French officials investigating the ex-IMF chief's alleged participation in a prostitution ring say police will begin looking into incidents in Washington.

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears before Latino small-business owners in Washington on Tuesday, he'll address a group whose explosive birth rates foreshadow a seismic political shift in GOP strongholds in the Deep South and Southwest.

Julian Zelizer says that even impartial observers see that congressional Republicans have taken the partisan wars to extremes

Protesters vowed to carry out disruptive demonstrations Monday in Chicago, a day after baton-wielding police clashed with demonstrators in a violent confrontation that left dozens injured just blocks from where NATO leaders were gathered.

Northern Italy was shaken by an aftershock Monday morning, a day after a magnitude-6.0 quake killed at least seven people and left thousands of survivors huddling in tents or cars overnight.

Robin Gibb, one of three brothers who made up the disco group the Bee Gees behind "Saturday Night Fever" and other hits from the 1970s, died after a bout with cancer, according to a statement on his website.

Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng arrived Saturday evening in the United States, bringing an end to a diplomatic firestorm that erupted after he escaped from house arrest and took to YouTube to complain about abuse he said his family suffered at the hands of authorities.

Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, has died in Libya. He was 60.

Aimee Copeland, the 24-year-old Georgia woman who lost both hands and feet to a bacterial infection, is now breathing on her own, her father said.

Lana Kuykendall has been fully conscious for all but a few days of her not-yet-3-week-old twins' lives. And after seven surgeries thus far to tackle a rare flesh-eating bacteria, the South Carolina mother's family realizes all too well that she "still has a long road ahead."

The Spurs rallied in the final minutes to beat the Clippers 102-99 on Sunday night, closing out the series 4-0 and advancing to the Western Conference finals.

LeBron James scored 40 points, superstar sidekick Dwyane Wade added 30 and Miami's dynamic duo took over after halftime to bring the Heat even the series with a 101-93 win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinal Sunday.

After having fluid drained from his troublesome left knee last week, Heat guard Dwyane Wade had one of the worst playoff games of his career as Miami stumbled into a 2-1 series hole against the Indiana Pacers.

The Coyotes beat the Kings 2-0 on Sunday.

The Clippers say they are confident they'll be able to retain Chris Paul and Blake Griffin for a long time.

A driver was beaten in the Dodger Stadium parking lot after a weekend game and four people were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, police said Monday.

It didn't take teams very long to figure out their best shot at winning the All-Star race would be in the first 20 laps.

Rafael Nadal beat top-ranked Novak Djokovic 7-5, 6-3 on Monday to win his record sixth Italian Open title.

Al-Jazeera says it will launch two sports channels in the United States in August.

Babe Ruth equals big bucks.

In a heated Hudson River clash that is threatening to become pretty nasty, the gloves were officially dropped Sunday when Rangers coach John Tortorella ripped the Devils, accusing them of selling penalty calls and skirting the rules.

Chris Perez is throwing some heat at Cleveland fans.

Pinch-hitter Scott Van Slyke connected for his first major league homer, a go-ahead, three-run shot in the seventh inning against his father's former team, and the Los Angeles Dodgers rallied for a 6-5 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday night.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. led for 209 of 250 laps and won the NASCAR Nationwide race at the Iowa Speedway on Sunday, his third straight win on Iowa's short oval.

Stephen Strasburg hit his first major league home run and struck out eight in five innings to carry the Washington Nationals past the Baltimore Orioles 9-3 Sunday.

