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<p>CHICAGO, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A business traveler waits in line at O'Hare International Airport to board a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta when his mobile phone rings. Thinking it is a personal call or business matter, he takes the call, but discovers it is a telemarketer, cold-calling from a credit card company, wanting to know if he would like to consolidate his cards.</p>

"While Kerry was relatively restrained in disputing [Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi's upbeat portrayal, some of his aides suggested that the Iraqi leader was simply doing the bidding of the Bush administration, which helped arrange his appointment in June. 'The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips,' said Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser." (Ronald Brownstein,  "Allawi Effectiveness Hinges On Credibility," Los Angeles Times.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040921-090816-9625r CHICAGO, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Four years ago, the Internet cognoscenti were talking constantly about the "digital divide." The theory was access to the Internet was determined largely by class and income, and poor children were being effectively excluded from online activities. True once or not, that no longer appears to be the case. New research indicates the digital divide has disappeared. Nearly every child -- 96 percent of all youngsters, according to research released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation -- has been online. Now a new problem has emerged, experts told United Press International: The quality...

Democratic Underground Forums - George W. Bush was photographed ... ... is the "military biography" released by the Bush Campaign: In this document, the claim is made that Bush was awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the ... www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/ duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x654437 - 101k - Cached - Democratic Underground Forums - Airforce says Bush would not get ... ... after they started attack on medal, seabeyond, Sep ... us an email at mail@DemocraticUnderground.com ... www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard. php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=715826&mesg... - 36k - [ More results from www.democraticunderground.com ] United Press International: Internet claim on Bush award disputed ... summary of the story was also...

Futurist Marshall McLuhan once famously wrote that the "medium is the message." The phrase has become a credo for the telecommunications industry during the last 30 or so years. Trouble is, there are so many media today, the message is getting garbled.Technology entrepreneurs are creating a continual array of new technologies, from wireless-fidelity networks to high-speed Internet, for mobile consumers and business people, none of which were envisioned only a decade ago. The problem is, the federal government's rules for telecom technology -- first written in the 1930s and revised about 10 years ago -- have not kept pace with...

The Air Force has knocked down allegations by a Web site that said President Bush, when serving as an officer in the Texas Air National Guard, wore a ribbon he was not authorized to wear -- a military offense that could have led to a bad-conduct discharge from the service, if true. The original story was offered to United Press International during late August by operatives from Democrats.com, an Internet activist group whose founder had earlier this year served as a source for the Boston Globe and other media outlets on stories about Bush's service in the guard in the...

CHICAGO, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Pop diva Avril Lavigne -- whose 2002 album, "Let Go," sold 14 million copies -- does not debut new songs on the radio. Rather, the Canadian singer and her producers premiere new tunes and music videos exclusively on the Internet. The cyber-strategy, employing the latest audio and video streaming technologies to reach music fans online, is being utilized by other popular musicians, such as Usher, and rapidly is remaking the global media business. "We can reach 2 million people in 24 hours," Evan Harrison, vice president and general manager of America Online's radio operations, told...

A weekly series by UPI examining emerging wireless telecommunications technologies.--CHICAGO, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Christi Dixon savors the roll-over minutes her mobile phone company recently started offering. "All of my minutes transfer to the next month," Dixon, who works in marketing in St. Louis, told United Press International. "And on the months that I talk a lot, I avoid all the overage fees."As recently as two years ago, mobile phone companies gouged consumers, selling them cool technologies, with seemingly cheap monthly plans. Consumers recoiled when they received their phone bills, and were charged huge fees, often two or three times...

CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russian underworld figures and Nigerian e-mail scam artists are no longer responsible for most of the spam arriving in U.S. e-mail inboxes. The latest research indicates most spam on the Internet in the United States is now generated domestically -- not overseas. "American spammers are the driving force," Phyllis Schneck, vice president of CipherTrust Inc., an Internet security firm in Atlanta, said. Experts say that is not just an interesting tidbit. It is explosive information, because it means legislation passed by Congress last year to curtail spam has not worked, and many Internet marketers who...

CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russian underworld figures and Nigerian e-mail scam artists are no longer responsible for most of the spam arriving in U.S. e-mail inboxes. The latest research indicates most spam on the Internet in the United States is now generated domestically -- not overseas. "American spammers are the driving force," Phyllis Schneck, vice president of CipherTrust Inc., an Internet security firm in Atlanta, told United Press International. Experts say that is not just an interesting tidbit. It is explosive information, because it means legislation passed by Congress last year to curtail spam has not worked, and many...

