LONDON: Britain has told the U.S. that it would call off its 10-billion-pound plan to acquire the new joint strike fighter F-35 if it does not get access to the technology for development of the aircraft.

Britain’s minister for defence procurement Lord Drayson told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that his country would lose sovereign control without access to the technology.

Both the U.S. Congress and Lockheed Martin are not in favour of any technology transfer fearing it would mean handing over stealth aircraft technology to industrial competitors in the U.K.

But the Royal Airforce commanders say in the absence of such an understanding, they will be at the mercy of Lockheed Martin executives in operating the fleet.

Lord Drayson told media persons before his meeting with the senators that Britain wants to be absolutely clear about what the bottom line is on this matter. Unless this is clarified, “we will not be able to purchase the aircraft.”.

Meanwhile, defence experts in the U.K. are talking about the government considering alternatives to the joint strike fighter, including continuing with the Harriers or buying the French Rafale aircraft. Indeed it is thought that the UK has already entered into a verbal agreement with the French to buy 150 Rafale aircraft for use on the new generation of aircraft carrier.

If this is the case, as is likely, then it could be that the British Government is spinning this for all it’s worth in an attempt to get out of the JSF deal when in fact another deal has been done for the French aircraft. This could be the reason why the US is slow to come forward with the technical and sensitive data as one would expect if they know about the Rafale deal too.

Although the UK has already bought a few Rafale aircraft already, it would indeed be a great pity for Britain, the Royal Navy and RAF if the UK Government opts for the lesser Rafale instead of the new state of the art JSF either as a political stunt to get in with the French as an EU gesture or one to try and save a bit of money at the expense of putting Britain’s security and defence first.

Lord Drayson told the senators that the U.S. needed to understand that a mutual commitment to the joint strike fighter was dependant on Britain having the operational sovereignty it requires.

Britain believes that the row could impact future cooperation between the two countries, especially on issues like replacement of Trident as Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Britain is also apprehensive about the U.S. defence department’s decision to scrap a $2 billion program for a second engine for the joint strike aircraft, proposed to be jointly developed by Rolls-Royce and General Electric.

Lord Drayson said Pentagon did not consult Britain properly before the project was dropped.

Several key U.S. senators questioned the Pentagon on its decision to scrap the plan.

Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner, said relying on a single-engine design is a “scenario that presents unprecedented vulnerability,” notably if a glitch should ground the fleet.

The administration in its fiscal 2007 spending plan, has suggested ending the alternative engine proposal, developed in 60-40 partnership by GE and Rolls-Royce.

Deputy defence secretary Gordon England had told the senate hearing that the Pentagon had felt “it would be nice to have a second engine, (but) it is not necessary and not affordable.”

England said the defence department has found that the second engine will never yield savings in the “most realistic scenario”.

The F-35 project is being co-financed by the U.S., Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway. While Britain and other countries, except the U.S. have committed $2 billion for the project, while the U.S. has committed the balance. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor, while Pratt & Whitney, part of United Technologies Corp. , has been chosen to build the plane’s initial engine.

LONDON: The British government has clarified that it will not demand repayment from pensioners of the overpaid pension credit, which is calculated at around 130 million pounds.

The government’s reiteration came in response to fears raised by Conservative shadow minister David Ruffley that the government is planning to ask the pensioners to repay the overpaid pension credit.

Pension reform minister Stephen Timms said the government has written to the pensioners clarifying the issue.

The government, in a parliamentary answer had admitted that overpayment of pension credit in 2004-2005 is estimated to have risen to 2.1 per cent of the total paid.

Timms said there is no demand for pay back. He said when there is a mistake, a letter goes out to the pensioners. “It makes it clear that social security law does not allow us to require repayment,” he said.

“If people want to, and are willing to pay that money back, we’ll be pleased. But nobody will be forced to pay the money back,” he added.

The pension credits system came into being in October 2003 replacing the earlier minimum income guarantee system. For the year to March 2003, the overpayment of MIG to pensioners was estimated at 50 million pounds. However, in the following years, as pension credits were brought in, this had gone up to 100 million pounds and then 130 million pounds.

The department of work and pensions has framed rules to the effect that the extra money would only be clawed back where “there was a misrepresentation of, or failure to disclose, a material fact”. There would be no demand for the money if it was overpaid due to official error.

