London, July 31 (IANS) Google has cleared the hurdle of an anti-privacy case to go ahead with the launch this year of its Street View service which will offer ground level pictures of every British street online. Street View faced opposition from lawyers who said it infringes civil liberties. Some said it would help burglars select their targets in advance. Privacy watchdog Information Commissioner's Office, however, brushed aside the objections. 'We are satisfied that Google is putting in place adequate safeguards to avoid any risk to the privacy or safety of individuals, including the blurring of vehicle registration marks and the faces of anyone included in Street View images.
'Although it is possible that in certain limited circumstances an image may allow identification of an individual, it is clear that Google are keen to capture images of streets and not individuals,' it said.
The watchdog was satisfied by Google's submission that it will have an...

A new search engine dubbed Cuil is hoping to offer a rival to the likes of Google, Yahoo and Ask.
Cuil is pronounced 'cool' and comes from an old Irish word meaning 'knowledge'. The site has indexed 120 billion web pages, which it claims is three times more than any other search engine, and results are organised by ideas rather than just rankings. Cuil also boasts complete user privacy. The new search engine will attempt to analyse the context of each page and the concepts behind each query, thereby grouping similar results together and sorting them by category.
These groups are divided by tabs which aim to clarify subjects, offer images to identify topics and search refining suggestions. "The web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it," said Tom Costello, chief executive and co-founder of...

James Borel, Group Vice President of agricultural and chemicals multinational DuPont, represented ICC during the High-level Thematic Debate on Rural Development organized by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) here on 3 July 2008. Mr Borel detailed a five-point plan for reforming the agricultural economy to UN members and other stakeholders. He also highlighted the importance of a successful agricultural economy, not only as short-term solution for poverty alleviation but also as a requirement for achieving sustainability. “Agriculture must be a higher priority in a world of increasing food demand and limited resources,” Mr Borel said. Buttressing his argument, Mr Borel cited a recent World Bank study, “Down to Earth,” which showed that sound economic growth of the farm sector was at least twice as effective at reducing poverty as any other sector. It used the Asian manufacturing boom as an example, which was preceded by...