, the FTC attorney who handled the case, warned: "Collection efforts are just getting underway."

Romance of books key in digital age, says Penguin CEO

MUMBAI , Apr 14 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - With the excitement around the launch of Apple's iPad and the growing popularity of other digital devices, it is a challenge to retain the romance of the printed book, according to the head of publisher Penguin.

The iPad, a cross between a smartphone and a laptop, is helping foster a market for tablet computers that is expected to grow to some 50 million units by 2014, and with it, also expand the market for e-books, which has been hard to crack.

So far, book publishers like Penguin, owned by Pearson, have struggled to find an online model that works successfully in terms of content and the consumer's propensity to pay, said John Makinson on a visit to India.

But with the iPad, book publishers see a new chance to get their electronic offering right and win more bargaining power if the iPad emerges as a viable rival to Amazon' Kindle.

"Large screen digital devices are opening up bigger opportunities for us: opportunities for interactivity with readers, and around social networking," said Makinson.

"There are opportunities not just in a marketing sense, but for actual content and new material," he said.

It is not just a younger demographic of readers drawn to the cool applications and greater interactivity that are flocking to digital devices, but also older readers who like the ability to for example, increase the font size, said Makinson.

While there is huge potential in India, the world's fastest-growing wireless market with more than half a billion mobile subscribers, rising levels of literacy also means that appetite for newspapers, magazines and books is still strong.

Penguin, which was the first international publisher to also publish in Indian languages including Hindi and Marathi, is keen to tap that opportunity, Makinson said.

"The printed product still has a very lively future in India," said Makinson, who launched a new imprint in India, Shobhaa De Books, a line of celebrity memoirs, commercial fiction and biographies focused on lifestyle and cinema, picked by writer and former beauty queen Shobhaa De.

People often compare the book industry to the music industry, where digital sales have overtaken sales of CDs, but there is an emotional connection to books, said Makinson, who studied English and history at Cambridge and began his career as a journalist.

"We need to keep the emphasis on the reader's emotional relationship with the book. It's still important to produce a well-designed, beautifully printed book that looks good on a shelf, and that you can gift to a friend," he said.

"And the challenge is not to lose sight of the main act, which is still the book. The definition of a book itself is set to change, but there is a tradition, a romance to a book that is essential to retain," he said.

China's `robot dad' aims to show inventions to world

SHANGHAI, Apr 23 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Wu Yulu, a 49 year old farmer from the outskirts of Beijing, has become a household name in China for his homemade robots. Now, the creations that he calls his children are about to gain international renown.

Made from scrap materials including wire and screws, Wu has invented over 47 robots which can pour tea, offer smokers a light and paint pictures.

Wu, who received no education after primary school, has become a hero in Chinese media for his whirring, ticking and talking inventions, and now foreign media have taken an interest in him ahead of his appearance at the Shanghai World Expo which runs from May to October.

"I am a little famous now," Wu told Reuters. "I have been doing this for over than twenty years but I feel that each year more people discover my inventions."

"At the Expo I can receive everyone's recognition. I am representative of all farmers, this is something very glorious."

Wu said financing his automaton hobby was a huge burden on his family. Since he started building robots in 1986, Wu has burned down his house and prompted his wife to threaten divorce after he spent all his money financing his tinkering passion.

Born into a family of farmers, Wu invented tools in his Mawu village to help farm more effectively such as changing his bicycle into a seeding machine. His latest project is a robot that can give massages.

"I want to make more useful robots to help humans, I've also designed a robot which can help chop the meat when cooking," he said.

His brightly colored metal figures, with painted human features and clothes have already been shown in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.

"It is possible I am able to visit the UK soon," Wu said, adding that no date has been fixed but it was in the pipeline.

Competitive pressures hurting India telecoms companies

NEW DELHI, Apr 26 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Bharti Airtel and its smaller Indian telecoms rivals are set to report that quarterly earnings were hit by a vicious price war that has sent call tariffs tumbling in the world's fastest-growing mobile services market.

The outlook remains bleak with more competition expected to keep pressure on wafer-thin call charges, while heavy bidding for 3G radio waves are set to balloon their costs in the near term.

Analysts expect each winner to spend up to $3 billion for acquiring the 3G and wireless broadband spectrum, and building next-generation networks would cost billions of dollars more.

"The entire sector is under pressure after the price war and things will remain so for the rest of 2010," said R.K. Gupta, managing director at Taurus Mutual Fund, which manages about $520 million in assets.

