Man faces five years in prison for reading wife’s emails

Michigan - A Michigan man faces felony charges for reading his wife’s emails. Leon Walker said the emails revealed his wife, Clara Walker, was having an affair with her second husband, a man who had been arrested in the past for allegedly beating her. Fearing for their daughter’s safety, Walker said he turned the emails over to his wife’s first husband, who also shared a child with Clara. They then both took action to protect their children. The charge is a felony.  More…

Player faces action over dog photo (Reuters)

Reuters - Australia's rugby league bosses have told the Canberra Raiders they expected "appropriate" action to be taken against Joel Monaghan after a photograph of the player simulating a sex act with a dog was posted on the internet...More

Cable modem seller faces up to 40 years in prison

Massachusetts - Matthew Delorey of Massachusetts has been arrested this week, accused of selling hacked Comcast cable modems that would allow buyers to have free Internet access. Delorey has also been charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of wire fraud, each of which has a maximum sentence of 20 years and a fine of $250,000 USD.---...More

Michael Douglas? Son Faces 10 Years in Prison

New York - Michael Douglas? son, Cameron, has pleaded guilty to trafficking large quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine. He was originally put under house arrest. But he was thrown in jail after his girlfriend allegedly tried to smuggle heroin to him in an electric toothbrush. ---...More

Cops: Skater faces charges in right-of-way dispute

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- A Connecticut in-line skater faces assault and other charges after a confrontation over whether a 4-year-old on a tricycle had the right to be on a bike path. Stamford police charged 43-year-old Chris Karamon with third-degree assault, risk of injury to a minor and other crimes--...More

Space elevator faces reality - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com

We don't have all the questions, let alone all the answers," Michael Laine, head of the LiftPort Group, told an audience of about 50 people on Saturday during the 2009 Space Elevator Conference on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash. (Microsoft is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

Laine probably knows as well as anyone how few answers are available.

LiftPort's Web site is still counting down toward his goal of putting a real live space elevator into operation by 2031. But Laine's years-long quest to turn the concept into an actual business left him hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by 2007, with a legal cloud hanging over his head.

Laine put LiftPort into mothballs and laid low for two years, spending part of that time in the International Space University's study program. It's only been in the past few months that he's been able to lift his head above the clouds again. "We went through some difficult times," he wrote last month in a newsletter, "but are beginning to get all those issues settled to the point where LiftPort will rise again (pun intended)."

Laine told me today that his legal troubles are "kind of in a strange point of limbo," and that he's still massively in debt. But he has enough hope for future ventures that he's willing to get back into the space elevator game rather than moving on to more conventional business ventures.

"I'm actually really happy to be back out there," he said.

Still a laughable idea?
The space elevator concept is one of the highest-flying ideas out there: Imagine a super-strong tether swinging out, say, 100,000 miles from Earth's surface, with laser-powered robots shuttling up and down from a ground- or sea-based station to an orbital platform. If such a thing could be built, the idea's proponents say the system could cut the cost of putting cargo into space from $10,000 to $100 per pound.

The idea is at least a century old - and was most famously popularized by science-fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke, who once said the space elevator would succeed "50 years after everyone has stopped laughing."

At last year's Space Elevator Conference, pioneer researcher Bradley Edwards said the first elevator could be built within 15 years, at a cost of $7 billion to $10 billion. The speakers at this year's conference took a far more sober view of the financial and technical resources that would be required. "They're not the rosy numbers that you hear," said Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation, who manages two NASA-backed contests for space elevator technologies.

In a technical paper presented at the conference, Shelef concludes that the conditions required for a working space elevator are "actually very difficult to satisfy" at any price. That's the bad news. The good news is that the technologies needed for a theoretical space elevator project could well lead to payoffs - even if the elevator itself never gets built.

Woman, 86, faces shoplifting charge in 61st arrest

CHICAGO – Authorities said a 86-year-old woman charged with shoplifting wrinkle cream and other items from a Chicago grocery store has been arrested 61 times since 1956. Ella Orko was arrested Sunday afternoon on the North Side after she allegedly stuffed $252 worth of groceries into her pants, including cosmetics, salmon, batteries and instant coffee.

She was charged with felony shoplifting.

Police said Orko has gone by as many as 20 aliases in the past.

Court records indicate that she has now been arrested 61 times and has 13 convictions for shoplifting.

She was arrested the first time in 1956 in Chicago for petty larceny and again in 1958 for grand larceny.

She's being held on $10,000 bail. It wasn't immediately clear who her lawyer is.
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