Monday, January 8, 2001		Lens on IT

Chinese policemen browse the Internet at an exhibition in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai . Top Chinese lawmakers have voted to criminalise a broad range of activities on the Internet, from promoting Taiwan independence and organising "cults" to spreading rumours to manipulate stock prices, state newspapers reported.

Mutalif bin Hashim, a 40-year-old former Hewlett-Packard supervisor and now one of two mosque chief executives in Singapore, poses with the home page for his Alkhair Mosque . The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore created two mosque chief executive posts last year in an effort to bring professional management to the city-state's 70 mosques, which have also started embracing high tech, including dispatching sermons over the Internet.

Chinese youth dance to techno music at a local bar in Shenzhen, China's first Special Economic Zone, which sits across the border from Hong Kong. Techno music is gaining popularity among Chinese youth following more than two decades of economic reform.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori points to a huge screen in front of a laptop computer as Sydney Paralympic swimming gold medalist Mayumi Narita (L) looks on during the opening ceremony for the year-long Internet Fair Japan 2001 "Inpaku" at the Prime Minister's official residence in Tokyo.

— Reuters photos