Three of the world's largest Internet concerns have entered the battle against spam, according to the BBC. America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo said they would work together and with other companies to develop ways of blocking unwanted messages. Spam is widely considered one of the biggest annoyances on the Internet. It is proposed that unwanted email will account for 40 percent of all email by the end of 2003. The three companies want to reduce the amount of spam by making it harder to register fraudulent email addresses in bulk. The companies also plan to set up better feedback policies so that their customers can help determine the real identity of the spammers. A number of major internet firms, including AOL, have turned to the courts to try to stop the spammers. There are also attempts to toughen U.S. law in this area, with two senators reintroducing a bill to curb junk emails. Experts estimate that spam costs businesses around the world about $9 billion a year to deal with. This includes the time it takes people to delete the messages, the cost of buying larger mail servers and storage systems and having staff unclog networks overloaded by spam, according to the BBC.

Tourist with mild SARS symptoms held involuntarily in N.Y.C.

An international tourist was held involuntarily for 10 days in a hospital in New York City after showing mild symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), according to the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and CNN. The tourist went to an unidentified hospital because he had a fever and flu-like symptoms. He had stopped in Hong Kong on his way to New York. The practice of isolation was defended by health officials. "All SARS patients are advised to remain in isolation until 10 days after fever subsides," said Health Department Spokesperson Greg Butler. People usually are allowed to isolate themselves at home, according to Butler. However, in this particular case in New York, the sick individual was a traveler and had to be isolated in a hospital, officials said. "We were erring on the side of caution," said Butler. The man was released after 10 days in accordance with the department's guidelines. It is not known if he did have SARS, since no test exists to diagnose the illness. As of Saturday, according to CNN, the department of health's Web site stated that there are 20 probable and suspected SARS cases in New York City.

Employee stole $100,000 in equipment from UMass

Officials believe that over an eight month period, an employee stole more than $100,000 in scientific equipment from UMass. Police are doubtful that they will ever determine the exact goods stolen but believe that more than $50,000 of stolen items were sold on Internet auction site eBay, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Police allege that Daniel Hunt, an asbestos abatement expert who had worked at the school for nearly two decades, is responsible for the theft. According to police, some items that were put up for sale on eBay have not been purchased. Police hope to recover some of these pieces by searching Hunt's home. Much of the stolen equipment was in university storage, and it is difficult to keep track of all the research equipment in a large university, officials said. UMass police were first alerted to the theft in August, when they started getting reports that very specific scientific equipment was missing from school labs, the biology department, the physics department, the astronomy department, food sciences, academic media services and the graduate research center.