Rogers boosts Australia amid DRS drama in third test.

(Reuters) - Australia opener Chris Rogers struck an unbeaten 67 on the
first morning of the third Ashes test against England at Old Trafford
on Thursday following another controversial umpiring decision against
his team.
The Australians went to lunch at 92 for two after Usman Khawaja fell
for one when he was adjudged to have been caught behind off Graeme
Swann.
The batsman reviewed the decision but the third umpire sided with his
on-field colleague despite replays showing no obvious edge in the
latest decision review system dispute to afflict the series and
Australia.
Shane Watson earlier got away with several loose shots through the
slips, over gully and just short of point but was finally caught at
slip by Alastair Cook off paceman Tim Bresnan for 19.
Rogers, obeying the message from on high to knuckle down and build an
innings after repeated Australian carelessness this series, calmly
compiled his highest test score to silence doubters of his worth to
the side.
The 35-year-old, selected because of his knowledge of English
conditions having been a mainstay of the county scene, is playing in
his fourth test only for Australia. Captain Michael Clarke was five
not out.
England, who lead the five-match series 2-0 and can retain the Ashes
at the revamped Manchester venue with a win or a draw, extracted
decent swing under slightly overcast skies and to the accompaniment of
a lone trumpeter in the packed crowd.
Stuart Broad had one lbw shout against Watson, out so often that way,
but England decided not to review the umpire's not out call and later
made the breakthroughs just as Australia looked to be taking the
initiative.
Australia had lost the toss at Trent Bridge and Lord's, when England
batted first both times on their way to victory, and the relief on
Clarke's face was visible as the coin landed his way.
The tourists, who risk losing a seventh test in a row and a third
straight Ashes series, brought in David Warner at number six after the
aggressive left-hander returned from his banishment to the A squad for
punching England's Joe Root in a bar in June.
He replaced the ineffective Phil Hughes while off-spinner Nathan Lyon
came in for left-armer Ashton Agar and paceman Mitchell Starc replaced
the injured James Pattinson.
England were unchanged after Kevin Pietersen passed a fitness test on
a calf strain.

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Shell misses forecasts as its takes North America impairment.

Shell misses forecasts as its takes North America impairment.
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Royal Dutch Shell said second-quarter earnings fell 20 per cent, as
trouble in Nigeria hit production and the company took a big
impairment on its North American shale assets.
The company also said it was dropping its oil and gas production
growth targets, in a sign of how difficult it is becoming for
supermajors such as Shell to increase output.
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Shell said profits slid to $4.6bn, from $5.7bn a year ago. The news
sent shares down 5.4 per cent in early afternoon London trading to
£21.18.
The results highlight the challenges facing new chief executive Ben
van Beurden, as he gears up to replace outgoing boss Peter Voser at
the start of next year. At the top of the list is the poor performance
of its North American business, which suffered a loss in the quarter
and is expected to remain in loss for the rest of 2013 and possibly
longer.
Analysts were also worried about the fall in operating cash flow,
which was $12.4bn compared with $13.3bn a year ago. Citi analysts said
Shell's first-half cash flow, pre-working capital, was "insufficient"
to fund both planned capital expenditure and the dividend.
Mr Voser said Shell's profits had been hit by higher costs,
exploration charges, adverse currency exchange rate effects and
challenges in Nigeria. But even setting aside those factors, the
results were "clearly disappointing for Shell", he said.
Shell said the results also reflected the impact of the weakening
Australian dollar on a deferred tax liability. They were also affected
by higher operating expenses and depreciation as well as the increased
exploration well write-offs.
But Mr Voser singled out the deteriorating operating environment in
Nigeria, where oil theft and disruptions to gas supplies were causing
widespread environmental damage and could cost the Nigerian government
$12bn in lost revenues per year.
Oil and gas production was 3.062m barrels a day, a decrease of 1 per
cent. Shell said the worsening situation in Nigeria impacted
production volumes by some 100,000 b/d.
Shell said it had taken impairments of $2.1bn in the quarter,
predominantly related to its tight oil assets in North America.
Several oil companies have written down the value of their US shale
gas interests, reflecting lower gas prices as a result of the shale
boom, but writedowns of liquids rich shales – a sector that has been
booming in recent years – are rarer.
Simon Henry, chief financial officer, said the impairment highlighted
what Shell had learnt from exploratory drilling carried out over the
past two years and "the fact that the production curve is less
positive than we originally expected," he said. But he emphasised that
Shell was producing 50,000 b/d from its liquids-rich assets, from zero
two years ago.
The $2.1bn impairment also reflected the fact that Shell had had to
carry out "quite significant well write-offs" in the second quarter of
about $600m, Mr Henry said.
Shell said it had launched a strategic review of its portfolio of
North American shale and onshore Nigeria assets. Mr Voser said the
company planned to halve the number of areas it operates in North
America, which currently stand at nine. It wanted to divest some
small-scale properties in the US which "are still prospective and can
produce, but do not have the size we are looking for," he said.
The dropping of Shell's production target was also a surprise. The
company had said it was aiming to increase oil and gas output to 4m
barrels a day by 2017-18. This has now been "retired", Mr Voser said.
He said production targets had only ever been a "proxy for financial
performance", and shareholders were "more happy" with purely financial
targets. He reiterated that Shell planned to generate $175-200bn of
cash flow in the 2012-15 period and was starting up five big projects
in the next 18 months that should add more than $4bn to 2015 cash
flow.
But some said even meeting its financial objectives might prove
difficult. "Losses and writedowns in North America look to make [cash
flow] target delivery a challenge," Citigroup analysts said.

