June 20, 2002

Four people have been killed after a man, believed to be Palestinian, took over a house in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Itamar. A resident of Itamar said that the Palestinians stormed into the settlement and began shooting people in the street before taking control of a house in the settlement, holding the residents hostage. [ Albawaba Middle East News  ] 3:33:21 PM

Messages intercepted by U.S. intelligence one day before the Sept. 11 attacks came from telephone conversations between people in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, sources said Thursday. The conversations were in Arabic, but officials are not sure who was talking. One of the intercepts said, "The match begins tomorrow." The other said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." The intercepts however, were not translated and analyzed until Sept. 12 -- one day after the attacks. [ CNN ] 10:04:47 AM

U.S. antitrust officials are investigating the $12 billion global memory chip industry, which has been bleeding losses amid cut-throat price competition, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday. The world's top four makers of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, confirmed that they were caught up in the U.S. probe, which appeared to focus on the sharp price swings that have battered the industry since last fall. [ Infoworld ] 10:01:57 AM

Wells Fargo to process PayPal payments. The banking giant will process credit card payments for the online payment company under a deal the companies are expected to announce on Thursday. [CNET News.com] Paypal becomes the way that we can buy and sell with other individuals on the net.  In theory a giant media company (like Yahoo) could blow it away, but right now it has the clout and trust of the NET community.  This is the business plan that VISA should have rolled out 5 years ago. 9:56:19 AM

A rule at Southwest Airlines (LUV) requiring larger passengers to buy tickets for two seats will be enforced more strictly starting next Wednesday, putting new focus on the controversial nature of such policies at airlines, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported. [ Smart Money ] I wonder if Calista Flockhart will be able to go half price? 8:59:01 AM

MS refuses judge's order, antitrust meltdown to follow?. I'm sorry CKK, I can't do that right now... [The Register] The judge asks MS to make a list of what she can do that will hurt the least, but still hurt. 8:32:27 AM

A new computer virus is the first ever to infect picture files, an anti-virus firm reported Thursday, making sharing family photos on the Internet a potentially dangerous activity. The virus, dubbed Perrun, is not currently infecting computers but worries anti-virus experts because it is the first to cross from program infection into data files, long considered safe from malicious data. Perrun is known as a proof-of-concept virus, and does not cause damage. (McAfee Security) fears that virus writers may use Perrun as a template to create a more destructive version. [ Canoe.ca ] Also on SARC: W32.Perrun is a virus that appends itself to .jpeg or .txt files 7:09:26 AM