Google's Motorola bid suffers setback

The European Union has put the brakes on Google's proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, reveals V3.co.uk.

The European Commission (EC) last month issued a filing asking the company to provide additional details on how the acquisition would be carried out.

According to a filing on the EC Web site, a second notification was issued on 6 December, informing the company that the review of the deal would be put on hold and the deadline for a decision on the deal suspended.

Google security crews have tossed at least a dozen smartphone games out of the Android Market after discovering they contained secret code that caused owners to accrue expensive charges for text messages sent to premium numbers, notes The Register.

The malicious apps, uploaded to the Google-hosted service by a developer named Logastrod, masqueraded as wildly popular games such as Angry Birds, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and Need For Speed.

The developer allegedly cloned the titles, including the accompanying graphics and descriptions, and added malicious code that caused handsets to surreptitiously send and receive premium messages.

YouTube, the world's largest video sharing service, has rolled out a new school-friendly version of its site, says the BBC.

YouTube For Schools promises classrooms access to educational videos without the risk of pupils being “distracted by the latest music video or cute cat”.

The Google-owned site has put together playlists according to subject matter and intended age level.

Kenyan soldiers and members of an extremist Islamist militant group have been fighting each other in Somalia since Kenya invaded two months ago, reports the Associated Press.

Now, their spokesmen are taking the battle onto Twitter, with taunts, accusations and insults being directly traded in a rare engagement on the Internet.

The propaganda war on the micro-blogging Web site shows the increasingly sophisticated use of media by both sides, and underscores that there is often little reliable information about the conflict in Somalia that now directly or indirectly involves a half-dozen nations, analysts say.