The death toll from a suicide bombing carried out by a teenage boy who struck in a busy market in northwest Pakistan has mounted to 45, officials said Tuesday. The bomber, wearing a vest(sleeveless inner garment) concealing the explosives advanced towards the military convoy.

“Two people died overnight and two more died this morning,” doctor Ehsanullah Khan of the state run Alpuri hospital told AFP. Thirty-eight people remained in hospital with injuries from the blast, he added. “The attacker was a young boy. He was standing towards the corner of the road. As soon as the convoy arrived, he rapidly moved towards the vehicles and blew himself up,” A military official Monday said the bomber was about 13 or 14 years old.

Indonesian cops interrogated Tuesday a college student and aid agency volunteer who allegedly arranged shelter for terrorists who were the brain  behind hotel bombings in Jakarta. Mathematics and science major
Sonny Jayadi, 24, was believed to have rented rooms at a Jakarta boarding house for militant brothers who were killed by the cops last week in a raid on the building, police spokesman Nanan Sukarna said.

Jayadi fell on the eye of the police Saturday in the West Sumatra coastal town of Padang, while helping victims of a powerful Sept. 30 quake that killed more than 800 people and devastated vast areas of the country’s westernmost
island. Jayadi is said to have paid rent for Syaiffudin Zuhri and Mohamad Syahrir – key members of a terrorist cell led by the late regional al-Qaida commander Noordin Top.

Putrajaya is a planned city, located south of Kuala Lumpur, that serves as the federal administrative centre of Malaysia. Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry enforcement officers raided an eminent private college in Shah Alam on Thursday and seized  US $ 3,26,000 worth of pirated software.

This was the first time a raid was conducted on an institution of higher education in Putrajaya city. Enforcement officers seized eight computers found to have 58 copies of pirated software installed in them. Ministry enforcement chief Mohd Roslan Mahayuddin said the raid was made after receiving the confidential information from an anonymous source. He said an IT solutions provider company was also found to have been using 74 pirated copies of software worthy of 50 thousnad dollars. Eight computers were also seized from the company.

Hewlett-Packard(HP)  is bringing new power management features to laptops that can help companies measure and cut energy costs, the company said on Tuesday. The PC maker announced new business laptops — the “ProBook 6445b” and “ProBook 6545b” — that include dedicated hardware and software that can estimate energy costs with the passage of time.

The Power Assistant software tool can help companies meet energy budgets by measuring and managing the electric power drawn by the laptops and its components, HP said. The software can estimate power cost of laptops over a
day, week or year. That is done by measuring its cost per kilowatt hour based on rates provided by a utility company, which need to be entered manually.

The software can also change power settings to reduce power drawn by laptops and its components. For instance, it could alter screen brightness, turn off wireless networking features, cut down on the speed of the
processor. Users are also concerned about prolonging their battery life, an HP spokesperson said. With the adjustable power setting features, users can change power profiles.

The Probook 6445b comes with a 14-inch screen and weighs 5.3 pounds (2.41 kg). The ProBook 6545b comes with a 15.6-inch screen and weighs 5.9 pounds (2.7 kg).  The laptops come with multiple OS options including Windows 7 and Linux. The laptops support up to 8GB of memory and come with hard drive or SSD storage options.  A 6-cell battery gives the laptops up to a 5-hour battery life, or an 8-hour runtime from a 9-cell battery. The laptops are expected to be available in the U.S. starting Oct. 22 and worldwide in mid-November starting at $799. The laptops also have buttons that provide quick access to Web, e-mail or contacts without fully loading Windows. The Quicklook button provides access to features like contacts and e-mail, and the QuickWeb button provides loads a browser in around 10 to 12 seconds.

North Korea’s latest short-range missile tests violate United Nations resolutions, South Korea’s foreign ministry said Tuesday, demanding an end to the launches. The communist state Monday fired five KN-02 missiles from its east coast, the first such launches for three months, Yonhap news agency reported.

The projectiles fired from mobile launchers have a range of 120 kilometres (75 miles) and are a modified version of the Soviet-designed SS-21 missile, Seoul’s defence ministry says. “North Korea’s latest missile tests are in
violation of the UN Security Council resolutions 1695, 1718 and 1874 which ban every activity related to testing of missiles,” foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-Young told AFP.

