Tomorrow, India will unveil a prototype of the new "Sakshat" laptop, a $20 machine that is reportedly equipped with wireless connectivity and 2GB of memory. If this laptop is indeed commercially viable -- which is a big "if" given the current financial climate -- the Sakshat's bargain basement price will almost certainly undercut the $100 educational laptop initiative launched by former MIT computer scientist Nicolas Negroponte, whose One Laptop Per Child program left Indian bureaucrats a little chilly in the past.

The big question is, will the Sakshat go the way of the Tata Nano? Just today, Reuters India reported that fourth quarter losses have caused the Indian car company Tata to table its rollout of the $2,500 Nano for the foreseeable future. Given that the Sakshat laptop currently has no commercial manufacturing partner -- only a prototype of the machine goes on display at the National Mission on Education tomorrow -- perhaps Negroponte can rest easy. At least for now.

An undersea cable near Egypt in the Mediterranean was cut today, disrupting Internet access for millions:

The main damage through is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.

It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

The cause of the cut is unknown though there was some seismic activity recorded near Malta. This certainly seems like a pretty serious story:

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.

"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised." [...]

"We've lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we're looking at a total blackout in the Middle East," said Mr Wright.

"These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we're going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,"

 

If financial transactions as far away as Singapore were really blocked by a minor undersea earthquake near Malta, it's a pretty sobering reminder of the fragile physical ties that make our virtual world possible.

The Sawiris family, which owns Egyptian telecom firm Orascom, has a history of making smart business deals. So maybe they know something the rest of us don't?

An Egyptian company said it will launch 3G mobile telephone service in North Korea on Monday, after winning the contract to build the advanced network in a country where private cell phones are banned. [...]

It was not clear what restrictions, if any, would be imposed on the network, which provides data capabilities as well as phone services. Ordinary North Koreans are forbidden from having cellular phones, and the government maintains strict controls over Internet access.

At a minimum, it's a great opportunity for the world's espionage services.

UPDATE: CrunchGear's Nicholas Deleon comments:

I just find it funny that there's going to be 3G in Pyongyang and I can't so much as get T-Mobile EDGE here in Dutchess County, NY, which is about an hour north of NYC.

Dr. Walter Wagner writes in response to his placement on the worst predictions list:

What kind of idiot do you have working for you, with respect to your #7 'prediction' about the Large Hadron Collider [LHC]? The LHC was not turned on; the LHC was tested in preparation for collisions and it self-destructed before collisions could be undertaken. CERN is currently engaged in a repair effort, estimated at about $30,000,000, and pronounce that they will undertake collisions next year [2009], sometime in the summer, if they can fix the damage that was caused. The machine is far from operational, and many more scientists are now also concerned about CERN's ability to properly predict safety. Of course we're still here - the experiment hasn't been tried yet. You should fire the idiot who wrote that analysis.

Very cool news out of Tel Aviv where Project Better Place, a company working to develop electric car charging stations, demonstrated a plug-in charging post yesterday. Better Place has been contracted to set up the posts throughout Israel and will soon expand its service to Denmark and Australia. Using these posts, drivers will be able to charge their cars through sockets like the one shown above.

For more on this exciting project, check out Wired's excellent profile of Better Place founder Shai Agassi.

Photo: David Silverman/Getty Images

This was probably inevitable:

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks." Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided[...]

Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive.

This isn't a new issue. The al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade also apparently used Google Earth to plan rocket attacks on Israel. But holding Google responsible for terrorists using its product makes about as much sense as blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11.

Just as the fact that terrorists take advantage of the laxer security regimes in democratic societies isn't a reason to unduly curb civil liberties, it would be a mistake to curtail the development of useful technologies because the bad guys have figured out how to use them too.

I don't mean to come across as some kind of libertarian tech-evangelist, and I think that some reasonable precautions--like not allowing Google to street-level map a military base--should be taken. But this is the price we pay for technological progress. As Tom Friedman might say, the world is flat for terrorists too.

It would also be a bit sketchy if India took any steps to restrict Google Earth at the same time they're developing a domestic competitor.

Who would dare challenge Google, the superman of the Internet age?

India, that's who.

Fresh off the high of its recent lunar achievements, India is taking on the powerful Internet search company on a playing field a little closer to home: Google Earth. 

The Indian Based Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch its Web-based mapping system, Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), by spring. The data comes from India's network of 50 satellites.

So, why does India think its program can compete? For starters, Bhuvan users will be able to zoom in on areas as small as 10 meters wide (Google's zoom limit is 200 meters). ISRO will replenish its high-resolution images each year, unlike Google, and its additional GPS component could lead to partnerships on navigation devices for cars.

While initially the program only covers India, if successful, Bhuvan will extend across the globe. ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair also hopes that the online software will lead to improvement India's notoriously bad offline hardware -- potholed road, clogged cities, and degraded environment. "This will not be a mere browser," he says. "but the mechanism for providing satellite images and thematic maps for developmental planning."

After hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work, the first malaria vaccine is ready to test. Sixteen thousand children are set to be vaccinated in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania -- African countries where malaria is a serious problem. 

