Sikkim quake: 7 casualties, damage reported

New Delhi: One child succumbed to injuries after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake on Sunday in Sikkim, Chief Secretary of Sikkim Karma Gyatso said. One person was reportedly dead in Bhagalpur district of Bihar in a stampede following the tremors. Five people were reported dead in Nepal.

An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the richter scale hit North India on Sunday at 6:10 pm and the epicentre was 64 km from Gangtok in Sikkim, causing major damages in the area. Mild tremors were felt in Delhi and other parts of North India. Tremors were felt in Patna, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal also. 

Aftershocks measuring 6.1 and 5.3 on the richter scale were also felt around Sikkim 20 minutes after the earthquake. 

Speaking to CNN-IBN, the DGP of Sikkim said that many buildings were damaged. He also said that roads were blocked and people were stranded on roads. He said that the Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling has called for an emergency meeting.

Arvind Kumar, Principal Resident Commissioner of Sikkim said that there was excessive damage in the northern parts of Sikkim. He also said that the rescue operations had started in the area. 

There were also reports of landslides following the earthquake in areas around Sikkim and also Darjeeling.

The Prime Minister also spoke to the Sikkim Chief Minister and offered all help. The Prime Minister also directed the Cabinet Secretary to call for an emergency meeting.

There were reports of damages from Bihar. Two buildings collapsed in Katihar in Bihar. The NTPC power plant in Kahalgaon in Bihar has also been shut down because of the earthquake following which North Bihar was under power crisis. 




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Polar bears' threatened status upheld in court

 A U.S. federal judge upheld the status of polar bears as a species threatened by climate change, denying challenges by a safari club, two cattlemen's organizations and the state of Alaska.

The ruling on Thursday by District Judge Emmet Sullivan confirmed a 2008 decision that polar bears need protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because their icy habitat is melting away.

The legal challenges -- some contending polar bears don't need this protection, others maintaining the big white bears need more -- were launched after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service included this Arctic mammal on its list of threatened species.

The state of Alaska, Safari Club International and two cattlemen's groups claimed the federal government's decision to list the polar bear was "arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of agency discretion," according to a memorandum opinion released with the ruling.

On the other side, environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, urged that polar bears be listed as endangered, which offers greater protection than that provided for wildlife classified as threatened.

RATIONAL DECISION

The heart of the judge's decision was whether the Fish and Wildlife Service had made a rational decision in its 2008 listing.

The judge noted that the wildlife agency took three years to "evaluate a body of science that is both exceedingly complex and rapidly developing," considering 160,000 pages of documents and some 670,000 comments from a wide range of interested parties."

"The court finds that plaintiffs (who challenged the listing) have failed to demonstrate that the agency's listing determination rises to the level of irrationality," Sullivan wrote.

"... the Court finds the (wildlife) service's decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species ... represents a reasoned exercise of the agency's discretion based upon the facts and the best available science as of 2008 when the agency made its listing determination," the judge wrote.

Environmental activists gave the decision measured praise.

Greenpeace called it "bittersweet," the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity said stronger protections were warranted.

However, Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute said in a statement: "This decision is an important affirmation that the science demonstrating that global warming is pushing the polar bear toward extinction simply cannot be denied."

Evidence "increasingly against" phone cancer risk

Despite a recent move to classify mobile phones as possibly carcinogenic, the scientific evidence increasingly points away from a link between their use and brain tumors, according to a new study on Saturday.

A major review of previously published research by a committee of experts from Britain, the United States and Sweden concluded there was no convincing evidence of any cancer connection.

It also found a lack of established biological mechanisms by which radio signals from mobile phones might trigger tumors.

"Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults," the experts wrote in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The latest paper comes just two months after the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) decided cellphone use should be classified as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

Anthony Swerdlow of Britain's Institute of Cancer Research, who led the new review, told Reuters the two positions were not necessarily contradictory, since the IARC needed to put mobile phones into a pre-defined risk category.

"We are trying to say in plain English what we believe the relationship is. They (IARC) were trying to classify the risk according to a pre-set classification system," Swerdlow said.

