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Gallas denies Chelsea allegations POSTED: 0842 GMT (1642 HKT), September 5, 2006 Adjust font size: PARIS, France -- French international defender William Gallas denied on Tuesday that he made any threats against his former club Chelsea in order to force a move away from Stamford Bridge. On Monday, the English champions said in a statement that Gallas refused to play for the team and threatened to score an own goal or make deliberate mistakes if selected. But Gallas has denied the claims, saying that Chelsea have lots of money -- but no style. The central defender, a key member of the France team that reached the World Cup final, was sold to Arsenal last Thursday in exchange for England left back Ashley Cole and five million pounds ($9.52 million). "I was adamant in my will to leave Chelsea, this is true," Gallas said in a statement to sports daily L'Equipe on Tuesday. "But I'm surprised and shocked by Chelsea's comments. I never said that I would score an own goal if I had to play for Chelsea," he said. "Some people are trying to explain my move (to Arsenal) thanks to cranky reproaches instead of assuming their own responsibilities in front of their fans," Gallas said. "I have spent five years with Chelsea. I always gave the best of myself and I always proved that I had a great respect for the colors I wore. All this is really mean from Chelsea," he said. "But it doesn't surprise me as it comes from the club's new officials. Even if these people have a lot of money they lack style," he said. Chelsea statement In a statement, Chelsea blamed the speedy defender for refusing to play before the first game of the season against Manchester City despite there being no available replacements for him. "He went on to threaten that if he was forced to play, or if he was disciplined and financially punished for his breach of the rules, that he could score an own goal or get himself sent off, or make deliberate mistakes," the statement added. Gallas, who joined Chelsea from Olympique Marseille in 2001, played 225 league and cup matches for the club but asked to leave in May. He angered team manager Jose Mourinho when he failed to report for pre-season training on Chelsea's tour of the United States. Health studies shock Vietnam veterans group The Vietnam Veterans Federation says it is shocked by three studies released today that examine the health of veterans. Two of the studies compared Vietnam veterans to the general population and show that veterans have a lower mortality rate and a higher cancer rate. But Graham Walker from Vietnam Veterans Federation says the most alarming results come from a third study, which shows veterans who served in Vietnam have a much higher mortality rate than the serviceman who did not. "We expected there would be increased incidents, or higher rates of disease and mortality and so on, but we didn't think they'd be so high," he said.

Contrary to the promises from technologists that began almost immediately after the attacks, these five years have seen few dramatic security improvements. But the market remains a source of riches -- real for some companies, still largely dreamed-of for others -- primed with billions of dollars from the U.S. and international governments. Spending on domestic security across all U.S. federal agencies is expected to reach $58 billion in fiscal 2007 -- up from $16.8 billion in 2001, according to the Office of Management and Budget. States and cities are annually contributing $20 billion to $30 billion more, Gartner Inc. Vice President T. Jeff Vining estimates. Much of it lands with large defense contractors and systems integrators with long government ties and the heft to tackle huge projects. For example, Unisys Corp. got a $1 billion contract to set up computers, cell phones, Web sites and other network technology for airport security staff. BearingPoint Inc. won a $104 million deal in August to provide secure identification cards to federal employees and contractors. Still, a lot of no-names are angling for a piece. Even a tiny slice could be revolutionary for them. Surveillance technologies When Salient Stills Inc. was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder Laura Teodosio figured its software -- which enhances the quality of frames captured from video, making them clearer to publish or analyze -- would find its biggest success with media companies. But after September 11, the FBI became a user, and Salient Stills' customer focus shifted to law enforcement. Today, revenue is less than $5 million, but it has increased every year. Teodosio credits the explosion in surveillance footage being captured by authorities and by regular people. Optosecurity is at an earlier stage, having gotten only initial funding for upcoming trial deployments of its gear at North American airports. Using the optical-recognition technology licensed from the Canadian institute, Optosecurity's devices attach to existing X-ray machines and are programmed to automatically spot weapons or their components. (Optosecurity will not say how many items it can recognize.) "There is not a lot of money that has trickled down to startups," Bergeron conceded. "But the problem is that now (government customers) are running out of innovation. If you look at the checkpoint now, it is the same as the checkpoint 10 years ago, and the checkpoint 20 years ago." Some measure of technology's limited impact since September 11 can be gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security's budget request for 2007.