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Party leaders "polluting" Parliament by giving peerages to biggest donors.

Party leaders "polluting" Parliament by giving peerages to biggest donors.
A total of 30 new peers have been appointed including a slew of
donors, lobbyists and political advisers.
There are 14 new Tory peers, five Labour and 10 Liberal Democrats,
while the Green Party have also appointed their first peer.
Lord Oakeshott, a senior Liberal Democrat and former member of the
joint committee on lords reform, told the Telegraph that giving
peerages to major donors "pollutes parliament and political parties
who collude in this".
He said: "It's now more urgent and vital than ever that we elect the
lords and get big money out of British politics for good."
David Cameron has given peerages to 14 individuals, including Sir
Anthony Bamford, the managing director of JCB.
Sir Anthony, his family and JCB have donated millions to the Tory
party. He was nominated for a peerage in 2010 by David Cameron but was
blocked by the taxman over apparent concerns over his tax affairs.
A source close to Sir Anthony said he had appointed PriceWaterhouse
Cooper to conduct a full audit of his tax affairs which gave him a
clean bill of health.
Mr Cameron also gave a peerage to Howard Leigh, the chairman of the
party's Leaders Group, which gives donors the chance to join Mr
Cameron and other senior Tory party figures. Mr Leigh's company,
Cavendish Corporate Finance, has given the Conservative Party more
than £77,000 since 2006.
Matthew Carrington, a former Tory MP who is now Deputy Chairman of an
Kuwaiti investment bank, has also been given a peerage. The company's
website boasts that he has a "strong track record" in lobbying.
Daniel Finkelstein, a columnist at The Times newspaper and the former
head of Policy at the Conservative Party, has been given peerage. Mr
Finkelstein is a friend of the Chancellor George Osborne.
Ed Miliband has given a peerage to Jon Mendelsohn, the founder of
lobbying firm LLM Communications and was formerly Gordon Brown's chief
fundraiser.
Another new Labour peer, Sir William Haughey, has donated over £1
million to the party since 2003. He made his fortune in fridges.
Nick Clegg has given peerages to two major Liberal Democrat donors,
the Ministry of Sound owner James Palumbo and Rumi Verjee, who brought
Domino Pizza to Britain.
Alison Suttie, Mr Clegg's former deputy chief of staff who was
implicated in the Lord Rennard sex scandal, has also been given a
peerage.
Olly Grender, the former Liberal Democrat director of communications,
has also been made a Liberal Democrat peer.
The appointments bring the number of working peers to almost 800. It
drew strong criticism from the Electoral Reform Society, who said that
the House of Lords had become "bloated".
"The 30 new members appointed today are the latest additions to an
increasingly bloated chamber. Our research shows that the total number
of peers could rise to nearly 1,000 by the end of the current
parliament, and to an astonishing and unsustainable 2,000 after the
next general election."
"Only China's set-up competes with the House of Lords in terms of
size. And that's a real headache for whoever is in government after
2015. No matter which party or coalition of parties takes the helm,
they will have to do something about the supersized second chamber."
The Green Party has given a seat to London Assembly member Jenny
Jones, while Mr Clegg has given a peerage to Brian Paddick, the former
Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate in London and a former Assistant
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Sir Anthony's peerage was initially blocked by the House of Lord
Appointments Commission after concerns were raised by HM Revenue and
Customs.
The Daily Telegraph understands that then he hired
PricewaterhouseCoopers who worked
with a team at JCB to draw up a file on his tax affairs.
The file was then taken by Sir Anthony's advisers to a meeting with
Sir Dave Hartnett, the head of HMRC.
Once HMRC was satisfied that there were no concerns, the team met with
Lord Jay of Ewelme, who chairs the commission.
The source said that none of the other candidates for peerages in the
list had given any money to the party.
A Conservative Party spokesman said that the party "totally refutes"
any suggestion that rich donors had been rewarded with peerages.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the new peers "will make
a valuable contribution to British politics, the House of Lords and
the Liberal Democrat team in Westminster".
"While vested interests prevented us from reforming the House of Lords
in this Parliament, the new peers, along with their Liberal Democrat
colleagues, remain committed reformers and will continue to make the
case for a smaller and more democratic upper chamber."
A Labour spokesman said the party "totally refutes" allegations that
that the peerages were linked to donations. "Doreen Lawrence
demonstrates our commitment to bringing people into Parliament that
deserve a voice," he said.

