Don't Scared To Talk

Four out of 10 UK adults with internet access use social networking sites compared to 17% in France, 12% in Germany and 22% in Italy.

The UK is eclipsed only by Canada where 53% of internet users go on social networking sites.

In Japan and the US the percentage is 32% and 34% respectively.

International comparisons

The Ofcom report into the £873bn telecoms, radio and television sectors compared the UK with 11 other countries, including Canada and the US.

It also looked at emerging giants Brazil, Russia, India and China, where mobile phone growth is particularly strong.

The report found that the US and UK are the only places where men do not use the internet more than women.

In the UK, the split is equal, while in the US 52% of internet users are women.

Cheap deals

The watchdog also said that the UK enjoys some of the cheapest deals for telephone, pay-TV and broadband.

In the UK, about 40% of households already take a bundled service, where they pay a monthly fee for a telephone landline, pay-TV and the internet.

This can be as low as £25 in the UK for a typical family household including two parents and two children.

This compares with £27.22 in France, £39.77 in Germany and £69.54 in the US.

Price may be one of the reasons the UK has the highest take-up of digital television in the 12 countries surveyed.

At the end of 2006, about 76% of UK households were digital.

But it is still Japanese and US consumers who spend the most time watching television, averaging 4.5 hours a day.

This is one hour more than people spend in front of television in the UK.

Revenue boost

Internet advertising revenues are also on the rise, particularly in the UK.

At £33, advertisers in the UK spend more money per person on internet advertising than any other country, twice as much as that spent in France, Germany and Italy combined.

Overall, the money to be made from telecom services is increasing, reflecting the growing importance of the sector.

Telecom services revenue per head increased by 20% - from £288m in 2001 to £345m in 2006 - across the countries surveyed, the report found.

Global take up

Globally, mobiles are driving growth in the communications sector, now accounting for 53% of total telecoms revenues.

By the end of 2006, there were 402 million landlines and 634 million mobile connections in the 12 countries surveyed.

Brazil, Russia, China and India are driving much of this growth.

Since 2001, more than 660 million subscriptions were added in these four countries, accounting for 40% of total new mobile subscriptions globally.

Last year, mobile phone users in China sent 429 billion text messages, or 967 text messages per user, compared with 621 per mobile user in the UK.

New subscriptions in India doubled to 150 million, more than twice the number of UK subscribers.

DotAsia, the organisation overseeing the registration, is expecting huge demand for the first domain name extension for the Asia Pacific region.

But some in the industry are concerned about the proliferation of domain name suffixes in recent years.

While others think that the business of buying domain names has become more about protecting brands than promoting them.

Cybersquatting

Work to create the .asia domain began in 2000 with the DotAsia Organisation winning official approval to set up the domain in 2006.

A so-called sunrise period, where companies can reserve domains to match their trademarks, has been ongoing since October.

Now the process has been opened up for anyone to register and the first .asia domains will go live on the internet in March.

Thomas Herbert, a product manager from UK hosting firm and registrar Hostway, believes the nature of buying domain names has changed, largely due to the lucrative businesses of cybersquatting.

"People are willing to pay big money for a domain and with domain name reselling on the increase, it has become a matter of protecting your trademark," he said.

As well as cybersquatting there can be legitimate battles over suffixes.

For example, in the sunrise period for the .eu domain, there were some 95,000 conflicting claims for domains.

The www.polo.eu domain was applied for by car maker Volkswagen, fashion house Ralph Lauren and sweet manufacturer Nestle.

To limit squabbles and cybersquatting this time around, the DotAsia Organisation, has put in place certain rules.

Companies must be already registered in the Asia/Pacific region to qualify and if there are any conflicts of interest, the domain will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Such restrictions are likely to increase as more domain names come online, thinks Mr Herbert.

Leona Chen, spokeswoman for the DotAsia Organisation, anticipated plenty of interest and hoped the suffix could have as significant an impact in Asia as .com has globally.

"We are ready for something big. All of our people and systems are in place and we look forward to the commencement of the .asia landrush," she said.

Too many?

