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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Dutch parliament votes against online gambling bill

    AMSTERDAM
    Wed Apr 2, 2008 8:24am EDT

    AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The upper house of the Dutch parliament defeated a bill that would have allowed monopoly casino operator Holland Casino to open a gambling Web site on a trial basis.

    Technology

    The bill was defeated in a narrow 35-37 vote on Tuesday, the Senate's Web site said. The lower house of the Dutch parliament had approved the bill in 2006.

    PartyGaming, Bwin and Sportingbet could have suffered if the plans had been approved as Dutch gamblers would have been able to bet legally with Holland Casino as opposed to going to the other firms' Web sites based elsewhere.

    Europe is grappling with Internet betting. While countries like Britain have opened up to almost every kind of online gambling, Germany and France have been reluctant to follow suit, concerned by gambling addiction and that state betting monopolies would see their revenues destroyed.

    In February, the European Commission gave Greece and the Netherlands a final warning before court action over restrictions in their gaming markets in a push by Brussels to boost competition.

    (Additional reporting by Marc Jones in London; Editing by Quentin Bryar)
    Technology


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