In the News...

US SCHOOL SPYING ON STUDENTS!

Parents in the US have accused a school of spying on children by remotely activating webcams on laptops. A couple from Pennsylvania have filed a lawsuit against a school district which gave laptops to its high school pupils.

They say their son was told off by teachers for "engaging in improper behaviour in his home" and that the evidence was an image from his webcam.

Lower Merion School District says it has now deactivated a tracking device installed on the laptops.

It says the security feature was only used to track lost, stolen and missing laptops.
But it was deactivated on Thursday and would not be re-instated without informing students and families, the district said.


UK CAR PRODUCTION RISES

UK car production saw a sharp increase in January, rising 64.8% from the same month the previous year.

That was the biggest year-on-year increase in monthly production since May 1976, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

Some 101,190 cars were produced in January, up from 85,316 in December.

Car production levels fell to a 25-year low in 2009, but the SMMT said it expected "modest growth" in the year ahead.


AIR INDIA BAILED OUT BY GOVERNMENT

The Indian government has approved an injection of $173m (£110m) for the ailing national carrier Air India.
The instalment is part of an expected $432m ($277m) financial aid package for the company, which has reported massive losses in recent years.
The money would be paid out in two phases, officials said.
Last year, the airline agreed to restructure the company, cut costs amounting to £407m over two years and to boost its revenues.
The airline reported a loss of $875m in the fiscal year ending in March 2009.


PLEASE ROB ME

A website called PleaseRobMe claims to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online.

The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet. The site scrutinises players of online game Foursquare, which is based on a person's location in the real world.

PleaseRobMe extracts information from players who have chosen to post their whereabouts automatically onto Twitter.

"It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers.

"People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing."


ONLINE RADIO STATION LISTENERS UP

In an online world saturated by struggling streaming music services, Internet radio site Pandora appears to be making all the right moves.

Last year, the 10-year old company recorded its first profitable quarter, doubled its subscription base to more than 40 million users and took in $50 million of revenue. The company also announced several new partnerships that allow users to take Pandora with them in the car and on the TV.

Pandora certainly seems to have found its sweet spot, making it a standout among other streaming services that have not been able to make it on their own. Social music site iMeem was scooped up by MySpace in December for just $1 million, and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) bought cloud-based music service Lala for not much more. Analysts say even mighty MySpace Music may be unable to sustain itself for much longer.

The company attributed its ability to rise through the rubble to its substantial user growth over the past year. With a rapidly increasing number of subscribers, Pandora has been able to attract better advertisers and demand higher ad prices.


GE NUCLEAR WASTE RECYCLE PLAN

Eric Loewen won't even utter the words "spent nuclear fuel." That's the industry term of art for the nuclear fuel bundles that are pulled out of today's reactors after they're done making electricity.
Loewen, a nuclear engineer at General Electric, doesn't see them as "spent" at all. He sees them as raw material for a new type of nuclear reactor. "It's used, but it's an energy asset," he says.

GE's joint venture with Hitachi, called GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, would like to build both the reactor and facility that creates the new fuel at a single site, which GE calls an advanced recycling center, or an ARC.
Loewen and GE suddenly have a captive audience. The Obama administration plans to offer $54 billion in loan guarantees to help America start building new nuclear reactors again.

Sources: BBC Business News, Fortune, Forbes