“The government again urges North Korea to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions.” Defence ministry officials said separately the KN-02 missiles are trial missiles, not guided ones. A trial missile is guided in the first part of its flight but falls freely as it approaches the target. Yonhap said there are signs the North is preparing later Tuesday to launch more short-range missiles, this time off its west coast. The North has conducted numerous short range missile tests in recent years, as well as the mid-range and long-range tests that were censured by the UN. Seoul has not previously described the short-range tests as breaching UN resolutions.

A Dolton, Illinois, police officer assigned to a school was placed on administrative leave and later resigned after a surveillance video caught him red handed of thrashing a special-needs student, officials said. Videotape showed the video clip of an unidentified police officer attacking student Marshawn Pitts, aged 15. Ed Manzke, an attorney who represents the student told the officer beat Pitts for not complying with the school’s dress code. The incident occurred in May at the Academy for Learning, a Dolton high
school for special-needs students. Pitts was admitted to the school in May after moving from Iowa, Manzke said. He suffered brain injuries as a child when he was rammed by a car.

The police officer, who has not been identified, scolded Pitts for not tucking in his shirt, which the school’s dress code and policy makes it mandatory. A video, released to Pitts’ parents by the school several weeks after the incident, showed Pitts talking to the officer and a faculty member grabbing Pitts’ arm. Pitts pulls away and walks down the hall, with the officer and faculty member close behind. But the officer then pushes him forcefully against the lockers and pushes him to the floor — breaking his nose, according toManzke. Pitts was treated by a school nurse after the incident, then taken to the Dolton Police Department, where his mother picked him up, Manzke said.

The officer was never charged with anything and an explanation for the incident was not demanded from the police officer. The school administration when contacted said that it would be inappropriate to comment on an incident involving a specific student. But, the school said, “Unfortunately, the physical restraint of a student sometimes becomes necessary. In such instances, AFL and its staff are committed to employing techniques that are safe, effective and which conform to best practice standards.

Pitts’ parents are considering engaging in judicial proceedings against the city of Dolton, the school and Dolton police, Manzke said. He added he is in talks with Dolton police to settle the case. If those talks are not fruitful, Manzke said, a lawsuit could be filed within a few weeks. Pitts is now living with his
father and attending another school, Manzke said.

Her childhood and young adult years were marked by frustration. ” Very soon after her birth it dawned in the minds of her parents that her parents that there was something abnormal with their child. Ten years ago,
Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institutes of Health, finally diagnosed the problem. An MRI scan revealed she was missing nearly half of  the left side of her brain. While
it was clear Mack has some problems, Grafman said he and the family were shocked by the extent of the damage.

“It was very hard for me,” Mack said. “It was very hard for me growing up. No one knew the truth about my brain. “There’s some very deep structures remaining, but the surface of her brain, the cortex is 95 percent
gone and some of the deeper structures, structures that control movement, are missing. These are all structures that are important for movement, behaviour, cognition”,remarked the doctor. “Michelle has fairly normal language abilities, certainly basic language abilities, she can construct a sentence, she can understand instructions, she can find words when she’s talking, but actually she has some trouble in some aspects of visual-spatial processing,” said Grafman.

In the 10 years since Grafman first diagnosed Mack, she has seen some intellectual functions improve, the doctor said. Recovery has not been perfect, however. Mack still struggles with abstract concepts and becomes easily lost in unfamiliar surroundings.

Mack is now 37 years old and lives with her mother and father. She works from home doing data entry for her church. She is fairly independent, pays rent and can do most household works. She realizes she’ll need help for the
rest of her life but wanted to tell her story to make it clear that she is not helpless.

The Columbia University study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The bone which has been created in the lab is known as the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). The availability of personalized
bone grafts engineered from the patient’s own stem cells would revolutionise the way we currently treat these defects.

Problems with the joint can be the result of birth defects, arthritis or injury. Although they are widespread, treatment can be difficult. The joint has a complex structure which makes it difficult to repair by using grafts from bones elsewhere in the body.

The Sudanese capital had previously been considered one of the safest in Africa. The BBC’s James
Copnall in Khartoum says there have been some concerns that the incident could prove damaging for
the already weak relationship between Sudan and the US.