50 million copies will be installed in Europe by 2010 analysts predict

The latest version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system, Windows 7, is available for pre-order in the UK.

Amazon said that sales of Windows 7 in the first eight hours it was available outstripped those of Windows Vista’s entire 17 week pre-order period.

The home version of the operating system costs around £50, while the professional version costs around £100.

The limited number of pre-ordered copies will be shipped on 22 October, the same day it goes on sale in stores.

Pre-orders are available from a number of retailers, with the period ending on 9 August.

Analysts IDC predict that some 177 million copies of the operating system will be in place by the end of 2010, 50 million of which will be in Europe. The firm estimates that products and services surrounding Windows 7 will generate $320bn (£195bn).

Discount

The software requires a “clean install”, meaning that prior versions of Windows will have to be removed before Windows 7 can be installed.

Because of a recent European Commission anti-trust ruling, Windows 7’s European version will not be integrated with Windows’ Internet Explorer, meaning that a browser will have to be installed separately.

“Both Windows 7 upgrade packages shot to the top of the Amazon.com software bestsellers chart over in the US as soon as they were made available for pre-order at the end of June,” said Chris Poad, software director at Amazon UK.

“With the significant discount currently on offer, a similar level of high demand was expected in the UK for what is undoubtedly the biggest software release for many years.”

The ebb and flow of thousands of pieces of household rubbish are to be tracked using sophisticated mobile tags.

It is hoped that making people confront the final journey of their waste will make them reduce what they throw away.

Initially, 3,000 pieces of rubbish, donated by volunteers, will be tagged in New York, Seattle and London.

“Trash is almost an invisible system today,” Assaf Biderman, one of the project leaders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told BBC News.

“You throw something into the garbage and a lot of us forget about it. It gets buried, it gets burned, it gets shipped overseas.”

The Trash Track aims to make that process - termed the “removal chain” - more transparent.

Friends of the Earth’s Senior Waste Campaigner Michael Warhurst said the project could be a “useful tool” for highlighting the impact of rubbish.

“[Waste] doesn’t simply disappear when we throw it away, and all too often it ends up causing damage when it could be recycled instead.

“People must have much better information on - and control over - where their rubbish and recycling ends up.”

Global waste

In order to monitor how the pieces of rubbish move around the cities and beyond, the MIT team has developed a small mobile sensor that can be attached to individual pieces of waste.

“It’s like a miniature cell phone with limited functionality,” said Carlo Ratti, another member of the project.

Each tag - encased in a protective resin - continuously broadcasts its location to a central server. The results can then be collected and plotted on a map in real time.

Volunteers can apply to have their trash tagged and tracked

“It’s like putting tracers in your blood and seeing where it moves around your body,” said Mr Biderman.

Because cell phone technology is cheap and - importantly - ubiquitous, the system should be able to track rubbish around the globe.

This could be important when tracking computers and electronic waste, which is often disposed of incorrectly, according to Mr Ratti.

“Some of them are shipped to Africa to pollute,” he said.

The team aims to tag different types of waste from computers and cell phones to bags of garden waste.

The group is currently looking for volunteers to donate their trash.

The results of the US studies will be shown at two exhibitions in Seattle and New York during September.

‘Zero waste’

The team stresses that it has tried to limit the impact of its study and of the technology, and limit the amount of extra waste it contributes to the “removal chain”.

“We are adhering to the highest standards in terms of environmental impact,” said Mr Biderman.

“The impact this could have on waste management and removal… could be significant, so these kinds of experiments could be much more useful than harmful for the environment.”

The MIT team has previously revealed the movements of people around cities, such as Rome and Copenhagen, by analysing mobile phone signals.

They used a similar method to show how crowds moved around Washington during the inauguration of US President Barack Obama.

The tags used to track the rubbish are a departure from these more passive studies of city movements.

Ultimately, the team hopes that the technology can be miniaturised and made cheap enough that the tags could one day be attached to everything.

