San Francisco - Twitter, which is preparing for its initial public offering, said on Wednesday it will help users receive special alerts from government agencies and aid agencies during emergencies.

Users who sign up will receive smartphone notifications via the Twitter app as well as SMS text messages - assuming they agree to handover their cell phone numbers - from any of several dozen agencies who have signed on to the program.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Tokyo's Disaster Prevention service and the World Health Organization are among those participating.

The alerts program starts a year after Twitter showcased its potential as a lifeline during Hurricane Sandy, when stranded residents on the eastern US seaboard reported the storm's progress and sought help on the mobile network.

A similar lifeline service played a part in the rescue efforts in Japan following the devastating 2011 tsunami, Twitter said. The program is initially available in the United States, Japan and Korea and will be expanded to other countries.

Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, said the service was at the cutting edge of disaster management in the age of smartphones.

"Today we have a two-way street — residents are informed about hazards in real time and emergency managers receive immediate feedback on the consequences of a disaster," Fugate said in a statement.

The program reflects the evolution of Twitter from its earliest days, when it gained a reputation as a hangout for geeks to share the minute details of their most recent meal or who they encountered at the South by Southwest Festival.

But the crowd-sourced information of today's Twitter has also proved problematic.

Even as the New York City Fire Department used Twitter to communicate with residents during Hurricane Sandy, there were pranksters who spread misinformation on the service, including a rumor that the New York Stock Exchange was submerged underwater.

And in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the name of a missing Brown University student went viral on Twitter after many users, including journalists, mistakenly identified him as a suspect.

Twitter, for its part, has maintained a strictly hands-off attitude toward monitoring its content and denied responsibility for ensuring its accuracy.

Earlier this month, Twitter filed with regulators for an initial public offering. Reuters reported last week that Twitter was in talks looking to add additional banks to its underwriting syndicate.

NEW DELHI: India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh branded Thursday's attack by militants on an Indian police station and army camp in disputed Kashmir as “barbaric” but - without mentioning Pakistan - said it would not derail efforts to pursue peace through dialogue.

“This is one more in a series of provocations and barbaric actions by the enemies of peace,” Manmohan Singh said in a statement. “Such attacks will not deter us and will not succeed in derailing our efforts to find a resolution to all problems through a process of dialogue.”

A group of militants dressed in Indian army uniforms attacked an Indian police station located near the main city of Srinagar before attacking an army camp and killing eight people, Indian officials said.

The attack triggered calls in New Delhi for talks between the rival nations' leaders at the weekend to be called.

Just a day before the attack, Singh said he would meet Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly for highly anticipated talks.

The Pakistani Prime Minister had also earlier expressed his wish to meet his Indian counterpart at the UN General Assembly to resume peace efforts between the two South Asian countries.

The talks are expected to discuss rising violence in the Kashmir region and to promote cordial relations between the neighbouring countries.

While Pakistani officials have not yet outlined the agenda for the Sharif-Singh meeting, Indian officials have said the issue of terrorism would figure prominently in the talks.

Pakistani officials, however, underlined Mr Sharif’s commitment to improving ties with India, pointing out that despite a downturn in ties after clashes at the Line of Control (LoC), the prime minister had been pushing for a meeting with Singh in New York.

SRINAGAR: Militants stormed a police station and an Indian army base in Kashmir on Thursday, killing at least nine in an attack the state's chief minister said was aimed at derailing peace talks between India and Pakistan.

“This attack in Jammu is aimed at derailing the dialogue process,” said Omar Abdullah, chief minister of the Indian administered Kashmir.

The group of militants who attacked a police station and army camp in India administered Kashmir on Thursday had crossed the border from Pakistan the previous day, the state's chief minister said.

Omar Abdullah told reporters that the raid appeared designed to upset plans for a meeting in New York this week between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“Given the history, timing and location, the aim is to derail the proposed meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart,” Abdullah said. “There are forces that are inimical to peace and want to derail any peace process.”

The militants, all wearing army fatigues, lobbed grenades and opened fire at the Hiranagar police station near the border with Pakistan, police said.

