Phoney web business

Fair-trade officials in Taiwan are probing reports that Samsung paid people to criticise rival HTC online. Samsung is alleged to have hired students to post negative comments about phones made by Taiwan’s company HTC. If found guilty of engaging in “false advertising”, Samsung could face a fine of up to of US $400,000. A Taiwanese website had published documents that showed Samsung recruiting students to criticise HTC and praise Samsung. Samsung Taiwan said it had not been told about the investigation.

Chinese pride

Taiwan is stopping the use of Chinese characters—the script used in mainland China—on official websites.

science & Technology - Briefs

CHEMISTRY …and now 117 Periodic table posters in science labs need to be updated. Scientists from Russia and the US have synthesized a super heavy radioactive element with atomic number 117. They have named it ununseptium or Uus, until the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry decides on a name.

News 360° - Briefs

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Congenital defects

treating drinking tap water with chlorine makes it bacteria-free. But its by-products may increase the risk of abnormalities among newborns, says a recent study. Researchers studied data on 400,000 infants in Taiwan and by products of chlorine in the water separately from 2001-03. Using these two sets of data, the researchers assessed exposure in mothers who were expecting.

Bytes

point of origin The first humans on the North and South American continents came from eastern Siberia, not Asia and Polynesia as is believed. Researchers at the University of Michigan, USA, examined the DNAs of 29 populations of native North, Central and South American people to arrive at this conclusion. The results of the study were published online in PLoS Genetics. wobbly transgenic

Malaysia lifts ban on export of long-tailed macaques

New whitefly found in Western Ghats

of the worlds major biologically diverse zones, the Eastern and Western Ghats of India are among the richest, providing natural conservation to many unknown species of plants and animals. They chronicle many undisclosed stories of evolution. Adding another feather to the biodiversity hotspot of the Western Ghats, entomologists have discovered a new genus of whitefly prompting a call for revision of its closest genus Aleurolobus. The genus Aleurolobus is characterised by hordes of different whiteflies thriving on plants.

In court

Settlement with Naveda The US Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a US $60.7 million Clean Air Act settlement with a Las Vegas-based company Nevada Power. As per the settlement, the company will improve air quality at its Clark power generating station by reducing air pollutants by 2,300 tonnes annually. The federal government had accused Nevada Power of violating the Clean Air Act by undertaking modifications of combustion turbines and increasing emissions of NOx without installing the required air pollution controls.

Taiwan agrees to shut down nuclear waste dump in Orchid Island

A 25-year-long battle in Taiwan between the area's government and indigenous people has culminated with the government agreeing to shut down a nuclear waste dump in Orchid Island by 2016. The island, about 65 km off Taiwan's southeast coast, is home to indigenous communities and has long been used to dump nuclear waste by Taiwan. The indigenous communities have been protesting against the dumping site since the 1980s.