Bomb hidden under wheelchair kills 1, injures 6 in Iraq

• Story Highlights
• 3 people dead, 15 injured in roadside attack in southeastern Baghdad
• Pilgrims on way to Karbala for al-Arbaeen, one of holiest days on Shia calendar
• U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, coalition forces condemn attacks

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A disabled, wheelchair-bound man blew himself up on Monday in a northern Iraqi police station, killing a top police official and wounding six police officers, police told CNN.

The attack, which occurred in Samarra in Salaheddin province, reflects official concern over the innovative tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq. Bombs, have been placed inside dead animals and hidden in carts. And in recent days, vagrants have been involved in bombings.

A high-ranking official with Samarra police said that the man came to meet with Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabbar Rabei Muttar, the deputy commander of security, at the security operations building in the city. The pair met last week as well.

The man was searched when he entered the building, but police didn’t look under his wheelchair seat, where the explosives had been placed. The man detonated the explosives when Muttar approached him.

Also Monday, a roadside bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of Shiite Muslims in southeastern Baghdad on Monday, killing three and wounding 15, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

The strike, in the Zafaraniya district, is the latest in a flurry of attacks against pilgrims trekking to Karbala for al-Arbaeen, one of the holiest days of the Shiite religious calendar. It falls on Wednesday this year.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber in Iskandariya killed at least 45 people and wounded 68 others, and armed militants attacked pilgrims in southern Baghdad, killing three and wounding more than 30 others.

Most of the pilgrims make their way to Karbala on foot as a demonstration of piety and as part of tradition, and those who head to the city from Baghdad go through Babil province, where Iskandariya is located.

Joint forces have stepped up patrols during the pilgrimage to protect the thousands headed to Karbala. Last year, more than 180 pilgrims were killed in a series of attacks, most from twin suicide bombings in Hilla, the Babil provincial capital.

Sunday’s attack in Iskandariya, conducted by a bomber wearing an explosives vest, prompted authorities in the city to replace its police chief, police in Hilla told CNN.

More National Police officers have been deployed to Babil to ensure the safety of the pilgrims heading to Karbala, the police official said.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and coalition forces issued a condemnation of Sunday’s “barbaric attacks in Baghdad and Iskandariya” against “innocent citizens participating in an important religious commemoration.”

“This indiscriminate violence further reflects the nature of this enemy who will target even those practicing their religion in an effort to reignite sectarian strife in Iraq,” according to a statement issued Monday.

“Yesterday’s tragic attacks further demonstrate the importance of national unity and resolve in countering these terrorists. We will work closely with the government of Iraq and their security forces to help bring the perpetrators of these attacks to justice.”

Every year, thousands of pilgrims mass in Karbala for al-Arbaeen, which commemorates the end of a 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein, the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Hussein is one of Shiite Islam’s most revered martyrs. He died in battle in the 7th century and is buried in Karbala — about 60 miles to the southwest of the capital city of Baghdad.

The U.S. military on Monday reported another suicide bombing with sectarian overtones, but it did not appear to be related to al-Arbaeen.

A suicide bomber blew up outside a mosque south of Falluja, in Anbar province, and killed two Iraqi police, two civilians and the bomber, a U.S. military statement released Monday said. Twelve civilians were also wounded.

The Friday attack outside the Rahman mosque appeared to have been carried out by an “adolescent,” according to police, the U.S. military statement said. Police are investigating.

The attack happened in Ferris Town, which is about 15 miles south of Falluja or about 35 miles southwest of Baghdad.

CNN’s Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

All AboutKarbala • Iraq War

Obama fights back on questions about his patriotism

• Story Highlights
• Obama responds to question about attempts to paint him as unpatriotic
• Obama cited for not wearing American flag lapel pin, among other things
• Obama: “There’s always some nonsense going on in general elections”
• Clinton has said she has shown she can withstand conservative attacks

(CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama defended himself and his wife Sunday against suggestions that they are insufficiently patriotic.

After a town hall meeting in Lorain, Ohio, a reporter asked Obama about “an attempt by conservatives and Republicans to paint you as unpatriotic.”