Around the same time attackers struck at an army base in the nearby Samba district in the southern-most part of the the Indian-administered state where a fierce gunbattle with soldiers took place and Indian tanks were deployed.

The attacks are set to overshadow a meeting by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this weekend, the first top-level dialogue in three years.

Manmohan Singh condemned “the heinous terrorist attack” in a statement but said that that it “will not deter us and will not succeed in derailing our efforts to find a resolution to all problems through a process of dialogue”.

Militant attacks have a history of stalling stop-start peace efforts between the two neighbours, who have fought three wars since independence, because New Delhi accuses Pakistan of abetting the groups which strike Indian targets.

The NDTV channel reported that Thursday's attackers may have driven from the police station to the army camp in a hijacked truck, but other security sources cautioned that there might have been separate groups.

“I was inside the dhaba (a roadside eatery) when I saw three men entering the camp firing a barrage of bullets. They opened the gates and entered,” one eyewitness told reporters outside the army camp in Samba.

Gunshots could be heard ringing out from inside the walled compound, while two officers could be seen running out carrying an injured man over their shoulder.

At least five policemen and two civilians were killed in the first attack on the police station in Kathua district, a police officer told AFP, and at least two soldiers including an officer died in the second assault, a separate army source who asked not to be named confirmed.

Indian premier Singh confirmed on Wednesday that he would meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif despite calls from the opposition to take a hardline with Islamabad.

Formal peace talks known as the Composite Dialogue are currently off and India has been keen to downplay any expectation they might restart as a result of Sunday's talks.

“Primarily we will see whether the dialogue process that started between the two countries, that stopped and got derailed, can that be brought back on track,” Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told reporters at the UN on Wednesday.

Kashmir, a picturesque Himalayan territory, is divided between India and Pakistan by a de facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC) but it is claimed in full by both countries.

Pakistani users of the social networking site Facebook crossed 10 million, according to Facebook Ads Manager.

The ads manager cites that the number of Pakistani users on Facebook is between 10.6-11.8 million of which 7.4-8.2 million are men and 3.0-3.4 million are women.

Of these users, 2.3-2.5 million are single and out of this 1.7-1.8 million are men and 0.7-0.78 million are women. There are 1.0-1.2 million who are either married, engaged or in a relationship.

Half of the users are between the ages of 18-24. This indicates that the social networking site is mostly used by youth.

Additionally, 2.9-3.2 million local Facebook users are university graduates, of which 2.1-2.3 million are men and 0.78-0.86 million are women.

More stats

A report by mobile survey company Ansr.io collated the following information in June 2013:

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan on Wednesday urged the government to declare a ceasefire if it was serious about holding peace talks with militants in Pakistan.

The PTI chief also called on the government to allow militants to open an office in Pakistan similar to the Afghan Taliban office in Qatar to facilitate the dialogue process, DawnNews reported.

Speaking to media representatives after visiting injured persons of the Peshawar church bombing at the Lady Reading Hospital, Khan said that on one hand, there were talks of holding negotiations whereas on the other, war was still ongoing. How would it be possible to hold peace talks, he questioned.

The PTI chairman moreover said that after the fourth All Parties Conference (APC), it was decided to hold peace talks; however no solutions had come about.

Khan stressed that the government should take negotiations seriously, adding that it should declare a ceasefire.

Furthermore, he also said that the government should allow militants to establish a political office in Pakistan to hold peace talks in the absence of which negotiations would not be possible and the decade-long war against terrorism would continue.

While discussing the Peshawar church bombing which killed 81 people, Khan alleged that the tragedy had been politicised. He said 170 blasts had taken place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the past nine years under previous governments, but PTI had not politicised those tragedies.

MADRID: Neymar scored his first league goal and helped Barcelona ease past Real Sociedad 4-1 in the Spanish league on Tuesday and stay perfect after six rounds.

Atletico Madrid also stayed perfect thanks to goals by Diego Costa in a 2-1 win against Osasuna, giving it 18 points, although Barcelona stay top with its better goal differential.

Neymar opened the scoring in the fourth minute before two more goals from Lionel Messi and Sergio Busquets inside 25 minutes left Real Sociedad reeling at the Camp Nou.