UK domain name registrar Net Names pointed out that the number of firms registering interest is considerably lower than for the sell-off of the eu domain in April 2006.

"Only 30,780 applications have been filed for .asia domain names so far compared with 330,000 at the same point in the launch of the .eu domain name," said Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer of NetNames.

He advised firms to get onboard quickly.

"Once it starts, there's far less protection for companies' trademarks and its open season on the .asia domain name for cybersquatters, online speculators and competitors," he said.

According to a report from Nominet, the overseer of the .uk registry, there is an active market in buying, selling and storing domain names, with sales regularly exceeding £100,000 and peak values reaching more than £1m.

While some of these resales are legitimate there was also a big market for speculators, said Nominet chief executive Lesley Cowley.

She was concerned that a sudden leap in the number of domain names could leave companies confused as to which ones they need to register for.

"The current process being developed by Icann (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) means there could be a couple of hundred or even thousands of new suffixes to bid for by the end of the year," she said.

The .asia domain name extends to some 70 countries, from the Middle East to Australia. 60% of the world's population lives within the Asia-Pacific region and there are 400 million internet users.

The review will be carried out by the former chief executive of telecoms firm Cable & Wireless, Francesco Caio.

An increasing number of consumers and firms are using broadband services and new, high-capacity cables are needed.

'Prepare the way'

The review has been ordered by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

According to the industry, the current telecoms infrastructure cannot cope with the increase in demand for services such as downloads of films, videos and music.

The review will report back to ministers and Chancellor Alistair Darling in the autumn.

"We need to prepare the way for the UK to adopt groundbreaking new technologies to ensure that we do not get left behind - competitively or technologically," said Business and Competitiveness Minister Shriti Vadera.

Last April, the Broadband Stakeholder Group, a government advisory body, warned that the government had two years to find ways of boosting investment in the next generation of broadband connections.

France and Germany are already trialling broadband services with much faster download speeds than anything offered in the UK.

But installing the cables and other technology needed for very high speed broadband is extremely expensive.

An estimate by Enders Analysis put the cost of providing that service to 5.6m BT residential customers at £1.1bn.

Analysts say cost is not the only problem.

"The business case for next generation access is weak, Virgin Media already has a high speed network and Sky has a strong hold of the premium content that users might actually pay for," said Ian Watt, head of fixed-line research at Enders Analysis.

Other analysts point out that the benefits of switching from the old, dial-up internet service to broadband was clear and customers were prepared to pay for it.

But according to Nickin Patel at Spectrum Value Partners it is "not clear" to consumers what the benefits of even greater speeds would be.

He will be asked to explain discrepancies between his inquest evidence and comments attributed to him in the Sun newspaper.

In a video recording obtained by the Sun, Mr Burrell apparently claims he introduced "red herrings" during his evidence and held back facts.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Mr Burrell say he did not conceal evidence.

A spokesman for the inquest said: "The coroner has asked Mr Burrell to return to court to explain discrepancies between the evidence he gave to the inquest and the material which is contained in the transcripts of the recording taken by the Sun newspaper."

A statement from Mr Burrell's lawyers says he did not "conceal" anything relevant or tell "untruths" during his evidence.

The tabloid story was the "result of entrapment" and the interview the allegations were based on was an "insidious" form of questioning, it says.

Joshua Rozenburg, the Daily Telegraph's legal affairs editor, told the BBC that the request was at the moment "informal".

But, he said, should Mr Burrell - who is currently in the US - choose not to respond, the coroner would have to consider whether to issue a witness summons.

"That can't be enforced in the United States but on the other hand if he ignored it he might be in difficulty if and when he returns to Britain."

If the allegations in the Sun were correct and he returned to the UK "he could be accused of perjury if he didn't tell the whole truth, which is what he swore to do," Mr Rozenburg added.

'Horrid' ordeal

At the time of his three-day appearance at the inquest in January, Mr Burrell described the ordeal as "horrid".

Jurors heard of the "extremely serious relationship" between the princess and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, which had lasted for two years, ending July 1997.

The former butler admitted Diana's relationship with her mother broke down after Mrs Shand Kydd, who died in 2004, accused her of "messing around" with Muslim men.

