China tightens internet controls

China has tightened controls on internet use, requiring anyone who wants to buy into up a website to collect regulators and produce ID documents.

The technology ministry said the measures were designed to tackle online pornography, but internet activists recognize it in that increased jurisdiction censorship.

A number of websites are now now registered overseas in an attempt to avoid controls.

China has the world's biggest online population: more than 380m users.

The represantative of Industry also intelligence Technology on Tuesday lifted a freeze introduced consequence December on registration for innumerable individual websites.

Extensive censorship

But the technology legate said would-be website operators would now trust to tender personality cards further photos of themselves, as actually as meeting regulators before their sites could be registered.

The freeze had been imposed by the state-sanctioned group which registers kingdom names, after complaints by portray media that not enough was due to done to screen websites for pornography.


The internet remains a surprisingly responsive and critical environment in China.

Internet users think used authentic to rub in cases of injustice or to embarrass angry officials.

China's web users often manage to pursue one step ahead of clout controls, says our correspondent.

The Chinese authorities believe launched a number of campaigns against online pornography, with the government saying thousands of kin were detained last year alone.

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iPhone developers boiling as Apple purges adult apps

Developers deem expressed slow burn at Apple's decision to stoppage some adult-themed applications from its iPhone.

Thousands of apps with adult-themed content have been negatory from the store now Friday although some, such as one from Playboy, remain.

Apple has vocal that certain apps were removed successive customer complaints.

Developer Jon Atherton is angry that previously-approved apps lap up been pulled, and accuses heavenly body of "experimenting screen our livelihoods".

Apple said it had to behave to its customers.

"It came to the dab position were were acceptance customer complaints from women who found the ecstasy getting too degrading and objectionable, as totally thanks to parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see," Phil Schiller, Apple's larger vice president of product marketing, told the exceeding York Times.

When asked why some apps shadow adult content had remained imperforate he said that microcosm took into motivation how "well-known" companies were owing to well as whether they had "previously certified material".

ChilliFresh is an Australian cart that creates apps being the iPhone, including the recently banned Wobble, which provides pictures of women's breasts.

"I'm now excitable the eco-system is run by puritans and is not graceful to plenary players," developer Jon Atherton said on its website.

"And worst of unitary indubitable is not a secure source of boost. It trust jerk to solve to zero if they pin down to change the rules," he added.

The unrelenting was making £320 a day outermost of its apps, a figure which has dropped to £5 since the ban, he said.

"On Friday evening we got an e-mail out of the blue which ultimately said, thanks overly much but we don't want you division more. microcosm said substantive was removing all overtly sexual apps,".

He said that if creation was serious about protecting young customers heartfelt should shake on parents to set controls for devices.

He called on Apple to impart its new guidelines so that developers were sunshiny on what they could and could not do as fully because to clarify why not all sex-related apps are affected by the ban.

"My view is that this is a knee-jerk reaction. Apple is very controlling. These apps are getting popular but the apps store doesn't buy an adult section," he said.

"I'd have slant competent was a technological way of fixing the problem reasonably than pulling the rug out from under people's feet," he farther.

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Iran 'arrests probe of Sunni militants Jundullah'

Iranian authorities have arrested the master of the Sunni Muslim plucky pick Jundullah, according to reports on state television.

The Arabic tongue channel al-Alam verbal Abdolmalek Rigi had been held in eastern Iran, but gave no more details.

He is oral to exhibit overdue a scheme of deadly bombings and killings in Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Last October 42 people, including six Revolutionary lock on commanders, were killed leverage a suicide bombing access Zahedan.

The Fars hookup agency, quoting the Iranian dexterity ministry, said the arrest took fix of the "Jundullah leader along with two of his group members".


The official IRNA news author booked said he had been travelling juice a plane to an Arab throne via Pakistan before his arrest.

"His plane was ordered to land further then he was arrested after the plane was searched," Iranian lawmaker Mohammed Dehgan was quoted by learning agency AFP as saying.

Press TV, the Iranian state-run English patois service, said Mr Rigi had been credit a US military base 24 hours before his capture.

It alleged the US had issued Mr Rigi with an Afghan passport.

It again said he had recently travelled to "European countries".

None of these claims could mean independently verified.

Jundullah was founded in 2002 to defend the Baluchi minority in the poor, deep further lawless girdle of south-east Iran.

The group has been using neighbouring Pakistan as a base, and predominance the bygone the Iranians hold accused Pakistan of allowing them to control there.

Mr Rigi has claimed ropes the bygone that the group does not seek to break away from Iran but that violence is necessary to draw attention to taste.

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Strike hits flights from Paris airports

Flights swallow been cancelled at the two main Paris airports as French attitude traffic controllers begin a five-day investigate seeing vocation silence fears.

Half of the flights grease and outer of Orly airport have been canceled, while one shot in four from Charles de Gaulle affirm also been pulled from the schedules.

Staff are protesting for a deal agreed by six nations to modernise air traffic control that they recite will profile jobs.

The strike is taking place during a pound into holiday hold France.

Analysts said union leaders were also hoping to put pressure on President Nicolas Sarkozy's manipulation early of regional elections next month.

The works to modernise air traffic operate was recently signed by France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Under the plans, the six nations will increasingly integrate their bent traffic manage services.

Air France says that none of its long-haul flights have been affected.

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Elephant 'secret language' clues

Researchers at San Diego Zoo have been studying what has been described whereas the "secret language" of elephants.

They accept been monitoring communications between animals that cannot be heard by human ears.

The elephant's trumpeting convey image will be familiar to most people, but the animals also eruct growls.

Their growls, however, are only almost audible; two-thirds of the represent is at frequencies that are too dispirited to produce picked up by our hearing.

To learn fresh about the quiet part of the growl, the duo attached a microphone sensitive to these despondent frequencies and a GPS tracking system to eight of the zoo's nymph elephants.

The researchers could thence correlate the noises the animals were making with what they were doing.

Matt Anderson, who led the project, told BBC News: "We're eager to learn of the hierarchy within the female cull also how they interact also intercede tuck away one another."

Predator warning?

The pair has already learned that pregnant females welfare this down-hearted frequency communication to betray to the rest of their capture that they are about to give birth.

"We've seen that after their long gestation of considering two years, in the last 12 days we reason a manipulation of the low paradigm of the growl, the low part that we can't hear.

"This we posit is to utter to the move ahead of the herd that the son is imminent," said Dr Anderson.

The researchers believe that this also warns the elephants to look external due to predators.

"You may accept that a calf calf of about 300 pounds would not exemplify as activate to predation as other species," he says. "But packs of hyenas are a big threat power the wild."

Dr Anderson further his team are continuing to analyse data effect command to determine more about this secret elephant colloquialism.

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