Police discovered the 498 sticks of gelignite -- an explosive similar to dynamite -- during a random search of vehicles entering Colombo from Nawagamuwa, north of the capital, senior superintendent K. Udayapala told The Associated Press. Six people were being questioned, he said, offering no further details. Heavy fighting erupted in late July over a rebel-controlled water supply near Trincomalee. It then spread to other parts of the east and north. There are no hard figures on the number deaths in the fighting, with estimates ranging from a few hundred to well over a thousand. This year's violence has forced at least 220,000 people from their homes, the United Nations says, adding to the more than 600,000 people already displaced by fighting before the cease-fire and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Most are living in squalid refugee camps in the north and east where food and medicine is running low because traffic across rebel and government lines has been curtailed. The fighting has also forced aid groups to scale back and in some cases cut off projects. BRISBANE, Australia (CNN) -- "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, the Australian naturalist killed by a stingray on Monday, was videotaped pulling a poisonous barb from his chest just before he died, according to news reports. Irwin's manager John Stainton, who was among the television crew on the reef, said the accident was caught on videotape, according to The Associated Press. He described the footage of his friend dying as "terrible," the AP reported. "It shows that Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him (in the chest), and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone," AP reported Stainton as saying.(Watch how a stingray strikes -- 2:35 ) "That was it. The cameraman had to shut down (after that)," Stainton said. As fellow countrymen and fans from around the world mourned his death, it was announced that a state funeral for Irwin would be held if his family so chose, an Australian state premier said. "We will honor Steve Irwin in whatever way his family wants," said Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, speaking to CNN affiliate Channel Seven. " ... We will approach the family and we would obviously be keen to honor him in some sort of way from the Queensland Government point of view, from the state's point of view, but we would only do that with the family's approval." For the past week, Irwin, 44, had been working on an underwater documentary at Batt Reef in the Great Barrier Reef off Port Douglas in Queensland state.

The other phones contained: One company's plans to win a multimillion-dollar federal transportation contract. E-mails about another firm's $50,000 payment for a software license. Bank accounts and passwords. Details of prescriptions and receipts for one worker's utility payments. The recovered information was equal to 27,000 pages -- a stack of printouts 8 feet high. "We found just a mountain of personal and corporate data," said Nick Magliato, Trust Digital's chief executive. Many of the phones were owned personally by the sellers but crammed with sensitive corporate information, underscoring the blurring of work and home. "They don't come with a warning label that says, 'Be careful.' The data on these phones is very important," Magliato said. One phone surrendered the secrets of a chief executive at a small technology company in Silicon Valley. It included details of a pending deal with Adobe Systems Inc., and e-mail proposals from a potential Japanese partner: "If we want to be exclusive distributor in Japan, what kind of business terms you want?" asked the executive in Japan. Trust Digital surmised that the U.S. chief executive gave his old phone to a former roommate, who used it briefly then sold it for $400 on eBay. Researchers found e-mails covering different periods for both men, who used the same address until recently. Experts said giving away an old phone is commonplace. Consumers upgrade their cell phones on average about every 18 months. "Most people toss their phones after they're done; a lot of them give their old phones to family members or friends," said Miro Kazakoff, a researcher at Compete Inc. of Boston who follows mobile phone sales and trends. He said selling a used phone -- which sometimes can fetch hundreds of dollars -- is increasingly popular. The 10 phones Trust Digital studied represented popular models from leading manufacturers. All the phones stored information on "flash" memory chips, the same technology found in digital cameras and some music players. Flash memory is inexpensive and durable. But it is slow to erase information in ways that make it impossible to recover. So manufacturers compensate with methods that erase data less completely but don't make a phone seem sluggish. Phone manufacturers usually provide instructions for safely deleting a customer's information, but it's not always convenient or easy to find. Research in Motion Ltd. has built into newer Blackberry phones an easy-to-use wipe program. Palm Inc., which makes the popular Treo phones, puts directions deep within its Web site for what it calls a "zero out reset." It involves holding down three buttons simultaneously while pressing a fourth tiny button on the back of the phone. But it's so awkward to do that even Palm says it may take two people. A Palm executive, Joe Fabris, said the company made the process deliberately clumsy because it doesn't want customers accidentally erasing their information. Trust Digital resurrected erased e-mails and other information from a used Treo phone provided by The Associated Press for a demonstration after it was reset and appeared empty. Once the phone was reset using Palm's awkward "zero-out" technique, no information could be recovered. The AP already used that technique to protect data on its reporters' phones. "The tools are out there" for hackers and thieves to rummage through deleted data on used phones, Trust Digital's chief technology officer, Norm Laudermilch, said.