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Chaz Albert, a freshman at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., is a passionate "texter," someone who loves to send and receive pithy text messages via cellphone. He does it at home, at school and at work. He often prefers texting over talking on his cellphone. Last month, though, Mr. Albert's habit caught up with him. Only $80 of his $400 cellphone charges were his father's, and most of his own, he said, were for text-messaging. "I was shocked, but I couldn't do anything about it," he said. "I didn't realize that I got charged for reading text messages. My...

EAGLE, Colo. - Lawyers for Kobe Bryant want the judge in his sexual assault trial to allow cell phone text messages between the NBA star's alleged victim, her former boyfriend and a third person to be introduced as evidence. The messages were sent hours after the woman's encounter with the Los Angeles Lakers (news)' guard last summer. Defense lawyers also want to give the jury information about money the woman received from a crime victims' compensation program. Bryant's attorneys have suggested the woman received unusually large amounts from a board appointed by the district attorney as an incentive to continue...

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Chinese authorities plan to employ new technology to improve surveillance of mobile phone messages amid efforts to intensify the policing of private communications, reports said Friday. The official Xinhua News Agency said the campaign was aimed at cleaning up "pornographic, obscene and fraudulent" phone messages that have "infiltrated short messaging content." According to the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders, the surveillance is also aimed at extending surveillance of political dissent to mobile phone messaging - known as short-message service, or SMS. Beijing already screens e-mail, censors online chatrooms and blocks access to foreign Web sites considered...

EAGLE, Colo. - The attorney for a witness in the Kobe Bryant (news - web sites) case asked the judge to order the return of all but one of the cell-phone text messages his client sent and received after the NBA star allegedly assaulted a resort worker. Only the one message, sent to Bryant's accuser about 16 hours after the alleged attack, might be relevant to the case, said Keith Tooley, attorney for Matt Herr, who sent the message. Herr is the accuser's former boyfriend. In a filing made public Monday, Tooley sought the return of the other messages, which...

DENVER (AP) - A few hours after NBA star Kobe Bryant had sex with a Vail-area hotel worker last summer, the woman exchanged cell phone text messages with a former boyfriend and someone else. What's in those messages could help determine whether the sex was consensual or whether Bryant is guilty of rape as charged. The judge himself said the content may be ``highly relevant'' to the case. That the judge could order the woman's cell phone company to produce the messages so long after they were sent shouldn't surprise anyone, analysts say. Texters beware. Like e-mail and Internet instant...

Cell phone cameras, text messaging are next in line of ways kids try to trick teachersCrib sheets tucked in sleeves. Math formulas programmed into calculators. Essays copied off the Internet. But a new technology now hitting classrooms is opening up new and easier ways to cheat. Cell phones with built-in digital cameras and e-mail allow sneaky students to send silent questions and answers to one another right under teachers' noses. Jan Burten, a math teacher at College Park High in Pleasant Hill, was shocked when a student showed her a cell-phone picture of a test question from another class last...

In recent weeks, cellular users in Hong Kong had what must be an interesting experience: After dialing a three-digit number, they received a text message offering lists of places to stay away from in order to avoid the SARS virus. They could also receive SARS rumors, sent person-to-person as text messages. Another text message--sent to 6 million phones by Hong Kong authorities--tried to quash a SARS-related rumor that was spreading on the Internet. All of these messages were sent via something called short message service (more commonly known as SMS), a cellular feature that's widely used in Asia and Europe...