U.S.: Pennsylvania 'Jihad Jane' tried to recruit terrorists
A Pennsylvania woman has been indicted for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and kill a person in a foreign country, the Justice Department said.

U.S. hikers held in Iran call home
Three U.S. hikers who were detained in Iran have spoken by phone with their relatives for the first time since authorities jailed them more than seven months ago, the hikers' families said Wednesday.

Jury urges death for 'Bachelor No. 1'
A California jury recommended Tuesday that a man who once appeared on "The Dating Game" be executed for the murders of four women and a child.

Dutch bishops launch child abuse probe
Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have announced an independent investigation into allegations of child abuse by clergy, widening a scandal that already touches countries including the United States, Ireland, Germany and Austria.

Answers demanded in bulldozer death
A-23-year-old American activist stands in front of an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. The bulldozer drives over her, crushing her to death. These are the facts.

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Iris Browser beta
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BFilter 1.1.4
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MySpeed Plug-In for YouTube Beta 2.11
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Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4
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Rock Band 3 Officially Announced For Holiday 2010
An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"

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Linux Takes Over E-Voting In Australian State
daria42 writes "The Electoral Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has made plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux in the next state election in November of this year. But it appears to be a little confused: the documentation states it will be using the '2.6 kernel/Gentoo release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.' Huh?"

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Puzzle In xkcd Book Finally Cracked
An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)."

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The Value of BASIC As a First Programming Language
Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC."

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US Considers Some Free Wireless Broadband Service
gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored.

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U.N. report: Much of Somalia's food aid diverted
Up to half the food aid intended for the millions of hungry people in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical ...

AP: No-fly list has nearly doubled since Christmas Day incident
An intelligence official says the government has nearly doubled the number of people on the no-fly list since the attempted Christmas ...

Israel apologizes for embarrasing Biden
Israel apologized Wednesday for disrupting the visit of Vice President Biden with its announcement of 1,600 new homes in disputed ...

Gates: Some troops could leave Afghanistan early
Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Wednesday that some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge ...

Iran leader: U.S. playing 'double game' in Afghanistan
Taking aim at the U.S., Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that it's the United States that is playing a "double ...