The reporter cited the fact that Obama once failed to put his hand over his heart while singing the national anthem.

Obama replied that his choice not to put his hand on his heart is a behavior that “would disqualify about three-quarters of the people who have ever gone to a football game or baseball game.”

The reporter also noted that the Illinois senator does not wear an American flag lapel pin, has met with former members of the radical anti-Vietnam War group, Weather Underground, and his wife was quoted recently as saying she never felt really proud of the United States until recently.

Asked how he would fight the image of being unpatriotic, Obama said, “There’s always some nonsense going on in general elections. Right? If it wasn’t this, it would be something else. If you recall, first it was my name. Right? That was a problem. And then there was the Muslim e-mail thing and that hasn’t worked out so well, and now it’s the patriotism thing.

“The way I will respond to it is with the truth: that I owe everything I am to this country,” he said.

The first-term senator from Illinois has been the subject of various debunked rumors since launching his presidential campaign — allegations that he is a Muslim, that he took his oath of office on a copy of the Quran and that he attended a radical Islamic school while living in Indonesia as a boy.

“You will recall that the reason I came to national attention was a speech in which I spoke of my love of this country,” said Obama.

He and his wife, Michelle, had already explained her comments. “She simply misspoke,” he said. “What she was referring to was [that] this was the first time she has been proud of politics in America. Watch what Michelle Obama said »

“That’s true of a lot of people who have been cynical and disenchanted. And she’s spoken about how she has been cynical about American politics for a very long time, but she’s proud of how people are participating and getting involved in ways that they haven’t in a very long time.”

About not wearing an American flag lapel pin, Obama said Republicans have no lock on patriotism.

“A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?

“That is a debate I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism.”

Obama did not respond to the question about the Weather Underground, a group whose members bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the 1970s.

Last week, the New York Sun reported that as an Illinois state senator in 2001, Obama accepted a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founder of the group who was not convicted for the bombings and now works as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But the paper said that, in a statement, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, William Burton, said, “Sen. Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence … But he was an 8-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost 40 years ago is ridiculous.”

Former first lady Sen. Hillary Clinton has said repeatedly that she is a stronger candidate because she has already shown she can withstand conservative attacks.

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Microsoft Talks Up Yahoo Integration Plans

Microsoft Talks Up Yahoo Integration Plans
By Kenneth Corbin
February 22, 2008

Oh, the inevitability of it all.

In an internal e-mail sent earlier today, Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s president of platforms and services, reminded his employees of the strategic advantages that will come from acquiring Yahoo, and addressed issues about the integration of the two companies such as staffing, corporate culture and branding.

With the two sides (publicly) deadlocked, talk whipping around of how high Microsoft will go, how low an offer Yahoo will accept and a looming proxy battle to oust the board, this stage of the deal has become a very public chess match. Every move is a calculated step, and this e-mail was no exception.

Johnson’s missive bore the tone of a press release. In fact, given the media alert that accompanied it, it was a press release.

“We have been very thoughtful about this combination, and are excited about what our two companies can do together,” Johnson wrote. “While Yahoo has issued a press release rejecting our proposal, we continue to believe we have a full and fair proposal on the table.”

He told his staff that “if and when Yahoo agrees to proceed,” the two companies would then work to clear the regulatory hurdles, and the transaction would close before the end of the year, sticking by the original timetable.

[cob:Related_Articles]Johnson, one of the Microsoft executives on the conference call announcing the offer exactly three weeks ago, put out the e-mail ostensibly to answer common questions employees had raised about the combination of the companies. They happen to include several of the same questions that members of the press have been asking.

The fate of the two brands has been a big one. “The Yahoo brand is one of the reasons the combination of the two companies would create so much value,” he wrote, adding, however, that it would be “premature” to speculate on which products would bear which brand in the combined company. A joint committee will see to that when the time comes, he said.

