Thailand blocks 2,300 websites offending monarchy

January 5th, 2009 BANGKOK - Thai officials Tuesday said the government recently blocked 2,300 websites for allegedly insulting the monarchy and is seeking court approval to shut down another 400. 'We are preparing to ask for court approval to shut down an additional 400 sites,' said Thailand's Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Minister Ranongruk Suwanchawee.

February 12th, 2009 LONDON - If there's anything you want to know about the British monarchy, just go the website: that is the message of an online offensive launched by Queen Elizabeth II. Anyone seeking employment as a royal butler, or keen to find out the names of the queen's four Corgis, can do so at the click of a mouse on www.royal.gov.uk As is fit for a queen, the 82-year-old monarch hired Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, to revamp the British monarchy website, first launched 12 years ago, for the advanced digital age.

January 31st, 2009 BANGKOK - Thailand's Culture Ministry is urging authorities to crack down on a rising trend of Thai students using the internet for prostitution, media reports said Sunday. Culture Minister Theera Salukpetch asked the education ministry, the communications technology ministry, police and internet service providers to increase their vigilance against website prostitution, which he blamed on faulty values among the country's youth, The Nation newspaper reported.

March 29th, 2009 TORONTO - Canadian researchers have reportedly uncovered a Chinese cyber plot that hacked the websites of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and systems in the embassies of India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Malta, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan. They claimed that the operation has been successful in stealing documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world.

January 10th, 2009 BEIJING - China has shut down another 50 websites for containing pornography and lewd content, bringing the total number of blocked sites to 91 since last Thursday. Authorities have vowed to beef up crackdown efforts in the following days and urged law-breakers to voluntarily turn themselves in to local public security departments.

January 13th, 2009 BEIJING - China Wednesday shut down 84 additional websites for containing 'pornographic and lewd content' in its month-long campaign against online porn, bringing the number of blocked sites to 175. The Special Operation Office said in a statement that government departments would step up efforts to continue to close illegal websites and 'severe penalties' would be meted out to violators of law.

August 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The hottest thing on the Internet is not social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, but Flickr-the popular photo-sharing portal - and the proof is: it has topped TIME's list of the best 50 websites this year. One of the noticeable trends in this year's list, which was released this week, was on-demand video services, like YouTube, Vimeo and US services Hulu and Netflix.

June 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US trade officials sent a letter to their Chinese counterparts Wednesday urging them to revoke an order that requires a controversial internet filtering software to be installed on computers. The Green Dam software, which China will require on all new computers from July 1, could be used to restrict free speech and raises questions about free trade, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a letter to the Chinese government.

August 1st, 2009 LONDON - Amateur scientists have apparently been cooking up mutant microbes at home with help from popular websites Ebay and YouTube. The "biohackers" were said to have assembled makeshift gene laboratories in their own homes and were creating genetically-engineered bugs.

September 11th, 2009 Twitter keeps it simple with new terms of serviceSAN FRANCISCO — Twitter Inc. keeps it simple, even when it comes to updating the legalese in its terms of service.

August 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Popular social networking websites' users could be leaking their personal information to tracking sites, warn researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). They have found that the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make that personal information available to companies that track Web users' browsing habits, and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people.

August 31st, 2009 LONDON - 'Twittering', 'hmm', and 'heh' are among the 267 words that have been added to this year's Collins English Dictionary, all thanks to teenagers who use such words on social networking websites. With teenagers increasingly using these grunts and sighs in words on Twitter and other such websites, the need to find spellings for sounds that were traditionally used only in speech has also spawned "meh" (an expression of dissatisfaction) and "mwah" (the sound of a noisy kiss).

July 15th, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO - The recent cyber attacks against South Korean and American websites could have originated from Britain, and not North Korea, experts have said. According to security researchers in Vietnam, the source of last week's string of attacks by the Mydoom virus - which overwhelmed systems belonging to the US Treasury and the office of the South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak - can be traced to the UK.

December 30th, 2008 LONDON - You are browsing a particular website thinking that it is perfectly secure, but it may not be the case as experts have uncovered chinks in Internet security. For instance, a weakness in the Internet digital certificate infrastructure allows attackers to forge certificates completely trusted by all commonly used web browsers.

March 29th, 2009 TORONTO - A China-based cyber spy network has hacked into government and private systems in 103 countries, including those of many Indian embassies and the Dalai Lama, an Internet research group said here Saturday. The Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), which carried out an extensive 10-month research on cyber spy activities emanating from China, said the hacked systems include the computers of Indian embassies and offices of the Dalai Lama.