The continued control of the internet's organisational structure by the US government - in particular the Bush administration - could result in the splitting of the Net, one of the leading Arab internet voices has warned.

The US government's "de facto monopolistic control" over the internet combined with the "serious and growing unpopularity of the Bush administration internationally" could "lead to serious forms of balkanisation", Fattal warned.

Four billion out of the six billion people on the planet use a non-Western (ASCII) alphabet, Fattal stressed. Everyone recognises the need to make the internet more of a global medium, especially with efforts in China and elsewhere starting to step outside the existing internet infrastructures to provide the services they want.

However, Fattal told us that he felt the issue of US government control had to be dealt with openly. It would be in everyone's benefit - including the US government's - to pool resources and create a multi-lingual internet in the same hub, he said.

But at the same time he warned that the "double standards" set by the US government - he cited in particular recent revelations that US president George Bush had considered blowing up the headquarters of Arab news station Al-Jazeera - had dealt the US' claims of freedom of expression on the Internet a "serious blow".

ICANN is well aware of the problems for many across the world caused by continued US government control, and is pushing forward several reforms that will redress the balance for other world governments.

The Xbox 360 has virtually sold out in the UK as gamers rushed to snap up Microsoft's next generation games console, say retailers.

In the UK, more than 200 gamers have queued for hours in the rain for the midnight launch of the console at Game's flagship store in London's Oxford Street.

For Asda, non-food director Tony Page said: "As predicted, we counted them in and counted them out quick as a flash. Someone at Microsoft seriously needs their ears Xboxing for failing to give us enough to go round."

A search by the BBC News website on online auction site eBay late on Friday found more than 2,000 consoles, with most going for around £600.

The Xbox 360 is one of the most eagerly-awaited consumer electronics debuts of the year.

Bats could be responsible for spreading Ebola among human and ape populations in central Africa, scientists have claimed in Nature. Three species, all of which "had a geographical range that included regions where human outbreaks of Ebola had occurred", did not show any signs of infection, but offered "genetic evidence or an immune response" as signs of their guilt.

The research, carried out by the International Center for Medical Research in Franceville, Gabon, involved capturing more than 1,000 bats in Ebola-infected areas between 2001 and 2003. Team member Eric Leroy told Nature: "We find evidence of asymptomatic infection by Ebola virus in three species of fruit bat, indicating that these animals may be acting as a reservoir for this deadly virus."

Ebola kills between 50 and 90 per cent of victims, depending on the strain. According to the WHO, it is characterised by "sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat... often followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding."

Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home.

But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard.

Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank's permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.

For Swank, the backyard cyclotron is a personal quest: He lost his father to cancer years ago, and he says his community needs the medical resource. He also wants to use it to inspire young people to learn about science.

But the Anchorage Assembly plan to hold an emergency public hearing on Dec. 20 to determine whether he will be permitted to install the device at his lifelong residence.

Diebold has a long history of resisting sharing the source code for its much-derided electronic voting machines, even if it's with election officials wanting to verify the machines actually work like they're supposed to. North Carolina had passed a law requiring e-voting machine vendors to make their source code available for scrutiny by officials and experts, and Diebold managed to get itself exempted from the law, drawing a suit from the EFF. Last week, a judge ruled against Diebold, saying if they wanted to sell their machines in North Carolina, they'd have to follow the law. Diebold's response is pretty predictable: they'd rather not do business in the state than expose their code. The company just doesn't seem to get it: elections, and the equipment used in them, need to be transparent and open to public scrutiny. Running away rather than opening their code won't engender much trust in their equipment, in North Carolina, or anywhere.

The National Law Journal reports that the RIAA has launched 14,800 lawsuits in the last two years in an attempt to clamp down on file swapping. But what's striking about the RIAA's tactics is that out of all 14,800 lawsuits, not a single one has gone to trial. That's about to change.

Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five living in Wappingers Falls, New York, is taking her case to trial. She recently found herself the target of an RIAA lawsuit and vowed to contest it, claiming that she knows nothing about downloading music online. The RIAA, however, is quite sure that she does.

Santangelo and her lawyers moved to dismiss the case but the judge has rejected their efforts, meaning that discovery will soon begin and a full trial appears likely. We haven't seen a trial on this issue yet because the RIAA has generously offered to settle the suits for amounts in the US$3000-4000 range, rather than the tens of thousands they would demand if they prevailed in court. To date, more than three thousand people have coughed up.

But the RIAA has been wrong before, as it was in its 2003 suit against Sarah Seabury Ward, a sixty-something sculptor who was accused of downloading gangsta rap. The suit was eventually withdrawn, but the case (and others like it, including one against a dead grandmother) does shed some doubt on the RIAA's ability to correctly identify the infringing party. With Santangelo's case now headed for trial, a judge's ruling may provide more clarity about what the RIAA can and cannot do in its war on musical piracy.

