News Wrap: Online shopping, Web crime, UFOs, Foot and mouth

Shopping trolleys have a habit of getting everywhere - canals, mountains, in your garden etc. But now dumped trolleys are posing a problem in cyberspace.

A survey by Forrester Research has found that around 65 per cent of online baskets get dumped before the transaction is completed.

The analyst said that reasons for abandoning a cyber shopping trip usually revolved around too many pages to go through or too many information forms to fill in - very different from the usual reason of the queue being too long.

European web crime treaty almost ready

The European Council is one step away from finalising an international treaty on internet crime as the group voted to put the document into the final draft stage.

The focus behind the project is to clamp down on paedophilia, hacking, virus distribution and digital copyright theft. The Council said that the treaty may well be finalised before the end of the year.

Although developed by European countries, the US, Japan and South Africa will also have the opportunity to sign.

The truth is out there

The British Flying Saucer Bureau, which once boasted 1500 members worldwide, is set to close its doors after 50 years of UFO spotting.

Over the last half century, the Bureau received around 30 UFO sightings a week but said it will be closing down due to a lack of reports in recent months.

Possible reasons, according to the organisation's founder Denis Plunkett, are that either the little green men have finished their survey of Earth, or UFO enthusiasts are communicating over the internet more, rather than travelling to Bureau meetings.

It would seem that the future of UFO watching is in cyberspace and not outer space.

Farmers use mobiles to fight foot and mouth

Mobile phones are now being used to help farmers combat the spread of foot and mouth disease. An agricultural information portal at farmgate.co.uk is launching a free text message service to alert farmers to new outbreaks of the disease.

The bulletins will allow farmers to keep up to date on the latest news while in the field, and help them take timely precautions and put preventative measures in place, as well as avoid areas where new cases have been recently uncovered.

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