“Think about a future where thanks to smart tags we will not have waste anymore,” said Mr Ratti. “Everything will be traceable.”

Petrol prices have risen recently

US consumer prices rose at their fastest pace in June for nearly a year, prompted by higher petrol prices, the Commerce Department has said.

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.7% last month, after May’s rise of 0.1%. The figure was slightly above the 0.6% increase analysts had expected.

But the rise is viewed as a blip, as petrol prices rose 17.5% last month.

However, the index was down 1.4% from the same period a year earlier when energy costs were higher.

This is the largest year-on-year decline in nearly six decades.

Oil volatility

Energy prices have fallen considerably since last year, but have shown significant volatility in recent weeks.

Inflation has neither gone away nor become a problem Joel Naroff, Naroff Economic Advisors

In July last year, oil prices reached a record high of above $147 a barrel, but by the end of 2008 prices were below $40 a barrel. In recent weeks oil has been trading at about $60.

Core consumer inflation - which excludes volatile energy and food prices - rose 0.2% in June - just above forecasts of 0.1%. Year-on-year the rise was 1.7%.

“Inflation has neither gone away nor become a problem,” said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.

“Investors should like this report as it basically says the Fed is free to do what it has to in order to get the economy going faster.”

Production falls slowing

Separate figures released on Wednesday showed that while US industrial production continued to fall in June, the rate of decline slowed.

Production fell 0.4% last month, following May’s revised 1.2% decline, said the Federal Reserve.

On a sector-by-sector basis, manufacturing output fell 0.6% last month, while mining production dropped 0.5%. By contrast, the utilities industry saw output rise 0.8%, helped by the higher energy prices.

The most recent official figures showed that the US economy contracted at an annualised rate of 5.5% in the first three months of 2009, less than the previous estimate of a 5.7% decline.

This was also an improvement on the 6.3% contraction seen in the last quarter of 2008.

Both the Federal Reserve and US government have said that the economic picture is now starting to improve, albeit slowly.

Zellweger has not ruled out a return to the Bridget Jones role

A third film in the Bridget Jones series is in development, production company Working Title has confirmed.

It is hoped Renee Zellweger will return to the role she first played in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and reprised in 2004 sequel The Edge of Reason.

No writer or director has been assigned to the project, which Working Title say is in its “very early stages”.

According to Variety, it could be based on columns author Helen Fielding wrote in 2005 and 2006 for The Independent.

The fictional columns saw publishing executive Bridget, now in her 40s, attempt to have a baby.

The first two films were based on books of the same name by Fielding.

Zellweger, who turned 40 herself this year, was Oscar nominated for her role in the first Bridget Jones film.

Directed by Sharon Maguire, the romantic comedy made almost $282m (£171.5m) worldwide.

Its follow-up, directed by Beeban Kidron, made $262m (£159m) worldwide when it came out three years later.

The character started life as the fictional writer of the Bridget Jones’s Diary column in The Independent in 1995.

Rowe was married to Michael Jackson from 1996 to 1999

Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe has denied reports she was paid by the singer to give up parental rights to their two children.

The New York Post reported that Rowe agreed to take about $4m (£2.4m) to give up her rights to children Prince Michael Jr, 12, and Paris, 11.

In a letter to the newspaper, her lawyer Eric George called the claims “blatant falsehoods”.

New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan said the paper “stands by its story”.

That was despite Mr George asking the newspaper to publish an immediate retraction.

‘Reckless’

The lawyer said Ms Rowe, who was married to Jackson from 1996 to 1999, “has not and will not” give up her parental rights and the claim was “unequivocally false”.

Katherine Jackson has temporary guardianship of her grandchildren

He said the story had been “concocted with reckless disregard for the truth”, adding that Ms Rowe had also not taken, and would not accept, any additional money beyond the spousal support she had agreed with the singer years ago.

Mr George said that, following Jackson’s death, “no determination has been reached concerning custody or visitation”.