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Owners of Scottish Gas under fire over profit rise.

Owners of Scottish Gas under fire over profit rise.
THE parent company of Scottish Gas has come under fire after it
announced a multimillion-pound jump in profits sparked by people
turning up the heat during the cold snap at the start of the year.
The supplier's residential arm, which raised its tariffs by 6% in
December, said profits had hit £356 million for the last six months, a
rise of 3.2% from last year.
Overall, Centrica's operating profit rose 9% to £1.58 billion for the
period to June 30, up from £1.45bn for the same months in 2012.
Glasgow MP John Robertson, a member of the energy committee at
Westminster, branded the profits announcement disgusting and
shameless, coming days after energy companies were criticised for a
lack of transparency.
Mr Robertson said: "After hitting its customers with a 6% price
increase it is galling that profits have passed £1.5bn.
"If British Gas executives are lining their pockets with profits from
anywhere at all in the ­business they should think about those
choosing between heating and eating and consider passing something
onto their customers and dropping energy prices.
"Ofgem needs to use its teeth and demand to take a good look at the
accounts out today. If British Gas is profiteering from its customers
then Ofgem needs to take immediate action."
Average residential gas consumption was up 13% while electricity usage
rose 1% over the period, compared with last year.
Nick Luff, Centrica's finance director, defended the £11m rise in
profits, saying it represented just 70p per customer, and refused to
rule out further price increases.
The profits rise as a result of the cold weather was partly offset by
higher commodity prices and a new duty to deliver energy efficiency
measures in customers' homes, which drove environmental costs up 37%.
Mr Luff sought to shift part of the blame for any upcoming rises to
the Government-backed Energy Companies Obligation scheme.
He said the scheme, under which customers are helped with boiler
repair or replacement or insulation costs, would inevitably impact on
customer bills.
Mr Luff said: "We will keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can.
"If prices do have to go up, we will delay it for as long as possible."
Mike O'Connor, chief executive of Consumer Futures, formerly known as
Consumer Focus Scotland, called on Centrica to use its profits to
avoid passing on further costs to consumers.
He said: "Centrica, like other major suppliers, has benefited from the
cold winter and the greater levels of demand.
"Wholesale gas prices have not risen significantly and its gas
production and much of its generation business has done well. Those
factors should give British Gas confidence to hold its prices."
The company's announcement comes days after MPs warned that lack of
transparency about profits and energy prices were leaving consumers
with deep mistrust towards suppliers.
Mr O'Connor added: "Energy companies have to make profits, but that
should happen in a market that is fair, competitive and transparent.
"As MPs pointed out this week, consumers have reason to question
whether the market is competitive and we cannot be surprised consumers
do not trust that this market is working in their best interests. That
will be acutely true for the millions of households in fuel poverty."
Tom Lyon, energy expert at uSwitch.com, said: "People are already
starting to worry about next winter and the cost of their bills and
high energy prices have a big impact on consumers.
"This is why we would urge suppliers to reduce the pressure on
consumers by guaranteeing that they won't hike prices this winter."