First time accepted submitter Shalmendo writes "My client needs to monitor traffic on his LAN, particularly going out to the internet. This will include websites like Facebook, Myspace, and similar, including from mobile devices. So far, based on the network education I have, I've concluded that it might be best to get a tap (And some kind of recording system with wireshark, probably a mini-barebone), or replace the existing Linksys router with a custom built mini barebone system with linux routing software and appropriate storage capacity etc to record traffic internally. (either way it looks like I will need to put together a mini barebone system for some purpose) My client is trying to protect his family from scammers and other unsavory types, and isn't savvy in this matter, so i'm doing it for him. What I need is a way to record the traffic at a singular point, like modem/router areas, or similar, and a way to scrape out Facebook, Myspace, and other messages. It also appears that the client's family is using iPhones and some game called 'words' which has message capability. Is it possible to scrape messages out of that game's packets, or are they obfuscated? Can I write a script? What software would you recommend? Linux routing OS? Can we sniff packets and drop them on the internal hard drive? or would a tap be better? How do I analyze and sort the data afterwards? my client needs easily read evidence (Such as text or screenshots) he can use as proof in discussion with his family to try and intercede in any potentially harmful transactions. In other words, how can I Achieve this goal? I have basic and medium training in computer networking, so I can make my own cables and such, but I've never worked on this exact kind of project before, and thought it might be better to query slashdot instead of do my own research from scratch. After days of discussion with the client, it's not plausible to put monitoring software in the devices on the network (due to legal issues and a few other factors), so I concluded a network tap or other device would be the best way to capture and study what's going on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TheGift73 writes "Last week, longtime chief Howard Schmidt stepped down. He's been replaced by Michael Daniel, who's been in the Office of Management and Budget's national security division for 17 years. What does that mean for the future of the cybersecurity issue? Probably that we can expect his knowledge of the intelligence community to play a part in not just tracking down hackers, but determining the lines that need to be crossed with future SOPA-like bills. So while this sounds like a relatively nondescript appointment, Daniel will almost definitely be a major player the next time someone comes for your internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Michael Grynbaum writes that 40,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men filed through the gates of Citi Field to discuss the dangers of the Internet. For the attendees, many of whom said they came at the instructions of their rabbis, it was a chance to hear about a moral topic considered gravely important in the Hasidic community: the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web. Schlomo Cohen, 24, said he came to Citi Field because the rally was a good way to remind his community to keep temptation at bay. 'Desires are out there,' said Cohen. 'We have to learn how to control ourselves.' The rally was sponsored by a rabbinical group, Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachane, that is linked to a software company that sells Internet filtering software to Orthodox Jews. Those in attendance were handed fliers that advertised services like a 'kosher GPS App' for iPhone and Android phones, which helps users locate synagogues and kosher restaurants. 'No one here is a Luddite who denies the manifold benefits that technology has brought to mankind as a whole,' says Eytan Kobre, spokesman for the event. 'But at a certain point, a mature, thinking individual stops and says, "I've got to make a cost-benefit analysis [of] what ways it is enriching my life, [and] in what ways it is undermining it."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fluffeh writes "Around a year ago, a person working for the ABC in Australia with the highest levels of access to systems got caught caught with his fingers on the CPU cycles. The staffer had installed Bitcoin mining software on the systems used by the Australian broadcaster. While the story made a bit of a splash at the time, it was finally announced today that the staffer hadn't been sacked, but was merely being disciplined by his manager and having his access to systems restricted. All the stories seem a little vague as to what he actually installed however — on one side he installed the software on a public facing websever, and the ABC itself admits 'As this software was for a short time embedded within pages on the ABC website, visitors to these pages may have been exposed to the Bitcoin software' and 'the Coalition (current Opposition Parties) was planning on quizzing the ABC further about the issue, including filing a request for the code that would have been downloaded to users' machines,' but on the other side there is no mention of the staffer trying to seed a Bitcoin mining botnet through the site, just that mining software had been installed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Eager to host Amazon warehouses and receive a cut of the tax on sales to customers statewide, the LA Times reports that two California cities are offering Amazon most of the tax money they stand to gain. After agreeing to collect California sales taxes beginning in the fall, Amazon is setting up two fulfillment centers in San Bernadino and Patterson, which will gain not only jobs but also a tax bonanza: Sales to Amazon customers throughout California will be deemed to take place there, so all the sales tax earmarked for local government operations will go to those two cities. The windfall is so lucrative that local officials are preparing to give Amazon the lion's share of their take as a reward for setting up shop there. 'The tax is supposed to be supporting government,' said Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Assn., of the proposed sales-tax rebate. 'Instead, it's going back into Amazon's pocket.' Sen. Mark DeSaulnier added: 'It seems like the private sector finds a way to pit one city against the other. You can't give away sales tax in this manner.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dsinc writes "Forbes' Alex Knapp writes about the Tesla idolatry and confusing his genius for godhood: 'Tesla wasn't an ignored god-hero. Thomas Edison wasn't the devil. They were both brilliant, strong-willed men who helped build our modern world. They both did great things and awful things. They were both brilliantly right about some things and just as brilliantly wrong about others. They had foibles, quirks, passions, misunderstandings and moments of wonder.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks simple. I've got a laptop and a USB HDD for backups. With rsync, I only move changes to the USB HDD for subsequent backups. I'd like to move these changes to a more portable USB stick when I'm away, then sync again to the USB HDD when I get home. I figured with the normality of the pieces and the situation, there'd be an app for that, but no luck yet. I'm guessing one could make a hardlink parallel-backup on the laptop at the same time as the USB HDD backup. Then use find to detect changes between it and the actual filesystem when it's time to backup to the USB stick. But there would need to be a way to preserve paths, and a way communicate deletions. So how about it? I'm joe-user with Ubuntu. I even use grsync for rsync. After several evenings of trying to figure this out, all I've got is a much better understanding of what hardlinks are and are not. What do the smart kids do? Three common pieces of hardware, and a simple-looking task."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jrepin writes with news of today's release (here's Linus's announcement) of Linux 3.4: "This release includes several Btrfs updates: metadata blocks bigger than 4KB, much better metadata performance, better error handling and better recovery tools. There are other features: a new X32 ABI which allows to run in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers; several updates to the GPU drivers: early modesetting of Nvidia Geforce 600 'Kepler', support of AMD RadeonHD 7xxx and AMD Trinity APU series, and support of Intel Medfield graphics; support of x86 cpu driver autoprobing, a device-mapper target that stores cryptographic hashes of blocks to check for intrusions, another target to use external read-only devices as origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume, several perf improvements such as GTK2 report GUI and a new 'Yama' security module."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fluffeh writes "On Friday, a company called SceneTap flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are, the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via an iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed, though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows. Beyond academics and policy experts, some San Francisco bar owners that originally partnered with SceneTap have said that they're pulling out and will be taking down the company's cameras. An increasing number of bars still listed on the SceneTap's site are now saying that they're not working with the Chicago startup, including Mr. Smith's, Southpaw, John Colins, and Bar None."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TheGift73 writes "In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release. Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why? One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead. And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode). But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn't help either."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First time accepted submitter Trubacca writes "The Northern-Pacific "Ring of Fire" has an opportunity tonight to observe an entirely different "ring of fire": an annular solar eclipse where the moon, owing to it's distance from the Earth, seems smaller than the apparent diameter of the sun. This results in the fiery ring for which the phenomenon takes it's name. Space.com has a decent write-up on the path of the eclipse, times, and tips for safe-viewing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "3 graduate students from University of Tokyo, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Tsukuba have developed a colloidal display — a clear projector screen that can control its transparency. Normally soap film will allow light to pass through, but the colloidal display does not. It mixes colloid into the solution and uses ultra sonic speakers to vibrate the surface of the soap film to achieve this. They have created several prototypes, such as 3D planar screen, to show how this technology can be useful."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

