The ambitious Europeana digital library opened on Thursday Nov. 20, only to be overwhelmed and crash. Its objective is to bring Europe's cultural heritage out of its museums and libraries and onto the internet.

The site was designed to handle up to five-million users per hour. But it was receiving 10-million hits an hour when it crashed at 11:30 am. Despite increasing the number of servers from three to six, the site crashed again early evening. It is now offline and displays the message, "We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible."

Europeana currently holds some two-million paintings, photographs, sound recordings, maps, manuscripts, newspapers and documents. According EU commissioner Viviane Reding Europeana will, "enable a Czech student to browse the British library without going to London, or an Irish art lover to get close to the Mona Lisa without queuing at the Louvre."

Europeana has 14 staff and an annual budget of 2.5 million euros (US$3.15 million). The aim is to have 10 million works available by 2010. It will be back online by mid-December 2008.

The US has a thriving, if dubious, export business in "contract cheating." This is the writing of student papers and course work for money. The UK is a major market for the US. However, this lucrative export trade is under threat from globalization.

UK colleges go to great lengths to detect and punish cheating, employing software to spot outright copying. However, as contract cheats often produce original work, such abuse difficult to detect.

Dr Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke at the UKs Birmingham City University have been following the phenomenon since 2004. They told the Deccan Herald that over a 20-month period between 2004 and 2006, they recorded some 1,000 students cheating worldwide. The majority on IT-related courses, a third in the UK.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) will not verify the result of London’s May elections. Saying, "There is insufficient evidence available to allow independent observers to state reliably whether the results ... are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions."

The elections for the Mayor of London and the 25-member London Assembly are among the most important local elections in the UK. An independent body, London Elects, organizes them.

This year’s elections were the first in London under a new UK law allowing for officially sanctioned, independent observers. ORG was one such group.