Ruffley said the figures revealed by the government showed that ministers were running the pension credit system “incompetently”. He said the government will have to explain why overpayments have trebled and give reassurances to affected pensioners that they will not be harassed and treated insensitively by government officials.

LONDON: Surfing the web has overtaken watching the TV as the favourite pastime of Britons, according to a survey commissioned by search engine Google. The survey, which covered more than 1,000 adults in the age group pf 16-64, found that on an average a person spend 164 minutes online every day, meaning 41 days a year, against 148 minutes watching television, which is equivalent of 37 days a year.

Men have been found to better women in surfing averaging 172 minute a day against 156 minutes a day by the latter. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they improved their online habit in the last one year, the highest increase being among the 16-24 year range.

On regional basis, people in the Greater London area spent the longest time on the net, an average of 181 minutes a day. They were also the largest online spenders, spending as much as 517 pounds a year buying goods and services online.

The average online shopper spends 446 pounds buying things on the net, which may range from groceries and clothes to holidays and cars.

The people who use the net the least are from the South and East, averaging 155 minutes, and the North West, averaging 142 minutes, the survey found.

Google UK’s Richard Gregory said this is not changing of guard, but shows how “people think about the place the internet has in their lives”.

Google’s claim is, however, contested by studies conducted by a television audience ratings group, Barb, which said its January figures showed a person viewed television on an average for 238 minutes a day. The firm uses electronic measurement in estimating the extent of television viewing.

Media watchdog Ofcom has another set of conclusions. Its report on media literacy claims television viewing has reduced in recent years. It said, the number of people watching the TV for at least 15 minutes a day had declined by 2.5 per cent among the 25-34 group. The shift is even higher among younger groups.

Industry watchers say the figures cannot be conclusive proof. For instance, they point out, many internet users may be using their computer systems to watch TV programmes and may be to watch a video or listen to radio even as they surf web pages.

In fact, there is convergence happening in this segment as demonstrated by the efforts of BSkyB and BT to bring in TV programmes over the internet using the internet protocol television – IPTV.

LONDON: The Competition Commission has found that in the absence of competition, store card users end up paying 10 per cent to 20 per cent more on interest and insurance, which on an annualised basis could be of the order of 55 million pounds. The commission, which carried out a two-year-long investigation, has directed store card providers to provide information to customers that they may get better deals elsewhere.

The commission’s deputy chairman Christopher Clarke said retailers and store card credit providers are insulated from competitive pressures and “We estimate that the detriment in terms of the excess prices paid for credit and insurance on store cards has been at least 55 million pounds a year, and possibly significantly more.”

There are 11 million Britons who use store cards mostly provided by six prominent players — Arg Card Services, Creation Financial Services, General Electric Consumer Finance UK, HSBC Group, Ikano Financial Services and Style Financial Services. These cards usually offer discounts on purchases within a fixed period — as well as a period of interest-free credit lasting a few weeks. Though the adverse publicity has led to a fall in the interest rates, these are still prevail around 30 per cent, compared with 10 to 15 per cent for conventional credit cards.

The commission is telling card providers, who charge an annual percentage rate (APR) above 25 per cent to print warnings on monthly statements that cheaper credit may be available elsewhere. It has also called for providing payment protection insurance to cover debt repayment for borrowers who lose their sources of income separately instead of including it in store card insurance and offer the option to pay by direct debit.

The commission had originally mooted these proposals in September to be implemented on a voluntary basis. It will now be imposed by an order.

The commission found that there were 11.4 million store cards in circulation at the end of 2005, down from 17.5 million at the end of 2002. Some 57 per cent of cardholders took credit on to their accounts, paying it back with high rates of interest.

The Finance & Leasing Association, which represents major store card providers, claimed the higher APRs are now historic and that most consumers were now offered a range of rates beginning 12.9 per cent.

Ashley Holmes, the association’s head of legal affairs, said the APRs are now lower and there is greater consumer transparency. He said the warning on cards costing more than 25 per cent could act as a back door cap on prices and may backfire.

A spokesperson for consumer rights organisation Which? said consumers should avoid store cards altogether.

LONDON: After more than three years of detailed study of paintings — six of them — the National Portrait Gallery has come to the conclusion that the Chandos portrait by a little known 17th century artist is the nearest in looks of Shakespeare. The study has been carried out for one of the biggest exhibitions on Shakespeare in his own time and is open from Saturday at the Gallery.

