Railway minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday said the official websites of the Indian Railways would be made bilingual to mark the golden jubilee year of official language beginning September 14, this year. Addressing the 45th meeting of the Railway Hindi Salakhar Samiti, he said that the Railways would also make all computer-related applications in bi-lingual.

Cyberkids

Boston's Cyberkids, part of Boston Education and Software Technologies Ltd, has opened its first centre in Bangalore. In Bangalore, Boston's Cyberkids has tied up with Baskin Robbins, Shoppers' Stop, Calypso, Archies and Hallmark for conducting a series of promotional activities like offering gifts and freebies for every fresh enrollment at the centre. Established in 1996, the institute has 10 centres in Mumbai and three in Ahmedabad apart from centres in Baroda, Surat and Pune.

UN agency announces new standard for high-speed WWW links

Global agreement on a new telephone standardwill vastly speed up links from homes to the internet, the United Nations telecommunications agency said. US firms are already offering the new standard, which enables speeds at least 30 times faster than the current top-of-the-line modems used by personal computers over ordinary copper telephone lines, specialists said.

Many other countries are introducing systems based on the standard to provide affordable access to the internet, multimedia services as well as long-distance schools, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said. European companies are poised to enter the field, said Andrew Nunn of Britain, chairman of a key panel that devised the standard for the ITU, announced on Monday.

Systems based on these standards, which are effective immediately, will complete "the last mile in high-speed subscriber-to-subscriber data communications," said an ITU statement. The new standard is for a system known as ADSL, or asymmetric digital subscriber line. It can send data in one direction at up to 7million bits per second (mbps).

Hate groups seek to recruit through Net

Hate groups are using the internet to recruit young disciples, providing children as young as 9 or 10 years old with a sense of purpose and belonging, civil rights campaigners have said. "Every extremist group has rushed to the World Wide Web to seek an infusion of young people," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a leading Jewish rights organisation based in Los Angeles.

Murdoch rules out his children as successors

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said in remarks published on Tuesday that News Corp's American-born president Peter Chernin is formally in line to succeed him as chief executive, not one of his three children as widely expected. Murdoch nominated Chernin, 48, as the man to lead the $32.8 billion company in an interview with Newsweek magazine. "It would certainly be a matter for the board," Murdoch said. "I would think Peter would probably be chief executive officer. Maybemy older son Lachlan would become chairman." He said his children -- Lachlan, Elisabeth and James -- would not be ready to succeed him any time soon, and threw down a challenge to the siblings. "They all have to prove themselves first."