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(Continued from page 24)
China tightening controls on Internet after embarrassing postings about official abuse
• BEIJING (AP) -- China's new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.
• The measures suggest China's new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors' anxiety about the Internet's potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.
• "They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet," said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views."
• This week, China's legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web's status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.
• That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.
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Hawaii governor names Democrat, Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz, to succeed Inouye in US Senate
• HONOLULU (AP) -- Hawaii's lieutenant governor spent time in the morning telling fellow Democrats why he should become the state's next U.S. senator. Hours later, he was hitching a ride to Washington with President Obama to be sworn in as the late Sen. Daniel Inouye's successor.
• Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz to the post Wednesday, going against the dying wishes of Inouye, who wanted U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa to take his place.
• Schatz, 40, said his top priorities would be addressing global climate change, (Continued on page 26)
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