Ohio

States looking to unload surplus property used to do little more than take out an advertisement in the local newspaper, hang an "Open" sign at a warehouse and set up a cash register.

Not anymore. This spring, Vermont will begin selling its surplus goods on eBay, the online auction site. The goal is to attract more bidders and bring in more revenue to state coffers, says Mark Casey, the state's Surplus Property Programs assistant.

"We can move a lot more stuff," Casey says from his office at the warehouse in the central Vermont town of Waterbury.

Disorderly and dangerous is the best way to describe the tangles of cables that live around computers, television, or stereo equipment. The unsightly mess is good only for dust bunnies.

And getting tripped up in the wire jungle is actually one of the most common causes of PC-related household accidents, according to a recent study by the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

by Ahmad Saidullah

by Ahmad Saeedullah

Ohio se ha convertido en el primer estado de la Unión que ejecutará a sus condenados a muerte con una sola inyección. El cambio de la legislación llega después de la fracasada ejecución el pasado 19 de septiembre del reo Romell Broom.

This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."

But this blockbuster is not a movie.

It is "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," a video game that Activision Blizzard Inc. is releasing Tuesday. Fans worldwide are expected to spend at least half a billion dollars on the game in the first week.

Think back to the age of telecom before the breakup of AT&T, before the Internet, before Facebook or Twitter. That's about how antiquated America's system for delivering electricity -- the electrical grid -- is today. In many parts of the country, the grid is so "dumb" that workers still have to walk from house to house to read the electricity meter, and utilities have no clue when the lights go out until customers call to complain.

Red Stands Out

Republican opposition is mounting as federal regulators prepare to vote this month on so-called "network neutrality" rules, which would prohibit broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain types of Internet traffic flowing over their lines.

Twenty House Republicans -- including most of the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on Monday urging him to delay the Oct. 22 vote on his net neutrality plan.