According to Tarnya Cooper, who has curated the show, the first painting of the poet known to have been donated to the institution some 150 years ago could be the best guess. The Chandos portrait dates back to the lifetime of Shakespeare and many scholars have vouched that it is the correct depiction of the Bard of Avon.

Cooper says the claim of the Chandos portrait to represent Shakespeare has “increased, but it’s not absolutely watertight. We may never find the clincher piece of evidence – though it may yet turn up”.

A detailed forensic examination of the paintwork has concluded that some of the details in the portrait, like the earring and necktie, represented the time when Shakespeare was alive. An 18th century antiquarian, George Vertue had done great work on Shakespeare, tracing him via a theatre manager, who was Shakespeare’s godson, William Davenant, and also the painter, John Taylor, who has done this portrait.

Dr Cooper says unfortunately there are no surviving works by John Taylor. He was not a great artist. “If Davenant was making up claims, you would expect him to say it was by someone more famous.

“I’m sure Vertue’s evidence is absolutely accurate but we’re relying on a chain of Chinese whispers. What is clear is that it was assumed to be Shakespeare within 50 years of his death. It’s a pretty close link.”

The Gallery has conducted tests on several so-called Shakespeare portraits, subjecting them to X-rays, ultraviolet examination, microphotography and pigment analysis. It found that one of the best-known images, the Flower portrait owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a fake, painted 200 years after the writer’s death. Forensic studies revealed that the chrome yellow paint used in the portrait was first used in 1814. This portrait has been widely reproduced and is often printed on the covers of his plays.

Studies also showed that the Grafton portrait, which shows a dark-haired, highbrowed young man in a rich scarlet jacket was not true. While the painting could be dated to 1588, when the poet was 24, there was no evidence that it depicted the poet. Cooper says it was unlikely that Shakespeare, then a young struggling actor, could afford such luxurious clothes.

All said and done, paintings and pictures fade into insignificance as Ben Jonson said in his preface to the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays: “Reader, looke not on his Picture, but his Booke.”

The exhibition, Searching for Shakespeare, has six of the best-known “Shakespeare” portraits with original documents from the playwright’s life, including the bond of his marriage to Anne Hathaway, the deed to his house in Stratford and the will in which he left his wife his “second-best bed.”

Also on display are early editions of Shakespeare plays, clothes worn on stage and other rare items relating to his life like the parish register from the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon containing details of his family life, a document which has recorded an objection to Shakespeare being granted a coat of arms because a stage player was not entitled to this honour and a painting of the Swan Theatre.

The exhibition runs until 29 May.

LONDON: Football goalkeepers and baseball catchers, who miss spinning balls coming their way, cannot be held responsible this lapse as new research has shown that humans cannot normally anticipate the spinning balls’ trajectory.

A psychologist in Northern Ireland, Cathy Craig, who studied the ability of athletes to follow the path of spinning balls, has found that the human visual system is not equipped to track the curved course of a fast-spinning ball. Craig of Queen’s University in Belfast reported her findings in New Scientist magazine.

She said she was motivated to examine the ability of humans in following the course of a spinning ball after witnessing a 1997 soccer game in which Roberto Carlos scored a goal for Brazil.

“Everybody seemed to think it was going wide,” she told the magazine. “Then it curved in at the last minute.”

She said she asked professional players watching a virtual game to forecast whether a ball with a spin of 600 revolutions per minute would land in the goal. None of them could predict the trajectory of the ball.

Craig says spin produces a force that adds to the speed of the ball in such a way that human eyes cannot process the movement of the ball. She has a reason: spinning is not a natural process and human visual capacity is not equipped to detect its course.

She is of the opinion that many top players work hard at trying to develop cognitive and behavioural compensatory strategies in order to counteract this shortcoming.

She says humans can predict how gravity will affect a body in motion and get ahead of it. But, a curveball or spinner involves a Magnus force pushing it sideways — a feature that does not happen in nature — and hence the human eyes and minds are not trained to handle them.

PARIS – The French government appears to be on a “Save the National assets from outsiders” campaign as it mediated a merger of Suez SA and the state-owned Gaz de France in order to pre-empt Italy’s Enel, which was considering tabling an offer for Suez. This is the second time in less than two months that the French government has intervened in a business deal after it opposed the hostile bid of steel baron Lakshmi Mittal’s LNM Company for Arcelor.

