There had been recent speculation that ISIS might attack Kirkuk to force Kurdish troops to divert their efforts away from Mosul, ISIS' stronghold in Iraq, about 100 miles to the northwest.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have moved in around the outskirts of Mosul recently, backed by airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS, forcing the Sunni extremist group onto the defensive.

ISIS has been facing off with the Peshmerga -- armed fighters who protect Iraqi Kurdistan -- to the west of Kirkuk for months.

The extremist group has previously held areas on the outskirts of Kirkuk but not the central city.

On Friday, however, ISIS militants took over Maktab Khalid, an area about 12 miles southwest of the city, after heavy clashes with Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga troops.

Among those killed was Brig. Gen. Shirko Fateh, the highest-ranking operational commander of the Peshmerga brigade located in Kirkuk.

Peshmerga fighters continued to battle, attempting to retake the area.

Hotel stormed

Separately, heavily armed militants attacked an abandoned hotel in central Kirkuk used by local police as headquarters. Police and Peshmerga sources in Kirkuk told CNN that armed men put snipers on the rooftop of the hotel and security forces had surrounded the area.

Peshmerga and Kurdish anti-terror units later raided the hotel, wresting control of it from the militants and killing three of them, Peshmerga sources said. In addition, two suicide bombers detonated themselves in an attempt to keep the Kurdish forces out.

In December, a suicide car bomb attack in Kirkuk that was claimed by ISIS killed at least 17 people and injured more than 20. ISIS said then that it was a message to the Kurdish people and Peshmerga fighters.

Kirkuk is strategically important because of its gigantic oil reserves, almost as large as those in the south of Iraq.

The Kurds and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad have long wrangled over control of those reserves, with each side wanting to keep hold of them. ISIS, which relies heavily on revenue from oil smuggling to fund its operations, has been coveting them too.

Peshmerga forces took over the Kirkuk area in June when the Iraqi army crumbled in the face of ISIS' advances and have played a vital role in defending it from ISIS since.

Let's go over some of the reasons why Apple needs it's new watch to be a smashing success.

1. There is too much riding on the iPhone

Apple's revenue during the holiday quarter may have soared 30%, but back out the iPhone and sales actually slipped 7%. The iPhone is hot -- and that's awesome -- but it's also 68.6% of the revenue mix at Apple.

Apple needs to earn its innovator wings again. With iPad sales plummeting and the iPod no longer even worthy of being its own line item in Apple's quarterly summary data table it's time for something new to take the weight off of the iPhone.

2. The iOS newbies are ripe for the picking

The only thing better than Apple selling a record 74.5 million iPhones is that a record number of them are also new to the tech giant's mobile platform.

"We had the highest number of customers new to iPhone last quarter than in any prior launch," CEO Tim Cook boasted on Tuesday night. "The current iPhone lineup experienced the highest Android switcher rate in any of the last three launches."

In other words, there are a lot of people making their initial investments in Apple products. The long overdue move to introduce larger screens to keep up with the competition is predictably paying off by eliminating their objections to going Apple. This leaves them ripe to to absorb other Apple products, and it's not iPads or iPods. Mac sales should benefit, but the no-brainer is an accessory that works in cahoots with the phone itself. Yes, we're talking about the smart watch.

3. Let's bring back the halo effect

It's not a coincidence that the Mac experienced a resurgence shortly after the 2001 introduction of the iPod. The media player worked with Macs and PCs, but it made Apple desktops and laptops cool again. Don't be surprised if we see this happen with the Apple Watch.

Ultimately the purchase of an Apple Watch is a commitment to iOS. It's unlikely to work with Android or other devices, cementing an iPhone user in place. Wireless carriers make it brutally easy to switch sides every two years, but someone buying an Apple Watch is that much more invested to sticking to the iPhone at the next upgrade cycle.

4. Show Google how wearable computing is done

If the trials are a success, it’s good news for homes and businesses that don’t have access to fiber in the U.K.—but also across Europe, as they will likely encourage operators in other countries to bet on the technology too.

Around 4,000 English homes and businesses will be able to participate in BT’s pilots, which aim to find out what speeds can be delivered using G.fast at scale. They will start this summer in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and Gosforth in Newcastle.

What speeds G.fast users will get depend on a number of factors, including the quality of the copper and the distance between the operator’s network equipment and the modem. For example, last year BT achieved download speeds of around 700Mbps and upload speeds at 200Mbps over a distance of 66 meters during a small field trial.

BT is more conservative when it comes to real-world speeds, but still expects to offer users a few hundred megabits per second initially. Speeds will then increase to around 500Mbps for a majority of users, as new standards are agreed on and hardware based on them developed, it said.

