China's state news agency launches search engine (AP)

BEIJING – China's main government news agency launched an Internet search site Tuesday, giving its own sanitized view of the Web following Google's closure of its China-based search engine last year over censorship.

The Xinhua News Agency is operating http://www.panguso.com in partnership with state-owned China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest phone carrier by subscribers.

The venture gives the ruling Communist Party a new tool to try to control what China's public sees online. Industry analysts say it might be commercially viable, drawing on Xinhua's news report and China Mobile's vast subscriber base, but is unlikely to challenge local industry leader Baidu Inc., which has more than 75 percent of China's search market.

Xinhua and China Mobile announced the venture in August after Google Inc. closed its China-based search engine, saying it no longer wanted to comply with Chinese censorship and complaining its e-mail service was hacked from China.

Xinhua said it hopes to make Panguso one of China's leading search engines.

"We would like to fully exploit the advantage of Xinhua as an official agency having a large collection of news and information, and that of China Mobile in terms of technology, advanced operation principles and strong infrastructure," said Xinhua president Li Congjun in a statement released by the agency.

China has the world's biggest population of Internet users with 457 million people online as of Dec. 31, and 303 million people searched the Web by mobile phone last year, according to a state-sanctioned industry group, the China Internet Network Information Center. China Mobile says it has more than 589 million accounts.

Beijing promotes Web use for business and education but its extensive filters bar access to material deemed pornographic or subversive. Search engines in China are required to exclude results of banned sites abroad.

Panguso, available on both Web and mobile phone, appears to filter even more stringently than other Chinese sites.

A search on Panguso for Liu Xiaobo, the jailed activist and Nobel Peace Laureate, returned no results. A search on Baidu turned up Chinese-language commentaries criticizing Liu.

Searches on Panguso for the Dalai Lama turned up tourism information for Tibet, followed by commentaries from Chinese state media criticizing the exiled Tibetan leader.

And Panguso has politically embarrassing gaps. It returned no result in a search for the website of People's University in Beijing, the first university founded after the 1949 communist revolution and one of China's most prominent institutions.

Baidu claimed a 75.5 percent share of China's online search market in the final quarter of last year, according to Analysys International, a Beijing research firm. Google was second but its market share fell to 19.6 percent, down from 30.9 percent before the closure of its China search engine.

China's mobile phone-based search market is more fragmented. Baidu leads with 34.3 percent but local rivals such as Easou.com also have double-digit market shares.

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AP researcher Yu Bing contributed to this report.

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Fla. agency under fire for death in toxic truck (AP)

By KELLI KENNEDY AND MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Kelli Kennedy And Matt Sedensky, Associated Press – Thu Feb 17, 5:09 pm ET
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – For four days, Florida child welfare investigators searched for missing 10-year-old twins. They made home and school visits, called the children's father on his cell phone, talked to their mother and contacted relatives.
Now, agency officials are being slammed for one call they didn't make: They never reached out to police.
By the time police were notified, the little girl, Nubia, was dead, wrapped in plastic bags in the back of her father's exterminator truck parked alongside Interstate 95. Her brother, Victor, was in the front seat, coated in a toxic chemical with critical burns.
Their father was nearby on the ground, unresponsive and doused in gasoline in what he later told police was a futile attempt to kill himself.
Her death has reignited criticism against the state Department of Children and Families, an agency that overhauled its system a decade ago after a foster child was missing for more than a year before anyone realized.
A judge slammed investigators this week for not thoroughly working the recent case, and officials have called for an outside review.
Meanwhile, authorities focused their attention on the couple. Carmen and Jorge Barahona's home was considered a crime scene as authorities investigate claims the couple starved their 10-year-old daughter and locked her and her brother in the bathroom with their feet and hands tied as punishment. It's unclear how Nubia died, or how long she had been dead before her badly decomposing body was found Monday.
The couple, who adopted the twins from foster care in 2008, have been the focus of three abuse allegations in the past few years, but the agency said they were unfounded. State officials said the Barahona's home visits and other documents were "stellar."
Jorge Barahona, 53, appeared in court Thursday, charged with aggravated child abuse for dousing the boy with the chemical and loading his dead daughter in the back of his exterminator truck. He was held on $1 million bond and ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation.
When Barahona was told to get ready for the hearing, he tried to injure his head and became uncooperative, authorities said. The judge decided he didn't have to come to the hearing, and the father was later taken to a hospital for observation before returning to jail.
Victor is in critical condition. Doctors are unsure of what chemical caused his burns, most of which were below the waist.
Child welfare officials tried to deflect claims Thursday they missed opportunities at several turns, looking for the twins in vain for days without alerting local police. DCF first started looking for the twins on Feb. 10 after someone called the abuse hotline, saying the children were being tied and kept in the bathroom.
Child investigators called and visited the Barahonas' home that day but no one was home. The next morning, investigators learned the children had been removed from school and were being home-schooled.
Investigator Andrea Fleary then went to the home Friday night, but Carmen Barahona said that she was separated from her husband and didn't know where he or the twins were. Officials now believe she was covering for him and expect charges will be filed against her.
Fleary said she did not interview the couple's two other adopted children at the home because it was 9 p.m. on a Friday night.
On Saturday, DCF officials unsuccessfully tried to call Jorge Barahona on his cell phone. The mother told another investigator that day that her husband had the children and that she did not know their whereabouts — while Jorge had told a relative who spoke with investigators that the children were with their mother.
The conflicting stories created enough concern for DCF to call police after four days of searching, southern regional director Jacqui Colyer said. Nubia was already dead by then.
An autopsy was done, officials said, but detectives were reviewing the report and had not yet released details. Child welfare officials said Jorge Barahona admitted to starving the girl.
Colyer said investigators worked the case every day, and one even sat for hours waiting to speak with the parents outside the Barahonas' home.
Investigators would have contacted police sooner if Carmen Barahona had not lied, Colyer said.
"If we hadn't been lied to, then we probably would have immediately began the process of trying to locate the father," Colyer said.
When asked if child investigators should have probed further, Colyer admitted "the questioning may not have been as thorough as it should have."
"It's not an exact science. We do our best."
On Wednesday, Judge Cindy Lederman blasted Fleary for her hasty investigation.
"How could we have gotten a call to a hotline on Feb. 10 and a child died" a few days later, she asked at the hearing.
Carmen Barahona declined comment at Wednesday's hearing, shielding her face with a piece of paper and crying at times.
Newly appointed DCF Secretary David Wilkins called Thursday for an outside review of the case, which could be the biggest scandal to hit the agency since it was reorganized nine years ago. That's when officials found 5-year-old Rilya Wilson had been missing for more than a year before officials noticed — in part because a caseworker filed false reports saying the girl was fine.
An investigation found that workers routinely falsified reports and were overworked and received low pay. It also found workers did not check the backgrounds of caregivers before placing children. The head of the agency resigned.
The department has since increased transparency and requires caseworkers to carry a device that tracks their whereabouts and takes photos of children to ensure the required visits are made.
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Associated Press writer Terry Spencer in Miami contributed to this report.
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Iran opposition protests, agency reports shooting (Reuters)

