A blast at a shopping complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that injured 33 people on Monday was caused by an explosive device, the police have said.
There had been confusion over its cause - officers first blamed it on an electrical fault, but the prime minister said it had a terrorist link.
Police now say they are hunting for two male suspects one of whom may be a German or Turkish national.
The police spokesman said one suspect may have entered Kenya from Somalia.
The militant group al-Shabab has repeatedly threatened to stage revenge attacks after Kenya sent troops to Somalia in October 2011.
In recent months, al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for a string of grenade and bomb blasts across Kenya, that have killed several people.
Monday's explosion tore apart a shopping centre on Moi Avenue at lunchtime.
One witness said a bag was abandoned next to her just before the explosion.
In Tuesday's statement, Kenya police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the blast was "caused by an improvised explosive device planted in the building by criminal elements".
"The team has been able to recover several materials from the scene of the explosion which has been sent for forensic analysis to determine the composition of the explosive and its method of initiation," he said.
Mr Kiraithe appealed for the public to come forward with information and said one of the suspects may have entered Kenya through the border town of Garissa.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga visited the bomb site on Monday and said it the explosion had been a "heinous act of terrorism".
"We are under threat, but we will not be cowed," he said.
Earlier this year, the African Union force backing Somalia's interim government was boosted from 12,000 troops to nearly 18,000 to incorporate Kenyan troops which entered Somalia last October in pursuit of al-Shabab militants.
They accuse the Islamist fighters of being behind various kidnappings on Kenyan soil and of destabilising the border region.
Wholesale Electricity Surges in New York - Businessweek
Wholesale electricity jumped in New York as hot, humid weather from Massachusetts to Maryland prompted households and businesses to crank up their air conditioners.
Spot power in New York City rose to an average of $706.33 a megawatt-hour for the hour ended at 12 p.m., after soaring as high as $1,647.56 at 10:55 a.m., according to the New York Independent System Operator Inc., which manages the state grid. Electricity traded yesterday for delivery in the 10 a.m.-to-noon period today was priced in the $50-range.
The high in New York today may be 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius), 14 above normal, with humidity rising to as high as 87 percent, according to AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. Baltimore’s high will be 12 above normal at 91 degrees.
“Today’s demand is expected to be up with the heat and humidity, but power supplies are more than adequate to meet that demand,” Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for Consolidated Edison Inc. in New York, said in an e-mail. A cold front expected to move in later today and tomorrow will “bring temperatures back to normal by the end of the week,” he said.
Most power for a given day is purchased the previous day in what is known as the day-ahead market. Spot prices can jump when demand exceeds the amount secured in trading a day earlier.
New York Grid
Hourly prices across the New York state grid have been above $100 a megawatt-hour since 7 a.m., when demand climbed with the start of the work day. Electricity use on the grid was 28,009 megawatts as of noon, 14 percent above yesterday’s forecast for that time.
Thunderstorms predicted for later today may result in transmission disruptions and surging prices at around 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., said Brendyn Brooks-Stocking, a Boston-based Northeast power analyst with Genscape Inc., which tracks real-time data at power plants.
Today’s spot-market price gains won’t affect bills for Con Ed customers, according to Clendenin. The utility has more than three million customers in New York City and Westchester County.
The high in Worcester, Massachusetts, may be 83 degrees, 13 above normal.
Spot power across New England was $205.81 a megawatt-hour as of 12:40 p.m., based on gains in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, compared with the day-ahead price of $43.74 for the grid, according to the region’s grid operator. Electricity on the grid averaged $151.65 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., according to data from ISO New England Inc.
Mid-Atlantic
Demand on the mid-Atlantic grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which spans 13 states from New Jersey to North Carolina and as far west as Illinois, was 120,911 megawatts as of 11:30 a.m., 4.8 percent more than the day-ahead forecast.
Prices have traded from lows that were mostly in the $20s and $30s per megawatt-hour to more than $400 in some of the more densely populated areas where transmission bottlenecks aren’t unusual, according to PJM data.
Public Service Enterprise Group (PEG) (PEG)’s territory in New Jersey averaged $278.58 a megawatt-hour for the hour ended at noon, after rising to a high today of $451.75. Spot power at Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.’s zone in Maryland averaged $314.68 for the same hour after rising as high as $431.58. Day-ahead prices were in the high $40s for both areas.