For Bharti, which dominates India's mobile market with about 128 million subscribers, the integration of its $9 billion acquisition of Kuwaiti Zain's African assets will be crucial for its earnings in the coming quarters.

Bharti sees itself becoming the world's No. 5 wireless firm after closing the deal, which comes after two failed attempts to finalise tie-ups with South Africa's MTN.

The acquisition, signed in March, must be approved by regulators, and governments in at least two of the African markets have weighed in against the deal.

India, the second-largest wireless market in terms of subscribers, has signed up 16 million connections a month on average in the past one year, but call charges have fallen to as low as 1/100th of a U.S. cent amid stiff competition among firms to add users faster than rivals.

A majority of the new users come from rural areas, who spend less than their urban counterparts, and people use more than one connection to benefit from freebies offered by newer mobile firms.

Second-ranked Reliance Communications, which was more aggressive in cutting call prices, is expected to see its quarterly profit plunge more than 40 percent.

After years of strong profit growth, Bharti and Reliance are facing the heat from Indian ventures of international players such as Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and the newest foreign entrant Telenor, with incumbents being forced to match low call charges offered by a smaller rival.

"While I don't see much downside for call prices from these levels, one has to wait for the response to value-added services after 3G comes," Gupta said, referring to premium data services, which offer better margin than voice.

STOCK MARKET LAGGARDS

In the March quarter, Bharti added 8.8 million mobile users, but lagged Vodafone's 9.5 million. Reliance and fifth-ranked Tata Teleservices, which had started the price war last year, signed up 8.6 million each.

Reliance Communications and Bharti were the two worst-performing stocks in the main Bombay index in 2009. This year, Bharti shares are down 9.5 percent and Reliance Communications has fallen 2.4 percent, while the broader market is up 1.7 percent.

"I would avoid the sector for at least one year," Sandip Sabharwal, CEO of portfolio management services at Prabhudas Lilladher, said from Mumbai. "Things are not looking good in the near term with the rising competition and the tariff wars."

Investors will watch for any announcement on a possible initial public offer of Bharti's telecoms tower unit, or in a tower joint-venture firm it owns along with Vodafone and Idea Cellular. Bharti has said it will look into these possibilities after the March quarter results.

Reliance has got the regulator's clearance for an IPO of its telecoms tower unit, which banking sources say could raise as much as $1 billion. The company is yet to set a date for the IPO.

Following are the March quarter results forecasts for Bharti, Reliance and sixth-ranked Idea, based on a Reuters poll of 12 brok

Developing nations want 2011 climate accord deadline

CAPE TOWN, April 25 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A group of developing countries, among the world's fastest growing carbon emitters, said on Sunday a legally binding global agreement to limit climate change needed to be completed by 2011 at the latest.

Environment ministers of the so-called BASIC bloc -- Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- met in Cape Town to look at how to fast-track a globally binding agreement that would bind rich nations to cut emissions and reduce global warming.

"Ministers felt that a legally binding outcome should be concluded at Cancun, Mexico in 2010, or at the latest in South Africa by 2011," the ministers said in a joint statement, referring to UN climate talks.

The Kyoto Protocol, which the United States did not agree to, binds about 40 developed nations to cutting emissions by 2008-12. UN climate meetings have failed to reach a legally-binding agreement on what happens post 2012.

More than 100 countries have backed a non-binding accord, agreed in Copenhagen last year, to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, but did not spell out how this should be achieved. It included a goal of $100 billion in aid for developing nations from 2020.

The United States supports the Copenhagen Accord but many emerging economies do not want it to supplant the 1992 UN Climate Convention which more clearly spells out that rich nations have to take the lead in cutting emissions and combating climate change.

Industrialised nations have been unwilling to take on new commitments beyond 2012 unless major emerging nations, such as India and China, also sign up.

"The question of Cancun -- right now it looks as if we will have to come back to Cape Town in 2011. There is no breakthrough in sight ... we have a long way to go," Jairam Ramesh, India's Environment and Forestry Minister told reporters.

