The US government is developing a "long-range plan" to empty its war-on-terror prison at its naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and seeking help on what to do with inmates who won't be tried.

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Is Barack Obama close to being shadowed by giant flip-flops and, worse, having the image stick with people all the way to the voting booth? Four years ago, Republicans branded as a...

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For a while now, we've been pointing out how, for advertising to be effective, it also needs to be good content that people don't just "not mind" seeing, but which they're willing to actively seek out. It appears that automaker Kia has decided to go with the exact opposite strategy. Reader Brooks writes in to point us to the news that Kia's new marketing director in the US doesn't want people entertained:

"We don't want to spend a good chunk of our time in a 30-second spot trying to...

In the past, we've covered plenty of stories about social engineering to get people to admit stuff they shouldn't -- suggesting you really just need to ask people to give up personal info and they will (sometimes giving them a gift helps, but just asking alone will often do the trick). The latest study does go a little deeper, however, suggesting that the more informal the setting, the more likely people are to cough up info. For example, it found that when those asked for confidential...

We were just complaining about the fact that governments should be exposing APIs on certain government data so that people can create more useful services out of them -- and it appears that someone in the UK was having similar thoughts. The government is now opening up a bunch of data to whoever wants to play with it. Not only is the gov't encouraging people to make mash-ups with the data, it's actually offering cash prizes to those who come up with the best results. Nice to see a government...

Here's one for the "didn't quite think that through, did you" files. Gizmodo points us to the news that British authorities trying to prevent illegal trash dumping put a hidden camera at a popular...

Reuters - France's Banking Commission on Friday
fined Societe Generale 4 million euros ($6.3 million) for
serious breaches in internal controls revealed by the French
bank's 4.9 billion euro rogue...

Reuters - World stocks edged lower on Friday,
getting no relief from a decline in crude prices as concerns of
further banking write-downs weighed on financial shares.

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AP - Fuel prices are soaring and credit markets tightening, but the super-rich are still lining up to pay tens of millions of dollars for mega yachts.

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Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) -The Dow rose on Thursday, a day after
the blue-chip average entered a bear market, on relief payrolls
data was not as weak as some had feared and with another record...