The speed increase is needed for applications such as streaming 4K video (and in the future 8K video), IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, according to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), which has developed the underlying standard. At the International CES trade show, chip maker Sckipio Technologies demonstrated G.fast’s ability to carry 4K TV.

Last year’s trials are the reason for BT’s current optimism. They showed that G.fast can deliver big speed increases from existing and new fiber street cabinets as well as from other points closer to the customer. That’s an important development as it means the technology can be deployed faster and more efficiently than previously thought, according to BT.

BT isn’t the only European operator that has high hopes for what G.fast can achieve. In October, Telekom Austria said it had connected the world’s first subscriber using the technology.

Telekom Austria has apartment buildings in cities in mind for large-scale commercial installations next year. In this case fiber is deployed all the way to the basement of a building, and existing copper lines are used for the final connection to the apartments.

BT plans to offer its first commercial G.fast services in 2016 or 2017, depending on the results of the tests. The ITU expects at least one operator to offer commercial G.fast services before the end of this year.

They are ready to be injected into the most delicate areas of a human body -- the heart and the brain -- to deliver drugs with extreme precision or work like an army of nano surgeons, operating from within.

If it all sounds like science fiction, that's because it is: the plot of the 1966 sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage revolves largely around this concept.

In the film, four people board a miniaturized submarine to enter the bloodstream of an American scientist, left comatose by the Russians as a result of a Cold War quarrel over the technology. They only have an hour to remove a life-threatening blood clot before they return to full size. The crew manage to escape the body in the nick of time via a teardrop.

But reality has a way of catching up with our fantasies, and nanotechnology is yet another field of science that bears that promise.

At ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, mechanical engineer Brad Nelson and his team have worked on nanobots for a decade, and are now ready to think big: "We're making microscopic robots that are guided by externally generated magnetic fields for use in the human body," he told CNN.

A little knife

The first to suggest that you could one day "swallow the surgeon" was beloved physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman. He coined the idea in the provocative 1959 talk "There's plenty of room at the bottom", which is widely considered the first conceptual argument for nanotechnology.

"You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood vessel and it goes into the heart and 'looks' around," Feynman said, "It finds out which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and slices it out."

Nelson's microrobots might not yet have a little knife, but they sure have something special: their shape is inspired by the common E.coli bacteria, which is propelled by a rotating "tail" called the flagellum.

"Bacteria have a rotary motor," he explains, "Now, we can't make that motor, we don't have the technology for that, but we can use magnetism to move these things, so we actually take these flagella and we magnetize them, which allows them to swim."

The nanobots have already been tested "in vivo" in an extremely delicate environment, the eye. They can swim through the vitreous humor -- the clear gel that fills the eyeball -- and deliver drugs in the retinal area to treat age-related diseases such as macular degeneration, which can cause blindness.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with over 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year.

Prostate cancer usually develops slowly, so there may be no signs you have it for many years.

Symptoms often only become apparent when your prostate is large enough to affect the urethra (the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the penis).

When this happens, you may notice things like an increased need to urinate, straining while urinating and a feeling that your bladder has not fully emptied.

These symptoms shouldn't be ignored, but they do not mean you definitely have prostate cancer. It is more likely that they are caused by something else, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia (also known as BPH or prostate enlargement).

What is the prostate?

The prostate is a small gland in the pelvis found only in men. About the size of a satsuma, it's located between the penis and the bladder and surrounds the urethra.

The main function of the prostate is to help in the production of semen. It produces a thick white fluid that is mixed with the sperm produced by the testicles, to create semen.

Why does prostate cancer happen?

The causes of prostate cancer are largely unknown. However, certain things can increase your risk of developing the condition.

The chances of developing prostate cancer increase as you get older. Most cases develop in men aged 50 or older.

For reasons not yet understood, prostate cancer is more common in men of African-Caribbean or African descent, and less common in men of Asian descent.

Men who have first degree male relatives (such as a father or brother) affected by prostate cancer are also at slightly increased risk.

Tests for prostate cancer

There is no single test for prostate cancer. All the tests used to help diagnose the condition have benefits and risks, which your doctor should discuss with you

The most commonly used tests for prostate cancer are blood tests, a physical examination of your prostate (known as a digital rectal examination or DRE) and a biopsy.

The blood test, known as a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, measures the level of PSA and may help detect early prostate cancer. Men are not routinely offered PSA tests to screen for prostate cancer, as results can be unreliable.

This is because the PSA blood test is not specific to prostate cancer. PSA can be raised due to a large non-cancerous growth of the prostate (BPH), a urinary tract infection or inflammation of the prostate, as well as prostate cancer.

"After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee," Romney will tell supporters during a conference call.

The Romney aide confirmed the 2012 presidential nominee's decision and requested anonymity before the announcement is made. Romney's prepared remarks were posted on Twitter by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and confirmed by the Romney aide.