Colon exam could slash cancer rates: study

PARIS, Apr 28 (bdnews24.com/AFP) – A single exam of the rectum and lower colon between the age of 55 and 64 slashes colon cancer mortality by more than 40 percent, according to research published Wednesday. The 16-year study of more than 170,000 people in Britain also found that the one-time procedure cut incidence of the disease by a third compared to a control group that did not undergo the examination. The relatively simple test "could massively reduce colorectal cancer incidence and mortality," the British medical journal The Lancet, which published the study, said in a press release. The most effective and cost-efficient way to screen for various cancers -- including of the breast, prostate and colon -- has been hotly debated in recent years. Colon cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed form of the disease worldwide, accounting for more than one million cases and 600,000 deaths annually. The large majority of colon cancers arise from adenomas, a type of pre-malignant polyp that occurs in 20 to 30 percent of the population. Most people who develop the disease will have adenomas by the age of 60. The new study provides the strongest evidence to date that a procedure known as a sigmoidoscopy, when performed in late-middle age, provides significant protection against the deadly cancer. Generally performed without anaesthesia, flexible signoidoscopy allows a physician to examine the rectum and lower colon, called the signoid. Two-thirds of colorectal cancers develop in this region. Growths, whether benign or cancerous, can be removed during the procedure. The examination is less invasive -- and less costly -- than a full colonoscopy, in which the entire large intestine is looked at while the patient is under anaesthesia. Many health systems currently screen for colon cancer by testing stool samples for the presence of blood, a procedure which has been shown to reduce mortality by 15 percent. In the study, 170,432 men and women recruited between 1994 and 1999 were divided into two groups. Nearly 113,200 were assigned to the control group, and 57,237 to the intervention group. During the screening period and an 11-year follow up, 2,524 participants were diagnosed with colon cancer, 1,816 in the control group and 706 in the intervention group. Incidence of the disease in people who were screened was cut by 33 percent, and mortality by 43 percent. When results were confined to the rectum and lower colon, incidence was reduced by half. "Flexible sigmoidoscopy is a safe and practical test and, when offered only once to people between ages 55 and 64, confers a substantial and long-lasting protection from colon cancer," the authors concluded. The exam, while far more expensive that checking for blood in the stool, may also be cost effective "largely because of the avoided costs of treatment resulting from the reduction in incidence", they added. The researchers, led by Wendy Atkin of Imperial College London, speculate that the decrease in cancer rates and deaths in the test group will become even greater over time. "If incidence in the screened participants remains low during further follow up, the magnitude of the reduction will continue to increase," they said.

Canadians live longer, healthier than Americans: study

NEW YORK, Apr 29 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Canadians live about three years longer and are healthier than Americans, and the lack of universal healthcare in the United States may be a factor, researchers said on Wednesday.

In a study published in BioMed Central's journal Population Health Metrics they said Canadians can expect to live until 79.7 years of age, versus 77.2 years for Americans.

A healthy 19-year-old Canadian can expect to have 52 more years of perfect health versus 49.3 more years for Americans.

"Canada and the US share a common border and enjoy very similar standards of living, yet life expectancy in Canada is higher than in the US," said David Feeny, of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, and a co-author of the study.

"There are two distinct potential explanations for the gap: differences in access to health care and in the prevalence of poverty."

Canadians have a universal healthcare service, which is free at the point of care, whereas Americans' access to health insurance is usually based on employment, income through Medicaid, or age through Medicare, and not universal, according to the study.

Healthcare expenditures also have been higher in the United States than in Canada since the 1970s.

The findings are based on telephone interviews of 8,688 white Canadians and Americans, to account for the impact of slavery and racial discrimination on health.

The interviews were conducted in 2002 and 2003 during the first joint survey by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics to provide fully comparable data.

"This data was very high quality, consistent and comparable," Feeny said.

Researchers may try to conduct another survey to update new developments in light of the recent healthcare reform measures in the United States, he added.

Failed rocket launch may set back India space business

CHENNAI, Apr 15 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A rocket powered by a domestically built engine failed on Thursday, officials said, in a potential setback to the country's quest for a bigger share in the multi-billion dollar global satellite launch market.

The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) lifted off from a base in southern India, but eight minutes into the flight the mission failed as the rocket veered off its designated path behind a trail of smoke and fire.

G. Radhakrishnan, head of Indian Space Research Organisation, told reporters that the rocket went out of control after one of its engines failed.

India is aiming to expand its satellite launch business to about $120 million a year, which is estimated to be only a fourth of China's present launch business.

But its dependence on Russian-built cryogenic engines, needed for lifting heavy payloads, has hampered growth plans, forcing ISRO to look for home-built engines.

Had Thursday's mission succeeded, using an Indian-made cryogenic engine for the first time, India would have joined a very small group of countries.

In April 2008, India sent 10 satellites into orbit from a single rocket. The same year it also dispatched its first unmanned mission to the moon.

That mission was abandoned 10 months later but not before it had sent back data with evidence of ice on the moon.

Shuttle leaves space station for Monday landing

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, April 17 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Space shuttle Discovery left the International Space Station on Saturday, wrapping up a 10-day stay to deliver supplies and spare parts before NASA retires its shuttle fleet later this year.

