IBM 'in anti-competition probe'

IBM is being investigated by the US Department of Justice over allegations of anti-competitive behaviour, a computer industry trade body has said.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said the investigation came after it urged officials to look into the matter.

CCIA accuses IBM of withdrawing software licences from business clients who do not also buy its hardware.

IBM denies any wrongdoing and says it will co-operate with any investigation.

The Department of Justice has declined to comment.

'No merit'

The CCIA said the investigation centred on IBM's mainframe operating systems.

The association's spokesman, Ed Black, said the scope of the Justice Department study was "quite broad".

The news comes a week after an anti-competition complaint against IBM by software developer T3 Technologies was thrown out by a judge in Manhattan.

"We understand the Department of Justice has asked T3 for documents from the litigation," said IBM in a statement.

"IBM intends to co-operate with any inquiries from the Department of Justice.

"We continue to believe there is no merit to T3's claims, and that IBM is fully entitled to enforce our intellectual property rights and protect the investments that we have made in our technologies."

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Tiny 'nuclear batteries' unveiled

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.

As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries.

They have developed it in an attempt to scale down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (Mems and Nems).

The means to power such devices has been a subject of study as vigorous as the development of the devices themselves.

Liquid solution

Nuclear batteries are an attractive proposition for many applications because the isotopes that power them can provide a useful amount of current for phenomenally long times - up to hundreds of years or more.

As a result, they have seen use in spacecraft that are fired far off into the cosmos. But for applications here on Earth, their size has limited their use.

The Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon, employed a liquid semiconductor to capture and utilise the decay particles.

Most nuclear batteries use a solid semiconductor to harvest the particles, but the particles' extremely high energies means that the semiconductors suffer damage over time.

This means that to build a battery that can last as long as the isotope inside, they must be built larger.

The team's solution incorporates a liquid semiconductor, in which the particles can pass without causing damage. They are now working to further miniaturise the batteries.

And although the whole idea hinges on the use of radioactive materials, the devices are safe under normal operating conditions.

"People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous," Dr Jae said.

"However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems."

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Weekly world news quiz

Weekly world news quiz

It's the end of another week... Just how much do you remember about the headlines from the past seven days?

Test your knowledge of world news events in our quiz.

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US first lady 'slave roots' found

Research into the family of US First Lady Michelle Obama has revealed that her great-great-great-grandmother was a slave given away at the age of six.

According to genealogist Megan Smolenyak, the girl was described in papers only as "negro girl Melvinia".

In her early teens, working as a slave on a farm in Georgia, she was made pregnant by an unknown white man.

The son she gave birth to around the year 1859, Dolphus, was Michelle's great-great grandfather.

Megan Smolenyak, whose discoveries have been detailed in the New York Times newspaper, said she was not surprised by what she discovered.

"But the fact that just 15 years after the death of Dolphus, one of his descendants was born who would end up in the White House, that is startling," she said.

'Intermingled'

The circumstances of Melvinia's first pregnancy are unclear, according to Ms Smolenyak. On the 1870 census, she is listed as having three mixed-race children, one born four years after emancipation.

When you research a family, some call more loudly than others - it's like they want to be found
Megan Smolenyak

"If you do African-American research that is not surprising at all - a lot of people don't appreciate how intermingled we are," Ms Smolenyak said.

According to her 1938 death certificate, the identity of Melvinia's parents was "unknown".

The White House has yet to comment on the research but Ms Smolenyak said she hoped the details of great-great grandparents Michelle Obama had perhaps not even heard of would "resonate".

She described how the slave girl and the son she bore seemed to want to be discovered.

"When you research a family, some call more loudly than others - it's like they want to be found. It was Melvinia and her son, Dolphus, that clearly wanted to be found," she said.

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Websites 'need to pay for news'

Rupert Murdoch has said it is time for internet search engines and other websites to start to pay for any news reports they currently take for free.

Mr Murdoch, owner of media giant News Corporation, said such sites would soon have to pay for any content taken from his firm's many new providers.

He was speaking at the World Media Summit in Beijing, where his comments were backed by some of his competitors.

Associated Press boss Tom Curley said news providers were being "exploited".

'Act decisively'

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," said Mr Murdoch, whose company owns newspapers including the Sun and the Times in the UK, and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves - at great human and economic cost - to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it AP boss Tom Curley

Mr Murdoch's comments came two months after he said online readers would soon have to pay to access news content across New Corporation's websites.

Mr Curley said news content creators had "been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission".

"Crowd-sourcing web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook, have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing websites of traditional news publishers," he added.

Mr Curley said news providers had to "decisively act to take back control of our content".

"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves - at great human and economic cost - to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it."

Mr Curley said earlier this week that Associated Press was considering selling news stories to some websites, such as Google or Yahoo, exclusively for a certain period, such as half an hour.

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Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

US President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Committee said he was awarded it for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".

There were a record 205 nominations for this year's prize. Zimbabwe's prime minister and a Chinese dissident had been among the favourites.

The laureate - chosen by a five-member committee - wins a gold medal, a diploma and 10m Swedish kronor ($1.4m).

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Norwegian committee said as the prize was announced.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

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