Airport body scans to be compulsory

UK transport secretary Lord Andrew Adonis has confirmed airport body scans will be compulsory for passengers selected to undergo the procedure. Travellers who refuse will not be allowed to fly, says Computing.co.uk.

"In the immediate future, only a small proportion of airline passengers will be selected for scanning. If a passenger is selected for scanning and declines, they will not be permitted to fly," he says.

Heathrow and Manchester airports started using the scanners today, and others, including Birmingham, are set to follow later this month.

A computer database containing the personal details of more than 80 000 employees was penetrated by unknown hackers, according to multiple news agencies, citing Iowa's Racing and Gaming Commission, reports The Register.

The attack occurred on 26 January "when the state firewall functionality was circumvented due to network routing changes and a licensing database was breached", according to a statement the commission issued over the weekend. The person who breached the system used a computer with an external account, the Associated Press reported.

Information stored in the database included employee names, social security numbers and dates of birth. The commission advisory said there were no reports of identity theft related to the breach.

WikiLeaks, a whistleblower Web site that allows people to publish uncensored information anonymously, has suspended operations owing to financial problems, writes the BBC.

Its running costs, including staff payments, are $600 000, but so far this year it has raised just $130 000.

WikiLeaks has established a reputation for publishing information that traditional media cannot.

The first production version of Firefox for Mobile has been released, for Nokia's Maemo operating system, states Computerworld.

But Mozilla already seems to be scaling back its deployment plans, and unexpectedly the mobile browser will not support Adobe Flash.

Practically speaking, the mobile version of the Firefox 3.6 browser, code-named Fennec, will run only on Nokia's N900 smartphone/Internet tablet, which runs Maemo 5, a Linux-based operating system entirely separate from the Symbian code that runs the vast majority of Nokia handsets.