Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic news broadcaster, has certainly sparked off a lot of controversy due to its coverage of the Iraq war and its broadcast of images of dead and captured US and British soldiers.

The backlash has been fierce. In addition to its reporters being barred from the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, the broadcaster found itself under attack on its Internet site.

Hackers redirected traffic from its Internet site (http://www.al-jazeera.com) to a page displaying the US flag.

The attack forced Al-Jazeera to delay the launch of its English-language news site (http://english.aljazeera.net) to an unspecified date.

It is a shame that Al-Jazeera has had to face such vitriol simply for reporting on the war, in which, yes, people do die and are captured.

In its defence the channel says it broadcasts images of the dead and captured of both sides, and that the Western media regularly broadcasts images of the Iraqi dead and captured.

The Arabic Al-Jazeera site does push its point of view quite far at times.

There are some very ugly pictures of dead or hospitalised Iraqi children on the Internet site if you care to click through on some of the links.

Yes the images are shocking but they do bring home the meaning of what war is about for the civilian population in a much more striking manner than the "virtual" war we see fed to the media by the military cameras.

Obviously Al-Jazeera has taken an editorial stance against the war, as has some UK media (I have not found any major US media with an anti-war position), and all of the French media.

Sometimes its editorialising is too heavy handed and goes beyond what is balanced journalism.

For example, during a recent broadcast the channel used a split screen to show Iraqis injured by bombs on one side and a live speech by the US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

That kind of commentary erodes the station's credibility. Objective? No. But that does not make the channel any worse than say the flag waving going on at Fox News or the firing of reporter Peter Arnett by NBC television for being "unpatriotic".

In actual fact much of Al-Jazeera's reporting is more balanced than you would find in many of the Western media outlets.

As a bit of history Al-Jazeera was founded out of the ashes of BBC's Arabic television network, which was closed down in 1996.

The reporters were used to form an independent satellite channel funded by the Emir of Qatar and other Arab moderates.

The channel's independence can be judged by the Emir's refusal to shut the channel down or restrict its coverage at the request of the US during the Afghanistan war.

Al-Jazeera's "crime" during that war was to have been the only channel to have stuck covering Afghanistan after the rest of the world' s media forgot about it.

So the channel was on the spot with excellent contacts. Since then the US has changed tactics and allowed the channel to interview officials such as Colin Powell and like Condoleezza Rice, among others.

The channel also has interviewed Israeli officials, all but banned from Middle Eastern networks, and criticised Arab leaders.

Al-Jazeera must be doing something right. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait have banned Al-Jazeera's reporters from operating within their borders due to the station's coverage.

Al-Jazeera does provide another view of the war and is worth comparing to the other broadcasters on the Internet that I mentioned last week (see http://broadband-television.com) for a list of streaming news broadcasts on the Internet).

The Al-Jazeera site is back up again after the hack attacks but the live streaming video currently does not work.

The link is on the top right hand side of the site's home page.

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Toshiba said it would release a fuel cell that runs on alcohol for use with laptops.

The company says the fuel cells will generate electrical power by breaking down substances such as hydrogen through the breakdown of the methanol in the fuel cells. The fuel cells will be refillable, which each top up giving about five hours of use. Future versions of the fuel cell should be able to power a laptop for about ten hours the company said. The cells are expected to be available next year.

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The SANS Institute is holding a webcast on 2 April on the protection of Intellectual property in the digital age.

"Many business entities would cease to exist without the profits and image gained from their intellectual property," the security organisation states.

"Thus, it makes perfect sense to properly protect, detect intrusions and resolve these security incidents involving intellectual property."

The webcast begins at 1 p.m. EST. You can register in advance at http://www.sans.org/webcasts/040203.php

Ahmed ElAmin Editor, OffshoreOn.com Etg. 3, Apt D Hotel Pas-de-Beaulieu 10 rue St. Firmin 34000 Montpellier, France Tel: (33)(0)467 63 33 96 Fax: (33) (0) 467 63 33 07 E-mail: editor@offshoreon.com Offshore, Online publishes news and information about offshore financial centres. Internet: www.OffshoreOn.com