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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube Sunday.

The queen will use the popular video-sharing website to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.

Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.

YouTube, which allows anyone to upload and share video clips, was founded in 2005 and bought by Google last year.

“The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement. “The Christmas message was podcast last year.”

The palace said, “She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries.”

The royal page’s modern video clips show shots of garden parties, state visits, the queen, the many British prime ministers who have served during her reign and a day in the life of her son, Prince Charles.

The footage of the queen’s 1957 Christmas TV broadcast will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as Internet is today.

“I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us,” the queen said of television at the time.

The Royal Channel also shows excerpts from Lord Wakehurst’s film “Long to Reign Over Us,” which has never been publicly released. Wakehurst, a member of Parliament who died in 1970, was an avid amateur filmmaker, charting events such as Queen Elizabeth II’s accession and coronation.

The color images convey the historical events from the public’s perspective, showing crowds holding street parties and camping out on The Mall — the wide boulevard outside Buckingham Palace — to catch a glimpse of the queen on Coronation Day.

The Royal Channel also includes rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen’s parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

On Tuesday, Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast from www.royal.gov.uk. It also is being made available on television in high definition for the first time.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion project to build the world’s largest computer database of biometrics to give the government more ways to identify people at home and abroad, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The FBI has already started compiling digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns in its systems, the paper said.

In January, the agency — which focuses on violations of federal law, espionage by foreigners and terrorist activities — expects to award a 10-year contract to expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives, it said.

At an employer’s request, the FBI will also retain the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, the paper said.

If successful, the system, called Next Generation Identification, will collect the biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes, the Post said.

(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

HELSINKI/LONDON (Reuters) - Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) and wireless technology firm InterDigital (IDCC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) each declared victory in a court decision on Friday over patents related to the UMTS third-generation (3G) mobile phone standard.

A London High Court ruled in favor of Nokia, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, that most of the patents in the case are not essential for mobile phone operators wishing to comply with the 3G standard, as claimed by InterDigital.

The court did rule that one patent relating to power control in mobile handsets was essential to the 3G standard. The validity of that patent may be considered at a later hearing and Nokia could be found to have infringed it.

Shares of InterDigital rose $2.32, or 11.41 percent, to $22.66 on the Nasdaq after the ruling. Nokia shares closed up 4 percent in European trade.

Both sides said they were happy about the court’s ruling regarding patents related to power controls that increase capacity of mobile base stations and improve signal quality.

“The result is an extremely favorable outcome for Nokia and other industry participants,” Nokia said in a statement.

InterDigital said in a statement it was pleased with the outcome and that they believe this is the first ruling by any court of law finding any patent to be essential to the 3G standard.

Nokia filed a complaint in July 2005 asking the High Court to declare that 31 of InterDigital’s European patents were not essential to the UMTS standard, saying the it was proactively defending itself from potential infringement suits in Europe by InterDigital.

InterDigital filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in August saying Nokia was engaged in unfair trade practice involving two InterDigital patents related to certain 3G handsets and components.