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On one side is GateHouse Media, one of the nation’s largest publishers of community newspapers. On the other is The New York Times Co., the parent company of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com Web site.

The two publishers will square off in federal court this week in a case that is being closely watched by journalists, bloggers and Internet users.

GateHouse filed a copyright infringement lawsuit last month, claiming that the Globe’s new community Web sites use online material from GateHouse without permission.

GateHouse claims Boston.com violates copyright and trademark laws by taking GateHouse’s newspaper headlines and lead sentences published on its “Wicked Local” Web sites. GateHouse alleges that Boston.com offers links that send readers directly to “Wicked Local” stories — bypassing ads posted on home pages that help fund its operation and creating confusion on the source of the original reporting.

Last fall, Boston.com launched three “Your Town” community Web sites that cover the cities of Newton, Waltham and Needham. The Globe said that the three towns were the first in a series of more than 100 “hyperlocal” Web sites it plans.

In its lawsuit, GateHouse claims that Boston.com is building community-oriented sites that rely on the work of GateHouse reporters.

News organizations and bloggers say the case could have far-reaching implications for determining how much content one news organization or Web site can use from another.

“It’s certainly being followed within the journalism community, but this is huge in new media and blogging because God help us if a judge or a jury starts to lay down rules as to what constitutes acceptable linking practices and what isn’t,” said Dan Kennedy, an assistant journalism professor at Northeastern University who has been blogging about the case on Media Nation.

Gregory Reibman, the editor-in-chief of the metro unit of GateHouse Media New England, said in an affidavit that many online readers only read headlines and lead sentences and do not click through to the full stories. He said that when readers do click through from the “Your Town” links, they bypass the ads on Wicked Local’s home pages.

“If the Boston Globe wants to compete with us in Newton and the other communities we serve, they should approach it fairly,” Reibman said in the affidavit. “They should hire and pay their own journalists. They should generate their own original content and nurture their own contacts within the community.”

Ira Levy, an attorney for The New York Times Co., declined comment on the case before trial. Anthony Scibelli, an attorney for GateHouse Media, also declined comment.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Co., declined comment on Friday, but said earlier that the company believes GateHouse’s claims are “without merit.”

“Boston.com’s local pages, like hundreds of other news sites, aggregate headlines and snippets of relevant stories published on the Web. They link back to the originating site where the interested user can read the entire article,” Mathis said in a statement on Dec. 22.

“Far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the Web. It is fair and benefits both Web users and the originating site.”

Bill Mitchell, director of Poynter Online, said the case is about more than just linking.

“I think it’s a very tricky, interesting issue because on the one hand if I were in GateHouse’s shoes, I’d feel well-served by links from the bigger Boston.com. On the other hand, the extent to which users find themselves sufficiently satisfied just by looking at the Globe hyper local site, that really undercuts what GateHouse is trying to do,” Mitchell said.

GateHouse, based in Fairport, N.Y., owns 97 daily newspapers, 400 other publications and 260 related Web sites reaching more than 10 million people in 21 states. Its Massachusetts publications include The Patriot Ledger, The Enterprise, the Newton TAB and the Daily News Tribune of Waltham.

The trial is scheduled to start Monday in U.S. District Court.

A voter survey released after polls closed predicted victory for a secular businessman against a powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish leader in Jerusalem’s mayoral race Tuesday, a contest that again exposed the deep divide between religious and secular Israelis.

Israelis voted around the country, picking mayors and city councils, but local issues and strong independent candidates overshadowed clashes between the major parties three months before national elections. In Jerusalem, the three largest parties failed to field candidates for mayor for the first time, leaving the race to representatives of two of the city’s three distinctive and often squabbling groupings.

The telephone survey of people who voted conducted by Israel TV, released just after balloting ended at 10 p.m., showed that secular candidate Nir Barkat defeated Meir Porush, 50 to 42 percent. The margin of error and other details of the poll were not released. Such surveys have generally reflected outcomes but have occasionally been inaccurate.

Porush, 53, an imposing figure on the ultra-Orthodox national political scene for years, his trademark bushy red beard going gray now, faced Nir Barkat, a venture capitalist in his second try for the mayor’s job.

Official results were expected early Wednesday. Leading candidates needed to win 40 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in two weeks.

In the only reported incident of violence in Jerusalem, police broke up a demonstration by extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not recognize Israel. Police said they were trying to prevent people from voting.