Other things deemed by the IARC to be possibly carcinogenic include items as diverse as lead, pickled vegetables and coffee.

Mobile phone use has risen hugely since the early 1980s, with nearly 5 billion handsets in use today, and controversy about their potential link to the main types of brain tumor, glioma and meningioma, has never been far away.

The largest study to date, published last year, looked at almost 13,000 mobile phone users over 10 years.

Swerdlow and colleagues analyzed its results in detail but concluded it gave no clear answer and had several methodological problems, since it was based on interviews and asked subjects to recall phone use going back several years.

Significantly, other studies from several countries have shown no indication of increases in brain tumors up to 20 years after the introduction of mobile phones and 10 years after their use became widespread, they added.

Proving an absence of association is always far harder in science than finding one, and Swerdlow said it should become much clearer over the next few years whether or not there was any plausible link.

"This is a really difficult issue to research," said David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study.

"But even given the limitations of the evidence, this report is clear that any risk appears to be so small that it is very hard to detect -- even in the masses of people now using mobile phones."

Swerdlow is chairman of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection's Standing Committee on Epidemiology. The commission is the international body, recognized by the WHO, that constructs guidelines for exposure limits for non-ionizing radiation.

Since mobile phones have become such a key part of daily life -- used by many for websurfing as well as talking -- industry experts say a health threat is unlikely to stop people using them.

Facebook set for $1 bln in social-gaming revenue

Facebook Inc is on course to generate $1 billion in revenue this year from social gaming, according to Kevin Ryan, a leading Internet entrepreneur and former chief executive of online advertising giant DoubleClick.

Most of that revenue will come from advertising, Ryan estimated in an interview with Reuters this week.

The $1 billion forecast also includes revenue from Facebook Credits, which allow users to buy items for games and other activities on the social network, he added.

Ryan is now chief executive of luxury flash-sales company Gilt Groupe, but he invests in other Internet businesses including news website The Business Insider and 10gen, which runs MongoDB, a database that's popular with start-ups.

Ryan's brother, Sean Ryan, became director of gaming partnerships at Facebook in early 2011.

Facebook's more than 500 million active users are attracting a lot more ad dollars as companies step up online marketing. Research firm eMarketer estimated in January that ad spending on Facebook would exceed $4 billion this year. That's more than double levels of 2010.

A big chunk of that ad revenue comes from social games that are played on Facebook's platform.

"Assuming Facebook is on track to produce $4 billion in ad revenue this year, $1 billion of that coming from social gaming is not outlandish," said Paul Verna, a senior analyst at eMarketer.

Facebook is a private company and doesn't disclose financial information. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Friday.

Zynga Inc, the dominant developer of social games played on Facebook, filed for a $1 billion initial public offering on Friday.

Zynga disclosed that it generated $235 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2011, more than double the same period a year earlier. That level of sales and the growth rate suggest Zynga is on course to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year.

"We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future," Zynga said in its IPO filing on Friday.

Dow, S&P end sixth losing week - is seventh on tap?

The Dow and S&P 500 closed out their sixth week of losses on Friday as further signs of a global economic slowdown set the stage for more losses ahead.

The deepening gloom raised the prospect for the S&P, which suffered its worst week since August 2010, to break below the year's low of 1,250 next week.

The Nasdaq wiped out its yearly gains on Friday and also posted its biggest weekly decline since August 2010, as the latest deterioration in sentiment came on fear of flagging Chinese growth and fresh worries about Greece's debt crisis.

The Dow closed below 12,000 for the first time since mid-March.

Reflecting the bearish sentiment, options traders eyed calls on the CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, which moves inversely to the S&P 500's performance. The VIX rose 6.1 percent to end at 18.86.

"We broke below the April low, which was about 1,295 (on the S&P 500) pretty much at the open today. We are probably going to test the March lows if data next week remain weak," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

"But investors are very susceptible to any kind of news and since we are very oversold here, we could see the market instantly bounce back if we get anything remotely good."

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 172.45 points, or 1.42 percent, to 11,951.91. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX slid 18.02 points, or 1.40 percent, to 1,270.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC tumbled 41.14 points, or 1.53 percent, to 2,643.73 at the close.