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Rihanna victorious in Topshop T-shirt court battle.

RIHANNA has won a High Court battle today against Topshop after they
used her image on T-shirts without permission.
The Russian Roulette singer accused the fashion chain of failing to
seek approval from her before going ahead with printing their stock.
At a hearing in London, Judge Mr Justice Birss ruled in the
25-year-old's favour, asserting that the British retailer was guilty
of "passing off".
Passing off is a common law tort which can be used to enforce
unregistered trademark rights.
The chart-topper had claimed that the "unendorsed" T-shirts could have
damaged her image if fans believed it was genuine merchandise.
However, the judge stressed the "mere sale" of a T-shirt bearing a
celebrity image did not necessarily equate to an act of passing off.
It was instead due to the fact that a "substantial number" of buyers
were likely to have been deceived into purchasing the product on
"false belief" that it had been authorised by the singer.
As a result, he said this was damaging to Rihanna's "goodwill" and
represented a loss of control over her reputation in the "fashion
sphere".
Topshop disputed the claim.
However, despite accusations from Rihanna, the retailer's lawyer
insisted her entourage had contacted Topshop up to 10 times to request
clothing for the starlet since the lawsuit was filed.


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Egad! Could Samsung be CHEATING in Galaxy benchmark tests

Samsung has reportedly been cheating in benchmark tests, artificially
boosting the scores of its latest and greatest system-on-chip, the
Exynos 5 Octa, on those performance-ranking number generators so
beloved by reviewers and product evaluators.

"Oh hell Samsung, shame on you!" wrote a Beyond3D forum member in a
posting on one of that site's forums last month.

The poster, a Luxembourger who goes by the handle Nebuchadnezzar, had
been testing a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa when he discovered that although
he thought he was running the chip's GPU at 532MHz, it only hit that
clock speed on two benchmarks he used for testing: AnTuTu and
GLBenchmark. For all other apps, it ran at 480MHz – a much better
speed for battery-life testing.

The Exynos 5 Octa, by the way, is so named because it has four
high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four low-power ARM Cortex-A7
cores, all baked into a single 28-nanometer die. It comes in two
versions: the 5410, which contains an Imagination Technologies PowerVR
SGX544MP3 GPU, and the 5420, which uses an ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPU.
Nebuchadnezzar was testing a 5410.

Anand Lal Shimpi and Brian Klug over at the ever-interesting deep-tech
site AnandTech were tipped to Nebuchadnezzar's discovery, and since
they are both proud owners of the international version of the Samsung
Galaxy S 4 powered by an Exynos 5410, they decided to see if they
could replicate his findings.

They could – and with a few additions and clarifications. For example,
the GLBenchmark v.2.5.1 did indeed run at 532MHz, but its latest
v.2.7.0 incarnation – GLBenchmark having been subsumed into GFXBench
along with DXBenchmark – was throttled to 480MHz.

Samsung hasn't published megahertzage for its GPU, but Shimpi and Klug
said that their sources tell them it runs at 480MHz – which in fact is
what they discovered its clock rate to be when running any games,
"even the most demanding titles." But when running GLBenchmark 2.5.1,
AnTuTu, or Quadrant – benchmarks that reviewers and product testers
might naturally use to rate a products – they ran at 532MHz.

Although Nebuchadnezzar had only reported on GPU behavior, Shimpi and
Klug checked out what the CPU was doing when running GLBenchmark
v.2.5.1 and GFXBench v.2.7.0. To their surprise, they discovered that
when running v.2.5.1, the four powerhouse Cortex-A15 cores were pinned
at their top speed of 1.2GHz no matter what load the benchmark put
upon them. When running v.2.7.0, however, the Exynos 5 Octa switched
over to its less-powerful Cortex-A7 cores.