Pairing technology platforms

On pairing the technology platforms, Johnson reassured his team that Microsoft has made numerous acquisitions of companies whose technologies are not Windows-based. In some cases the open source technology has eventually morphed into Windows; in others, Microsoft has made the relevant facet of Windows interoperate with the acquired technology to preserve its original form. In the case of Yahoo’s technology, Johnson said that engineers from both companies would work together to make the appropriate decisions.

Johnson wrote that the two companies’ cultures would come together — some sooner, some later — in a synergistic hybrid buoyed by Microsoft’s R&D and Yahoo’s Web and “21st century media expertise.”

With regard to staffing, and the possibility of cuts, Johnson said that there would inevitably be some overlap of the two companies (read: layoffs), but that Microsoft is growing, and faces “no shortage of business and technical opportunities.” Any layoffs that come on the Yahoo side are going to be costly, after the golden parachutes announced earlier this week.

Finally, Johnson said that the combined company would maintain offices in Redmond and Silicon Valley.

With the number of options available to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang dwindling, this acquisition has taken on an air of inevitability. The more pressure put on Yahoo’s board to come to the table, the better Microsoft’s bargaining position will be. On a merger of this scale, whittling even a fraction of a dollar off the final per-share price would save Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars.

Americans’ e-Commerce Conundrum

Americans’ e-Commerce Conundrum
By Kenneth Corbin
February 15, 2008

A new study from the Pew Internet Project casts light on the love-hate relationship many Americans have with e-commerce.

In response to the survey, 78 percent of U.S. Internet users said that online shopping is convenient, and 68 percent said it saves time. Yet, 75 percent said they don’t like giving out personal information like a credit card number over the Internet.

The security risks, real or perceived, are hampering the growth of the Internet economy, said John Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project and author of the report.

[cob:Special_Report]”These inconsistent notions about the online shopping environment show that, even as e-commerce matures, people’s confidence in the security of online shopping remains as an issue,” Horrigan said in a statement.

“If people’s worries about security of personal information were eased, the pool of online shoppers would be greater,” he said.

How much greater? Horrigan estimated that the portion of U.S. consumers with Internet access who shop online would increase by seven percent if the perceived threats were of less concern.

Contrary to Americans’ perceptions, many payment security experts agree that online credit card purchases are generally safer than in-store transactions.

Many brick-and-mortar retailers are behind the curve when it comes to payment security, said Rob Tourt, chairman of PCI Security Standards Council.

For one thing, many traditional retailers are still running legacy systems that lack the security mechanisms baked into the younger, tech-savvy e-commerce payment processes.

Additionally, when a cashier swipes a credit card, the retailer snags much more information than is conveyed through an online purchase, Tourt told InternetNews.com. A credit card’s magnetic strip contains several additional pieces of data that can compromise an account in the event of a breach.

“Retailers are fighting a battle of education,” said Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Shop.org, the online retail industry association.

[cob:Related_Articles]”Retailers know that even though their sites are safe, you’re never going to be able to convince 100 percent of consumers,” she told InternetNews.com. “So it makes more sense for retailers to integrate new payment options for shoppers.”

The security concerns highlighted in the Pew report are leading many online retailers to add alternative payment options like Google Checkout or Bill Me Later to their sites, Davis said.

Consumers’ security concerns tend to be greater when visiting a smaller, lesser-known retailer than when shopping with a major brand, the study found. The addition of a recognizable brand such as PayPal or Google as a checkout option can help allay those fears.

A Shop.org survey conducted in September found that one-quarter of retailers had added PayPal or some other third-party e-mail payment service.

Anecdotally, those retailers reported seeing new customer counts increase and average order prices rise upon implementing the alternate payment option.

Among the Pew report’s other findings, people in lower-income households were more likely to see the risk in e-commerce than convenience, whereas the reverse was true with more affluent Americans.

The report also found that more people use the Internet to research products than actually make purchases.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they had used the Internet for banking, compared with 27 percent in Pew study conducted in February 2005.

The survey also identified the increasing popularity of online classified sites, with 24 percent of respondents saying they had used Craigslist or some other online listing site, up from 14 percent in February 2005.