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.

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.

Ex-doc sentenced for wife's poisoning
A former Ohio doctor was sentenced to life in prison for poisoning his wife with cyanide five years ago. The judge lamented that she could not hand down a stiffer sentence.

Missing executive's body found in river
The body of a missing energy executive was pulled from the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Tuesday, four days after he disappeared, police said.

Police: Ohio State shooter killed himself
A gunman apparently angry over a poor evaluation entered an Ohio State University maintenance building today, killing a manager and then himself, police said.

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BFilter 1.1.4
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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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Gamers Spend $3.8 Billion On MMOs Yearly
eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The World's First Commercially Available Jetpack
ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's Computing Power Refines Translation
gollum123 sends an excerpt from the NY Times on how Google has taken a lead in language translation, in one of the company's few unqualified successes as it attempts to broaden is offerings beyond search. "...Google's quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems. The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation. ...in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts. It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google's alley. ...Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff Jaffe Named CEO of W3C
blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5 killed in attack on aid group in Pakistan
Gunmen attacked the offices of an international aid group in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five people working for ...

Female WWII pilots receive medals
Congress is awarding the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor, to members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots

Roberts: Presidential address is 'pep rally'
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told an Alabama audience Tuesday that he found the atmosphere "very troubling" at January's ...

El Nino could whip up more active tornado season
Weather forecasters say the wetter-than-usual El Nio winter that has blasted much of the United States could be followed by an ...

Allegations rise against N.Y.'s Massa
Hours after resigning amid allegations of sexually harassing staffers, former House member Eric Massa went on national television ...