World briefs

Pakistanis look for shoes at a market for used footwear in Karachi. Pakistan's current account deficit during the last nine months has decreased from 7.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent owing to reduced inflationary pressures, the central bank governor said. International donors recently pledged more than $5 billion to stabilise poverty-stricken Pakistan, seen as a frontline state in the battle against Islamic extremism.

US reporter on hunger strike

US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi, who has been handed an eight-year jail sentence on charges of espionage, has been on hunger strike for the past five days, her father told AFP yesterday.

"She has started (a hunger strike) and today is the fifth day," Reza Saberi said. "Her lawyer lodged an appeal over the sentence today," he added.

Saberi, 31, was convicted by an Iranian revolutionary court in a closed-door trial last week of spying for the US, which along with Israel is Tehran's main foe.

US-born Saberi, who is also partly of Japanese descent, has reported for US National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News, and has lived in Iran for the past six years.

In an unprecedented move last Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for "justice" for the journalist and said she should be given the right to defend herself.

British police paying informants

British police claim to be paying hundreds of informants within environmental groups in a bid to get better intelligence about their activities and protests, The Guardian reported yesterday.

The newspaper said it had been given nearly three hours of footage secretly filmed by an activist for Plane Stupid, which is against airport expansion, who said she was approached by officers from a Scottish police force offering money in exchange for information about the campaigning group's activities.

Strathclyde Police confirmed to the daily that officers had meetings with activists from Plane Stupid, with a senior officer telling the paper that the force had "a responsibility to gather intelligence".

During the footage, captured by 24-year-old Matilda Gifford, the officers reportedly indicated they could pay her tens of thousands of pounds in exchange for information about Plane Stupid activists.

Saudi cracks down on blaring speakers

Saudi Arabia is cracking down on overly loud loudspeakers used to call the faithful to prayer, as mosques increasingly drown each other out, the official SPA news agency said yesterday.

Islamic Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh al-Sheikh has ordered teams to inspect mosques in the holy city of Mecca, in Riyadh and elsewhere around the kingdom for powerful speakers.

In Medina, imams have been told to make the initial summon to prayer over loudspeakers outside the mosque, and after that use only the internal speaker system to continue the ritual.

In Bahah city in western Saudi Arabia, ministry inspectors recently removed 100 speakers from 45 mosques because they were too loud and smothered out the broadcasts of other mosques.

Lost laptops cost companies dearly

Today's mobile workforce is putting precious business secrets at risk, with lost or stolen laptop computers costing companies dearly, according to the Ponemon Institute.

A Ponemon study backed by chip giant Intel found that losing a laptop costs a firm on average $49,246 after accounting for data loss, intellectual property, replacement, lost work time and legal expenses.

"An increasingly mobile workforce is putting corporations' sensitive and confidential information at great risk," researchers said in the study released recently.

"It is the Information Age and employees are carrying more information on their laptops than ever before."

So-called 'power-users' of corporate data are losing laptop computers in taxis, rental cars, hotels, airports, pubs, and conference centers, according to the research.