The European Commission has chosen ICT as one of the sectors for which it will develop specific guidance on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

Other areas to also get sector-specific guidance include the oil and gas industry, and employment and recruitment agencies. The guidance will be based on the United Nations' Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

"These sectors face a wide range of significant human rights challenges that could benefit from detailed guidance for companies," the EC said.

Apple announced yesterday that it had requested the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to begin voluntary inspections of its final assembly suppliers. Among these are Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, where there have been reports of poor working conditions.

The work planned for the development of the human rights guidance for ICT will also contribute to the implementation of the EC's 'No Disconnect Strategy' to promote internet freedom globally.

Consultations with businesses and all stakeholders will be carried out as part of the project, which will be coordinated by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) and Shift, an independent, non-profit centre for business and human rights.

Any organisations or individuals wishing to provide feedback on the project can email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected attempts by three telecom companies to block shareholder votes on whether they should commit to net neutrality principles.

This week, the SEC declined to act on requests by AT&T, Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel to block the votes. All three companies had argued that net neutrality was not a significant policy issue under SEC definitions and, therefore, they weren't required to put the matter to a shareholder vote.

The SEC disagreed, saying in letters to the company that there's been a "sustained public

Oracle has updated its MySQL Cluster software to make it more appealing to large Web service providers, among other users of large-volume distributed databases.

MySQL Cluster 7.2, released for general availability Wednesday, "is a huge step forward for MySQL Cluster, taking it further into the Web market," said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering for Oracle.

Two features in particular will help with such duties. The software now offers a Memcached API (application programming interface) that allows applications to access data directly rather than go through the SQL engine. The software also implements

A 20-year-old hacker who goes by the Internet name TinKode was arrested recently by Romanian police after he bragged about hacking into Pentagon and NASA computer systems.

Razvan Manole Cernaianu is accused of revealing security holes and publishing information about SQL injection vulnerabilities in those agencies.

The Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said Cernaianu also offered a computer program on his blog that could be used to hack into websites and published a video showing