The time is 23:00 UTC, on January 18 2007, and this is Audio Wikinews Newsbriefs. (Sound Effect)
Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that his country is prepared to have a nuclear standoff with the United States.  The move comes as the U.S. decided to send another aircraft carrier to the Middle East.  According to the U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the USS Stennis was dispatched to the region to "impress on Iran that the four year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable." 
In response to the deployment of additional troops, Aminajad said that Iran was "prepared for any possibility in the standoff with the west over its nuclear activities."  Iran has stated that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes, but the United Nations disagrees, and imposed limited sanctions on the nation last year.
An E.U. funded research commission studied costs and benefits of adopting open source software such as Linux or OpenOffice.org instead of proprietary software such as [Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office.  The study was conducted on six organizations from European nations.  The study concluded that "in almost all the cases a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long-term costs of ownership of the software products."  The study also reported that they found "no particular delays or loss of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org."  This is bad news for Microsoft who is in a legal battle with the European Union over its monopolist behaviors.  It is also competing with a number of open source software distributors for the market.
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Wikinews:Briefs/January 18, 2007