The merger of Suez and Gaz de France, which has been given an initial approval by both boards, will create the world’s second largest energy utility. The deal, which is a one-for-one stock swap, was termed as a “merger of equals” by both companies. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin had announced the deal on Saturday and the boards gave their nod on Sunday, “Given the strategic importance of energy, the fusion of Gaz de France and Suez seems today to be the most appropriate path,” Villepin said.

“It will give France a second big player in the energy sector besides EDF and boost the global industrial vocation of our country.” Finance Minister Thierry Breton said that the details are yet to be trashed out, but the government stake in Gaz de France would automatically come down, “The government’s stake will automatically fall below 34 to 35 percent. But the state also has indirect shareholdings and overall the state shareholding will be slightly below 40 percent,” he said.

The state currently holds 80 percent of the energy utility. This move is the latest in what is being dubbed as “economic patriotism” in France. However, Italy and Enel were not pleased with this high-handedness displayed by the French government. Enel’s chief executive Fulvio Conti said that the move was akin to renationalizing Suez, “It’s as if the Italian government took over Fiat to defend it from a takeover bid by Renault. It’s the funeral of the European market,” he said, adding that it was a big blow for the European market.

Italy’s economy minister, Giulio Tremonti went a step further and labeled this move as a declaration of war, “We still have time to stop this race by the European states to build protective barriers,” he said.

LONDON: Supermarket chain Somerfield is planning to sell 270 of its budget stores, Kwik Save, according to news reports.

Somerfield, now owned by a consortium including property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, Apax and Barclays Capital, is said to be in talks with a number of buyer for its loss-making business.

Latest reports indicated that Richard Kirk, chief executive of Peacock Group, is a front-runner to buy a majority of these stores with his own funds. Kirk had acquired Peacock Group with the help of hedge funds in a 405-million-pound deal in November last.

Iceland’s retail group Baugur is also keen on buying a number of these stores. The other potential buyers could be Aldi, Lidl and Netto, all of Europe, the reports said.

The consortium had bought Somerfield for 1.1 billion pounds late 2005. It had brought in a new management team and restructured the business, which included converting the better performing Kwik Save stores into Somerfield mould and selling the remaining ones, mostly located at secondary sites. The company is said to be losing 40 million dollars a year on account these unprofitable stores.

A spokesman for the company refused to comment on the report that the Kwik Save stores are for sale.

Baugur had earlier hinted at buying the whole of Somerfield but withdrew following internal problems.

Kwik Save vends a range of branded goods at knock-down prices. Somerfield had bought the business in 1998.

NEW YORK: Apple Computer announced Thursday its iTunes Music Store has sold one-billionth song — in less than three years of its debut in the online music market.

The song, Coldplay’s Speed of Sound, was downloaded by 16-year-old Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, Michigan. In reward, Apple is to present him with a 20-inch iMac, 10 iPods and a $10,000 in gift card that can be used to buy any item at the iTunes Music Store.

Adjudged as the world’s most-visited online music store, iTunes is the first e-store to break into the top 10 ranks of music retailers. It is estimated to have 80 per cent of worldwide market share and in 2005, its traffic had grown by a phenomenal 241 per cent, from 6.1 million to 20.7 million, according to Nielsen NetRatings.

Ostrovsky , who has not been a frequenter at the iTunes store, said he must have downloaded around 50 songs. He was more of a borrower of music CDs from his friends. “I’m certainly going to download more songs now,” he said.

Apple has announced that it will set up a scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music in New York in Ostrovsky’s name to mark the occasion. The company has posted a ‘thank you’ announcement at its website, saying, “Music lovers like you in 21 countries around the globe have purchased 1 billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. And for helping us reach this massive milestone in digital music history, we’d like to thank you.”

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement: “I hope that every customer, artist and music company executive takes a moment today to reflect on what we’ve achieved together during the past three years. Over 1 billion songs have now been legally purchased and downloaded around the globe, representing a major force against music piracy and the future of music distribution as we move from CDs to the Internet.”

The company has been awarding a black 4GB iPod nano and $100 worth of coupons to every fan downloading 100,000th music.

Globally, digital music sales constitute only 6 per cent of overall music sales, but they grew from $220 million to $790 million in a year.