The Brazil forward made the most of hesitation between two Sociedad defenders and goalkeeper Claudio Bravo to rush forward and poke the ball home for his first goal since joining the champions in the close season for 57 million euros ($76 million).

''It doesn't matter that it was a scrambled goal, what is important is that it went in,'' said Neymar. ''The team is getting better all the time.''

Messi lunged headlong four minutes later to score past Bravo from Neymar's cross for his seventh league goal this season.

A minute later Bravo was forced to sprint forward and punch away a head-high ball as Neymar arrived alone into the penalty area.

Sociedad captain Xabier Prieto fell to the ground clutching his right thigh and had to be substituted in midfield by Imanol Agirretxe in the 21st.

Busquets scored Barcelona's third two minutes later after the ball had bounced off the crossbar from Messi's close-range shot.

Mascherano was substituted at half time by Marc Bartra, and Barcelona upped the pressure on Bravo, who was forced to save twice and watch another shot go just over the bar in a 10-minute spell.

Sociedad pulled one back when Agruirretxe beat Gerard Pique and passed the ball across the goalmouth for Alberto de la Bella to tap into goal past a stranded Victor Valdes in the 64th.

''One of our starting premises was not to allow them to score in the first few minutes, which is something we've done in other years, and look what happened,'' said de la Bella. ''Playing like this in the Camp Nou makes it very difficult for us.''

In the 76th minute, Messi dribbled past three defenders before crossing to Bartra who flicked the ball into goal to complete the rout.

Costa scored his sixth league goal of the season for Atletico when he deftly flicked in a cross in the 18th and he then doubled his tally with a sublime header from a Jorge ''Koke'' Resurreccion assist in the 25th. Oriol Rieira pulled one back for Osasuna in the 43rd.

Atletico coach Diego Simeone chose to rest striker David Villa and began with an all-Brazillian attack of Baptistao and Diego Costa.

Elsewhere, Levante drew 1-1 with Valladolid. Baba Diawara opened the scoring for Levante in the 35th minute and Javier Guerra equalised six minutes later.

Malaga beat Almeria 2-0 with goals by Fernando Tissone and Francisco Portillo.

On Wednesday Real Madrid travels to Elche, Sevilla hosts Rayo Vallecano and Granada plays Valencia.

SYDNEY: Former England batsman Graeme Hick was Wednesday named high performance coach at Cricket Australia's Centre of Excellence, tasked with developing the next generation of scorers and turning around the side's recent batting malaise.

Hick, 47, replaced former Australian Test player Stuart Law who became head coach at Queensland Cricket after Darren Lehmann left the position in June to become Australia's national coach.

“Graeme knows what it takes to compete at the top level and has had many years' experience playing in different conditions, which will be vital to the development of our young batters,” said Cricket Australia's Pat Howard.

“His main role will be working with our development teams including Australia A, Under 19 players and those in our current pathway system,” said Howard, who is executive general manager team performance.

One of the first tasks for Hick will be attending a Cricket Australia batting forum in Sydney next month.

“The forum will bring together a number for former Australian cricketers and current coaches and will provide information that will feed into the creation of a national batting programme that Graeme will be charged with developing and implementing,” said Howard.

Australia's performance in the recent five-match Ashes series in England, won by England 3-0, highlighted their susceptibility to top-order collapses, including one in Durham which saw Australia lose the fourth Test by 74 runs.

Hick, who retired from first-class cricket in 2008 with 136 centuries and 41,112 first-class runs, said he had developed a “huge amount of respect for Australian cricket” over the years.

“I am excited about the chance to work with Australia's young talent and being able to assist in their growth and development,” said Hick who played for Zimbabwe before moving to England where he played 65 Tests.

“This is going to be a great challenge for me and one I am really looking forward to.”

The Centre of Excellence is based in Brisbane.

ROME: Three boats carrying more than 700 asylum-seekers — some of whom were Syrian refugees — landed in Italy on Wednesday, the Coastguard said.