He revealed that Mrs Shand Kydd had called the princess a "whore".

Mr Burrell also said it was "impossible" Diana was murdered on the orders of the Royal Family, saying the princess and Prince Charles had been on cordial terms at the end of her life.

In 2002 Mr Burrell, who worked for the Royal Family for more than 20 years, was cleared of stealing Diana's possessions after an Old Bailey trial collapsed.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said the offensive is limited in scale and troops will return as soon as possible.

Iraqi officials say they remain unaware of any major incursion into the north, and Kurdish officials believe it took place in a remote and unpopulated area.

"The target, purpose, size and parameters of this operation are limited," said Mr Erdogan, whose comments were televised.

"Our armed forces will come back in the shortest time possible as soon as they achieve their objectives," he said, insisting that members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were the sole targets.

Correspondents say the aim is to isolate the organisation and prevent it using northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks on Turkish soil.

Washington said it had been informed of the incursion in advance and said it had urged the Turks to limit their action to precise targeting of rebel Kurdish targets.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad said he believed only a few hundred Turkish troops were involved in the operation.

Meanwhile, senior Iraqi Kurdish sources told the BBC the Turkish side had exaggerated the operation, which they believe to be "very, very limited", and in a remote border area.

Earlier, Turkish broadcaster NTV reported that 10,000 soldiers had crossed the border on Thursday, a Turkish military source also confirmed for Reuters news agency that two brigades had been deployed.

'Unusual timing'

The US, the EU and Turkey consider the PKK to be a "terrorist" organisation.

Turkey's military said a cross-border ground operation backed by the Air Force was launched at 1900 [1700 GMT on Thursday].

Turkey has carried out at least one ground incursion, as well as frequent air and artillery strikes, against suspected PKK targets in Iraq since parliament authorised the army to act in October 2007.

But this operation's timing is unusual as the mountainous border area is still covered with heavy snow.
Nor have there been any major PKK attacks inside Turkey for some time, she adds.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began fighting for a Kurdish homeland in south-eastern Turkey in 1984.

Mystery in Baghdad

Top Iraqi Kurdish and government officials are saying there has been no crossing at the Habur bridge, the only major land route into Iraq.

Kurdistan Democratic Party militants who control the area in question inside northern Iraq say they have not detected any Turkish forces near any of their own lines.

The office of Turkish President Abdullah Gul says the leader phoned his Iraqi counterpart, Jalal Talabani, about the operation on Thursday evening.

"During the call, our president conveyed information on the objective of the ground operation," Mr Gul's office said.

Mr Talabani's office confirmed a conversation had taken place during which Mr Gul invited him to visit Ankara officially, and also assured him that any Turkish operations were against the PKK, not against the Iraqi Kurds.

Now that the video-game industry is firmly seated in the “next generation” with the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii setting the standard for the game console experience, the question inevitably turns to what’s next.

With no new consoles being announced this year, the eyes of the industry turn to as IGN publisher Peer Schneider told me in an earlier conversation, “creating a deeper experience for the player.”

While for producers and programmers, that could mean crafting deeper story and play experience for gamers, along the lines of BioWare’s critically praised “Mass Effect,” other developers are turning to their attention towards the way in which players actually physically experience their game.

One such company, Dreamflyer, has captured the attention of a number of visitors to the Moscone Center’s 3rd floor with a state-of-the-art flight simulator chair.

The chair features a system of weights and counterbalances that work in concert with a highly realistic set of pilot’s controls to create one of the most realistic flight simulator experiences outside of actually flying. By incorporating a realistic range of motion into the simulation playing out on screen, wanna-be pilots become truly immersed in the experience. The controls, according to Dreamflyer CEO Rahul Lakote, will work with any flight program on the market including Microsoft’s “Flight Simulator.”

Though the version on display at GDC was fully loaded with a three monitor display, the system can be scaled down to work with just a single display. However, if you have the money to spend on the $3000 device, holding back on the number of monitors seems almost counter-intuitive.

Jury selection began Tuesday for the trial of a man accused of killing a 10-year-old girl whose mutilated body was found stuffed into a plastic tub.

