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In what is being touted as a world first, a British Scientist says he has been infected with a computer virus.

The scientist, Mark Gasson, claims to have been infected with the virus after he contaminated an electronic chip which was inserted into his hand.

Gasson, of the University of Reading, said the device was programmed with a virus which could transfer itself to other electronic systems it came in contact with, the BBC News website reported on Wednesday.

Any other chips that interacted with the infected systems would also contract the virus, he said, raising the possibility that in the future, advanced medical devices such as pacemakers could become vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Gasson’s computer chip, a refined version of the ID chips used to track animals, has been programmed to open security doors for him and to unlock his mobile phone automatically.

The chip in Gasson’s hand is high-end radio frequency identification chip, a sophisticated version of the technology used n shop security tags and for identifying pets. The device, the size of the grain of rice, allowed him secure access to University buildings and his mobile phone.

Once infected with the virus, the microchip contaminated the system that was used to communicate with it. It would also have infected any other devices it was connected to.

Gasson deliberately introduced a computer virus into an electronic chip that had been implanted into his left hand last year, in order to study its effects.

The results allegedly prove the principle that in future, human implants like this could contaminate increasingly complex medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants.

“With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses,” Gasson was quoted by BBC News as saying.

Implanted technology has become increasingly common in the United States, where medical alert bracelets can be scanned to bring up a patient’s medical history.

Professor Rafael Capurro, of the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics in Germany, added: “If someone can get online access to your implant it could be serious.

“From an ethical point of view, the surveillance of implants can be both positive and negative. Surveillance can be part of medical care, but if someone wants to do harm to you, it could be a problem.”

Gasson, however, said technology with surveillance capabilities could in future become widely used for non-medical purposes. “If we can find a way of enhancing someone’s memory or their IQ then there’s real possibility that people will choose to have this kind of invasive procedure,” he said in the BBC interview.

Egypt’s communications ministry said on Thursday that it had launched the first internet domain name “.misr”-using Arabic letters to try to boost e-services and the number of people online in the most populous Arab nation.

“Introducing Arabic domain names is milestone in internet history,” communications minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement. “This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt. It will enable internet services to penetrate new market segments by eliminating language barriers.”

With the addition of non-Latin suffixes, web users with little or no knowledge of English would no longer have to type Latin characters to access web pages targeting Chinese, Arabic and other speakers.

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to 37 characters: the 10 numerals, the hyphen and the 26 letters in the Latin alphabet. In January, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, paved the way for an entire domain name to appear in Cyrillic for Russia and Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Now Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd faces the hazards of online social networking as he becomes the follower of pornographic communities through his official Twitter Account.

A bare-breasted women in handcuffs, an online adult super store and a pornographic blog were among dozens of dodgy accounts followed by the prime minister among his list of supporters, community groups and wife Therese Rein.

An embarrassed spokesman for Rudd has since admitted an Twitter automated programme made the prime minister’s account auto-follow those who followed him, Herald Sun reported.”While the Kevin PM Team try to monitor the follow backs, with more than 900,000 followers this is a very large task,” the spokesman said.

To “follow” someone usually requires a user to view and approve a profile. Other profiles followed by Rudd include a gay resort in Phuket, blogs offering sex shows via webcams and an online store selling adult goods, reports heraldsun.co.au.

Although it normally requires a Twitter account holder to view another person’s profile before following, an auto-follow option allows this to be done automatically. This can be helpful for people with large followings –Rudd follows around 200,000Twitter users through his KevinruddPM account.

Rudd is known as an eager Tweeter, using the medium to announce policies and recently the engagement of his son. About 900,000 accounts follow th PM on twitter, while he follows about 200,000.

Young Media Australia vice president Elizabeth Handsley said Rudd’s questionable online companions highlighted the dangers of social media.

“There seems to be an attitude with new media like twitter that anyone can just get on and have a go without a problem,” she said.

“We need to understand the platform and know how it works before using it safely- this is an example of that.”

Computers in companies, Hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves after an antivirus program identified a normal windows file as a virus.

MCA fee Inc confirmed that a software update it posted at 9am Eastern Time caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless file. It has posted a replacement update for download.

MCA fee could not say how many computers were affected, but judging by online posting, the number was at least in the thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands.

MCA fee said it did not appear that consumer versions of its software caused similar problems.  It is investigating how the error happened and will take measures”to prevent it from recurring, the company said in a statement.

The computer problem forced about third of the hospitals in Rhode Island to postpone elective surgeries and stop treating patients without traumas in emergency rooms, said Nancy Jean, a spokeswoman for the Lifespan system includes