The new arrivals reflected a sharp increase in boats landing with people fleeing conflict-torn parts of the Mediterranean region and the Horn of Africa.

Two of the boats arrived on the island of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost point and a major gateway for undocumented migration into the European Union.

The first boat had 398 Syrians on board, the second had 111 whose nationality was yet to be determined.

The latest arrivals have caused severe overcrowding in the temporary migrant centre on the tiny island, which can only house 350 people and was already too full.

A third boat, which was spotted by a patrol plane on Tuesday, arrived in the port of Syracuse in Sicily with around 200 people on board, including 70 children.

The UN refugee agency earlier this month said that at more than 20,000, the number of asylum-seekers arriving in Italy was already around triple the whole of 2012, with most coming from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria.

A 22-year-old Syrian woman was found dead on a boat that arrived on Saturday with 339 people on board. Her funeral was held in Sicily on Wednesday.

NAIROBI: Somalia's Shebab insurgents claimed Wednesday 137 hostages they had seized died in a Nairobi shopping mall siege, figures impossible to verify and higher than the number of people officially registered as missing.

The Al-Qaeda-linked fighters, in a message posted on Twitter, said “137 hostages who were being held by the mujaheddin” had died.

They also accused Kenyan troops of using “chemical agents” to end the four-day stand-off.

“In an act of sheer cowardice, beleaguered Kenyan forces deliberately fired projectiles containing chemical agents,” one tweet read.

“To cover their crime, the Kenyan government carried out a demolition to the building, burying evidence and all hostages under the rubble.” President Uhuru Kenyatta announced an end to the 80-hour bloodbath late Tuesday, with the “immense” loss of 61 civilians and six members of the security forces.

Police said the death toll was provisional, with the Kenyan Red Cross listing 63 people as still missing.

There was no immediate response from Kenya's government, but the Shebab have in past made repeated outlandish claims, especially on their Twitter site.

The Shebab said they carried out the attack in retaliation for Kenya's two-year battle against the extremists' bases in the country.

In one of the worst attacks in Kenya's history, the militants marched into the four-storey, part Israeli-owned mall at midday Saturday, spraying shoppers with automatic weapons fire and tossing grenades.

Kenya on Wednesday began three days of official mourning, with flags flying at half mast, while rescue workers scoured the wreckage of the mall for bodies.

Close to 200 were wounded in the four-day siege, which saw running battles between militants and security forces in the complex, Nairobi's largest shopping centre and popular with wealthy Kenyans, diplomats, UN workers and other expatriates.

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities have shut down the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice newspaper in Cairo, the latest move aimed at crushing the Islamist movement, the Brotherhood said on Wednesday.

“We the journalists of the Freedom and Justice newspaper condemn the security forces for closing down the headquarters of the newspaper,” the Brotherhood said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

Police stormed the building overnight and removed the contents. A source at the Cairo Security Department said the raid followed Monday's court ruling which banned the Brotherhood and ordered its funds seized.

“A court ruling was issued to do it on charges of inciting violence and terrorism in the recent past,” a security source said, referring to the operation.

The army overthrew Mursi in July, and the Brotherhood has seen hundreds of its members killed and thousands arrested since then.

The campaign had forced many of the 50 journalists who produced the daily Freedom and Justice to work in secret to avoid arrest.

The newspaper, named after the Brotherhood's political wing, had focused on efforts to reverse what it called a military coup against an elected government.

The Brotherhood emerged from the shadows to win parliamentary and presidential elections after autocrat Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

Many Egyptians became disillusioned with Mursi after he gave himself sweeping powers and mismanaged the economy, taking to the streets in protest and prompting the army move.

NEW DELHI: Indian premier Manmohan Singh confirmed Wednesday he will meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif this weekend in a major step towards better relations following rising tensions.

Singh said he will hold talks with Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the first such meeting in three years, amid heightened friction over a string of deadly military attacks across their border in disputed Kashmir.

“During my visit to New York, I... look forward to bilateral meetings with the leaders of some of our neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan,” Singh said in a statement before leaving for the United States.

Singh will first head to Washington to meet President Barack Obama to try to strengthen economic ties between the two world's largest democracies including on nuclear power, before leaving for New York.

