Monday, March 5, 2001		Latest in IT world

Hackers hit Web site before Budget

The Web site of India’s Economic Times newspaper was hacked by opponents of New Delhi’s rule in Kashmir, shortly before the Finance Minister was due to present his annual Budget last week. An employee at ET Online, who asked not to be named, said the homepage of the leading business newspaper’s site (www.economictimes.com) was hacked at about 9:30 a.m. (0400 GMT). The site was back to normal about an hour later. The homepage of the site briefly read: "D0SeD of HaXoBuGz owns you so the India’s Business newspaper got hacked!," and then there was a headline "Save Kashmir." Managers of the Web site were not immediately to comment.

A Singapore man will spend nine months in jail for having sex with an under aged girl he met via the Internet, the Straits Times newspaper reported. Tay Kim Kuan, 45, made contact with the 15-year-old student at an Internet chatroom last May and had sex with her in a hospital carpark a month later after she shared intimate details of her love life online and over the phone. The married company director was arrested in November when he went to meet the girl again. Two other men are also charged with having sex with the same girl. Passing the sentence, District Judge Seng Kwang Boon said the law must protect young girls from being exploited. Tay pleaded guilty but is appealing the sentence.

Tampa officials on Wednesday briefly shut down Dude Dorm, controversial Internet Webcast site featuring sometimes-nude college-age men, for allegedly violating city regulations, company and city officials said. City inspectors ordered Dude Dorm’s cameras turned off for unspecified violations of its business license, city officials said. But Entertainment Network Inc., the company that runs the Web site, said inspectors and police conducted a "storm trooper" raid and it threatened to sue in retaliation. Entertainment Network has been in a dispute with Tampa city officials for years over Dude Dorm, www.dudedorm.com, and its sister site, Voyeur Dorm, www.voyeurdorm.com.

Now, speakers of Euskara and Pinyin can register their Internet domain names in their native tongues. In a move that further opens up the Net to non-native English speakers, VeriSign Inc. opened up registrations for the Internet domain names in more than 70 additional, mostly-European languages. Internet users will be able to choose Web site and e-mail addresses that use special letters, accents and marks particular to Western European languages

— Reuters