Suit says NYC stole software secrets

Suit says NYC stole software secrets

NEW YORK

A software company that helped identify the remains of 9/11 victims is accusing the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office of handing its secrets over to the FBI.

A Manhattan federal judge has been asked to decide if the lawsuit, filed in March by the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Gene Codes, can go forward, The New York Times reported Saturday. New York City has filed a countersuit claiming Gene Codes didn’t meet its contractual obligations.

Gene Codes’ software, known as the Mass-Fatality Identification System, helped the city analyze and organize the DNA of victims of the terrorist attack. Both sides signed a three-year contract in 2002, for which the city said it paid $13 million.

Bomb found in keg, dismantled

DUBLIN

Northern Ireland police seized a dissident IRA bomb packed into a beer keg Saturday and were inspecting a potential car bomb parked outside Belfast International Airport, the latest efforts to undermine peace in the British territory.

Police said British Army experts who dismantled the beer-keg bomb found 90 pounds of explosive inside.

A pedestrian spotted the keg bomb underneath a rail bridge in the town of Lurgan, where Irish Republican Army dissidents have a base of operations.

Hurricane Tomas batters Caribbean

CASTRIES, St. Lucia

Newly born Hurricane Tomas swept through a cluster of eastern Caribbean islands Saturday, tearing off roofs, damaging houses and downing power lines.

Authorities in St. Vincent were trying to confirm reports that three people died, including two men who might have been blown off a roof, said Jimmy Prince, emergency management spokesman.

Fierce winds tore roofs from nearly 100 homes, and more than 400 people sought emergency shelter as the island plunged into darkness, he said.

Tomas, the Atlantic season’s 12th hurricane, was expected to drop up to 6 inches of rain in the region.

Forecasters said it could become a Category 2 storm Monday evening and possibly reach Category 3 by midweek, with winds around 115 mph.

Turkey lifts ban on YouTube

ISTANBUL

Turkey said Saturday that it was lifting a ban on YouTube more than two years after it blocked access to the site because of videos deemed insulting to the country’s founder.

Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, who is in charge of Internet issues, said the government has been in touch with Google, which owns YouTube. There was no longer any reason to ban the video-sharing site, he said, as the offending videos had been removed.

Turkey’s telecommunications authority banned access to YouTube in May 2008 after users complained that some videos insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the country in 1923. It is a crime in Turkey to insult Ataturk.

Palin: Let Manchin remain governor

CHARLESTON, W.Va.

Sarah Palin says Democrat Joe Manchin is a good governor — but she says West Virginia voters should keep him in the governor’s mansion and out of the U.S. Senate.

Palin, the former governor of Alaska and one-time vice- presidential candidate, was in Charleston on Saturday to support Republican John Raese’s Senate bid. She drew cheers when she said Manchin was a better fit as governor.

Raese and Manchin are running to serve the final two years of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s term. Byrd died in June at age 92.

Associated Press