China stands firm on Green Dam deadline

In today's podcast: China stands firm on Green Dam deadline; Apple employees see Jobs back at work; and Japan threatens South Korea with WTO action over batteries.

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China's deadline for the installation of Web filtering software on new PCs hasn't changed, despite growing protests from the U.S. government and Chinese Internet users. Foreign and domestic PC makers are still required to ship the filter program with all PCs sold in China beginning July 1, the state-run China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China first issued the mandate last month and has said the software is meant to protect children from pornographic and other "harmful" content online. But the program, called Green Dam Youth Escort, also blocks political content including Web sites that mention Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned as a cult in China. The mandate could escalate into a serious trade dispute if China actually bars foreign PC makers from selling computers without the software, said Simon Ye, a Gartner analyst. State media last week cited an unnamed official saying foreign PC makers like Dell might not be able to meet the deadline.

Apple employees at the company's US headquarters have reported that CEO Steve Jobs returned to work today. According to CNBC, Apple employees told reporter Jim Goldman that they have seen Jobs on campus. Jobs, who is a survivor of pancreatic cancer, took leave in January from the company citing health issues, leaving COO Tim Cook at the helm. Late last week, media reports said Jobs underwent a liver transplant about two months ago to treat an undisclosed medical condition. Apple is yet to officially confirm Steve Jobs has returned to work.

Japan is threatening to complain to the World Trade Organization if South Korea goes through with reported plans to require certification for lithium ion batteries. The rules would require Japanese battery makers to obtain certification for their products from a South Korean agency before they can be sold in the country, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported. However, batteries from rival manufacturers in the U.S. are exempt from the rules, provided that their batteries have been certified by a U.S. standards organization, the newspaper said. Japanese battery makers are responsible for more than half of the world's lithium-ion-battery production, and the government is worried that the rules, which are scheduled to come into effect on July 1, will impede the ability of Japanese companies to compete in the Korean market.

Publishers with custom domains hosted on Google's Blogger blog-publishing service have been losing traffic for the past week due to a bug affecting how visitors get redirected from the Blogger domain to the publishers' own domains. The problem hits when someone tries to visit a blog by going to its Blogspot URL, which follows the format: BlogName.Blogspot.com, instead of going directly to the site's custom domain. Ironically, Google is among the publishers affected by the problem, as can be seen by attempting to visit the company's official blog for its Orkut social network through its Blogspot address. While the problem is caused by an issue in a Blogger system, its severity varies depending on which browser Web site visitors are using. The issue remains unresolved.

...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.