In TV land, prime viewers are fleeing prime time: The networks have seen a 7.4% drop in viewings by 18- to 49-year-olds so far this fall compared with last year. There are plenty of reasons for these declines-fickle tastes, videogames, piracy. But there's also the fact that, frankly, the entertainment industry tends not to show the fans much love. Any business that prices popcorn the way gas stations price gas, encodes software into its CDs that compromises computer security, or persists in building sitcoms around Jim Belushi needs work in staying close to customers.

Yet with anime and its print cousin-the paperback-sized cartoon books called manga-the otaku keep showing up, cash in hand. This tidy little corner of the show-biz universe-a market worth more than $625 million last year at retail in North America, of which AD Vision captured $150 million-makes for a rare example of an entertainment niche that does more than not alienate its customers: It has found ways to keep them buying and buying.

But as the majors take their first tentative steps, Ledford and his peers keep racing along. The most dramatic example of this attitude is their tolerance for folks who have the potential to put them out of business: pirates trading anime online. And not just trading, but competing to see who can create the best subtitled version of a particular show.

This is open-source TV programming. "Fansubbers," as they're called, can spend more than a dozen hours collectively just to get a half-hour show ready for English speakers. The process is as orderly as an ant farm, with each fansubber having a specialized task.

If this were being done in any other industry-imagine Chinese Pontiac fans getting together to strip and build their own versions of General Motors cars-the lawsuits would be piling up. Not here. Part of the reason is that the fansubbers police themselves with a zero-tolerance policy that would impress Eliot Spitzer.

"It's backwards thinking. It's protectionism," said Terri McBride, president of Vancouver-based Nettwerk, whose roster includes the Be Good Tanyas. "The average consumer who's not tech-savvy is going to buy the CD, thinking that they can load it onto their iPod ... They're going to be royally pissed off."

It's becoming a regular occurrence in CD shops across the country: an irate customer comes in complaining the CD they bought won't play on their computer, and worse yet, they can't transfer the tunes to their iPod.

"Consumers are not liking it," says Leslie Purchase, assistant manager at CD Plus in the Halifax Shopping Center. "People are getting very frustrated by (copy-protected CDs)."

She's noticed an increase in customers who put CDs down after noticing the "copy-controlled" or "copy-protected" label.

More controversial is the ability to control which programs consumers can use to playback their music. With EMI and Sony BMG discs, for instance, the music is compatible only with Windows Media Player but not with iTunes (for PC users).

The CIA's inspector general warned last year that interrogation procedures approved by the Bush administration could violate the UN convention against torture, it emerged yesterday.

The leaking of the inspector general's classified report represented an embarrassment for President George Bush, only a few days after he emphatically declared: "We do not torture." It also comes at a sensitive time when the vice-president, Dick Cheney, is lobbying to have the CIA exempted from legislation establishing stricter interrogation rules.

A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain - a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam - would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Mr Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted.

Negotiations are under way to resolve the impasse, after the White House threatened that Mr Bush would make his first use of the presidential veto if the McCain draft law remained unchanged.

In December, the EU parliament is expected to vote to extend data retention requirements in the EU from 3 months to a maximum of one year in an effort to combat terrorism. Currently companies in the telecommunication and internet access industries are required to keep detailed data on communications for at least three months so that law enforcement can examine these records if they're needed. Call data must include the names, numbers, and address of the callers, start and end time of the call, and SIM card information in the case of mobile usage. ISPs must keep log-on and log-off times, IP addresses, email headers, sites visited, and billing information. Member states such as Britain would like to see this period extended to an entire year, and it looks as though passage of the directive is likely (curiously, the law has little support in the UK itself, but politicians hope to get it through the back door by making it EU law).

However, in a move that is becoming increasingly common, an industry group representing content giants such as Sony BMG, Disney, Time Warner, and EMI, would like to see this data opened up for use in less serious situations, such as, oh, say, copyright infringement? The Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA) believes that it is fundamentally wrong to limit these tools to fighting terrorism.

"The data retention directive was proposed to fight terrorism. As ill-conceived as the original legislation was, this should never be used to fight the music and film industries' battles at the expense of the taxpayer," said Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group. "The music industry's attempt to hijack this legislation is a travesty and a gross affront to civil liberties and human rights."

he Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive 2 (IPRED2) contains language that would criminalize all copyright infringement done for commercial gain, or even "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such infringement."

Privacy advocates also say that giving this kind of access to commercial concerns as opposed to legitimate government security concerns is like asking for abuse. Armed with this kind of data, it would be very easy for companies to profile individuals, including the sites they visit, who they e-mail, and how much time they spend online.