The appearances of the two rivals in Jerusalem underlined their differences. Porush wears a long, black coat and black skullcap, as do the tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The bareheaded, casually dressed Barkat reflects the embattled, dwindling secular Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

With a high birth rate and government financial support, ultra-Orthodox Jews are a growing proportion of Jerusalem’s population, while many secular Jews are leaving the city because of their lack of control and rising municipal tax rates.

Uri Lupoliansky rode that trend in his victory in 2003, becoming the first ultra-Orthodox Jew to serve as Jerusalem’s mayor, succeeding Ehud Olmert, now Israel’s outgoing premier.

Left out is the third sector — Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. They make up a third of the city’s population of 750,000 and have the right to vote after Israel annexed their section of the city in 1967. But most boycott instead of tacitly recognizing Israeli control by taking part in city elections. Palestinians claim their section of Jerusalem as the capital of the state they hope to create.

The mayor of Jerusalem has no official standing in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but one area of agreement between Porush and Barkat — and the other two candidates who are seen as having little chance of victory — is opposition to division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal.

Instead, the two leading candidates favor building thousands more apartments for Israelis in the disputed part of the city, angering Palestinians.

More mundane issues face the incoming mayor. Financially strapped because a large proportion of its residents are poor, downtown Jerusalem has become shabby and dirty. In the past year it has also become a construction zone, with the building of a light rail tying up traffic and angering residents and merchants.

Barkat, 49, was emphasizing economic issues, aiming to persuade younger Israelis to stay in the city. Porush labeled his campaign “Jerusalem for everyone,” but his focus was on services for the city’s Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Adina Freimark, 20, a religious resident of Jerusalem, said she voted for Porush.

“I felt like I wanted someone who would care about Jerusalem as a city for the Jewish people,” Freimark said. “There’s a lot of talk about giving Jerusalem away and I want Jerusalem to stay in Jewish hands.”

Polls showed Barkat with a slight lead, but ultra-Orthodox residents traditionally vote in much higher percentages than others, possibly giving Porush an edge.

In Tel Aviv, two-term incumbent Ron Huldai was trying to fend off Dov Khenin, 50, a member of Israel’s parliament from the Communist party Hadash. While Khenin is Jewish, his party is especially popular with Arab voters because of its calls for Palestinian and Arab rights.

But Khenin’s strong environmental stand rather than his views on Arab-Jewish relations have won him popularity in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial and cultural center, home to 390,000 people.

Huldai, 64, is a former general, fighter pilot and high school principal with a pro-business bent.

Early returns gave Huldai a solid lead.

Bunking classes for the school students in the United Arab Emirates’ capital is likely to get tough as Ministry of Education is planning to alert the parents of such non-serious students through Short Message Service (SMS).The new system, if gets approval of the Ministry of Education (MoE), would monitor the movement of the students and update their parents about the whereabouts of their wards, media report said.

The SMS information project, developed by Sharjah-based Good Luck Systems, will cover all public and private schools of Abu Dhabi and plans to set up a call centre is being studied by the Ministry of Education (MoE), ‘Khaleej Times’ reported.

Parents of the students will get detailed information about their children’s examination results, attendance, detailed evaluation reports, holidays, anniversary celebrations and events such as sports and cultural competitions through SMSes.

We will offer the new-software featured with facilities for back-to-back communication between a parent and school to ensure that every child is disciplined,” said K Rajiv, the general manager of Good Luck Systems.The company will provide the system free of cost to the Ministry. The schools can register with this new service after the MoE approves it, he added.

“Teachers and school’s administrative staffs will also get free training,” Rajiv said, adding the parents will have to pay 10 dirhams for 10 SMSes and 100 dirhams for a one-year membership.

General Manager of the MoE, Rashid Al Nuaimi, said the Ministry officials were studying a project to set up a call centre that would facilitate communication among the ministry, schools and parents.

Deeming mathematics ‘uncool’ in the social context of middle and high schools in the US is hurting the country as a new study found that a majority of young mathematicians working here were born in a foreign country.

‘It is deemed uncool within the social context of US middle and high schools to do mathematics for fun; doing so can lead to social ostracism. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, usually camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers,’ the researchers commented.

The Americans’ attitude of making fun of girls who are good at math is robbing the country of some of its best talent, the study found, adding that girls can be just as talented as boys at mathematics but some are driven from the field because they are teased, ostracised or simply neglected.