Jackson’s mother, Katherine, was granted temporary guardianship of her son’s three children on 29 June.

A custody hearing on the three is set for next Monday.

The surrogate mother of Jackson’s youngest child, seven-year-old Prince Michael II, has never been identified.

In a 2002 will signed by Jackson, he said he had “intentionally omitted” to provide for Ms Rowe.

She gave up custody rights to the children but sought them again in 2003.

They agreed a settlement in 2006 but the terms were never disclosed.

Intervention

Meanwhile, sales of Jackson’s music have continued to rocket in the US.

Early figures show the singer’s catalogue of solo albums sold 1.1 million copies in the past week.

It brings the total number of Jackson album sales in the US to more than 2.3 million in two-and-a-half weeks.

Meanwhile, Tito Jackson has said he and his brothers and sisters confronted the star over claims he was addicted to prescription drugs.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, he said: “We had to act - it was me, my sisters Janet, Rebbie and La Toya and my brothers Jackie and Randy.

“We kept asking him if it was true.”

He added: “He kept denying it. He said we were over-reacting. We talked about it again and again for hours but we just couldn’t get through to him.”

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Los Angeles coroner said results of Jackson’s autopsy would not be released “this week or next” while final work on the case was carried out.

Heart and circulatory disease is the UK’s biggest killer

Having a lower than average IQ is in itself a risk factor for heart disease, say UK researchers.

Given the findings, public health messages on things like exercise and diet could be simplified, the authors say in the European Heart Journal.

In the study of over 4,000 people, IQ alone explained more than 20% of the difference in mortality between high and low socioeconomic groups.

This applied even when known heart disease risk factors were considered.

Dr David Batty, who led the research for the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, said: “We already know that socio-economically disadvantaged people have worse health and tend to die earlier from conditions such as heart disease, cancer and accidents.

I think the public health messages on things like diet, exercise and smoking could be simplified Lead researcher Dr David Batty

“Environmental exposures and health-related behaviours, such as smoking, diet and physical activity, can explain some of this difference, but not all of it.”

He said this raises the possibility that as yet unmeasured psychological factors need to be considered and that one of these is intelligence or cognitive function, commonly referred to as IQ.

His team at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh studied a group of 4,289 former US soldiers from all walks of life.

As expected from past trends, those on low incomes and with less education had a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

Health promotion

But when the researchers took into account IQ and controlled for nine other known heart disease risk factors, IQ alone explained 23% of the differences in mortality between the highest and lowest socioeconomic groups in the study.

They offer several possible explanations for this - low IQ scores might simply be a marker of underlying poor health or intelligence might lead to greater knowledge about how to keep healthy.

Dr Batty said, whatever the explanation, the findings imply the IQ of the public should be considered more carefully when preparing health promotion campaigns.

“I think the public health messages on things like diet, exercise and smoking could be simplified.

“For instance, we often read about how some types of alcohol are good for you while others, or even the same ones, are not. The messages can be difficult to interpret, even by knowledgeable people.”

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “If we are to make real progress on tackling health inequalities we need health campaigns designed to reach everyone in the community and an environment that makes healthy choices easy choices for the whole population.

“One way to achieve this would be through clear and consistent front of pack food labelling to replace the confusing hotchpotch of schemes we currently have.”

He urged the government to implement a single traffic light food labelling scheme as soon as possible.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, said: “People with lower IQ also tend to miss out on preventive healthcare.

“They are less likely to have check-ups, follow lifestyle advice, take preventive medication and be referred for preventive hospital treatment. We must find ways to break down these barriers.”

A Spanish woman who became the world’s oldest new mother when she gave birth in 2006 to twin boys at the age of 66 has died, her family has said.

The brother of Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara told the paper Diario de Cadiz she passed away on Saturday, aged 69.

It said she had been diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth.

