"The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that a technique the FBI has used for decades to match bullets to crimes is flawed... The study's publication next month could open the door to hundreds, even thousands of appeals, and give defense lawyers in future cases new ammunition for undermining expert testimony... The findings are the latest in a string of controversies and embarrassments this year to hit the FBI lab, which pledged to remake itself after a scandal in the 1990s over bad science."

More Bad News for FBI Crime Lab

"[Former high school teacher and football coach] James Michael Carr, 38, of Conneautville, pleaded guilty yesterday to corruption of minors... Authorities said Carr offered the teens - now 18 and 14 years old - marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines earlier this year at a motel and in his home. Police said Carr asked one of the girls to smoke marijuana with him topless and to dress up in a French maid outfit to clean his house."

Ex-teacher Admits Misdeeds With Teens

"Three Oslo teenagers have been on a secret private visit to pop idol Michael Jackson at his pleasure park Neverland Ranch in California... Two youths were invited along to California by Jackson's Norwegian-Pakistani friend Omer Bhatti, 19... the Oslo trio's USA holiday is bought and paid by Jackson and was a secret to all but their nearest family members. The trip to Neverland should have lasted a week, but the boys have now been gone nearly four weeks."

Michael Jackson and the Disappearing Norwegian Boys

"The inside of Michael Jackson's creepy lair was revealed for the first time yesterday. A shocking video shows a secret room behind a trapdoor at Jackson's California mansion - where he apparently entertained kids who slept over... The 45-year-old's covert cubbyhole is a twisted version of a child's bedroom. A bed is adorned with pillow cases imprinted with Peter Pan's face and the word Neverland. Sitting on the bed is a red-headed, bug-eyed stuffed doll, and on a nightstand next to the bed is a Mickey Mouse telephone... On the walls are framed pictures of smiling diapered babies, which the TV show said were not Jackson's children."

Michael Jackson's Secret Bedroom

"The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed its outrage at what it claims is a Mormon scheme to buy up the names of dead Russians in order to baptise 'dead souls' in their faith... in the town of Nizhni Novgorod, east of Moscow, the Church of the Latter Day Saints has paid ten US cents for each page of thousands of names of dead people dating mainly from the late eighteenth century to be put on a microfilm... Yevgeny Smirnov, from the Nizhni Novgorod Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and adviser to the Moscow Mormon region, said: 'Our church aims to create a database permitting people to look for their ancestors. Our ceremony is not rebaptism; it only gives the soul of the deceased person the freedom of choice to accept our belief or to reject it.'"

Mormons Buying Up Russian Souls

Care to register a .mil Web site of your own for free? The DoD has gone out of its way to make it a snap. An unbelievably badly-protected admin interface welcomes you to register whatever domain you please, or edit anything they've already got. The interface is so ludicrously unprotected that it's been cached by Google and fails to mention that you must be authorized to muck about with it. Incredibly, default passwords are cheerfully provided on the page.

Create your own .mil domain

Once again, Veterans Day went by without anybody in the mainstream media pointing out that our Commander in Chief is a draft dodger. It is well documented that George W. Bush's daddy pulled some strings and got him into the Texas Air National Guard. Then he got himself transferred to Alabama, where he was destined to serve with distinction... except, he never showed up. Basically, Bush decided to ditch his military duties for about a year. And yet, for some reason, he was never charged with desertion. Not to mention the fact that Bush was grounded for several months after refusing to submit to a routine physical exam in 1972. [One possible motive: the exam would have included a compulsory drug test.]

Media Continues to Ignore Bush's Military Record

Court TV is experimenting with a whole new way to fund its programs, beginning with what executives call in program product sponsorship, or IPPS. It's what the rest of us call pop-up ads, but they are less obtrusive than what you'd think.

Web-Inspired Ads Coming to TV

Microsoft took a public file server offline Tuesday after Internet users discovered that the system contained scores of internal Microsoft documents, including a huge customer database with millions of entries.

Microsoft Spills Customer Data

People who enjoy the occasional decaf latte may be getting more of a lift than they know, scientists report in today's rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

New Buzz On Coffee: It's Not the Caffeine That Raises Blood Pressure