‘The US culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys,’ Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who led the study, said in a statement Friday.

‘The situation is becoming urgent. The data show that a majority of the top young mathematicians in this country were not born here,’ she said.

Writing in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Mertz and colleagues analysed data from international math competitions going back to 1974 as well as surveys of US students.

They also challenged the widespread belief that females lack exceptional math aptitude.

Co-researcher Titu Andreescu of the University of Texas, Dallas, said: ‘Innate math aptitude is probably fairly evenly distributed throughout the world, regardless of race or gender. The huge differences observed in achievement levels are most likely due to socio-cultural attributes specific to each country.’

The study also found that in the five top US research university mathematics departments, only 20 percent of women faculty members were born in the US.

‘We are wasting this valuable resource,’ Mertz said. ‘Girls can excel in math at the very highest level. There are some truly phenomenal women mathematicians out there.’

The study found that in elementary school, girls do as well or better in math tests than boys. The scores begin to lag in the middle school years and the gap widens greatly between girls and boys in high school.

Many of the women who become math or engineering professionals come from other countries, notably in eastern Europe and Asia, where mathematics is promoted more, the study found.

‘Just as there is concern about the US relying on foreign countries for our oil and manufactured goods, we should also be concerned about relying on others to fill our needs for mathematicians, engineers, and scientists,’ Joseph Gallian of the University of Minnesota and current president of the Mathematical Association of America, said.

Three Chinese astronauts emerged from their capsule Sunday after a milestone mission to carry out the country’s first spacewalk, showing off China’s technological know-how and cementing its status as a space power and future competitor to the United States.

A senior space official said the mission — China’s most ambitious yet — took the country one step closer in its plan to build a space station and then to land a man on the moon.

Wang Zhaoyao, deputy director of manned space flight, said the program is looking to launch a new orbiting vehicle and set up a simple space lab by 2011. There are also hopes of sending unmanned and manned space vehicles to perform docking activities with the target vehicle.

By 2020, China wants to launch a manned mission to experiment with technologies that will enable astronauts to take care of spacecraft for longer periods of time, Wang told reporters at a briefing in Beijing after a parachute brought the astronauts’ capsule back to ground.

“After we have successfully completed these three steps, we will go to even more remote areas,” Wang said. “We believe that as long as we can make further progress on the road of science and technology, China will achieve the target of putting a manned spacecraft on the moon in the near future.”

The United States is the only country to have accomplished that feat, putting its first astronaut team on the moon in 1969. But its last human landing was in 1972, and it has since concentrated on unmanned probes.

China’s communist leaders, riding a wave of pride and patriotism after hosting the Olympics, face few of the public doubts or budgetary pressures that have constrained space programs elsewhere. Saturday’s spacewalk was watched by cheering crowds on huge outdoor TV screens.

State broadcaster CCTV showed the astronauts’ return Sunday after their Shenzhou 7 ship’s re-entry vehicle burst through the Earth’s atmosphere to make a landing under clear skies in the grasslands of China’s northern Inner Mongolia region.

The vessel touched ground at 5:37 p.m. after floating down gently while attached to a giant red-and-white striped parachute, marking the end of the 68-hour endeavor.

“It was a glorious mission, full of challenges with a successful end,” said mission commander Zhai Zhigang, a 41-year-old fighter pilot. “We feel proud of the motherland.”

Zhai, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng stayed inside the capsule after landing for about 46 minutes to adapt to Earth’s gravity before slowly crawling out the narrow entrance.

Outside, the trio cheerily waved to cameras and reporters from Chinese state media before sitting down in blue fold-out chairs. They saluted as they were presented with bouquets of flowers.

Premier Wen Jiabao applauded at mission control in Beijing and shook hands with staff.

“This mission’s success is a milestone; a stride forward,” Wen said. “I would like to extend my congratulations to the heroic astronauts who successfully completed this mission.”

The premier also reiterated Beijing’s longtime stance that it is the Chinese people’s “persistent aspiration” to develop space technologies for peaceful exploration.

The spacewalk was a key step in mastering techniques for docking two orbiters to create China’s first orbiting space station. Tethered to handles attached to the Shenzhou 7 ship’s orbital module, Zhai remained outside for about 13 minutes before climbing back inside.

China has relied heavily on homegrown technology, partly out of necessity. It has trouble obtaining such technology abroad due to U.S. and European bans and is not a participant in the International Space Station.

