City and State at Odds over Millions to Fight Terror; Oregon Law Would Jail War Protestors as Terrorists; Apache Rushes to Fix Serious DoS Hole; SARS Fear Impedes Business

City and State at Odds over Millions to Fight Terror

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor George Pataki are suddenly at odds over tens of millions of dollars in homeland defense money that Congress is poised to approve, according to The New York Times, with each man lobbying at the other’s expense in Washington for a larger share of the aid. The Republican governor is urging lawmakers to change a formula that gives New York City 80 percent of any money that will be doled out to New York State, believing the state should have a larger share. The Republican mayor is urging them just as hard to grant 80 percent to the city, as the place where the threat of terrorism is strongest. The governor counters that a large chunk of the states money is spent on the city. Both entities face huge deficits and dismal revenue projections.Oregon Law Would Jail War Protestors as TerroristsBoston Globe, an Oregon anti-terrorism bill would jail street-blocking protesters for at least 25 years in what critics call a thinly veiled effort to discourage anti-war demonstrations. Dubbed Senate Bill 742, it identifies a terrorist as a person who ”plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt” business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly. The Globe story says that the bill’s few public supporters say police need stronger laws to break up protests that have created havoc in cities like Portland, where thousands of people have marched and demonstrated against war in Iraq since last fall. Critics of the bill say its language is so vague it erodes basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism under an extremely broad definition.

According to a Reuters story in todays

Apache Rushes to Fix Serious DoS HoleInternetnews.com story yesterday. Details of the vulnerability have been embargoed until April 8, but the group wanted to issue a safe upgrade after an embarrassing incident last June, when a high-risk exploit was released on security mailing lists before a patch could be issued. Apache is an open-source Web server project developed and maintained by volunteers, which dominates the Web server market.

The Apache Software Foundation has rushed out another update to the Apache 2.0 HTTP Server because of a significant denial-of-service vulnerability discovered and reported by security research company iDefense, according to an

SARS Fear Impedes BusinessThe Register today. According to the New York Times, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines says the disease is hurting air travel more than the war in Iraq. The Times also notes that fears about SARS are affecting so many businesses that economists at many of the big investment banks reduced their estimates today for economic growth in East Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Indonesia plans to announce emergency measures today giving officials the power to forcibly quarantine and treat patients in a bid to fend off a deadly flu-like disease. The Australian newspaper, in the backyard of the diseases starting point, has extensive coverage of SARS and its affects in a special section.

Intel said it would cancel the Developer Forum to be held in Taiwan and Beijing this month, and Sun Microsystems has cancelled a major Sun Network event in Shanghai, both companies fearing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), according to