"A quick check across AnTuTu, Linpack, Benchmark Pi, and Quadrant
reveals the same behavior," they write. The CPUs were gunned to their
highest possible power capabilities when the benchmarks were running.

Digging into the Galaxy S 4's operating system support files, they
came upon one with the name TwDVFSApp.apk, and since DVFS is short for
dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (and, The Reg opines, "Tw" might
be shorthand for "tweaking"), they opened it up in a hex editor and –
behold! – in it were a list of what appeared for all the world to be a
series of strings that allowed for top performance for some apps and
not others, and a group-identification string with a rather
incriminating name.

"The string 'BenchmarkBooster' is a particularly telling one," they write.

The gun may not be belching great clouds of damning smoke, but there's
more than a mere wisp emanating from its barrel. As the AnandTech duo
put it, "This seems to be purely an optimization to produce repeatable
(and high) results in CPU tests, and deliver the highest possible GPU
performance benchmarks."

If Nebuchadnezzar, Shimpi, and Klug are correct in their testing and
analysis – and we have no reason to believe that they're not – there's
only one possible conclusion: Samsung is cheating. And if they're
cheating, there's a fair chance that others are, as well. But Samsung
got caught.

Your Reg reporter has been around the technology-evaluation block
enough times to remember – as Shimpi and Klug discuss in the
conclusion to their article – when benchmark manipulation was rampant
in the PC industry. As the director of a product-testing lab in the
90s, such cheating was the bane of my 9-to-5 existence.

Well, here it comes again – both fairly blatantly, as in Samsung's CPU
and GPU rigging, or in a more slippery fashion, as in the use of an
Intel-specific compiler in a test that enabled Chipzilla's Clover
Trail+ platform to outperform ARM processors.

Today is different from the 90s, however. In those far-away days,
speeds and specs were important even to consumers, while in today's
shiny-shiny world, the average fandroid or fanboi couldn't care less
about gigatexels or TMUs. "Experience" rules the checkbooks of the
marketplace, not benchmark scores.

But deceit is still not right. Having experienced Samsung's chicanery
directly, let's give our cheater-finders the last word on this sorry
state of affairs.

Shimpi and Klug: "Just because we've seen things like this happen in
the past however doesn't mean they should happen now."

Nebuchadnezzar: "Oh hell Samsung, shame on you!" ®
Bootnote

Here's a li'l fairness v. bias test we suggest you might find
personally illuminating. Read the story above one more time, except
each time you see the word "Samsung", substitute "Apple".

Then ask yourself: "Is my response any different?"

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Office Mobile for Android smartphones looks great on the HTC One (Gallery)

Office Mobile comes to Android smartphones

Mary Jo already posted about the release of Office for Android
smartphones and Larry offered up his thoughts on the new software.
Since I previously posted a side-by-side gallery of Office Mobile for
the iPhone compared to the native Office Mobile client on Windows
Phone 8 I wanted to also give you a look at Office Mobile for Android
smartphones.

As you can see in this short screenshot gallery, Microsoft was able to
bring the same experience seen on Windows Phone 8 devices and the
iPhone to Android smartphones. Given that Android smartphones have the
largest displays of these three smartphone platforms, I think users
may find the Android version the most useful of all.

A key difference between what I have on my new Nokia Lumia 1020 and
what we get with the iPhone and Android phones is that an Office 365
subscription is required on iOS and Android while Windows Phone owners
get native Office without requiring the service.

I am running Office Mobile on my fantastic HTC One, I still believe it
is the best smartphone I have ever used, and it looks great. I felt
squeezed by the small iPhone display, but that is not the case on the
1080p 4.7 inch HTC One display. The layout for some editing tools and
menus are a bit different on each platform and I personally find that
iOS and Android are a bit more refined and user friendly.

Those of us who have been around the mobile world for a while will
remember paying upwards of $50 for applications that allowed us to
work with word documents and spreadsheets and I remember long
discussions and comparisons about getting chart support in those apps.
Office Mobile on today's modern smartphones functions well and is an
incredible value for those who need native Office support.

It is nice to have Office functionality on all my different
smartphones and while some people are happy with services like Google
Docs or even the new Quip word processor nothing beats having the
ability to jump in and edit native Office files. Microsoft is a
software company at its core and I think this is a smart move to
finally get Office on all mobile platforms.

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