A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed two teenage siblings when it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood.

Officials blamed the sinkhole on recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main. They warned that the crater could widen or others could open up.

Authorities have warned that the sounds coming from the sinkhole augured further possible collapses, and possibly the destruction of more homes. The dwellings around the crater have been evacuated, and police cordoned off a 500-yard security perimeter around the hole.

A tree surgeon rescued by helicopter after he broke his leg in a 130ft tree suffered further injuries when he was swung into another tree.

Westpac rescue helicopter spokesman Dave Greenberg said Mr Finch suffered extra cuts and bruises after he was swung into a second tree while being lifted out of the first.

High winds and surrounding trees and power lines meant it had not been an easy rescue, Mr Greenberg said.

Music industry trade body the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) is seeking a contempt of court order against e-tailer CD Wow, after the company was accused by the BPI of continuing 'grey imports' of CDs from abroad.

The BPI is now seeking a finding that CD Wow is in contempt of Court; a fine payable to the crown by CD Wow; an order that CD Wow pay damages for breach of copyright; and an order that CD Wow pay the UK record industry's costs.

The etailer added it may face closure if it loses the battle with the BPI.

The legal wrangling between the two was initially concluded in 2004 when they reached an out-of-court settlement which saw pounds added to the price of CDs after CD Wow switched from sourcing its goods from Asia to Europe.

CD Wow suggested in emails to customers that the price rises were imposed on it, a claim the BPI refuted leading to an injunction preventing the CD seller from repeating the claims.

The change, which began Tuesday, affects e-mails sent from AOL accounts using the internet provider's AOL 9.0 software, which is available to AOL's 13 million paid subscribers and others who have downloaded the program.

E-mails sent through AOL's Webmail service, which is available for free on the company's Web site, have had the ads attached for about eight months, said AOL spokeswoman Anne Bentley.

Bentley said the ad is a reminder to people, especially those paying for AOL service, that many products like e-mail are now available for free.

The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip hop artists to make mix tapes, and then helping the police raid their studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, they were raided by SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later that they were 'prepared for the worst.' Men in RIAA jackets helped cart away 'evidence'. Just the same, 'Record labels regularly hire mixtape D.J.'s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist. In many cases, these arrangements are conducted with a wink and a nod rather than with a contract; the label doesn't officially grant the D.J. the right to distribute the artist's songs or formally allow the artist to record work outside of his contract.'

Over the weekend, a bunch of people stopped by to point us to the blog post from the maker of some blogging software who was surprised to note that the MPAA had started a blog using his software, but had stripped out all of the backlinks to the developers site -- despite it being pretty clear in the license that you could not do that. The story got picked up on a bunch of popular tech sites, leading the MPAA to take down the blog and proffer a weak defense that the blog (while on an unprotected site) was just for testing, had never been made public and was just a proof of concept. Someone from the MPAA insisted that the organization would have paid for a license to the software had the MPAA moved forward with the project. However, as the developer notes, if he used similar excuses to explain previewing a movie he downloaded, somehow he doubts the MPAA would find that acceptable. Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen the MPAA have a bit of a double standard when it comes to how it can ignore the intellectual property rules it claims to support so strongly. A year ago, remember, the MPAA was accused of making unauthorized copies of a movie criticizing the MPAA, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. That time MPAA officials claimed it was okay to make those unauthorized copies because it had "implications" for MPAA employees. Funny how the MPAA comes up with all sorts of exceptions for its own activities that aren't found anywhere in copyright law -- and yet it doesn't want to give anyone else the benefit of the doubt.

A blogger who wrote his own blogging engine called Forest Blog recently noticed that none other than the MPAA was using his work, and had completely violated his linkware license by removing all links back to the Forest Blog site, and had not credited him in any way.

Amazingly, the MPAA seem to think they're above "formalities" like licenses and such. The MPAA blog, located at www.mpaa.org/blog_default.asp, was using Patrick's Forest Blog software, but had been completely stripped of his name, and links back to his site. He only found about it accidentally when he happened to visit the MPAA site.

Clearly, there seems to be a lack of concern by the MPAA of others' copyrighted works. Therefore, is it unsurprising that their customers seem to have the same attitude towards their movies?

Profoundly blind people could get their best shot yet of restored vision with a more advanced "bionic eye", researchers have announced.

Trials of the new retinal prosthesis will begin shortly, following the success of a prototype that has enabled six blind people to see again.

Within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century, after his sight was destroyed by retinitis pigmentosa, a virus that attacks retinal cells.

Currently recipients of the device experience a relatively narrow view, but more electrodes should provide a greater field of vision, Humayun says. By stimulating more ganglion cells, he hopes that visual acuity will increase dramatically. His team's next goal is to design a device with 1000 electrodes.

Steve Ballmer has played down the hype surounding Vista sales saying some analysts have taken an overly optimistic view.

Ballmer said most sales of Vista were reliant on people buying new PCs and that the short-lived surge in PC sales was unlikely to be long-lived.

However, boxed copies of Vista did less well. Vista sold 59 per cent less copies in its first week in the US than XP did on its debut.

Microsoft shares fell almost 2.5 per cent on the news.

A US intellectual property pressure group has called on the US government to declare Canada a member of the IP Axis of Evil, alongside China, Russia and Belize.

The group has complained to the US government, accusing the Canadians of failing to deliver on a promised overhaul of copyright laws and a policing crackdown.

The group which includes members such as Microsoft, Apple and Paramount Pictures feels that the Government needed to "ratchet this up" as the Canadian government doesn't seem to take this very seriously.

The IIPA thinks that putting Canada on the "priority watch list" next to Belize, Venezuela, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Ukraine and Russia will do the trick.