For the week, the Dow was down 1.6 percent, the S&P 500 was off 2.2 percent and the Nasdaq was down 3.3 percent.

The S&P 500 has fallen about 6.6 percent from its intraday peak early last month. Many see the benchmark index sliding back down to around 1,250, its March low, where valuations could bring investors back into equities.

At 1,250, the S&P 500 would be roughly 1.7 percent below current levels and approaching a 10 percent decline commonly referred to as a correction.

FINANCIALS DECLINE

Bank stocks, already under pressure, finished lower, with the KBW Banks Index .BKX dropping 0.4 percent after sliding more than 2 percent earlier in the day. The Federal Reserve said it will subject more banks to annual stress tests to determine whether they have enough capital and can raise their dividends.

Some of the biggest decliners were regional bank stocks that are now going to face annual tests.

Northern Trust Corp (NTRS.O) fell 1.2 percent to $46.77 and M&T Bank Corp (MTB.N) lost 1.2 percent to $84.41.

But large banks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N), rose in a late rebound, on a news report that the extra capital charge on big banks will likely be 2 percent to 2.5 percent, compared with the widely predicted 3 percent, traders said.

Bank of America shares rose 1.4 percent to $10.80 and JPMorgan added 0.2 percent to $41.05.

The S&P energy index .GSPE declined 1.9 percent while the S&P index of industrial stocks .GSPI lost 1.6 percent.

China's sales to the United States and the European Union slumped to their weakest since late 2009, excluding Lunar New Year holidays, underlining the view that the world economy is stumbling.

In another negative for stocks, the euro tumbled more than 1 percent against the U.S. dollar as fears about Greece's debt returned to the forefront and investors curbed expectations about the European Central Bank's interest-rate hikes. Investors have been recently trading the correlation between stocks and the dollar.

The PHLX semiconductor index .SOX slid 1.7 percent, sinking to its lowest since early December. The SOX fell below its 200-day moving average for the first time since last October.

About 7.47 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, compared with the daily average of 7.59 billion.

Declining stocks beat advancing ones by 2,419 to 587 on the NYSE while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by 1,987 to 593.

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Ice melt to close off Arctic's interior riches - study

Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said.

Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural gas developers to coastal regions in coming decades.

The melting has also led to hopes that shorter Arctic shipping routes between China and Europe will open.

The Arctic is increasingly a region of deep strategic importance to the United States, Russia and China for its undiscovered resource riches and the potential for new shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says that 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and natural gas lies in the Arctic.

But the warming also will likely melt so-called "ice roads", the temporary winter roads developers now use to access far inland northern resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"It's a resource frontier where we don't even know what all is there and I'm beginning to think we never will," Lawrence Smith, a professor of geography at the University of California Los Angeles and a co-author of the study, said about the Arctic interior.

"These places are going to become wilder and the lands are going to be abandoned and revert to a wild state."

The ice roads, made famous by the History Channel show "Ice Road Truckers", are constructed on frozen ground, rivers, lakes and swampy areas using compacted snow and ice. They cost only about two to four percent of what permanent land roads would cost, making resource extraction more cost effective in these remote areas.

As the roads melt, indigenous populations could also face increased isolation and higher costs as some goods could only reach them via airplanes.

All eight countries that border the Arctic -- Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- are expected to experience declines in winter-road land accessibility.

Russia will lose the most land suitable for winter road construction by area, followed by Canada and the United States, according to the modeling done in the study, which was supported by NASA's Cryosphere Program and the National Science Foundation.

DIAMOND ROAD

Northern Canada's Tibbitt-Contwoyto "diamond road," an winter road first built in 1982 and said to be the world's most lucrative ice road as it services several diamond mines, is expected to be among the routes that suffer, according to the researchers. Much of the roughly 300 mile (482 km) road runs atop frozen lakes.

By 2020 the road is projected to lose 17 percent of its up to 10-week operating season.

Oil and natural gas developers could lose access to some inland drilling, but the industry would gain access to coastal drilling and would benefit from easier shipping routes.

Timber and metal mining, however, would suffer far more because it would be cost-prohibitive to build permanent roads leading to these resources.

