Baidu.com Inc (百度), China's most-used Internet search site, has introduced an online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia that excludes information censored by the Chinese government.
Baidu aims to use the Baidupedia service, started last month, to attract users to its Web site and may later sell advertising alongside the content, Cynthia He, a spokeswoman, said in Beijing, where the company is based.
The introduction of the Baidu encyclopedia service comes after access to San Diego-based Wikipedia was blocked in China because it carried content critical of the government. Baidupedia, which like Wikipedia offers information written by its users, will censor material submitted for posting. Google Inc, the world's biggest search engine and Baidu's main competitor, introduced China sites in January.
``We are following the same laws that the entire Chinese Internet is held to,'' He said.
China controls content disseminated via the mass media through state-ownership of all newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations.
China censors online content using the world's most "sophisticated" Internet filtering system, according to a joint study by the University of Toronto, Cambridge University, Oxford University and Harvard Law School.
Web sites banned in China include those of the British Broadcasting Corp and human rights group Amnesty International.
The Chinese-language version of Wikipedia has been blocked in China since late last year, the Financial Times reported yesterday, without citing a source.
Google's Chinese-language search site Google.cn excludes links to content such as pictures of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, which were put down by the government.
Baidu.com had a 56.6 percent share of a Chinese search market at the end of last year, according to Shanghai-based research company IResearch Inc. Google had a 32.8 percent of the market and Yahoo! Inc. had a 5 percent share. Mountain View, California-based Google owns about a 2 percent stake in Baidu.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
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One person was killed and another seven injured today when a tourist shuttle bus plunged 30m to 40m down a ravine in Nantou County, the Tourism Administration said. The bus is suspected to have suddenly accelerated out of control near the flower center of the Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area, a popular attraction during cherry blossom season. Of the eight onboard, a 66-year-old man was killed, four were seriously injured and three sustained minor injuries, including the driver. The Nantou County Police Department said it received a report of the incident at 12:15pm and dispatched seven teams to assist. All surviving passengers have been transferred
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