“Over the past decade, our relationship with the United States, which is one of our most important relationships, has transformed into a global strategic partnership,” his statement said.

New Delhi and Islamabad have been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to secure a meeting, which was in jeopardy after deadly skirmishes in recent weeks between their militaries. The attacks repeatedly broke a ceasefire in place since 2003 along the de facto border in Kashmir.

The picturesque Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan by the UN-monitored Line of Control (LoC), but is claimed in full by both countries. Two of their three wars have been fought over Kashmir.

The deadly flare-ups followed an ambush in August that killed five Indian soldiers along the LoC. India blamed the Pakistan army for the attack, a charge that Islamabad denied.

Since winning a general election in May, Sharif has been vocal in his desire for better relations with India.

Last month he urged both sides to work swiftly to shore up the 10-year ceasefire after India's defence minister hinted at stronger military action along the LoC.

Analyst K. G. Suresh said the incidents in Kashmir, along with attacks by Pakistani militants on Indian soil, were among issues expected to be raised at the meeting — set to be held at a New York hotel on Sunday.

But Suresh told AFP that talk of a resumption of peace talks as a direct result of the meeting was premature. The talks were halted in January, shortly after they had resumed, following a deadly flare-up at that time along the LoC.

“The meeting is definitely a huge step forward (to improved relations),”said Suresh of the Vivekanand International Foundation think-tank.

“The Indian PM has taken a calculated risk by agreeing to meet Sharif ahead of elections next year,” he added.

India's embattled ruling Congress party faces national elections next year and is under domestic pressure not to be seen as too soft on Pakistan.

The premiers of India and Pakistan last met in 2010 on the sidelines of a regional summit in Bhutan's capital Thimphu, with both sides reaffirming the importance of moving forward with dialogue.

Peace talks were suspended for three years after the 2008 attacks in Mumbai which killed 166 people and which India blamed on Pakistani militants.

India has been demanding that Pakistan speed up trials for militants on its side thought to have been behind the attacks.

Earlier, the provincial government had decided that five police stations in the metropolis, one each in the five districts of Karachi division, would be under the joint control of Rangers and police to deal with four types of heinous crimes.

The suspects arrested on charges of “terrorism, targeted killing, kidnapping for ransom and bhatta (extortion)” during the ongoing targeted operation would be kept and interrogated at the five designated police stations, said Advocate General for Sindh Barrister Khalid Javed Khan.

Sources told Dawn.com that PS Aaram Bagh, PS Ferozabad, PS Nazimabad, PS Orangi Town and PS Steel Town would be under the control of Rangers’ forces.

Meanwhile, in an operation carried out by the city’s east and west zone police, 130 suspects were arrested within 24 hours. The suspects included wanted criminals, drug dealers and fugitives. Moreover, arms were also recovered during the raid.

Moreover, paramilitary forces carried out operations in the areas of Old Sabzi Mandi, Phool Pati Lane Lyari, Kharadar, Zia Colony, Jodia Bazaar among others and arrested 21 suspects.

According to a Rangers’ spokesperson, the arrested persons were involved in heinous crimes.

Karachi, the largest metropolitan city of Pakistan, is riddled with targeted killings, gang wars, kidnappings for ransom, extortion and terrorism. Targeted operations are ongoing in Karachi under a directive issued by the federal government led by Rangers’ forces with the support of police against criminals already identified by federal military and civilian agencies.

Syrian officials supplied the evidence, which Mr Lavrov has not yet seen.

A UN report released on Monday concluded the nerve agent sarin was used in the attack in Damascus, in which hundreds were killed.

The US blamed government forces for the attack, but Russia and Damascus have insisted that rebels were responsible.

The UN report did not apportion blame for the attack, which sparked diplomacy that culminated in a deal for Syria to hand over its chemical arsenal by mid-2014.

The report's author, Ake Sellstrom, told the BBC he believed that the task of finding and destroying Syria's chemical stockpile would be "stressful work", but was "doable".

He said much depended on whether the Syrian government and the opposition were willing to negotiate.