Pilot Jim Dutton gently pulsed Discovery's steering jets to back out of its berthing slip at 8:52 a.m. EDT/1252 GMT as the two spaceships sailed 217 miles/350 km over New Guinea in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

"Thanks for your hospitality," shuttle commander Alan Poindexter radioed to the station crew. "We enjoyed every minute of it."

In addition to delivering new experiment racks, a fourth sleeping berth and a darkroom for the US Destiny laboratory, Discovery astronauts made three spacewalks to install a new ammonia cooling system on the station, though a valve problem remains to be resolved before the new gear can be turned on.

NASA considered adding an extra day to Discovery's visit so spacewalkers Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson could venture outside for a fourth outing and install a spare nitrogen tank. The nitrogen is needed to pressurize the coolant, which dissipates heat from the station's electronics.

Flight directors decided to let the shuttle depart on time and have the station astronauts or a future shuttle crew make the repairs. The station has two cooling loops. Both will need to be operational beginning in about a month, when the shifting angle of the sun causes extra heating on the station.

Discovery's departure leaves NASA with just three more shuttle missions to the station before the ships are retired.

The White House wants to end NASA's planned follow-up mission to fly astronauts to the moon and instead refocus the agency on research and technology demonstrations that will culminate in a crewed mission to an asteroid in 15 years and then a mission to Mars in the 2030s.

In the meantime, Russia will fly astronauts to and from the station until a commercial US firm develops capability to launch people into orbit, an effort that President Barack Obama wants to support with a five-year, $6 billion stimulus.

The only new crewed spaceship in NASA's immediate future under Obama's plan is a revamped Orion capsule that instead of going to the moon would serve as a station lifeboat.

Discovery is due back at the Kennedy Space Center on Monday, the same day that sister ship Atlantis is scheduled to be rolled out to the launch pad to begin preparaions for its final flight on May 1

Cloudy skies delay space shuttle's homecoming

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Apr 19 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - NASA delayed the shuttle Discovery's homecoming from an International Space Station servicing mission until Tuesday after cloudy skies scuttled two landing attempts on Monday, NASA officials said.

Touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was rescheduled for 7:33 a.m. EDT (1133 GMT) on Tuesday, with several backup opportunities available both in Florida and in California at the space agency's base in the Mojave Desert.

NASA prefers to land in Florida to avoid the costly and time-consuming cross-country ferry flight to return the shuttle to Florida for processing.

Discovery's planned 13-day mission already had been extended by a day so astronauts could use the station's communications system to relay heat shield inspection results.

NASA discovered the shuttle's Ku-band communications antenna was broken shortly after Discovery's April 5 launch. The inspection was implemented after the 2003 Columbia accident, which was blamed on a breach in its heat shield.

Though Discovery has enough supplies to remain in orbit until Wednesday, NASA will land on Tuesday even if it means diverting to Edwards Air Force Base in California, flight director Bryan Lunney said.

Discovery spent 10 days at the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that is due to be completed this year after more than a decade of construction 220 miles above Earth. The shuttle delivered a new ammonia cooling system, science experiments, a fourth U.S. sleeping berth and a darkroom for Earth observations and astronomical studies from the Destiny laboratory.

Three shuttle flights remain to complete outfitting of the station before the shuttle fleet is retired.

The weather was not expected to affect NASA's plans to move the shuttle Atlantis to the launch pad on Monday night in preparation for launch on its final mission on May 14

Space Shuttle Discovery home after 15-day mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, April 20 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The Space Shuttle Discovery returned safely to Earth on Tuesday after completing a 15-day resupply mission to the International Space Station, the 131st trip of the shuttle program.

Discovery and its seven astronauts glided to a smooth landing at 9:08 a.m. EDT (1308 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The shuttle and crew returned from a 10-day stay at the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that has been under construction since 1998.

Discovery's commander Alan Poindexter and pilot Jim Dutton fired the shuttle's braking rockets at 8:02 a.m. EDT (1202 GMT) while over the Indian Ocean to leave orbit and head for the spacecraft's home base in Florida.

Bad weather had delayed a scheduled return on Monday, further extending a mission that had already been lengthened by a day so the astronauts could use the orbiting space station's communications system to relay heat shield inspection results.

NASA discovered the shuttle's Ku-band communications antenna was broken shortly after Discovery's April 5 launch, obliging the crew to use the station's system. The inspection procedure was implemented after the 2003 Columbia disaster, blamed on a heat shield breach.

