Thief swipes Cabinet minister's laptop

Gordon Brown's government has lost another batch of sensitive information, this time courtesy of one of his own Cabinet ministers, reports The Register. A laptop belonging to Hazel Blears, the Communities and Local Government secretary, was stolen from her constituency office in Salford over the weekend, it emerged this afternoon.

The Press Association, quoting a government spokesman, said the PC was primarily used for Blears' constituency work, and carried "some material from her department". "None of the departmental material included sensitive personal data about the public or would be of use to criminals," the spokesman soothed.

However, it is not "personal information" that is the issue of the week, but the government's loss of top secret eyes only type stuff, after Whitehall staffers spent last Wednesday dumping bundles of hush-hush files on commuter trains running in and out of Waterloo.

The market for mobile financial services is predicted to boom over the next three years, reaching a total of 41.5 billion transactions by the end of 2011, says Computing.co.uk.

The sector will gain an additional 517 million users between 2007 and 2011, to an overall total of 612 million, according to analyst Juniper Research. The combined activities of this group will generate more than $587 billion of financial transactions.

The new users will largely come from two sources, said the study: Phone owners in developing countries that do not currently have access to bank accounts, and young people aged 13 to 18 in developed countries who are currently too young to engage in such activities.

A Department of Industrial Accidents investigator has been cleared of child porn possession charges after a forensic investigation revealed that malware was to blame for depraved smut on his company laptop, reports The Register.

Michael Fiola, 53, of Rhode Island, went through a massive ordeal after images of child abuse were discovered on a replacement machine he received in November 2006, following a laptop theft. He lost his job in March 2007 after an internal investigation, prompted by a Verizon wireless bill four times higher than his colleague, unearthed the suspicious content.

Fiola had worked for the agency investigating workers' compensation fraud for seven years prior to his dismissal. The case was forwarded onto the authorities who filed a criminal complaint in August 2007.

Governments contracting IT work could conclude that Microsoft's antitrust history constitutes "grave professional misconduct" and ban the company, according to the European Commission, says ITWorld.

But the Commission said in a statement that Microsoft can't be banned from competing for government IT projects because of the fines that have been levied against it.

The statement, dated 9 June, was in response to a question posed by two members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in April. Green Party members Heide R"uhle, of Germany, and Alain Lipietz, of France, asked the Commission whether Microsoft's antitrust violations would also make the company ineligible to enter bidding under existing financial and procurement rules. The MEPs asked if Article 93 of the European Union's Financial Regulation and other public procurement directives would apply to Microsoft.

Philadelphia revived an effort on Tuesday to provide free citywide wireless Internet access in a project to be run by a new group of investors, reports eWeek.

The city aims to provide free-of-charge outdoor Web access throughout its 135 square miles, which would be the largest area covered by public WiFi of any US city.

The project, initially launched in 2005, came close to failure when EarthLink, the company that installed wireless transmitters on light poles, abandoned the effort in May amid complaints about signal weakness.