More study is needed to determine the potential economic losses from the melting regions and how they would compare to the opportunity, the authors said.

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Rats, bees to protect African wildlife: experts

Beekeeping and breeding animals such as cane rats for food are needed to help tackle the unsustainable trade in bush meat in central Africa, conservation experts said on Friday.

Local populations rely on birds, reptiles and mammals including apes in the vast Congo Basin for food, but overhunting for so-called bush meat is leading to 'empty forest syndrome', according to a statement issued by a panel of environmental experts following a meeting on the issue in Nairobi.

"Tackling the impact of unsustainable and illegal trade in bush meat is critical for protecting the livelihoods of rural people and conserving wildlife in biodiversity-rich areas," said John Scanlon, secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (CITES).

Legitimate subsistence hunting is being replaced by commercial hunting and trade in endangered species including elephants and primates, said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The statement said that replacing bush meat with locally produced beef would require up to 80 percent of the Democratic Republic of Congo to become pasture.

"Therefore, there is no alternative to making the use of wildlife for food more sustainable."

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the size of western Europe, is home to more than 150 million hectares (370 million acres) of forest, one of the largest stretches left in Africa.

Experts say overhunting is undermining food security and also poses a threat to the forest itself, as 75 percent of tropical tree species depend on animals to spread their seeds.

Measures proposed by the experts include the promotion of beekeeping to produce honey for trade and subsistence, the introduction of community wildlife management programs, and farming cane rats for food.

Cane rats, also known as grasscutters, are large herbivorous rodents that are already farmed in some parts of Africa.

Bush meat has become big business in some countries, with the Central African Republic's informal trade estimated at $72 million dollars a year, the statement said.

Population growth and commercial trafficking were adding to pressure on local wildlife, it added.

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Spanish police arrest 'Anonymous' PlayStation hackers

Spanish police arrested three suspected members of the so-called "Anonymous" group on Friday on charges of cyber-attacks against targets including Sony's PlayStation network, governments, businesses and banks.

The police said the accused, arrested in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante, were guilty of coordinated computer hacking attacks from a server set up in a house in Gijon in the north of Spain.

Spanish police alleged the three arrested "hacktivists" had been involved in the recent attack on Sony's PlayStation online gaming store which crippled the service for over a month, as well as cyber-attacks on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia and the Italian energy group Enel.

Members of the loosely coordinated "Anonymous" group, known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks made popular by the graphic novel "V for Vendetta", had also hacked government sites in Egypt, Algeria, Lybia, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, police said.

"They are structured in independent cells and make thousands of simultaneous attacks using infected 'zombie' computers worldwide. This is why NATO considers them a threat to the military alliance," the police said in a statement.

"They are even capable of collapsing a country's administrative structure."

The arrests are the first in Spain against members of the "Anonymous" group following similar legal proceedings in the United States and Britain.

The police did not rule out further arrests.

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"Twilight" sequel shines brightest at MTV awards

The MTV Movie Awards are turning into a free infomercial for the "Twilight" movie franchise.

For the third year in a row, the vampire romance was named best movie at the light-hearted -- and frequently X-rated -- salute to Hollywood's biggest crowd-pleasers.

"The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," which led the field with eight nominations, ended up with five awards. In a replay from last year Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart won for best male and female performance, respectively

The real-life couple won the award for best kiss, which Pattinson celebrated by running into the audience to smooch his co-star Taylor Lautner. Pattinson won an additional prize for best fight -- sharing the tub of gold popcorn with Bryce Dallas Howard and Xavier Samuel.

With categories such as those, nobody would ever confuse the MTV event with the self-congratulatory Academy Awards. The real point of the show is to promote upcoming buzzworthy movies targeted at MTV's youthful demographic.

Indeed a sneak preview screened of the fourth "Twilight film, "Breaking Dawn, Part 1," which opens November 18. Other exclusive clips were shown of the supernatural thriller "Super 8," which opens Friday, and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2," which opens July 15.

The awards are determined by fans' online votes, which probably accounts for Justin Bieber's win in the best jaw dropping moment category for his 3D concert film "Never Say Never." The Canadian teen idol beat seemingly edgier scenes from such films as "Black Swan" and "127 Hours."