Discovery had delivered to the space station a cargo pod, about the size of a small bus, filled with equipment and experiment racks, a fourth US sleeping berth, a darkroom for the station's US laboratory module and other supplies.

The returning Italian-built cargo pod was packed with old equipment and items no longer needed on the station.

The shuttle also hauled home a spent tank of ammonia coolant, which will be refurbished and returned to the station as a spare.

A new ammonia tank was installed during three spacewalks by Discovery astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson, but a problem with a valve prevented NASA from activating the coolant system as planned.

The International Space Station has two coolant loops, and both will need to be operational within about a month to keep the station at full power as the changing sun angle generates more heat on the station.

Discovery's return leaves just three shuttle flights on NASA's schedule before the ships are retired at the end of the year. Sister ship, Atlantis, is due to be rolled out to the launch pad on Tuesday evening to be prepared for a May 14 liftoff.

Vitamin B linked to worse diabetic kidney function

WASHINGTON, April 28: Patients with diabetic nephropathy, kidney disease caused by diabetes and treated with high doses of vitamin B, suffered rapid deterioration of the kidneys, a study released Tuesday found, reports AFP.
Diabetics in addition to kidney function loss also were affected by higher rates of heart attack and stroke than those who took a placebo, according to the clinical research in the April 28 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Diabetic nephropathy affects the network of tiny blood vessels in the glomerulus, a structure in the kidney made of capillary blood vessels, which is needed to filter blood.
Despite a range of treatments to curb the progression of the disease, about 40 percent of the 21 million Americans who have diabetes develop diabetic nephropathy so a new approach to treatment is needed, the authors of the study said.
Observational studies have shown a link between high concentrations of plasma total homocysteine and the risk of developing diabetic nephropathy, retinopathy, and vascular diseases, including myocardial infarction and stroke.
B-vitamin therapy meanwhile-using folic acid, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12 -- has been shown to lower the plasma concentration of homocysteine.
Andrew House of the University of Western Ontario and J. David Spence of the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario ran a study to see if B-vitamin therapy would slow progression of diabetic nephropathy and prevent vascular events in 238 patients with type 1 or 2 diabetes.
The placebo-controlled trial was conducted at five university medical centers in Canada between May 2001 and July 2007.
Patients received single tablet of B vitamins with folic acid (2.5 mg/d), vitamin B6 (25 mg/d), and vitamin B12 (1 mg/d), or matching placebo.
After they were followed for an average of 31.9 months, researchers found patients treated with vitamin B had a faster rate of reduction of kidney filtering hence kidney function compared to those on a placebo course.
Patients with the diabetic nephropathy additionally had a higher rate of heart attack and stroke than patients who received placebo.
"In addition to the personal burden, the societal burden of diabetic nephropathy is enormous, exceeding US 10 billion dollars in annual medical expenditures," the authors stressed.

US to double climate fund for Bangladesh

USA is going to more than double its financial assistance in the coming financial year to help Bangladesh addresses challenges of climate change, reports UNB.
United States Climate Envoy Ambassador Todd Stern disclosed it when he met Bangladesh Speaker Abdul Hamid Advocate, MP, and accompanying delegation in the US State Department on Tuesday.
Ambassador Todd Stern appreciated Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for her leadership in the Copenhagen Summit (COP 15), saying that without leadership like that of Prime Minister Hasina, COP-15 wouldn''t have eventually turned out positive.
Speaker Abdul Hamid thanked Ambassador Stern for their continued support and hoped that US will work with other donor countries as well, to channel more resources through multilateral forum.
Ambassador Stern added that projected assistance of US$14 million in the coming financial year is in addition to what they are planning to channel to Bangladesh through multilateral channels.
United States allocated US$6.00 million in the current financial year for Bangladesh.
Saber Hossain Chowdhury, MP, who is also Chairman of Committee on Climate and Environment of All Party Parliament Group (AAPG), elaborated on elements of Bangladesh''s strategy to face challenges of climate change and showed how Bangladesh is way ahead in terms of mitigation and adaptation practices.
Saber emphasized on the need to broader international support structure to make more resources available to countries like Bangladesh.
Ambassador Stern assured that they are aware of Bangladesh''s exemplary works in facing the challenges of climate change and accordingly, the US is also working with other partner countries to help Bangladesh to face the challenge of climate change.
The meeting was also attended by Ambassador to USA and State Minister Akramul Qader, Abdul Momin Talukder, MP, Reza Ali, MP, Ishrafil Alam, MP, Shampad Barua, PS to speaker, and Shishir Shill, Secretary General of AAPG.