The disarmament deal was brokered by the US and Russia.

The penalty for any possible breaches by Syria are now being thrashed out by the UN Security Council permanent members.

Mr Lavrov said there was plenty of evidence that pointed to rebel involvement in chemical attacks similar to the Damascus attack.

"We will have to find out who did it," he said.

Earlier Mr Lavrov's deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, said he had been given the evidence during a trip to Syria.

He said it needed to be analysed, and gave no details of its content.

Mr Ryabkov criticised the UN report, saying it was "distorted" and "one-sided".

"The basis of information upon which it is built is not sufficient, and in any case we would need to learn and know more on what happened beyond and above that incident of 21 August," he said.

"We are disappointed, to put it mildly, about the approach taken by the UN secretariat and the UN inspectors, who prepared the report selectively and incompletely."

In response to Mr Ryabkov's comments, Mr Sellstrom told the BBC he thought Russia was not criticising the report itself but the process, which he described a political matter and therefore not his remit

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius defended the UN report, saying he was surprised by the Russian reaction.

"Nobody can question the objectivity of the people appointed by the UN," he said.

Human Rights Watch has taken the trajectory of the rockets from the UN document and plotted their likely path.

The rights group said the likely launch site for the missiles was in a government military compound.

The UN inspectors were originally mandated to go to Syria to investigate three alleged chemical weapons attacks, at Khan al-Assal, Sheikh Maqsoud and Saraqeb.

But they were later ordered to shift their focus to the Damascus incident, which was the most deadly chemical assault.

They are due to return to Syria "within weeks" to complete their inquiry into the other attacks, and a report is due in October.

On Tuesday the five permanent UN Security Council members met in New York to discuss a draft resolution put forward by the UK, France and the US.

They want a resolution containing the threat of military action against Syria if it fails to comply with the disarmament deal, but Russia opposes this.

A resolution under Chapter VII of the UN charter permits military action if other measures do not succeed. Chapter VI requires a purely negotiated solution.

The BBC's Daniel Sandford in Moscow says Russia has delivered a promise from Syria to give up its chemical weapons, and it seems that at this stage Moscow does not feel like giving the Western allies anything more.

Russia and China have three times blocked Western-backed Security Council resolutions against Mr Assad.

More than 100,000 people have died since the uprising against President Assad began in 2011.

Millions of Syrians have fled the country and millions more have been internally displaced.

The release of Grand Theft Auto V yesterday brought to the forefront an apocalyptic scenario. The end-times theme isn’t part of the blockbuster video game’s setting, a fictionalized Los Angeles that’s havoc-filled but otherwise enduring. The apocalypse is part of the non-pixelated reality for gamers living through the final weeks in the eight-year reign of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Later this year, next-generation technology from the two major gaming powers will hit the market and render obsolete the current console, which will be banished en masse to dusty closets and the cluttered shelves of GameStop (GME) outlets. Grand Theft Auto V will likewise become an outmoded relic: Neither the Xbox One nor the PlayStation 4 will be able to run games made for older consoles (at first, anyway).

Rockstar Games (TTWO) reportedly spent $115 million developing Grand Theft Auto V and $150 million on marketing—and the game is expected to make almost six times that much in sales over the course of the first year. So maybe a relatively short shelf life doesn’t matter much. Still, it seems strange to develop the most expensive video game ever for machines that will soon take a major step toward irrelevance.

In part, the decision to build for the old consoles is driven by the fact that game developers have gotten really good at it. Aaron Garbut, the art director at Rockstar North, told BuzzFeed that the studio is just hitting its stride when it comes to using the capabilities of the current consoles to do things like replicate convincing-looking daylight. Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, told Famitsumagazine that the best games for a console always come out at the moment before it’s overtaken by newer machines:

This seems especially plausible given that Grand Theft Auto V has a rating of 98 out of 100 on the game-rating site Metacritic. While the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be more powerful and include features unavailable on their predecessors, there will also be a learning curve that could go on for several years.