In 2007, Ms Bousada de Lara said she had lied about her age to doctors at a fertility clinic in California to get IVF treatment, telling them she was 55.

Ms Bousada de Lara argued that there was no reason to believe she would not have as long a life as her mother, who died at the age of 101. She even joked that she might live to see her grandchildren.

She also insisted that if she died prematurely her sons Christian and Pau, who are now two years old, would never be alone.

“There are lots of young people in our family,” she added.

When the twins were born in Barcelona on 29 December 2006, Ms Bousada de Lara was aged 66 years 358 days, 130 days older than Romanian Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth in 2005 to a baby girl.

All 168 passengers and crew have died in a Caspian Airlines plane crash in the north of Iran, officials say.

Wreckage was spread over a large area in a field in Jannatabad village, Qazvin province, about 75 miles (120km) north-west of Tehran, state TV said.

The Tupolev plane was flying from the Iranian capital to Yerevan in Armenia, with mostly Armenian passengers.

The cause of the crash, which happened soon after take-off, was not known. Witnesses said it dropped from the sky.

In pictures: Iran plane crash

“The 7908 Caspian flight crashed 16 minutes after its take-off from the International Imam Khomeini Airport,” Iran’s Aviation Organisation spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, was quoted by Iranian Press TV as saying.

An eyewitness said the plane dropped out of the sky and exploded on impact.

Iranian media reported officials confirming the deaths.

Mohammad Reza Montazer Khorasan, the head of the disaster management centre at Iran’s health ministry said: “All people aboard… the crashed plane are dead,” according to AFP news agency.

The Qazvin Fire Department Chief said residents began calling emergency services about noon local time after seeing thick smoke.

“After going to the crash scene and scouting, we found that the area of the disaster is very wide and wreckage of the crashed plane have been thrown around as far as 150 to 200m,” he said.

Television footage showed a massive crater in a field, with smouldering debris over a wide area.

ANALYSIS Jon Leyne, BBC News Iran has a notoriously bad air safety record. Because of sanctions imposed by the United States, Iran relies on an increasingly ageing fleet of airliners, and has trouble buying spares. There are tales of aircrew buying spare parts on flights to Europe, then sneaking them back to Iran in the cockpit. While those sanctions don’t apply to aircraft from Russia and Ukraine, many planes from those countries in the Iranian fleet also appear well past their best. For some people, flying in Iran can be a nerve-wracking experience. Stepping on board, it often becomes quickly apparent you are in a plane that has done many years service. There are also frequent delays because of the shortage of aircraft. Iranian engineers and aircrew do their best to keep their fleets in service.

Mr Jafarzadeh said there were no irregularities reported before the plane took off.

“The regulations of the State Aviation Organisation do not allow a plane to take off before security of the plane is 100% approved,” he told Iranian television.

“As to why this happened and what problem the plane ran into, we will need to carry out a thorough investigation of all contributing elements.”

The plane was built in Russia in 1987.

A Caspian Airlines representative told Associated Press news agency that most of the passengers were Armenians, with some Georgian citizens also on board.

It was unclear if other nationalities were involved.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered his condolences to the families of the victims.

Ten members of Iran’s national junior judo team were reported to be on the plane, ahead of training with the Armenian team.

IRANIAN PLANE CRASHES 6 December, 2005: A C-130 military transport plane crashes on the outskirts of the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 110 people, including some on the ground 19 February, 2003: An Iranian military transport aircraft carrying 276 people crashes in the south of the country, killing all on board 23 December, 2002: An Antonov 140 commuter plane carrying aerospace experts crashes in central Iran, killing all 46 people on board Air disasters timeline

The BBC’s Jon Leyne said the country was reliant on air transport, but it had been three years since the last crash.

The civil and military fleets are made up of elderly aircraft, in poor condition due to their age and lack of maintenance.

Since Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979, trade embargoes by Western nations have forced Iran to buy mainly Russian-built planes to supplement an existing fleet of Boeings and other American and European models.