Yahoo! Headlines Technology Monday January 17

CORRECTED - Corrected - Birth certificates hit by computer bug In the story headlined "Millennium babies already 100 years old", the National Statistics Office incorrectly said its computers were printing 1900 on birth certificates instead of 2000, but now says computers were printing 22002000 on the certificates. LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of millennium babies are being given hand-written birth certificates until a computer glitch can be put right.

Officials are resorting to pen and ink and writing out so-called "short certificates" which give basic details of date and place of birth because computers were printing out the figures 22002000 on birth certificates.

A National Statistics Office spokesman said Action 2000, the "hit squad" for ironing out millennium bugs, had been called in to deal with the problem.

"These extra characters popped up in the middle of the issue date. So we have stopped printing them," a spokesman said. "The problem should be corrected in the next couple of weeks."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000117/22/dj7w.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 18, 2000