PC World - Microsoft has released its free antivirus software, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). As the name implies, Microsoft’s new security software removes the bloated bells and whistles found in other products, like Microsoft’s discontinued Windows Live OneCare, and provides only the essential protection.
Reuters - A campaign warning girls not to stash or carry guns for their boyfriends was launched by London police Wednesday.
Reuters - Beauty queen Miss Singapore World has given up her crown after it emerged that she had stolen credit cards to go on a shopping spree for lingerie. Ris Low had come under public pressure to be stripped of her 2009 title, after local media reported she stole seven credit cards last year while working at a medical clinic, buying goods worth about S$8,000 ($5,662) including gold anklets and phones.
Reuters - A Dubai-based company is opening what it says will be the world’s largest confectionary store in Dubai as it looks to tap demand from the Gulf Arab region’s hunger for candy.
AP - A Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe Wednesday on a journey to the International Space Station.
InfoWorld - Bottom Line Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 offer substantial performance and functionality enhancements over the previous editions, but support for non-Windows guests remains extremely limited.
AFP - US mobile entertainment company mSpot has begun offering full-length movies for streaming to mobile phones.
AFP - Typhoon Ketsana extended its trail of destruction across Southeast Asia Wednesday, killing at least 66 people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and unleashing some of the worst floods in a decade.
AP - Justin Verlander got a sense of what it’s like to follow baseball from afar.
AP - A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific hurled a massive tsunami at the shores of Samoa and American Samoa, flattening villages and sweeping cars and people out to sea, leaving at least 99 dead and dozens missing.