Outbreak of third intifada feared

JERUSALEM — Thousands of Israeli students are in mourning over eight classmates killed in an attack on a Jerusalem seminary Thursday, Palestinians are still reeling from the deaths of 120 Gazans in an Israeli military operation last week, peace talks are faltering and Palestinians increasing chafe at the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The ongoing violence, demonstrations and anger have raised fears in the region that the ground has been laid for the outbreak of a third intifada.

“I’m concerned,” said Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah. “The Israelis will escalate targeting of Hamas leaders and we will see more and more incidents from the Palestinian side like we saw yesterday. The Palestinians are going to hit back.”

HBO Zings Bada Bing Rumors

It sounds as if talk of the Bada Bing reopening is nothing but a bunch of B.S.

An HBO spokesperson says there is “no truth” to a rumor that The Sopranos saga will be making its way to the big screen.

While talk of a feature film version of the groundbreaking cable series began almost immediately after the credits silently rolled on last year’s finale, the hype got a shot in the arm recently when the manager of the strip club that stood in for the Bada Bing said he got a tip that a Sopranos movie was in the works.

Opera: IE8’s changes don’t let Microsoft off legal hook

Microsoft Corp.’s rivals have applauded some of what they’ve seen in the new Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), but the browser maker that has complained to antitrust regulators in Europe said the changes don’t address all its concerns.

Earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled Beta 1 of IE8, just days after the company’s head of browser development confirmed a turnabout in how IE8 would handle backward compatibility and support Internet standards.

On Monday, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the IE group, announced that IE8 would support a new “super standards” mode by default. Previously, Hachamovitch had said the super standards mode would be an option, a decision that raised a ruckus among Web developers. This week’s 180-degree turn, he said, showed Microsoft’s commitment to Web standards, even if it risked breaking sites designed for older versions of IE.

Judge approves Teachers’ takeover of BCE

MONTREAL – A Quebec judge has approved the proposed leveraged buyout of Canada’s largest telecom company by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and its partners and rejected a lawsuit by bondholders who had tried to stop the deal.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Joel Silcoff issued the ruling late Friday, clearing the way for BCE’s privatization in what would be the biggest takeover in Canadian history.

Daylight saving time uses more energy, not less

WASHINGTON — For Benjamin Franklin, daylight saving time was about saving candles and for modern lawmakers, it’s about electricity — but a recent university study found it might actually cost more energy when the nation resets its clocks Sunday.

Matthew J. Kotchen, a professor of environmental economics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and Laura E. Grant, a doctoral student in the same field, studied the effects of daylight saving in Indiana, where some counties used it and others did not. The states changed the law two years ago so that all counties now use daylight saving time.

In an interview, Kotchen said using residential electricity bills for Indiana, he and Grant found that daylight saving time reduced electricity use for lighting but that more was used for air conditioning in the summer and heating in the fall than was saved.