I wanted to call these Islamic terrorists “animals” but then realized that calling these demonic terrorists  “animals” would be an insult to the whole animal kingdom.  All moderate muslims should unite and raise their voice against this brutal display of  Islamic fanaticism and strongly condemn these barbaric acts that are being committed in the name of Islam. These cowards are bringing bad name to Islam by killing innocent people and are doing great harm to the future of the religion of Islam. 

There are literally thousands of links to this news on the web. I gave a few of them here ....Guardian, financial times, timesofindia

India Internet outage

On Thursday I  read reports that India lost 50 percent of  her internet bandwidth due to severed  undersea cables in the Mediterranean sea near Alexandria, Egypt. According to reports, these cables were severed by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday.

There are two main undersea cables that connect India with Europe, called SEA-ME-WE (South East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe) and FLAG (Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe).

Click here to see a map of the undersea cables around the world

Apparently, both FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 4 cables were severed.  Because these cable systems are run by competing companies, one would have thought that one cable system would  serve as a backup of the other in the event of a failure of one of them.  The fact that the two cables are right next to each other means that they are susceptible to accidents or  acts of sabotage.  This incident proves countries such as India whose economy relies heavily on outsourcing are highly vulnerable to acts of sabotage involving undersea cables. I hope the Indian businesses  take note of this and have redundant alternatives in place, in order to ensure business continuity in the event of a terrorist sabotage of undersea cables.

Microsoft Corp offers to buy Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion

Microsoft Corp offered to buy Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion, in an apparent  bid to take on the market leader Google Inc.This would be the biggest Internet deal since the ill-fated Time Warner-AOL merger, Microsoft offered $31 per share in cash and stock. This price is a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's Thursday close.

Yahoo attracts more than 500 million people monthly to sites devoted to news, finance and sports, and Yahoo Mail is the No. 1 consumer e-mail service.

This offer is bound to make the internet landscape even more interesting in the future -  to say the least.

Picture of the week

It is reported that four giant waterfalls will be erected in New York for three months this summer as part of a public arts project. The waterfalls, including one that will fall from the famed Brooklyn Bridge, are the brainchild of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson..