Whistle-blower site taken offline

A controversial Web site that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US, says The BBC.

Wikileaks.org was cut off from the Internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities. Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

The shuttle Atlantis left the International Space Station on Monday and headed home for a planned Wednesday landing, clearing the way for a defence department effort to shoot down a failed spy satellite, reports New York Times.

The shuttle and its seven-member crew left the station after almost nine days of joint operations topped by installing the $2 billion Columbus science laboratory of the European Space Agency.

The Pentagon said last week that it planned to use a missile fired from a Navy ship to shoot down an out-of-control spy satellite that is expected to crash to earth early next month.

The smartphone market has registered a new contender: the Samsung Ace. With a 2.3-inch colour screen and based on Windows Mobile 6, the Samsung Ace was unveiled in the US on Sprint's network. Its design is similar to Samsung's popular Blackjack, reports efluxmedia.

The Samsung Ace is a versatile phone, which can be the perfect companion because it can be used not only for its PDA capabilities, but also as source of entertainment. It has access to Sprint TV with over 50 channels of live television and on-demand video.

It features a full qwerty keyboard and includes Bluetooth support and a stereo speaker.

JuicyCampus' endless threads of anonymous innuendo have been a popular Web destination on the seven college campuses where the site launched last year, including Duke, UCLA and Loyola Marymount, reports The Associated Press.

It recently expanded to 50 more, and many of the postings show they have been viewed hundreds and even thousands of times.

But JuicyCampus has proved so poisonous there are signs of a backlash. In campus debates over Internet freedom, students normally take the side of openness and access. This time, however, student leaders, newspaper editorials and posters on the site are fighting back - with some even asking administrators to ban JuicyCampus. It's a kind of plea to save the students, or at least their reputations, from themselves.