Kevin Underwood could face the death penalty if found guilty of murdering a 10-year-old girl.

Kevin Underwood is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jamie Rose Bolin in what police have described as a cannibalistic plot.

Prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty for the April 2006 killing.

The girl's nearly decapitated body was discovered inside a plastic tub in a bedroom closet of Underwood's apartment in Purcell, a suburb 40 miles south of Oklahoma City.

The case was moved from Purcell in McClain County to Norman, about 20 miles away, because of pretrial publicity.

About 140 jurors reported to Cleveland County District Court. Judge Candace Blalock said she planned to question them in groups of 15 beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing Wednesday.

Shortly after Jamie's disappearance, Underwood drew the suspicion of police officers at a traffic checkpoint and let them search his apartment, where they found the child's nude body.

Authorities have alleged that the 28-year-old former grocery store stocker planned to rape the girl's corpse and eat her flesh.

According to an autopsy report, Jamie was struck on the head and her neck was cut to the bone from ear to ear. The official cause of death was listed as asphyxia.

Her body showed signs of sexual assault, but the medical examiner was not able to determine if the injuries happened before the girl died.

Underwood has pleaded not guilty, but his attorneys have not revealed their defense strategy; the judge in the case has issued a gag order. The defense has sought to remove execution as a possible punishment.

Legal observers said moving the trial to the next county will have little if any impact because residents of both counties read the same newspapers, watch the same television stations and listen to the same radio shows.

In addition, they said, the graphic nature of the case will make it difficult to impanel an unbiased jury.

"The more horrific the alleged facts, the more incentive there is for a jury to ensure justice by convicting the person before them," said Art LeFrancois, an Oklahoma City University law professor specializing in criminal procedure.

"I don't envy these jurors one bit," said Irven Box, an Oklahoma City defense attorney who has closely followed the case. "The job of jurors is going to be hard.

Nasrallah called U.S. President George Bush's visit to Israel "a black day for Arabs and Muslims" and said the President's view of Israel as a Jewish state is "racist."

"Its existence is premised on race," said Nasrallah. "Israel aspires for a racially pure existence," he said.

Nasrallah criticized the President's visit to "occupied Palestine."

"Bush came to Israel to celebrate 60 years [of independence] of a state that has no right to exist," Israel Radio quote the sheikh as saying.

As the crowd chanted "death to America and death to Israel," Nasrallah slammed American media's "pro-American, pro-Zionist allies" for calling Israel a democracy.

"Bush the faker, who fails to protect the Arabs from the real murderer and instead argues that he wishes to defend them [Israel] from a fictitious enemy. He is attempting to convince our Arab and Muslim people of a bogus danger. It's a deception," Nasrallah warned his followers.

"Oh Arabs, hope is in your hands," he said.

Nasrallah said the "Zionist occupation of Palestine" is "the reason for all the wars in the region."

The assassinated terror chief, who has been in hiding for years, was on the FBI's most wanted list, with a $25 million bounty on his head -- the same bounty offered for al-Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden.

He was also among the terrorists indicted for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.

Israeli intelligence believes Mughniyeh planned the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina, which left 29 people dead, and he was also responsible for the 1994 bombing at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 95.

Mughniyeh, who was close to Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, was the terror group's number two man in Syria, serving as liaison with Iran and heading up its "military" wing.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for his death.

"With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs…The brother commander jajj Imad Mughinyeh became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis," al-Manar announced.

Hamas also accused Israel of the assassination.

"We condemn this crime and we emphasize that the Muslim nation must rise up to confront the Zionist devil, which is backed by the Americans," said Gaza-based Hamas spokesman Samir Abu Zuhri.

Israel rejected Hezbollah's accusation.

"Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident. We have nothing further to add," read a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office.

Mugniyah was involved in numerous terror attacks on Israel's northern border with Lebanon and is believed to have masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad, whose remains were returned in a prisoner exchange in 2004.

Israeli intelligence believes Mugniyah also planned the cross-border attack in the summer of 2006, which sparked the Second Lebanon War. Eight IDF soldiers were killed in that incident and two others -- Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev -- kidnapped. Their status remains unknown.