Preliminary tests have shown that this particular vaccine -- one of several candidates funded partly through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- is 30 to 50 percent effective. Some worry those rates are too low to make a big impact.

But there is a strong case to make for any amount of effectiveness at all. Malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, is no small matter in countries where the disease is prevalent. Many experts argue that the economic impact in endemic countries contributes greatly to underdevelopment -- taking workers out of the workplace and reducing childrens' attentiveness in school.

And although malaria is a treatable condition, the best medicines are sometimes too expensive for poor victims of the disease. There is also a problem of quality: A recent study found that medicines in six African countries are either diluted or inneffective. And since there are multiple, constantly adapting strains of the disease, resistance to drugs is common. Quinine and chloroquine, used to treat malaria throughout colonial times, now have virtually no impact on the disease.

So, even if it's not 100 percent effective, a vaccine is a dream for public-health experts struggling to keep up with the changing disease that kills more than a million people every year and leaves many more sick. Here's hoping it works.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

The Russian SOYUZ TMA-13 rocket is moved to the launch pad of the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on Oct. 10, 2008. U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott is set to blast off for the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz TMA-13 rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome with Michael Fink of the United States and Russia's Iouri Lonchakov on Oct. 12.

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images

FILE; JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

There's a fascinating article in today's New York Times about India's controversial practice of using electronic brain scans for lie-detection in interrogation. Two Indian states have been using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to interrogate criminal suspects since 2006, but this summer was the first time a judge handed down a conviction based on the data. Here's how the procedure works:

This latest Indian attempt at getting past criminals’ defenses begins with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, in which electrodes are placed on the head to measure electrical waves. The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut. An investigator reads aloud details of the crime — as prosecutors see it — and the resulting brain images are processed using software built in Bangalore.

The software tries to detect whether, when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions — the areas that, according to the technology’s inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived, their smells and sounds summoned back to consciousness. The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish between people’s memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed.

Based on this scan, a woman who claims to be innocent was convicted in June of poisoning her fiancé.

Neuroscientists have widely condemned this application of EEGs, which has not been sufficiently peer-reviewed to have gained wide acceptance. It's not too far-fetched, though, to see it as the future of criminal investigation. Officials from Singapore and Israel have expressed interest in the Indian program and similar procedures have been developed in the United States.

Before we condemn India for using such an unproven technology in murder trials, it's worth pointing out that U.S. law enforcement agencies still regularly administer polygraph tests even though the Supreme Court ruled them unreliable a decade ago. And of course, there's bullet lead analysis, which the FBI used for four decades before it was discredited.

Let's just be sure these new technologies really work this time around before we start putting them in front of juries.

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

Next Wednesday, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland will switch on the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer particle accelerator that will create physical conditions that haven't existed in the universe since the big bang. It all sounds totally awesome, unless you're one of the very few people who think that the LHC will create a black hole that will expand to consume the planet.

Opponents of the LHC have filed suits in Hawaii and the European Court of Human Rights seeking to prevent the historic experiment, but it's highly unlikely that the court will take action. Scientists involved in the project have also been receiving death threats.

According to a newly released report, naturally occuring cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful collisions than the LHC, so the fact that we're even alive to worry about this is a good sign. Cory Doctorow quotes one physicist saying, "Look, it's a 10^-19 chance, and you've got a 10^-11 chance of suddenly evaporating while shaving."

So we can be pretty confident that the end of the world is not coming next Wednesday. But just in case, it's been great blogging for you all.

(Hat tip: Chris Blattman)

What do you do when you're an international pariah dependent on foreign food aid to feed a starving population? Why, develop a "special noodle" that delays feelings of hunger, of course!

Choson Shinbo, a pro-Pyongyang Japanese newspaper, reports that Kim Jong Il's new noodles, which pack more protein and fat than normal noodles, will be available soon:

When you consume ordinary noodles (made from wheat or corn), you may soon feel your stomach empty. But this soybean noodle delays such a feeling of hunger," it said on its website.

While it's nice to see North Korean scientists working on something other than nuclear weapons, a "special noodle" alone isn't going to solve the country's food crisis. It is fitting that, instead of tackling the root causes of the food shortage, the country instead found a superficial means to delay hunger.

To delve further into the mind of North Korea's Dear Leader, check out
"The Secret History of Kim Jong Il" in FP's Sept./Oct. issue, as well as the accompanying photo essay: "Inside the World of Kim Jong Il." (The former requires a subscription and the latter is free.)

The September cover of Esquire is going to be pretty cool. An electronic ink diplay, built on the same technology that E Ink used in the Amazon Kindle, will flash the words "the 21st Century Begins." The logistics of pulling of this feat are a story in globalization:

First Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine's distributor in Glazer, Ky.

So, has the magical world of Harry Potter and its animated Daily Prophet sprung into being? Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger sees a bright future for e-ink:

Pointing to the prototype sitting on a conference room table, Mr. Granger said, "The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones."

Alternatively, it could look a lot like this.