Poker lobbyists are ramping up an aggressive push backed by millions of dollars to legalize Internet gambling in the United States this year, hoping to overcome passionate objections from social conservatives, sports leagues and other longtime opponents.

Partly bankrolled by offshore gambling companies, the campaign has already persuaded the Obama administration to delay enforcement of a 2006 law cracking down on Internet wagers.

Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) and other Democrats are using the six-month reprieve to push ahead with legislation that would legalize and regulate poker, mah-jongg and other online betting games — pastimes that have exploded in popularity in a country that accounts for more than half of the $16 billion global Internet gambling market. The federal government, which rarely prosecutes online gambling, would net billions of dollars in tax and licensing revenue if it were legalized, proponents say.
[Read more...]

People are afraid to lose money and an unusual study released on Monday explains why — the brain’s fear center controls the response to a gamble.

The study of two women with brain lesions that made them unafraid to lose on a gamble showed the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, activates at the very thought of losing money.

The finding, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers insight into economic behavior and suggests that humans evolved to be cautious about the prospects of losing food or other valued possessions.
[Read more...]

Toyota Motor Corp  faced its first U.S. class-action lawsuit stemming from complaints of faulty braking of its top-selling Prius hybrid model, which the automaker is to recall.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court order requiring Toyota to repair a braking defect that the named plaintiff, Elaine Miller, says makes driving her 2010 Prius dangerous.

Miller’s lawyer, Daniel Warshaw, said on Monday he is seeking class-action status in California for all affected owners of the 2010-year Prius and the 2010 Lexus HS250h hybrid, which he said is equipped with the same braking system.
[Read more...]

LOS ANGELES – An ex-Boeing Co engineer, found guilty last year of passing space shuttle secrets to China in America’s first conviction under a 1996 espionage law, was sentenced on Monday to 15 years in prison.

Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was convicted in July of economic espionage and acting as an agent for the People’s Republic of China.

In sentencing Chung to 188 months behind bars, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, who presided over the 10-day trial in Santa Ana, California, said he wanted to send a signal to China to “stop sending your spies here,” according to prosecutors.

Chung, 73, the first person convicted at trial under the Economic Espionage Act, told the judge he was innocent.

“Your honor, I’m not a spy, I’m an ordinary man,” he said. “I was planning to write a book. Those documents were going to be used for my references.
[Read full story...]

PORT-AU-PRINCE  – Hundreds of Haitian earthquake survivors protested in a suburb of the wrecked capital on Sunday, accusing a district mayor of corruption and hoarding food aid provided by relief groups, witnesses said.

The protest in the Petionville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince was one of the largest since the January 12 quake that killed more than 200,000 people and left over 1 million homeless. It reflected still simmering anger among survivors over problems in the massive international relief effort.
[Read full story...]

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI  – A consortium led by Walt Disney Co. is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company, a deal that could offer the U.S. entertainment giant a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, three sources told Reuters.

Google Inc., the world’s No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.
[Read full story...]

With the Nexus One, Google made voice commands an integral part of the phone’s user interface. In addition to voice searching — a feature on all Android phones — Nexus One users can also dictate e-mails, SMS messages, and use voice commands in Google Maps.

Now the Times Online is reporting that Google is seeking to take the next step with mobile voice. The company is developing software that will allow near-instant language translation on mobile phones. The technology would be a combination of Google’s text translation service and their mobile voice work.

[Read full story...]

Veracode today released Blackberry-specific spyware, which the code-review specialist intends as a “call for defensive research” to show that the BlackBerry is vulnerable to spyware problems.

“The Blackberry ‘sandbox’ keeps you from getting into the operating system level. It’s effective for that,” says Tyler Shields, senior researcher at Veracode Research Lab and author of the Blackberry spyware. “BlackBerry is one of the better operating systems in regards to security,” he says, “but in the sandbox you can steal data.”

Shields says the point in releasing the spyware source code, which he calls TXSBBspy, is to “show how easy it is to write this code.” He calls the source code a blueprint for malware on the BlackBerry, showing how it’s possible to remotely dump all the contents, send the contents via e-mail, and conduct real-time monitoring of phone messages.

Shields says his purpose is to inspire a “call to action” to encourage development of BlackBerry applications to make it clear what these apps do before releasing them.
Source

IBM is beginning a long-awaited upgrade to a range of servers and other hardware to make them more energy-efficient and competitive than rival products by Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems Inc.

International Business Machines Corp said on Monday its new POWER7 system, including new microprocessors, storage and middleware, will be able to process more data than its predecessor POWER6, making them useful for utilities with electrical grids or banks conducting electronic trading.
[Read more...]

China has closed what it claims to be the largest hacker training website in the country and arrested three of its members, domestic media reported on Monday.

The “Black Hawk Safety Net” website taught hacking techniques and provided malicious software downloads for its 12,000 members in exchange for a fee, the Wuhan Evening News newspaper reported this weekend, citing police in Huanggang, just east of Wuhan.
[Read more...]