The market for gaming consoles is also relatively friendly to developers who don’t immediately move to the hot new thing. About 150 million current versions of the Xbox and PlayStations have been sold worldwide, and even the most optimistic sales forecasts for the upcoming consoles put them nowhere near those numbers for quite some time. Nor will Microsoft (MSFT) or Sony (SNE) stop selling their old gear. It could be as late as 2015 before annual sales of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 surpass sales of their lower-priced predecessors, according to
Gartner (IT) analyst Brian Blau.

For the next several years, developers will continue to serve two sets of gamers. “I would expect that we would get one more year out of parallel development, where you will see parallel titles, but after a while the developers will start to see diminishing returns,” Blau says. “I think it’s going to take some time.”

It will take three to four years before the current consoles really become obsolete if the patterns of past cycles continue, and by then sales of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will likely be slowing down as consumers anticipate the next generation of consoles down the line. That will be just about the time when developers finally start cranking out games that take advantage of the aging technology.

The South American nation has suggested forcing internet firms to open data centres in Brazil, which would be used to store locally generated material.

It is also pursuing a plan to build a new internet cable.

The project would offer a way for data to bypass the US.

Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, has postponed a state visit to Washington after allegations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had targeted her emails and phone calls.

It has also been alleged that the NSA hacked state-run oil company Petrobras and intercepted billions of emails and calls to Brazilians.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has previously defended the NSA's actions, saying they were necessary to combat terrorism.

"Brazil and other countries will understand exactly what we are doing, why and how - and we will work together to make sure that whatever is done is done in a way that respects our friends and our partners," he said last month on a visit to the country.

Brazil's IT policy secretary Virgilio Almeida has suggested that internet firms would have to operate data centres in the country, which would make them subject to local privacy laws.

In addition, he said, the government might move to ensure that its own data about tax information and other sensitive subjects would be stored locally rather than in the cloud.

Last week a Brazilian official specifically named Facebook, Google and Microsoft as examples of companies that would have to change their practices, according to a report by the Reuters news agency.

The three companies are among those that have acknowledged handing over data about "national security matters" after legally binding requests from the US authorities.

However, there is no suggestion that Brazilians would be barred from using US-based storage services.

Brazil is also backing a separate plan to create the Brics Cable.

This would see a fibre-optic link run from the Brazilian city of Fortaleza to Vladivostok, Russia. The link would pass through Africa and Asia and connect with cables running to mainland Europe and the Middle East.

There would also be a link between Fortaleza and Miami, but it would mean data would not need to go through Florida before travelling elsewhere.

At present the vast majority of Central and South America's internet data is routed through a single building in Miami known as the Network Access Point.

According to documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have used cable taps to collect "vast amounts" of data passing though their countries, which are then analysed using encryption-cracking tools.

The Brics Cable's organisers hope to have their 34,000km (21,000 miles) link ready to use by the end of 2015.

Brazil's telecom firm Telebras is also planning to launch the country's first communications satellite in 2016. Its military currently relies on a system run by Mexico's Embratel.

In addition the country's postal service has announced plans to create an encrypted email service to offer the public an alternative to Gmail, Yahoo email or Outlook.com.

One expert warned that such measures would give Brazil only a limited degree of protection from the NSA.

"They are a step towards getting out the very strong control the US has over the internet infrastructure," said Dr Joss Wright, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute.

"But if you send an email from your encrypted Brazilian provider to somebody else who has a Gmail account then Google is getting to read the thread of information anyway.

"Regarding the new cables, you can't say, 'My data should go from here to here across this particular path.'

"It's calculated on a very ad-hoc basis where it is going to go... which means you can't guarantee that just because there is a new high-capacity cable running from Brazil to Russia that all the data will go through it rather than an alternative."

He added that taking steps to make firms subject to local data protection laws might also be easier said than done.

"Look at the EU - it already has very strict rules about sharing and processing data and the general rule is that you can only share data if you share it with a country that has equivalently strong protection laws," he told the BBC.

"However, the US being the US has a get-out-of-jail-free card with what are called the 'safe harbour provisions'.

"They are an industry self-regulatory agreement which says they will treat data according to EU standards. But there is no oversight, there's no comeback if they do not live up to them."