Outraged by the butterfly ballots and hanging chads of the disputed 2000 presidential election, political activists nationwide pushed for user-friendly voting systems that wouldn't lead to a repeat of the confusion that left the outcome in Florida - and the nation - in doubt.

Less than eight years later - after taxpayers in Maryland and other states spent hundreds of millions on easy-to-use, all-electronic, touch-screen voting machines - the debate has come full circle.

By 2010, four years before its $65 million touch-screen machines will be paid off, Maryland expects to be back on the paper trail, following states such as Florida and California, which have also decided that all-electronic systems make it too easy to compromise elections.

As previously reported, the pro-democracy rallies in Myanmar have been closely covered by regular reports coming out of the embattled nation via cellphone, email and even YouTube. The government's attempts to try and pollute the web with their own propaganda must not have worked, since on Friday morning, the government shut off Internet access, cut phone lines and confiscated mobile phones in an attempt to control the outflow of information about the rallies.

Even if the junta is able to completely shut things down, events can still be monitored from satellites, which are providing evidence of potential human rights abuses conducted by the government.

We've covered the long and detailed saga of Antigua fighting the US via the WTO, but the short summary is this: Antigua claims that the US is violating a free trade agreement in banning online gambling (many online gambling firms are in Antigua). The WTO agreed with Antigua and the US proceeded to ignore the ruling. The WTO again sided with Antigua... and the US pretended the WTO had sided with the US... and again ignored the ruling.

That's why Antigua is now pushing for the right to ignore US copyrights and patents as a remedy. However, there may be an even more persuasive remedy. Back over the summer, the EU indicated that it might start siding with Antigua in the dispute -- and it's a lot more difficult for the US to simply ignore the EU. To make the situation even more fun, the latest news is that gambling firms in the EU are pushing for $100 billion in damages from the US.

So far the US has lost an initial hearing and two appeals on its policies regarding Antiguan offshore gambling sites. Now the lawyer pressing the case has asked for a rarely invoked, but codified, recourse under WTO rules: letting Antiguans copy and distribute American music, movies, and software. The game may be to get Hollywood and Microsoft, et al., to pressure Washington to cut a deal. But their influence may not be sufficient to move lawmakers on the question of online gambling.

"But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That's because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others."

This has not been a good week for e-voting companies. First came the report out of California that the security had problems on every machine tested by independent security experts, followed quickly by security experts finding problems with other machines in Florida.

Apparently all of the e-voting machines are vulnerable to malicious attacks that could "affect election outcomes." The report also points out: "An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be extensive -- malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers." This, of course, is what others have been saying for years, and which Diebold always brushes off.

Remember how Diebold had used the master password "1111" in their machines? Now their machines use hard-coded passwords like "diebold" and (I kid you not) "12345678." At some point, isn't it time for Diebold (and the other e-voting critics) to stand up and admit that their machines aren't secure and, in fact, were never secure?

Nearly 2,000 officials in central China's Hunan province have been caught breaking China's strict one-child policy, state media reported Sunday.

Xinhua said the officials were caught between 2000 and 2005 by the provincial family planning commission and included 21 national and local lawmakers and 24 political advisers.

China has about 1.3 billion people, 20 percent of the world's total. The government has pledged to keep the population under 1.36 billion in 2010, and under 1.45 billion in 2020.

But rising incomes mean some newly rich can afford to break the rules and pay resulting fines. In April, the government said it would crack down on rich lawbreakers with bigger fines.

In its first 25 years, the Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter by plotting assassinations, funding behavioral and drug studies that included "unwitting participants," opening U.S. mail, creating dossiers on nearly 10,000 American dissidents, wiretapping journalists to root out their sources, and interrogating a Soviet defector against his will for two years, according to a summary of a decades-old CIA report on the agency's activities released Thursday by the National Security Archive, an open government group.

That report was compiled in 1973 at the order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger, following revelations that the Watergate burglars had CIA help. The existence of report, referred to as the "Family Jewels" has long been known, but only a few bits have been revealed through open government requests.

When you voted the RIAA the worst company in America you gave us an assignment. But how can we improve the customer service of a recording industry trade group? It's not an easy task.

One of the ways the RIAA operates is by donating money to politicians who then enact favorable legislation on their behalf. Don't let the optimist in you believe that this doesn't work. It does.

But wait, aren't these representatives supposed to work for you? Sure. That's why we've compiled a list of 50 congresspeople who took campaign contributions from the RIAA in the last election cycle. We've linked their contact information so that you, as their constituents, can inform them that they're taking money from the "Worst Company in America," and that's going to cost them your vote.

California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could banish ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state.

For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with "red teams" of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes.

County elections officials balked at the proposed standards in a letter Monday to Bowen and hinted broadly at the same conclusion reached by several computer scientists: If enforced rigidly, the standards could send many voting machines, especially touch-screens, back for major upgrades.

Local elections officials argued that there isn't enough time to fix any deficiencies before the February 2008 presidential primary.

The Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death has reportedly applied for asylum in Britain.

Raouf Abdel-Rahman is said to have entered the country on a visitor's visa with his family in mid-December, but has now asked the Home Office for permission to stay.

Mr Abdel-Rahman took charge of the Supreme Iraqi Tribunal, which heads the dictator's trial for genocide, after the resignation of the former chief judge Rizgar Amin.