AP - Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

AP - Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

AP - The Associated Press-GfK Poll on President Barack Obama and the economy was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from June 16-20. It is based on landline and cellphone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,001 adults. Interviews were conducted with 700 respondents on landline telephones and 301 on cellular phones.

AP - The FBI is investigating allegations that computer hackers in China broke into Google's email system, but no official government email accounts have been compromised, the Obama administration said Thursday.

AP - The FBI is investigating allegations that computer hackers in China broke into Google's email system, but no official government email accounts have been compromised, the Obama administration said Thursday.

AP - The White House says no official U.S. government email accounts were accessed during what Google alleges was Chinese hacking of its email systems.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Google's allegations of Chinese hacking of its email system are "very serious" and will be investigated by the FBI.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Google's allegations of Chinese hacking of its email system are "very serious" and will be investigated by the FBI.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Google's allegations of Chinese hacking of its email system are "very serious" and will be investigated by the FBI.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Google's allegations of Chinese hacking of its email system are "very serious" and will be investigated by the FBI.

AP - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Google's allegations of Chinese hacking of its email system are "very serious" and will be investigated by the FBI.

AP - Workers who don't trust the boss to keep track of their wages can now do it themselves with a new smart phone application from the Department of Labor. But employers worry that the time sheet app, along with other new initiatives, could encourage even more wage and hour lawsuits.

AP - The Supreme Court on Wednesday limited the ability of people to combine forces and fight corporations together when they want to dispute contracts for cell phones, cable television and other services, a move consumer advocates called a crushing blow.

The Daily Beast - Sen. Al Franken just announced hearings on the location-tracking software in iPhone and iPad, South Korea and Europe are investigating—and here come the lawsuits. Dan Lyons reports on fallout from Steve Jobs' silence in the data flap.

AP - House Republicans adamant that the government keep its hands off the Internet passed a bill Friday to repeal federal rules barring Internet service providers from blocking or interfering with traffic on their networks.

AP - House Republicans adamant that the government keep its hands off the Internet passed a bill Friday to repeal federal rules barring Internet service providers from blocking or interfering with traffic on their networks.

AP - Nokia is suing Apple in the United States for allegedly infringing patents in "virtually all" of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers, the Finnish company said Tuesday.

A second blast on Monday rocked the quake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown.

Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake has knocked out back-up cooling at several stricken reactors at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture north of Tokyo, causing a build-up of heat and pressure.

What is happening now in the core of the nuclear reactors?

* The core of a nuclear reactor consists of a series of zirconium metal pipes or rods containing pellets of uranium fuel bundled into what engineers call fuel assemblies.

* Water is pumped between the pipes to keep them cool and create steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.

* Back-up cooling has struggled at various times over the past three days at reactor units 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima plant.

* In the normal running of a reactor, high-energy neutrons from the uranium fuel bash atoms and break them into pieces in a chain reaction which creates heat, new radioactive elements such as strontium and caesium, and new neutrons which continue the process.

* The chain reaction halted within a few seconds of the earthquake at all the nuclear reactors in Japan, including those worst affected, as they automatically shut down: control rods made of boron were inserted into the fuel, absorbing the neutrons.

* However the natural decay of the radioactive materials in the reactor core continues to produce heat, called decay heat, which falls to a quarter of its original level in the first hour, and then disappears more slowly.

* Normally that heat is removed by coolant pumps whose back-up power supply was knocked out by the earthquake, tsunami or both at the Fukushima plant.

* Emergency workers are trying to cool the inner reactor cores and remove this decay heat by pumping seawater inside. They have added boric acid to the seawater to try and further halt nuclear reactions in a “belt and braces” measure.

* It is important to cool the reactor cores because even though the chain reactions have stopped, there is still enough heat to melt the metal sheaths surrounding the uranium fuel. If these are hot enough they react chemically with the surrounding water, producing an explosive gas hydrogen.

* It is that hydrogen gas which has caused the two explosions at the Fukushima plant, at unit 1 on Saturday and reactor unit 3 on Monday, experts and authorities say.

* Engineers have tried to vent the hydrogen into the atmosphere, which has also contributed to some local radiation because the gas contained small amounts of radioactive particles.

* The core of the reactor is inside a thick steel container called a reactor vessel, and around that there is a concrete containment shield. Around the whole there is a more open building with quite a thin covering not intended to be structurally important.

* The hydrogen explosions only damaged the outer building, which collapsed, not the inner shells, say authorities.

Cotinue reading…

AP - Pushing his jobs agenda, President Barack Obama made the case Friday that companies can make money and build up the country at the same time, citing the giant Intel Corp. chip maker as his model of smart investing in education.

Reuters - Apple Inc.chief executive Steve Jobs, on medical leave from the company he co-founded, attended a meeting of technology industry leaders with U.S. President Barack Obama in northern California on Thursday.

AP - House Republicans on Thursday moved to block the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing new rules that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic on their networks.

AP - President Barack Obama is assembling the biggest names in Silicon Valley to confer on jobs and innovation, trying to get leaders from companies like Google and Apple behind his push to keep spending on high-tech initiatives even as Republicans are out to slash the budget.

Reuters - Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who is on medical leave from the company, will attend a meeting in California on Thursday with President Barack Obama, a source familiar with the meeting said.

AP - The Associated Press-GfK Poll on President Barack Obama was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from Jan. 5-10. It is based on landline and cell phone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,001 adults. Interviews were conducted with 701 respondents on landline telephones and 300 on cellular phones.