the agent man writes "The idea of getting kids interested in programming in spite of their common perception of programming to be 'hard and boring' is an ongoing Slashdot discussion. With support of the National Science Foundation, the Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring computer science education into the curriculum of middle and high schools for some time. The results are overwhelmingly positive, suggesting that game design is highly motivational across gender and ethnicity lines. The project is also finding new ways of tracking programming skills transferring from game design to STEM simulation building. This NPR story highlights an early and unplanned foray into bringing game-design based computer science education even to elementary schools."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Okian Warrior writes "Various new sources are reporting the results of a recent Labor Party poll, indicating that Julian Assange would be elected to the Australian senate, should he choose to run. From the Sun Daily article: 'Controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands a real chance of winning an upper house seat in his native Australia if he presses ahead with plans to stand for election, a poll showed Saturday. A survey conducted by the ruling Labor party's internal pollsters UMR Research and published in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper showed 25 percent of those polled would vote for the whistleblowing website chief.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gunkerty Jeb writes "After banning the word 'jailbreak' from its app store and music library, Apple [Friday] reversed course and again permits the term — slang for hacking into a device to download unauthorized content — to appear on iTunes and its App Store. On Thursday bloggers noticed Apple had censored the word, using the Thin Lizzy album 'Jailbreak' as an example. For awhile, the title was listed as 'J******k' in Apple's music library, at least its U.S. version. In other instances, digital content continued to bear the full name Jailbreak."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tough morning for The Zuck -- after a lackluster debut ... Facebook stock is sinking like a stone this morning ... down more than 11% from its opening price. As of 7:32 AM PDT ... FB had fallen to $33.97 per share ... down $4.26 from its closing…