The producers of "The Social Network" probably will not lose too much sleep wondering why Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-winning script lost the best line from a movie category to the critical bomb "Grown Ups." The winning quote, "I want to get chocolate wasted," was uttered by child actress Alexys Nycole Sanchez.

Ribald humor was the order of the night, thanks largely to host Jason Sudeikis. The "Saturday Night Live" comic directed a joke about oral sex to a mortified Selena Gomez, Bieber's 18-year-old girlfriend.

He also referenced the alleged nude photos circulating online of presenter Blake Lively when he introduced "what I believe is the real Blake Lively, but she won't confirm it."

The "Gossip Girls" actress, who has denied the self-portraits are of her, came backstage to pose for photos, but refused to answer any questions.

Other nonfamily-friendly moments saw Justin Timberlake grabbing Mila Kunis' breasts. She reciprocated by grabbing his crotch. The daredevil stars of "Jackass" made homoerotic references to Donald Trump, and footage screened of dogs engaging in sex.

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U.S. says can use force to respond to cyber-attacks

U.S. defence systems are constantly under attack in cyberspace and the Pentagon is working to identify hackers who will be responded to in kind or with traditional offensive action, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday.

Gates was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian security meeting, days after Google said it had disrupted a campaign aimed at stealing passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

It was the latest in a series of cyber attacks that have also targeted defence contractor Lockheed Martin and Sony Corp. Google said the latest breach appeared to originate in China but neither the company nor the U.S. government has said the Chinese government was responsible.

But the U.S. State Department has asked Beijing to investigate.

"We take the cyber threat very seriously and we see it from a variety of sources, not just one or another country," Gates said.

"One of the problems of cyber attacks is that attributability is a problem at some times. It's hard to know or takes a lot of time to figure out where an attack came from."

Gates said the Pentagon was examining threats from cyber-space in the context of defence responsibilities.

"There is no question that our defence systems are under attack all the time," he said.

"What does constitute an offensive act by a government? What would constitute an act of war by cyber that would require some kind of response, either in kind or kinetically?" he said.

"We could avoid some serious international tensions in the future if we could establish some rules of the road as early as possible to let people know what kinds of attacks are acceptable, what kinds of acts are not and what kinds of acts may in fact be acts of war.

reuters..

Hackers attack another Sony network, post data

 Hackers broke into Sony Corp's computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant's systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company.

LulzSec, a group that claims attacks on U.S. PBS television and Fox.com, said it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures Entertainment websites. It published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony.

"From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING," the hacking group said in a statement. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?"

The security breach is the latest cyber attack against high-profile firms, including defence contractor Lockheed Martin and Google Inc.

LulzSec's claims came as Sony executives were trying to reassure U.S. lawmakers at a hearing on data security in Washington about their efforts to safeguard the company's computer networks, which suffered the biggest security breach in history in April.

Sony has been under fire since hackers accessed personal information on 77 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity accounts, 90 percent of which are users in North America or Europe.

Sony said at the time credit card information may have been stolen, sparking lawsuits and casting a shadow over its plans to combine content and hardware products via online services. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the April attack.

It later revealed hackers had stolen data from 25 million users of a separate system, its Sony Online Entertainment PC games network, in a breach discovered on May 2.

Sony said it was investigating the breach claimed by LulzSec and declined to elaborate. Sony shares in Tokyo fell 0.6 percent on Friday, in line with the broader market.

The latest attack, unlike that on the PlayStation Network, was not on a revenue-generating Website and was likely to have no impact on earnings, analysts said.

Reuters confirmed the authenticity of the data on several contestants that LulzSec said it had published.

CYBER SECURITY

Cyber security is quickly rising up the agenda for global policymakers.

The Australian government said on Friday it will develop a cyber defence strategy and the United States said in a report in May that hostile acts in cyberspace would be treated just like any other threat to the country.

The hacking attack on Lockheed may have compromised the safety of SecureID tokens made by EMC Corp, while that on Google targeted, among others, senior U.S. government officials' data.

