‘China-printed Quran has spelling mistakes’
Tehran: Iran, which gave contracts to publishers in China to print copies of the Quran, has said the books are full of spelling mistakes, the Mehr news agency reported.
Several Iranian publishers had asked for copies of the Quran to be published in China. However, the copies came back littered with spelling mistakes, said Ahmad Haji-Sharif, director of the Department of Evaluation on Publication of the Holy Quran.
The copies were cheaply made in China but are being sold in Iran for much more than they are really worth, he said.
He said that if a customer finds out that the actual value of a Chinese copy is less, but it is full of mistakes, he would certainly prefer to purchase an Iranian product with better quality and bearing no mistakes.
Iran has high quality printing presses and publishing firms, with around 1,000 of them publishing the Quran, he said.
“So why should we send our publications outside Iran?” he asked. (IANS)
Father, spying on son, caught with child porn
London: A British father, who spied on his teenaged son for a TV show about sex, has been convicted himself after being found possessing pornographic pictures of children.
Fortynine-year-old Richard Watson had appeared on BBC3’s Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents programme, The Sun reported.
Watson and his wife Barbara used hidden cameras to keep an eye on their 18-year-old lad on holiday in Ibiza island in Spain, and watch him enjoy a sexy lapdance.
Watson even appeared shocked by the antics, spluttering: “Good God! Can you do that?”
But when cops raided Watson’s home in Workington, Cumbria county in North West England, after a tip-off, he was found to be keeping a stash of nearly 250 indecent images of children under his possession.
He admitted 12 charges of making indecent images of children. He has been put on the sex offenders register for five years.
Watson, who is banned from working with kids, said: “There are worse things going on in the world. It’s been a nightmare for my family, I can’t get any lower than this.”
“It’s my son I’m concerned about – I don’t want his life ruined because of this.”
He said he only looked at the snaps on his laptop out of curiosity, Carlisle Crown Court heard. (IANS)
Russia may halve training time for pilots to meet shortage
Moscow: Russia’s aviation authorities are reportedly considering halving the training time for the country’s airline pilots in a bid to end a shortage of crew in civil aviation.
The transport ministry thinks the current course structure for pilots – a “leftover” from the Soviet era – is too “academically based” and “too long”, Izvestia newspaper reported.
The ministry wants to introduce a western-style Multicrew Pilot’s License (MPL) course, in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) guidelines, officials said.
The new course would take just 18 months to complete, and would qualify a pilot for flight on a particular type of aircraft.
The first such course will begin in September, Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.
The ministry is, however, taking a cautious approach to introduce the new system. It is currently only training students who have completed two years of technical education.
A debate in Russia over whether civil pilots need a formal higher education goes back at least 50 years.
In the 1970s, pilots studied in training schools for two years.
Currently, they study for three years in training colleges and undertake a five-year flight training course at one of two flight training centres in St. Petersburg or Ulyanovsk.
The three-year college course is academic and includes topics like mathematics, social-economic studies and basic science.
Specialist topics are only studied in the second course, and flight training only in the third.
Only after that, graduates get a diploma with a certificate granting them civil pilot status, allowing them to be a line pilot on a civil airline.
Sergei Krasnov, rector of the Ulyanovsk Flight Training School is against the decision to scrap the existing system. He says the school is already cutting down the time it takes to train pilots to four years.
Russian airlines need at least 800 new pilots, an official said. By 2015, they will need at least 1,000. (IANS)
Punishment for Chinese who hack foreign computers
Beijing: China has passed a new law that would punish Chinese hackers who steal information from foreign computers, officials said.
Starting Sep 1, hackers who attack 20 to 100 computers, or steal from 10 to 50 user names and passwords, will get at least three years in prison. And those who hack even more computers or steal more passwords will face jail terms of up to seven years, the China Daily reported.
Though the original law was passed in 2009, a new “judicial interpretation” was recently issued by the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
An official with the Supreme People’s Court said the new law was issued in an attempt to combat computer viruses and the increasing number of hacking cases.
The ministry of public security said the number of computer viruses seen in China has increased by 80 percent this year, and eight out of 10 computers that are connected to the internet have been hacked during the past five years.
Till June, China had more than 485 million netizens, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Centre.
In 2010, more than one million Internet Protocol addresses – or individual numbers assigned to computers that are connected to the internet – were controlled by overseas hackers, says a report by the State Council’s Information Office. (IANS)
Teen falls from bridge trying to paint graffiti
Melbourne: A teenaged boy, who was attempting to scrawl graffiti on the Southern Expressway bridge in South Australia, fell to his death early Monday morning.
Southern Expressway bridge is the world’s longest reversible one way freeway, built as a corridor to relieve heavy traffic from the major arterial, Main South Road in Adelaide’s south.
It is understood that the youth slipped from a narrow ledge on the side of the bridge, falling on rocks in Christies Creek below, AdelaideNow reported.
A pedestrian discovered the body while walking along the Morphett Vale creek, a southern suburb of Adelaide in South Australia, about 8 a.m.
A backpack containing spray cans was recovered from the site, said police.
“It’s not just about the graffiti, it’s about public safety,” said Inspector Stephen Howardhe.
“These bridges are not built for people to climb on.”
“It’s a tragedy for him and his family.” (IANS)