BEIJING (AFP) –
Authorities in China’s Xinjiang have restored access to email services and 32 Internet sites that were blocked after ethnic unrest broke out in the region in July, state media reported Sunday.

Restrictions on the number of text messages a mobile user could send have also been lifted, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Authorities in the Xinjiang will restore communication services “step by step,” Xinhua said, citing a spokesperson for the local government.

Internet and email services were cut following the outbreak of clashes between ethnic Han Chinese and mainly Muslim Uighurs, in which almost 200 people died and 1,600 were wounded.

The authorities accused Uighur organisers of using the Internet and mobile phones to orchestrate the unrest.

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Deaf West Theatre in North Hollywood, CA, will present Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister In This House, based on the true story of the troubled lives of French sisters, April 10-May 30.

Opening night is April 17. Michael Unger will direct a cast that includes Deanne Bray, Matthew Jaeger, Casey Kramer, Jennifer Losi, Darrin Revitz, Melissa Strom and Amber Zion.

According to Deaf West notes, “Based on the true story of the Papin sisters, who suffered an abusive childhood followed by a dark and foreboding workplace in 1930s France, My Sister In This House is a haunting play exploring class struggle, identity, and what happens when the need for connection and companionship is abused and ignored. This bizarre tale inspired many writers of the era, including Jean Genet and Jean Paul Sartre.”

As in all Deaf West productions, the actors will be drawn from a mix of the deaf and hearing, and a combination of ASL, spoken word and open captioning will be used to perform the play. As the press notes mention, “The divide between the deaf and the hearing worlds provide added thematic weight to the world in which the Papin sisters live.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Verizon Communications filed a complaint against Cablevision Systems on Tuesday, alleging that it infringed its patented technology for television set-top boxes, the U.S. International Trade Commission said.

The brief ITC notice on the complaint did not describe what precisely was being infringed other than to say that the matter involved certain set-top boxes.

The two companies are fierce rivals in the New York area, competing for video, Internet and phone customers.

A source familiar with the ITC complaint said a companion suit had also been filed in Delaware, requesting monetary damages. Both the Delaware suit and the ITC complaint, which is confidential, ask for Cablevision to stop selling the set-top boxes.

Verizon had previously offered to license the patents to Cablevision, the source said.

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