Sgt. Evan Vela had faced a possible life sentence. Earlier Sunday, jurors found him guilty of murder without premeditation in the May 11 killing of an Iraqi man south of Baghdad.

Vela was also sentenced to forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and will receive a dishonorable discharge. His case is automatically referred to a military appeals court.

He will be transferred to a U.S. military base in Kuwait, where he will remain until the military decides on a permanent incarceration site in the United States.

Vela had previously been charged with premeditated murder, but that charge was changed during his court-martial in Baghdad. He was also found guilty of making a false official statement and of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.

The defendant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Two of his lawyers leaned over and gave him a light hug over the shoulders before leading him out of the courtroom on a U.S. military base in Baghdad.

Defense lawyers had claimed the killing of Genei Nasir al-Janabi was an accident, brought on by extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. But military prosecutors called it a simple case of murder.

"It's a simple case place where Vela and five other Army snipers were sleeping near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

"I don't remember pulling the trigger. I don't remember the sound of the shot," Vela said in a near whisper, thumbing the hem of his camouflage jacket and looking straight ahead. "It took me a few seconds to realize that the shot came from my pistol."

He testified that after he shot al-Janabi, he tried to shoot him again because "he was convulsing on the ground and I thought he might be suffering."

"I just didn't want him to suffer. It was something I've never seen and I got a bit scared," Vela said. The second shot missed the man.

James Culp, Vela's attorney, had unsuccessfully argued that Vela was too sleep deprived to know what he was doing.

"This was an accident waiting to happen," Culp told the jury of seven men and one woman in his closing argument Sunday. "What happened on May 11 is clear: These men were extremely, extremely sleep deprived and nobody was thinking clearly."

Vela and his sniper team had hiked through rough terrain and slept less than five hours in the 72-hours leading up to the killing, the defense said.

Culp also called two medical experts who testified that Vela was suffering from acute sleep deprivation and exhaustion. They said he later lied about the events in part because he suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome.

On Friday, Vela's commanding officer testified that he ordered Vela to kill al-Janabi, saying that was the only way to ensure the safety of his men in hostile territory.

Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, who was a staff sergeant at the time of the killing but was later demoted, testified that he and the other members of the sniper team had all fallen asleep, then awoke to find al-Janabi squatting about three feet from them.

Hensley said he ordered the man to lie on the ground and was searching him when he saw "military-aged men" who he thought were carrying weapons about 100 yards away.

He said al-Janabi began yelling, and he decided that killing the man was the only way to keep the sniper hide-out from being discovered by what he believed was a group of approaching insurgents.

Hensley, of Candler, N.C., and Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., of Laredo, Texas have faced similar charges in al-Janabi's killing as well as two other slayings. They were acquitted of murder but convicted of planting evidence on the dead Iraqis.

Sandoval was sentenced to five months in prison, his rank was reduced to private and his pay was withheld. Hensley was sentenced to 135 days confinement, reduced in rank to sergeant and received a letter of reprimand.

The soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade , 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Vela testified at Hensley's court-martial in late September, under a deal that bars his account of events from being used against him at his own court-martial.

At least 28 people were wounded in the attack in Spin Boldak, a town in Kandahar province near the border with Pakistan, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief. Three Canadian soldiers were lightly wounded, he said.

The attack comes one day after Afghanistan's deadliest bombing since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than 100 people were killed by a suicide bomber outside Kandahar city on Sunday.

The back-to-back bombings could indicate a change in tactics by militants. Though attacks occasionally have killed dozens, insurgents in Afghanistan have generally sought to avoid targeting civilians.

The country saw a record level of violence last year, and analysts and military leaders here have predicted that 2008 could turn even deadlier.

One of the Canadian military vehicles was heavily damaged in the attack, as were several shops and civilian vehicles, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief.

Khalid said several of the wounded were in critical condition and that the death toll could rise. Though the Afghan-Pakistan border had been closed Monday because of elections in Pakistan, several of the wounded were taken to Chaman, Pakistan, for treatment, Razeq said.