To contact the reporter on this story: Naureen S. Malik in New York at nmalik28@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
MyNetFone Gains Official Certification From NBN Co For Broadband Services - PRWire
From late June 2012, MyNetFone will offer residential and business customers in NBN connected areas a range of broadband plans. Prices start from $39.95 per month for the ‘My NBN Basic’ plan, featuring 20GB (12mbps download speed), through to $99.95 for the “My NBN 100’ with 1TB download allowance (100mbps download speed).
Jim Hassell, Head of Product Development, Marketing and Sales at NBN Co Limited, said: “We welcome news that MyNetFone is gearing-up for the release of new residential and business plans following the completion of their onboarding certification. The growth in innovation and competition in the telco services market should be one of the key benefits of the NBN.”
As part of its broadband plans, MyNetFone will bundle its award-winning VoIP service for no additional fixed monthly cost. Customers will simply pay a flat 12.5 cents for untimed national calls and 24 cents per minute for mobile calls. International call costs vary from 1.9 cents per minute. A broad range of low-cost plans will be available to further cut call costs, depending on customers’ specific needs.
“The NBN levels the playing field considerably in terms of our ability to compete with the large incumbents,” commented MyNetFone CEO, Rene Sugo. “We will see a heightened level of competition in the market for broadband and voice services that will provide customers with more choice than they’ve ever had before.
“With local number portability, we can slay one of the telco industry’s sacred cash cows; line rental. This will quickly become a thing of the past as consumers won’t need to hang onto their copper phone line to retain their phone number. We can simply port their existing landline number into the cloud via their broadband connection.”
Symbio to be one of the first to offer true wholesale NBN aggregation
In addition to residential and business services provided by MyNetFone, wholly-owned subsidiary Symbio Networks has also been certified by NBN Co to provide wholesale access to the high-speed network.
Symbio will offer providers the benefit of number porting at the wholesale level to make the most of the IP communications shift enabled by the NBN. Symbio's market-leading, proprietary Number Porting system will allow providers to port phone numbers into the cloud and give end-users access to feature-rich functionality and flexibility of a new-generation IP solution delivered over the NBN.
“NBN really completes the picture, we have been successfully offering next generation hosted voice for 10 years but always held back by the lack of guaranteed bandwidth”, said Jon Cleaver, Symbio General Manager of Sales, “From our perspective, the key benefit of NBN is not necessarily the much-hyped super high speeds, but the ability to deliver a reliable, guaranteed speed to everyone. We anticipate this will significantly improve the user experience of the IP services and lead to an unprecedented increase in the rate of IP communications take-up.”
Symbio is expecting to deploy wholesale NBN services in NSW in June and will be working with a number of wholesale trial customers to ensure a smooth delivery of the NBN services & operational solutions.
Following the NSW deployment, Symbio will focus on establishing permanent POIs in Tasmania. This is a significant development, as Symbio will be one of only a few direct wholesalers making the investment to offer NBN services in Tasmania. Symbio sees this is a key opportunity to give providers access to a long-overlooked market, and to give Tasmanian end-users a wider choice of providers and an alternative to the big Telcos.
Once NSW and Tasmania projects are completed, Symbio will focus on finalising the interim sites in the rest of the country over the next few months, followed by a steady rollout to the permanent POIs.
As summed up by Rene Sugo, CEO of the MyNetFone Group including MyNetFone retail and Symbio Networks wholesale, “We are proud to play a part in changing the communications landscape, whether it be directly to end-users through MyNetFone or through Symbio’s wholesale customers. We are just happy to see this overdue shift in focus to IP when it comes to the communications landscape, and we believe it is vital to take Australia’s consumers and businesses into the new digital age.”
About MyNetFone Limited
MyNetFone Limited, (ASX:MNF) is Australia’s leading provider of hosted voice and data communications services for residential, business and enterprise users. My Net Fone was first founded in 2004, was listed on the ASX in mid 2006, has 55.2 million shares on issue, has operated profitably since 2009 and has paid dividends to its shareholders every six months since September 2010.
The company has a reputation for quality, value and innovation, having won numerous awards including the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 (2008, 2009, and 2010), PC User Product of the Year (2005), Money Magazine Product of the Year (2007) and many others.
MyNetFone’s wholly owned subsidiary, Symbio, owns and operates Australia’s largest VoIP network, providing wholesale carrier services to the Australian industry, including number porting, cloud-based hosted PBX services, call termination, call origination and many other infrastructure enabled services. The Symbio network carries over 1.5 Billion minutes of voice per annum.
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