Worries about a looming bubble in China?s real-estate market are misplaced, as gains in home prices have not dramatically outpaced rising incomes on a nationwide level, the World Bank says.

The global economy is slowly recovering after the worst financial crisis in decades, but government efforts to stimulate growth, including the Fed's move to drive interest rates down to zero, may be creating another problem. Prices for assets ? gold, stocks and real estate in Asia ? are soaring, leading to warnings that a new bubble could be forming.

CBB had put a 30% cap on share of real estate financing that Bahrain's banks can hold.

RISMEDIA, November 6, 2009?The ongoing financial crisis is changing the face of the real estate market, and although the media is fond of using terms such as ?credit crunch,? and ?credit crisis,? these are misnomers. A more appropriate term would be a ?return to rational lending practices.? The effects of runaway ...

MANAMA, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has suspended caps on banks' exposures to the region's troubled real estate markets, banking sources said, highlighting regulators' trouble with containing the crisis aftermath.

Israel on Friday rejected a United Nations General Assembly vote endorsing a report accusing it of war crimes in Gaza last winter, saying that the resolution did not have ?the support of the moral majority.?

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to stop seeking compromise with Israel but offered him an olive branch, saying Palestinians must end their divisions.

Israel is keen on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas staying in office despite his announcement he will not seek re-election, officials said Friday.

Turkey is ready to oversee a new stage of secret peace talks between Israel and Syria, resuming a role it had played until last year, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said here Friday.

Israel is keen on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas staying in office despite his announcement he will not seek re-election, officials said Friday as the Arab League urged him to reconsider.

PC World - WarMouse, in collaboration with the OpenOffice.org community, revealed on Friday a new open-source mouse developed specifically for users of the OpenOffice suite.

PC World - WarMouse, in collaboration with the OpenOffice.org community, revealed on Friday a new open-source mouse developed specifically for users of the OpenOffice suite.

AFP - A Motorola Droid smart phone goes on sale Friday, joining the growing ranks of smart phones on the open-source operating system backed by Google.

PC World - Google has decided to release as open source several of its key application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications.

InfoWorld - The Apache Software Foundation for open source projects is readying an upgrade to its Tomcat Java servlet container, eyeing improvements in areas such as scalability and security, Apache personnel said on Wednesday afternoon.

TechnologyResource writes "More than two years ago in California, a police officer wrote Shaun Malone a ticket for going 62mph in a 45-mph zone. Malone was ordered to pay a $190 fine, but his parents appealed the decision, saying data from a GPS tracking system they installed in his car to monitor his driving proved he was not speeding. What ensued was the longest court battle over a speeding ticket in Sonoma county history. The case also represented the first time anyone locally had tried to beat a ticket using GPS. The teen's GPS pegged the car at 45 mph in virtually the same location. At issue was the distance from the stoplight mdash; site of the first GPS 'ping' that showed Malone stopped mdash; to the second ping 30 seconds later, when he was going 45 mph. Last week, Commissioner Carla Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit and would have to pay the $190 fine. 'This case ensures that other law enforcement agencies throughout the state aren't going to have to fight a case like this where GPS is used to cast doubt on radar,' said Sgt. Ken Savano, who oversees the traffic division. However, Commissioner Bonilla noted the accuracy of the GPS system was not challenged by either side in the dispute, but rather they had different interpretations of the data. Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit."pa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/037216/Radar-Beats-GPS-In-Court-mdash-Or-Does-It?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=09/11/07/037216"/a/ppa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/037216/Radar-Beats-GPS-In-Court-mdash-Or-Does-It?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KZoWFxISmtcNEfFdPqB8B6XFq34/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KZoWFxISmtcNEfFdPqB8B6XFq34/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KZoWFxISmtcNEfFdPqB8B6XFq34/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KZoWFxISmtcNEfFdPqB8B6XFq34/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/ZV6bRBOloBM" height="1" width="1"/

chill writes "Skype's co-founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, have agreed to transfer ownership of the remaining Skype technology that eBay didn't own, paving the way for eBay to complete its sale of a majority stake in Skype to an investor consortium. In exchange, Friis and Zennstrom will join the investor consortium and obtain a 14 percent stake in Skype. The other consortium partners, led by Silver Lake, will own a 56 percent stake in Skype, and eBay will hold on to 30 percent, eBay said Friday."pa href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/0340222/Skypes-Legal-Situation-Clears?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=09/11/07/0340222"/a/ppa href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/0340222/Skypes-Legal-Situation-Clears?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AaYc_GJkx7qO4vNRELZK_OnU5g8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AaYc_GJkx7qO4vNRELZK_OnU5g8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AaYc_GJkx7qO4vNRELZK_OnU5g8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/AaYc_GJkx7qO4vNRELZK_OnU5g8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/k913wi6vmiQ" height="1" width="1"/

C4st13v4n14 writes "In a sudden outbreak of uncommon sense yesterday, a Norwegian District Court handed down the decision that Telenor, Norway's largest ISP, will not have to block access to The Pirate Bay. Telenor was sued earlier this year by the IFPI after being threatened and not backing down. 'The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site. ... In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites.'"pa href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/0256257/Norwegian-Court-Rules-ISP-Doesnt-Have-To-Block-The-Pirate-Bay?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=09/11/07/0256257"/a/ppa href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/0256257/Norwegian-Court-Rules-ISP-Doesnt-Have-To-Block-The-Pirate-Bay?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3-8JLUF0nr9fdZ9ornEX_trWrfs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3-8JLUF0nr9fdZ9ornEX_trWrfs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3-8JLUF0nr9fdZ9ornEX_trWrfs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3-8JLUF0nr9fdZ9ornEX_trWrfs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/vDYLv91JkJA" height="1" width="1"/

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was decorated today with the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software. The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is awarded by the Federal President for outstanding achievements in the political, economic, cultural, and other fields. Matthias was awarded the medal in recognition of his work spurring innovation and spreading knowledge for the common good."pa href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/014245/KDE-Founder-Receives-Highest-German-Honor?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=09/11/07/014245"/a/ppa href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/07/014245/KDE-Founder-Receives-Highest-German-Honor?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3A9QaQfe8otcZ15NRvapV0ZT1IU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3A9QaQfe8otcZ15NRvapV0ZT1IU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3A9QaQfe8otcZ15NRvapV0ZT1IU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/3A9QaQfe8otcZ15NRvapV0ZT1IU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/0GpVN01qCHA" height="1" width="1"/

An anonymous reader writes "It's not just Microsoft investigating full body, markerless motion capture. Sony has enlisted the help of Swiss firm Atracsys to develop similar technology. Sony has openly discussed the technology with New Scientist, and has realistic expectations for the new system mdash; it can capture broad body gestures but not individual fingers. That's just one trade-off needed in order to develop a real-time system that anyone can use, according to a markerless motion-capture expert." It's still in the early stages of development, but the accompanying video shows the use of face-recognition software as well. The demo game has players moving their heads left or right to position their character, and then smiling to "catch" an object.pa href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/2346212/Sony-Demos-Natal-Like-Control-System?from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=09/11/06/2346212"/a/ppa href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/2346212/Sony-Demos-Natal-Like-Control-System?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FfxdskqqLzLMIf5HkvZFPSvQMBQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FfxdskqqLzLMIf5HkvZFPSvQMBQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FfxdskqqLzLMIf5HkvZFPSvQMBQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FfxdskqqLzLMIf5HkvZFPSvQMBQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/-Q389Fqzrec" height="1" width="1"/