CHICAGO, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- As the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court last summer prepared their opinions for the case of Lawrence, et al. vs. Texas, gay activists around the country rapidly readied their online response. "We didn't know whether we would celebrate, protest, or celebrate and protest," said Robin Tyler, executive director of the Equality Campaign, a homosexual rights organization, at dontamend.com."So we had three sets of postings ready," he told United Press International. "The second it came out, we distributed our talking points by e-mail and online postings." Based on Internet talking points, which touted a ruling...

An associate of Osama bin Laden crawls into a container --along with some new luxury cars -- in a shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. The goal -- shipping himself to the United States and evading the Department of Homeland Security, with its high-tech officers on the ground at major airports, armed with databses of suspects' photos. he is foiled, however, when a silent alarm is triggered, and an alert is sent to security over the airwaves, as he lifts the lid of the container in the warehouse. A wireless radio frequencey identification or RFUD security tag on the container sent the...

CHICAGO, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- It's August, and the new school year is about to start, but Linda Crandall, a mom in Baldwin, Mo., is vowing she will not shop for her kids at one of those frenzied, back-to-school sales at the local mall. "This year, I will purchase school supplies online," Crandall told United Press International. "It's 10 times more flexible and it keeps the kids from seeing all the neat stuff in the aisle. They can't talk us into buying things that they already have due to a new, neat color or shape." Crandall is far from alone....

A weekly series by UPI examining emerging wireless telecommunications technologies.-- CHICAGO, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- A grocery store orders a case of potato chips, but the delivery man arrives with a carton of swizzle sticks. The mix-up in orders -- a commonplace in retailing and manufacturing today -- soon may be a thing of the past, thanks to wireless radio frequency identification technology, experts told United Press International. "Getting the right products in the right boxes, and sending it all to the right location, is a lot more complicated than most people think," said Joe Zurawski, vice president of product...

On July 12, Planned Parenthood began to offer for sale on its Web site a T-shirt with the simple--yet startling--message, "I had an abortion." Through Monday, 200 shirts have been purchased and commentators on all sides of the abortion issue have registered opinions about it. Reactions have ranged from gratitude to unease to hostility.

CHICAGO, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, an internist, learns a great deal from his clients these days, many of whom are sophisticated Internet surfers. "My patients teach me a lot," said Teitelbaum, who practices in Annapolis, Md., and is the author of the best-selling book, "From Fatigued to Fantastic!" (Avery Penguin Putnam). "Medical school was a good start," Teitelbaum told United Press International. "But the Internet is a powerful information tool. It saves a lot of time and has a lot of valuable information on medical conditions. Having access to that makes it easier for doctors to listen...

A weekly series by UPI examining emerging wireless telecommunications technologies.-- CHICAGO, July 30 (UPI) -- A nervous individual investor eyes the wireless device on his desk at the office. The small, crystal ball shaped object -- the stock orb -- is glowing red. That means it is time for him to sell his shares on NASDAQ.Stock market advice, provided by a telecommuting medieval wizard? Hardly. he device is an example of "pre-cognitive communications," as its inventor calls it, and it -- and other wireless devices like it -- are designed to help harried humans, overwhelmed by the influx of information...

A weekly series by UPI examining the global telecommunications phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. -- CHICAGO, July 28 (UPI) -- Computer hooligans are increasingly employing more sophisticated techniques to trick unsuspecting consumers and infect their PCs with viruses, including embedding malicious code in fabricated news images, such as those posted on the Internet last week purporting to show terrorist madman Osama bin Laden dead from suicide. "If you are going to talk about trends in malware -- malicious code -- you must talk about trends in overall computer technology," said Sam Curry, the vice president of security management...

CHICAGO, July 23 (UPI) -- When marketing professionals at a firm in California's Silicon Valley pitched their creative services to a new prospect earlier this year, they delivered part of that sales presentation via text messaging over the mobile phone network. Unconventional? Perhaps in the late 1990s, but not in today's wireless world. "In our arena, we've learned that a speedy response is expected, and mandatory," Becky Quinlan, a professional at the firm, in Redwood City, Calif., told United Press International. The instantaneous "response helped us land the business," she added. Forget about requests for proposals, long-lead times and extended...

CHICAGO, July 21 (UPI) -- Terrorists launch a chemical attack on the United States -- and the American military reacts in minutes, by means of a cutting-edge Internet application. In the middle of the night, fighter pilots are rousted out of bed by automated phone calls sent over the Internet. As each pilot picks up the receiver, his response is routed securely to an application service provider, which automatically begins the process of getting his warplane ready for flight -- before the pilot even arrives at the air station. "That's an early warning and call mechanism," said Peter Berghammer, chief...