"These allegations are very serious," U.S. Secretary of States Hillary Clinton said of the Google attack, which the Internet giant said appeared to originate in China.

In the latest attack on Sony, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could choose to review the circumstances leading up to the breach if Sony Pictures Entertainment failed to use proper procedures for protecting the data of its customers.

John Bumgarner, chief technology officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit group that monitors Web threats, said he was not surprised that Sony's systems had again been breached.

"The system was unsecure," said Bumgarner, who last month warned of a string of security vulnerabilities across Sony's networks that he had identified.

He said he found vulnerabilities in the Sony Pictures Entertainment network as recently as last weekend.

The first hacking attacks in April prompted Sony to shut down its PlayStation Network and other services for close to a month.

The PlayStation games network and Qriocity, a video and music service, are back online except for some operations in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Representatives criticized Sony in the Congressional hearing for waiting several days to notify customers of the breach.

LulzSec has claimed responsibility for several hacks over the past month. It said it defaced the U.S. PBS television network's websites, and posted data stolen from its servers on Monday to protest a "Front Line" documentary about WikiLeaks.

It has also broken into a Fox.com website and published data about contestants for the upcoming Fox TV talent show, "X Factor."

LulzSec also said on Thursday it had hacked into Sony BMG Music Entertainment Netherlands and Belgium. It previously disclosed an attack on Sony Music Japan.

Could a cyber war turn into a real one for U.S.?

The United States is warning that a cyber attack -- presumably if it is devastating enough -- could result in real-world military retaliation.

Easier said than done.

In the wake of a significant new hacking attempt against Lockheed Martin Corp, experts say it could be extremely difficult to know fast enough with any certainty where an attack came from. Sophisticated hackers can mask their tracks and make it look like a cyber strike came from somewhere else.

There are also hard questions about the legality of such reprisals and the fact that other responses, like financial sanctions or cyber countermeasures, may be more appropriate than military action, analysts say.

"There are a lot of challenges to retaliating to a cyber attack," said Kristin Lord, author of a new report on U.S. cyber strategy at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

"It is extremely difficult to establish attribution, to link a specific attack to a specific actor, like a foreign government."

The White House stated plainly in a report last month that Washington would respond to hostile acts in cyberspace "as we would to any other threat to our country" -- a position articulated in the past by U.S. officials.

The Pentagon, which is finalizing its own report, due out in June, on the Obama administration's emerging strategy to deal with the cyber threat, acknowledged that possibility on Tuesday.

"A response to a cyber incident or attack on the U.S. would not necessarily be a cyber response ... all appropriate options would be on the table," Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

The sophistication of hackers and frequency of the attacks came back into focus after a May 21 attack on Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's top arms supplier.

Lockheed said the "tenacious" cyber attack on its network was part of a pattern of attacks on it from around the world. The U.S. Defense Department estimates that over 100 foreign intelligence organizations have attempted to break into U.S. networks.

Every year, hackers steal enough data from U.S. government agencies, businesses and universities to fill the U.S. Library of Congress many times over, officials say.

BEHIND THE CURVE

Several current and former national security officials said U.S. intelligence agencies did not appear particularly concerned about the Lockheed attack. One official said that similar cyber attacks directed at defense contractors and government agencies occurred all the time.

Some critics say the Obama administration is not moving fast enough to keep up with the cyber threat or to develop a strategy that fully addresses concerns about privacy and oversight in the cyber domain.

"The United States, in general, is well behind the curve," said Sami Saydjari, president of the privately held Cyber Defense Agency, pointing to "significant strategic advances" out of countries like China and Russia.

China has generally emerged as a prime suspect when it comes to keyboard-launched espionage against U.S. interests, but proving Beijing is behind any future plot would be difficult because of hackers' ability to misdirect, analysts say. China has denied any connection to cyber attacks.

The Pentagon's upcoming report is not expected to address different doomsday scenarios, or offer what Washington's response would be if, say, hackers wiped out Wall Street financial data, plunged the U.S. Northeast into darkness or hacked U.S. warships' computers.

"We're not going to necessarily lay out -- 'if this happens, we will do this.' Because again the point is if we are attacked, we reserve the right to do any number of things in response," Lapan said.

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