US government welcomes North Korea to Twitter

In today's podcast: US government welcomes North Korea to Twitter; no charges after school used webcams to spy on students; and advertised broadband speeds misleading, FCC says.

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The U.S. government has welcomed North Korea's jump onto Twitter and challenged the country to let its citizens see the recently created account. The message came days after Uriminzokkiri, the closest thing the insular country has to an official Web site, established a Twitter account. The account has to date posted messages only in Korean but that hasn't stopped it becoming somewhat of a Twitter hit. Publicity from the launch has resulted in over 5,000 followers subscribing to the slow stream of government propaganda.

The U.S. Department of Justice won't file criminal charges against a Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students via webcams in their computers. After an investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the local district attorney and local police, the U.S. Attorney's Office said that it did not find criminal intent and would not file criminal charges against the Lower Merion School District.

The actual download speeds that consumers get are about half of those promised by service providers, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. In 2009, U.S. residential consumers subscribed to broadband services with an average and median advertised download speed of 7 Mbps to 8 Mbps, respectively, the FCC said. But the actual average speed they received was 4 Mbps and the actual median speed was 3 Mbps.

Research in Motion today called reports that Amazon.com has cut the price of RIM's new BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone to $99.99 "inaccurate and misleading." RIM, through a spokeswoman, said that Amazon.com has been selling the new smartphone for $99.99 since its launch on Aug. 12, following an "obviously ... common online pricing and promotional strategy that has been used with many other product introductions in the past." Carrier AT&T sells the new Torch for $199.99.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.