A regularly updated column of IT related briefs.
Hong Kong school gets fingerprint registration
HONG KONG - Teachers at a school in high-tech Hong Kong just got a helping-hand to end truancy - a computerized registration system that reads students' fingerprints. The system has been installed in a Catholic primary school in the Kowloon District of the southern Chinese territory.
Pupils must place their finger in one of five scanners each morning instead of showing their hands during a registration class with their teacher, a report in the South China Morning Post said. The system is hoped to save staff time and ensure more accurate attendance records to help them crack down on truants. It is expected also to be used in the school's library and canteen, the report said.
France investigates youths for riot blogs
PARIS - Two teenage boys were placed under investigation on November 8 for inciting violence by using their blogs to urge others to join the rioting that is raging in the country, judicial officials said. The two, a French national aged 16 and an 18-year-old Ghanaian national come from the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris where the violence first broke out on October 27. A third youth, aged 14, from the southeastern city of Aix-en-Provence, has been released without charge for procedural reasons.
All three youths, who did not know one another, had hosted their blogs on a site owned by a youth radio station, Skyrock. On one of them, a message called on people living in the greater Paris area to "Unite, burn all the cops. Go to your local police station and set it on fire," according to police. Another called on "all the hoods that want to get moving: burn everything up Friday between 9:30 and 10:00 pm".
EU to hear IT dumping complaints
VILNIUS - The European Commission is to consider a request by Lithuanian and Czech electronics companies to take anti-dumping measures against television tubes imported from Asia and Brazil, a Lithuanian manufacturer said on November 8. "On behalf of two big European color picture tube producers, Tesla Ecimex from the Czech Republic and Ekranas, from Lithuania, a dumping request was prepared by the International Relations and Trade Policy Company and was lodged with the Commission on November 2," Ekranas said.
"Ekranas and Tesla Ecimex have asked that anti-dumping measures be imposed for all size color tubes produced in China, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and Brazil," Ekranas' spokeswoman Angelija Zokaitiene said. "We are also considering asking for anti-dumping measures against tubes from Mexico," she added.
China cracks down on sex and violence
BEIJING - China's media watchdog, the General Administration of Press and Publication, has launched a monitoring system to step up surveillance of illegal Websites with sexual and violent content, state press reported on November 8. The move was launched in a bid "to safeguard the order of the Internet, purify the Web environment and to protect the physical and mental health of the youths", the report said.
The media watchdog will issue warnings to any Websites found to have "unhealthy" content and will punish those that do not delete the material within 24 hours, it said. Regular offenders will have their licenses revoked and risk having their Websites closed down, it said.
Blogger arrested, faces torture in Egypt
CAIRO - An Egyptian student was arrested by security services over articles that he posted on his Internet blog about recent religious violence in the city of Alexandria, a rights group said on November 7. The Association for Human Rights Legal Aid (AHRLA) said that state security forces burst into the 21-year-old's home in Alexandria on October 26 and took him away "because of his recent Internet articles on the incidents" in the Mediterranean city. Egypt's security services refused to comment on his arrest.
The clashes, which occurred on October 21, were the worst confessional violence that Egypt had seen in several years and rekindled a debate on the place of the Christian Coptic minority in Egyptian society. In his blog Suleiman posted vitriolic articles condemning Muslim reaction to a Christian play and what he described as systematic oppression of the country's Christian community. AHRLA called on the attorney general to protect the young blogger against torture.
Bloggers arrested in France for inciting riots
PARIS - Three teenage boys have been arrested in France for inciting violence by using their blogs to urge others to join the rioting that is raging in the country, justice minister Pascal Clement told a media conference on November 7. The three, all aged 16 and living in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence, "called for riots and an attack on police stations", Clement said. Their blogs were hosted by a site owned by a youth radio station, Skyrock.
Police have said that those responsible for the unrest that has rocked France since October 27 have become increasingly organized, using mobile telephones to monitor police movements and text messaging and the Internet to communicate their plans.
French ruling party having an Internet riot
PARIS - Although struggling with worsening urban violence, President Jacques Chirac's ruling conservative party has found the time to make sure that it comes out on top in Internet searches on the rioting. The French version of Google (www.google.fr) returns a sponsored link to www.u-m-p.org, the homepage for Chirac's Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), when users type "riots" and "Paris" (or the French words for riots and suburb, emeutes and banlieue) into the search field.
"Riots in the suburbs: Support Nicolas Sarkozy's policy to restore order" the link reads, referring to France's interior minister who is also leader of the UMP - and a politician with ambitions of replacing Chirac as president in 2007 elections. Franck Louvrier, Sarkozy's spokesman, said that the company hired by the UMP to run the Website paid for the link as a way to respond to voters who were e-mailing spontaneous messages of support "every 60 seconds".
NTT DoCoMo ties up with Tower Records Japan
TOKYO - Japan's top mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo announced on November 7 a tie-up with Tower Records Japan to allow subscribers to use access music news and use e-money services in its stores. It aims to make the music retailer, which has more than 100 outlets in Japan, the "model retailer" for DoCoMo's wallet phones, which allow subscribers to make payments with their handset instead of using cash.
Vodafone now owns 50 percent of Vodacom
LONDON - Britain-based Vodafone has increased its share of ownership in the South African mobile phone company Vodacom. The move is the latest in Vodafone's move to capitalize on the key Africa and southeast Asia markets, the BBC reports. Vodafone, which previously owned 35 percent of Vodacom, bought into the investment company Venfin, which owns a 15 percent stake in the mobile phone firm.
I.T. Briefs
TOOLBAR
To add a comment,
Please log in:
Don't have an account?
Register now to comment on stories and stay up to date on important events and issues in the Middle East with our newsletter.