Romney upended the 2016 GOP race when he told a small group of donors on Jan. 9 that he was seriously considering a third presidential bid.

He had been working to solidify support among the supporters and staffers who backed him in previous races. But several top donors and strategists were flocking to Jeb Bush, who appeals to the same business leaders in the GOP establishment.

Romney has made three speeches in recent weeks hinting at a possible presidential platform, centering on economic opportunity, foreign policy and fighting poverty.

Just this week, Romney took aim at potential Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. During a speech at Mississippi State University, he slammed the former secretary of State as being clueless about how to create jobs and in her dealings with Russia.

The virus is "flaring up" in new areas in the region and not all infections are being reported, said Birte Hald, who leads the Ebola coordination and support unit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"We are also seeing that in places like Sierra Leone and especially in Guinea that it is flaring up in new districts all the time, with small new chains of transmission, which means that it's not under control and it could flare up big-time again," Hald told a news briefing in Geneva.

"I think that we should consider ourselves lucky and fortunate if we are able to stop it in 2015," she said.

More than 6,000 Red Cross volunteers are deployed in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, tracing contacts of those infected, isolating suspect cases and ensuring safe burials, she said.

But the Red Cross still has "no access" to some communities in Guinea, Hald said. It saw "quite a number of incidents" of backlash in January.

"There are still communities that think, for instance, Ebola is spreading with spraying chlorine, disinfecting of the houses, and it is the Red Cross team that are coming with the chlorine, so they are making that connection," she said.

To de-escalate tensions, the Red Cross is sending police and authorities a day in advance to prepare villages for the arrival of its teams, she said.

"If we don't get full access in Guinea, then we definitely risk that this will become something permanent. If it's permanent in Guinea, then we know also that it will be in the whole region, because there are porous borders," Hald said.

The number of new confirmed Ebola cases totaled 99 in the week to Jan. 25, the lowest tally since June, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, signaling the tide might have turned against the epidemic.. The outbreak has killed 8,810 people out of 22,092 known cases.

Some 27 sub-prefectures in Guinea reported at least one security incident or other form of refusal to cooperate in the week to Jan 21. Two districts in Liberia and four in Sierra Leone reported at least one similar incident, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said on Friday.

"Light can kind of turn one-sided and single-edged under certain conditions," says Peter Banzer of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany.

Banzer and his colleagues were following up on predictions made by Isaac Freund at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who first suggested in 2005 that light's polarisation, a property that describes how its electric field moves, could become twisted. If proved experimentally, the phenomenon could pave the way for fundamental studies of how light and matter interact, such as using light to trap tiny particlesMovie Camera for biomedical purposes.

Let's twist again

In 2010, Freund proposed a way to test this: prepare two polarised beams of light and allow them to interfere with each other in a particular way. The interference will cause the polarisation to twist, forming a Möbius strip.

Banzer's team scattered two polarised green laser beams off a gold bead that was smaller than the wavelength of the light. The resulting inference introduced a polarisation pattern with either three or five twists, giving it a Möbius-like structure.

"These results are the first (experimental) proof that polarisation Möbius strips really exist, which has been a decade-long question in the community," Banzer says. "These findings emphasise the richness of light and its properties."

In the first tie-up of its kind, the airline has teamed up with Samsung to provide the headsets for in-flight entertainment.

The Samsung Gear VR headsets will show a variety of tailored content.

Experts have questioned how much content will be available and what the impact on fellow passengers might be.

Qantas said the headset would offer new experiences for passengers.

"Whether the user wants a virtual tour of our new Los Angeles First Lounge or to experience an A380 landing from the tarmac, this technology gives us a completely new way to connect with our customers," said Qantas group executive Olivia Wirth.

"It's also a fantastic tool to feature our network's destinations, inspiring travel and promoting tourism."

She also promised "the virtual worlds of favourite Hollywood blockbusters," although it is unclear how much film content is currently available in the format.

Qantas said that it was working with production company Jaunt to develop more content for the device.

Ben Wood, director of research at the telecoms consultancy CCS Insight, said that getting good content would be the biggest challenge for Qantas.

He was also not convinced that an aircraft was the best place for virtual reality.

"I couldn't think of anything worse than sitting next to someone wearing this on a plane," he said.

"They would be fidgeting, looking behind them - it would drive me mad."

He also questioned how safe the experience would be.

"It is such an immersive experience, people would be completely unaware of what is going on around them and presumably it would not be linked in to the in-flight safety announcements."

Monis, a self-styled Islamic cleric, ordered and ate a piece of chocolate cake and drank some tea. He then moved tables, to one where he could see everyone inside­ the cafe.

About 30 minutes later, Monis asked to speak to the manager, Tori Johnson.

