Bush condemns bombing in Lebanon; tells Syria, Iran to stop interfering in Beirut politics

President George W. Bush on Saturday bemoaned the latest assassination of a Lebanese official and told Syria and Iran to stop meddling in its neighbor's affairs. Investigators tried to determine if the killing was tied to attacks against anti-Syrian politicians.

Iran, which supports the Syrian-based opposition in a power struggle with Beirut's Western-allied government, came under criticism along with Syria for working to undermine Lebanese institutions.

"We demand that Syria, Iran and their allies end their interference in and obstruction of Lebanon's political process," the president said in a statement.

Syria has been blamed for the …

Free IT training

SOUTHMEAD: Free computer training is available for people aged 19and over at Southmead Development Trust's …

Gotcha! Complying With Financial Regulations ; The process never ends Bringing your systems into compliance with a new financial reporting law may be your biggest information- technology expenditure this decade.

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The process never ends Bringing your systems into compliance with a new financial reporting law may be your biggest information- technology expenditure this decade. Some say implementing compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a bigger project than Y2K bug fixes. "That might seem extreme," says Kraig Haber, director of financial product marketing at SAP. "But Y2K was a single task - this is a recurring one."

"We've seen clients invest tens of thousands of hours to achieve minimal Sarbanes-Oxley compliance," says Gregory Derderian, managing director of the World-Class Finance practice at consultancy BearingPoint.

Speed is a requisite …

Up, up and away in lawn chair hoisted by 150 helium balloons _ Oregon man heads to Idaho

A man has taken flight in a lawn chair hoisted by more than 150 large helium-filled party balloons in a bid to ride the wind from the central Oregon town of Bend all the way to Idaho.

Kent Couch was wearing a parachute Saturday morning as he kissed his wife and kids goodbye, patted …

Microsoft hopes for a fresh start with Windows 7

Microsoft Corp. put a new edition of Windows on sale Thursday, hoping for a fresh start after a bad reception for the previous version of the software that runs most of the world's personal computers.

Windows 7 is now available on new computers, and as a software upgrade for some older PCs.

A Fry's Electronics store in Renton, Wash., several miles south of Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, opened at midnight to give customers an early shot at buying a new PC or a disc that they could use to put Windows 7 on their existing computers. Such upgrade discs start at $120.

"We're geeks, that's what geeks do. This is …

Dow's '97 gain wiped out

NEW YORK The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 148.36 pointsFriday as the stock market resumed a downward spiral amid signs ofhigher inflation.

The Dow fell to 6,391.69. It was the third drop of more than140 points in 11 sessions. The average, which a month ago was 10percent ahead for the year, is now down almost 1 percent for 1997.

Other market indicators also posted stiff losses: The Standard &Poor's 500 stock list fell 20.69 to 737.65, slightly below …

Spanish court backs YouTube in copyright case

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish court has dismissed charges of copyright infringement brought against YouTube by television company Telecinco.

Telecinco said YouTube permitted material it owned to be uploaded and aired on the popular Internet video site, infringing its intellectual property rights.

The Madrid mercantile court rejected the claim. It said in a ruling Thursday that YouTube offers content owners …