The Chinese program is backed by the secretive military. While Beijing insists it is committed to a peaceful program, analysts point to numerous potential applications for its technology, such as when it used a land-based missile to blast apart an old satellite last January.

China conducted its first manned space mission, Shenzhou 5, in 2003, becoming only the third country after Russia and the United States to launch a man into space. That was followed by a two-man mission in 2005.

Scientists have found the oldest known rocks on Earth. They are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

Scientists have found the oldest known rocks on Earth. They are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

An internationally recognized scholar of presidential debates believes that the McCain-Obama presidential debates coming up this week and next month, will be as significant as the debates that took place between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the run-up to the 1960 presidential elections.With many polls showing Obama and McCain in a dead heat, many are predicting that the first presidential debate on September 26 could be a turning point in the election.

According to Mitchell McKinney, a University of Missouri associate professor of communication and internationally recognized scholar of presidential debates, the four key elements in the current presidential race will be:

Voters’ familiarity or comfort level with the candidates

How close the race remains at the outset of a debate series

The number of undecided or leaning voters

The strength - or weakness - of traditional party allegiances cKinney has conducted extensive research of various candidates’ debate performances, including the numerous Democratic and Republican primary debates that featured both Barack Obama and John McCain. n 1992, McKinney consulted with the Commission on Presidential Debates, advising the Commission on how debates could be structured in order to better educate citizens on significant campaign issues.

The co-author of The 1992 Presidential Debates in Focus, has also co-authored and edited four other books and numerous research articles on presidential debates.

Most recently, he advised the presidential debate committee of South Korea as Seoul officials planned their 2002 televised presidential debates.

Iran has failed to provide information that would clear up allegations it was involved in nuclear weapons-related research, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday.A report issued by the nuclear watchdog provided further indications that Iran’s studies on high-explosives testing and missiles, which the IAEA says could have been related to weapons, were technically related and were conducted with foreign help.

‘The agency, regrettably, has not been able to make any substantive progress on the alleged studies and other associated key remaining issues which remain of serious concern,’ IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in his report to the agency’s board members.

While Iran denies that it has conducted explosions with hemispherical charges, ElBaradei said in the report that the IAEA had obtained information that the experiments ‘may have involved the assistance of foreign expertise.’

The dimensions of the explosive charge corresponded to the dimensions of the warhead documented in Iran’s alleged missile studies, the report said. The IAEA has said previously that there are indications the missile project was geared towards nuclear weapons.

Since the last report in May of this year, Iran has continued to defy United Nations Security Council resolutions by expanding its uranium enrichment programme.

Iran now operates around 4,600 centrifuges, which have produced a total of 480 kg of low-enriched uranium so far, according to the report and information provided by UN officials.

However, Iran would need 15,000 kg for a ‘breakout scenario’ in which Tehran would take the low-enriched uranium and enrich it further for use in an atom bomb, a UN official said.

While the United States and other Western countries are concerned about the possibility of such a breakout, Iran’s leaders stress that its nuclear programme is geared solely towards energy generation.

Three men were shot dead and two left injured after an argument between a group of Indian and white visitors to a bar here, allegedly over the size of genitals.Superintendent Muzi Mngomezulu of the South African police confirmed that five people were arrested in the early hours of Thursday morning in connection with the shootings, which erupted after a confrontation between white and Indian patrons of the bar late Wednesday evening.

Two of them were in possession of firearms believed to have been used in the killings.

A worker at the bar, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said a customer of Indian origin had remarked to a white customer while they were both at the urinal in the bar that his penis was bigger than that of the white customer.

‘After both men returned to their friends, the two groups began swearing at each other before the group of five Indian men left the scene and all returned with firearms. They opened fire and three guys died on the spot. The other two were rushed to St. Augustine’s Hospital, where I am told they are critical.’

Mngomezulu said the argument is believed to have been racially motivated, although he could not confirm the incident at the urinal.

Durban is home to two-thirds of South Africa’s 1.2 million Indians, with the unique Indian accent there often being the butt of jokes by comedians and arguments sometimes erupting over it in social environments if it is maligned by other groups.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari soon after his swearing-in has assured of progress on fast track to resolve the Kashmir issue. Addressing a news conference jointly with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai in Islamabad, Zardari said that his party was working hard with all the political forces in Pakistan to arrive at a solution on the Kashmir issue.