Johnson’s colleagues saw him looking stressed. He then quietly told another colleague: “I need you to go get the keys from my offic­e and lock the doors. We’re closed. Everything is OK. Tell the staff to be calm.”

Only then did Monis put on a bandanna, pull out the shotgun and stand up, saying: “This is an attack, I have a bomb.”

The details of what happened in the 17 hours that followed, ending in the deaths of Johnson, barrister Katrina Dawson and Monis, were revealed yesterday at the opening of an inquest into their killing.

“These events have precipit­ated an outpouring of emotion: anguish, anger, resentment and even despair,” NSW Coroner Mich­ael Barnes said. “The protracted nature of the siege, its morbid suspense and the explos­ive climax must have made manifold the grief of the families of the hostages who died.”

Inside the Lindt Cafe on ­December 15, Monis ordered his 17 hostages to stand together against one wall, the inquest heard, before forcing several to hold a black “Islamic-type” flag against the window looking out onto Martin Place.

At 9.44am, Johnson was made to call triple-0, telling the operator Monis was pointing a gun at him and passing on the message that “Australia is under attack by Islamic State”. There is in fact no evidence that Monis had contacted the terrorist group before carry­ing out his attack, the inquest heard. He also lied about having a bomb on him and about having planted a number of radio-controlled bombs in Martin Place and at nearby Circular Quay and on George Street.

That phone call lasted 12 minutes. Police were on the scene by 9.51am. At 10.07am, the specialist Tactical Operations Unit was on its way. Under the watch of snipers positioned in office­ buildings around the cafe, a grim stalemate began.

There was no fixed CCTV camera inside the Lindt Cafe to record what happened next, the inquest heard, although there are some sound and film recordings from inside. Hundreds of hours of material including these recordings, text messages, phone calls and social-media posts will form part of the evidence to be tendered to the inquest.

If you’re looking to access content that’s blocked from those not in the US, the UK or other countries, one way of getting it is by using a VPN - virtual private networking software.

Choice spokesperson Tom Godfrey says: “Businesses use all sorts of tricks to try to keep Australian consumers out of overseas stores. A VPN unlocks a world of options and savings.

“VPNs have a range of uses. They can help you secure your internet connection and hide the data you send and receive online. This helps you keep your personal information private.”

Choice released a copy of its paid research in a link for people to read, which as of now is open to anyone to look at, and while Choice hasn’t said anything about restricting access to the research in the future, it’s probably worth having a look now if you’re interested.

The consumer advocates looked at 12 of what is says is the most popular VPN services, ‘ranking them based on their ease of use and performance’.

The top 3 VPNs are HideMyAss, PureVPN and VyprVPN, while the others are CyberGhost VPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish, OverPlay, privateinternetaccess, TorGuard, TunnelBear and VPNSecure.

However, as Fairfax Media points out, TorrentFreak says HideMyAss keeps extensive logs on user activity, with TorrentFreak’s own guide to the most private VPNs due next month (February 2015).

Even so, Choice makes the observations that a reliable VPN service can:

• Protect people from identity theft when using risky public networks, like unsecured café Wi-Fi.
• Open up opportunities for savvy consumers to seek out better shopping deals from international retailers.
• Give TV lovers the ability to access streamed content from overseas that is blocked for Australian viewers.

Choice’s Tom Godfrey adds: “Consumers shouldn’t be locked in to a bad deal just because they live in Australia.

“Australian consumers want to be able to purchase things at a reasonable price, and access the products that are available in other countries. Using a VPN service is like being given the keys to the global marketplace, with all of its competitive benefits.”

“With the launch of new streaming services and a falling dollar, we are starting to see more affordable streaming and video on demand services in Australia. This is a great win for consumers. However, people don’t need to be locked in to local options if it doesn’t suit them. There’s a global marketplace available with the help of VPNs.

It also released an app for its popular Outlook email program to run on Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad, hoping to attract the millions of users familiar with Outlook from their work desktops.

The new releases are the latest gambits in Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella's attempt to wrest back the initiative in the battle for mobile users, where Microsoft has fallen behind Apple and Google Inc.

Nadella broke with decades of tradition last March by releasing a free, touch-friendly version of Office for Apple's iPad, before such software was even available for Microsoft's Windows devices.

By giving away its industry-standard Office apps on Apple's popular iOS and Google's Android operating systems, Microsoft is looking to build up a base of users which it can later persuade to sign up for Office 365, the full, Internet-based version of Office starting at $7 a month for personal users.

Microsoft has been offering test versions of the Office apps on Android for almost three months, but Thursday marks the first day they are available as finished products from the online Google Play app store.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the key elements of Microsoft's top-selling Office suite of applications, have been a hit on Apple's mobile devices, with 80 million downloads since last March, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft plans to release new, touch-friendly versions of its Office apps for Windows devices later this year when it releases the Windows 10 operating system.