It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK.

The idea relies on the "Twomey effect", which says that increasing the concentration of water droplets within a cloud raises the overall surface area of the droplets and thereby enhances the cloud's albedo.

The 300-tonne unmanned ships used to seed the clouds would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails.

Fraudsters have begun cold-calling householders to accuse them of copyright infringement online and threaten them with court action, an ISP has reported.

Small ADSL provider UKFSN received a support call yesterday from an elderly customer who was concerned after being contacted by a scammer on Tuesday.

Accused of illegally sharing music, UKFSN's subscriber was savvy enough to refuse to give any details, and turned the tables on the caller, demanding to know where they were calling from. When they refused to provide credentials he hung up.

HiVision has managed to create a UMPC that sells right now for $120.00. They say they have refined the manufacturing process and have learned from building this laptop how to mass produce a laptop that will sell for $98.00.

MIPS based processor, WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, has 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support and Abiword for word processing. Running a custom Chinese Linux distrubution named Xip.

Controversial Silicon Valley advertising startup NebuAd drops plan to sell deep packet inspection technology to Internet service providers after Congress and public interest groups slam privacy implications of deep packet inspection. NebuAd suffered through a summer of losing customers and congressional hearing before bailing on the plan that promised ISPs additional revenue sources.

According to the report, NebuAd uses special equipment that "monitors, intercepts and modifies the contents of Internet packets" as consumers go online. The report found that NebuAd inserts extra hidden code into users' Web browsers that was not sent by the Web site being visited.

St. Paul police fired chemical agents and projectiles into a large crowd of protesters outside the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.

The incident comes after almost 300 people were set to be formally charged in Ramsey County District Court on Tuesday after they were arrested during protests Monday at the Republican National Convention, police said.

On Monday, police arrested 283 people after firing projectiles, pepper spray and tear gas to disperse a crowd demonstrating near the convention site, St. Paul Police Department Chief John Harrington said.