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Thousands of Iranian opposition activists rallied in support of popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia on Monday and a semi-official news agency said one person was shot dead and several wounded by protesters.

An opposition website said dozens were arrested while taking part in the banned protests, which amounted to a test of strength for the reformist opposition in the Islamic state.

By late evening, chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) echoed from Tehran rooftops in scenes reminiscent of 2009 protests against the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Eight people were killed in those mass street demonstrations which lasted about a month and resulted in many arrests and several executions.

A witness said security forces fired teargas to scatter thousands marching toward a Tehran square on Monday. There were also clashes between police and demonstrators, and dozens of arrests, in the city of Isfahan, another witness told Reuters.

The semi-official Fars news agency cited violence on the part of protesters in a report that could herald a hard line by authorities clearly eager to head off any resurgent opposition.

"One person was shot dead and several were wounded by seditionists (opposition supporters) who staged a rally in Tehran," Fars said, without giving further details.

Some Tehran protesters chanted "Death to the dictator" during protests, which continued in some places into the evening. Other demonstrators marched in silence.

Some chants drew comparisons between the Iranian leadership and the autocrats deposed in recent weeks in Tunis and Cairo.

By late evening, the protests appeared to have eased off.

Amnesty International condemned the authorities' reaction.

"Iranians have a right to gather to peacefully express their support for the people of Egypt and Tunisia," it said.

Describing events, state television said: "Hypocrites, monarchists, thugs and seditionists who wanted to create public disorder in Iran were arrested by our brave nation ... These people set garbage bins on fire and damaged public property."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia against secular, Western-allied rulers an "Islamic awakening," akin to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah in Iran.

But the opposition see events in Tunisia and Egypt as resembling their own protests after the June 2009 election which they say was rigged in favor of President Ahmadinejad.

RIOT POLICE

Police in Bahrain, where tensions arise from discontent among a Shi'ite majority, fired teargas and rubber bullets to break up pro-reform demonstrations and witnesses said one protester was killed. Analysts say any large-scale unrest in Bahrain could embolden marginalized Shi'ites in nearby Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said of the action against Iranian protesters: "President Ahmadinejad ... told the Egyptian people that they had the right to express their own views about their country. I call on the Iranian authorities to allow their own people the same right."

Large numbers of police wearing riot gear and security forces were stationed around the main squares of the capital and pairs of state militiamen roamed the streets on motorbikes.

There were minor clashes at some points across the sprawling capital city of some 12 million people, witnesses said. Mobile telephone connections were down in the area of the protests.

Video posted on the Internet showed young men, some holding sticks, gathered around overturned garbage bins, some of which were on fire. The demonstrators marched toward Azadi (Freedom) Square, a traditional rallying point for protests. Hundreds of marchers also gathered in Isfahan and Shiraz, witnesses said.

Security forces surrounded the homes of opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi preventing them joining the march, their websites said.

Noting official Iranian backing for demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, Mousavi and Karroubi asked permission to hold their own marches in solidarity. But authorities refused, wary of a repeat of the protests in 2009, which saw the greatest unrest since the revolution of 30 years earlier.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul, on a visit to Tehran, called on Middle Eastern governments to listen to their people.

The Iranian authorities accuse opposition leaders of being part of a Western plot to overthrow the Islamic system.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

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