The VERY last song Whitney Houston ever recorded has finally been released ... a duet with Jordin Sparks ... which Whitney performed just 4 days before her death.The song is called "Celebrate" -- from her upcoming movie "Sparkle" in which she plays…

It's the most famous crash diet in history ... the Master Cleanse ... but according to celebrity super-trainer Jillian Michaels ... it's dangerous for your body. Michaels was out in Malibu this weekend, when we asked about rumors that Beyonce…

Ray J was almost physically removed from the Billboard Music Awards last night after angry members of Whitney Houston's family ordered their security to get him away from them ... TMZ has learned.Pat Houston's blood was boiling because she, Bobbi…

The new Jesse McCartney horror flick "Chernobyl Diaries" is a slap in the face to the 400,000 victims of the real-life nuclear disaster ... so says a Chernobyl recovery organization. For those unfamiliar with the Chernobyl disaster ... (shame on you…

Lindsay Lohan's finally looking the part -- trying on some crucial Elizabeth Taylor-inspired outfits for her new movie ... and TMZ has obtained pics of the wardrobe action.Sources close to Lindsay tell TMZ, the actress is dead set on nailing Liz…

Young Buck is in SERIOUS trouble -- the rapper has been evicted from his Tennessee mansion ... AND the I.R.S is still on his ass for more than $300k in unpaid taxes. TMZ has learned ... the former G-Unit rapper was ordered to vacate his 5,000 square…

Looks like hell officially froze over ... Nicolas Cage, his baby mama and their alleged wife-beating son all hung out together for FUN on Monday night ... which NEVER happens. Weston Cage had a gig with his metal band at Whiskey a-Go-Go in Hollywood…

Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, didn't speak long at tonight's BIllboard Music Awards -- but she described herself as being "blessed to have been in such an incredible woman's life."Bobbi Kristina -- in her first major public…

A rep for Al Jarreau tells TMZ he was diagnosed with pneumonia before the concert, saying, "Mr. Jarreau believes that his illness and fatigue resulted from a very busy week on tour, which included 4 concerts in Austria. He will spend a short time…

Robin Gibb, one-third of the legendary group the Bee Gees, died Sunday after a long battle with cancer. He was 62. His spokesperson released a statement that reads, "The family of Robin Gibb, of the Bee Gees, announce with great sadness that…

Missing "Terminator 3" actor Nick Stahl has told his wife he has checked in to rehab, TMZ has learned.  The 32-year-old actor was reported missing earlier this week by his wife Rose -- but e-mailed friends yesterday to say he was okay and would…

Kim Kardashian and current boyfriend Kanye West continued their trip to London by embracing their monochromatic differences -- KK decked out all in black, KW all in denim blue. Kim has been in town to promote the upcoming season of…

Mark Zuckerberg might have more money than the average man, but he has the same musical tastes as everyone else -- because TMZ has learned his wedding was bumping some serious Michael Jackson tracks all night long. A neighbor of the Facebook…

It's the moment we've all been waiting for ... THE FRESH PRINCE IS BACK!!!!At least he was for about three minutes Saturday night on BBC's 'The Graham Norton Show' ... when Will Smith actually rapped the infamous "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song…

A movie date for Timothy Busfield went terribly awry ... a woman is now accusing the famed actor of sexual battery ... TMZ has learned.Law enforcement sources tell us ... Busfield took a date to the ArcLight theaters in Sherman Oaks Wednesday night.…

We are calling on you to find the hidden differences in these crazy pics. Will you pick then up?**HINT -- There are THREE differences in the above photographs!**

MMA fighter Muhammed Lawal -- known as King Mo -- wants to kick some serious ass this summer when he joins TNA wrestling ... so much so he's reaching out to some MAJOR ring legends for advice. The former Strikeforce champion tells TMZ ... as a…

After all the hoopla to compete, transgender beauty queen Jenna Talackova LOST the title of Miss Universe Canada ... but DID manage to win something else -- Miss Congeniality. Talackova took the stage Saturday night in Toronto -- along with 61…

Tim Tebow posed for a photo backstage with cast members of the Broadway music "Rock Ages" ... and then asked for that photo to be taken off Twitter ... this according to one of the cast members. Neka Zang posted the pic (see above) on her…