In fact, the federal government should focus more on building a technologically advanced high-speed passenger rail system along interstate highways, rather than upgrading tracks owned and used by goods rail companies, said Steve Purchase, a spokesman for H Inc., a Lansing urban development firm that is not affiliated with the proposed project.

It was the initial of four hearings on a project by Interstate Traveler Co. LLC, which is seeking investors for $2.3 billion for elevated rail lines between Detroit and Lansing and Detroit and Ann Arbor.

An editorial published Tuesday in North Korea's state-run Minju Joson newspaper says its nuclear arsenal will be a strong restriction against any enemies, and will also be used to carry out what it called a "merciless offensive" against those who violate the country's dignity and sovereignty.

In a part development, Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as saying there are indications that North Korea is preparing to launch another missile, following a series of recent missile launches.

The move follows a government crackdown on online smut that has led to the closure of thousands of Web sites this year, and concern that such campaigns could develop to target content that is political rather than pornographic.

PC makers will be essential to pre-install the Web site-blocking program or offer it on a CD-ROM included with all PCs sold in China after July 1, according to a translation of a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology notification seen by IDG News Service.

To say that will be complicated is an understatement. They might be at the bottom of the ocean - two miles down.

When airliners go down, their black boxes nearly always give the critical clues to what went wrong.

Despite the State Department's earlier assertion that no Americans were on board Air France Flight 447, it turns out that two U.S. citizens were passengers on the Airbus A330 that disappeared from the night sky on Sunday.

A multinational search is under way for the aircraft, which is only four years old, and its traveler and crew of 228 people, which were headed from Brazil to Paris.

Experts are speculating that massive thunderstorms are the cause of the airliner's disappearance, but French President Nicolas Sarkozy says no hypothesis is being discarded. And although there are no indications of terrorism, there that can't be ruled out yet, according to the Pentagon.

Online retailing came of age during the White House tenure of George W. Bush whose hands-off move towards to business meant Washington’s policies had small effect on e-commerce. That is likely to change with Barack Obama as president.

In part that’s because Obama has pledged action on a number of issues affecting e-commerce, including online privacy and extending broadband Internet access. But the bigger reason is that the economic crisis has led government, even before Bush left office, to take a more activist position.

Obama also wants to ensure the states can pay their bills. And that is likely to bring to the fore in the coming months the issue most likely to change Internet retailing: an online sales tax.

A science museum is using art and tradition to train math to poor children in some of South Africa's most neglected schools, based on the exquisite artwork of Ndebele artists.

Panels of geometric shapes outlined in black and filled in with bright primary colors generally adorn huts in the Ndebele tribe's homeland in northeast South Africa. On Wednesday, some of those panels appear on a wall at the Sci-Bono Discovery Center in downtown Johannesburg.

With a stack of shiny brass-and-beaded rings around her neck, Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu, 73, stood on scaffolding as she began a small, complex model of angles and lines.

Ndebele paintings assist students understand squares, rectangles and angles. Exercises in measurements and volume has been devised from the shapes used in the stacked gateways and decorated pillars of Ndebele homesteads. Their round huts can explain circles, the relationship between circumferences and diameters, and how to solve solid geometry problems like volume.

The police figures, exclusively revealed to the Evening Telegraph, show 11,500 mobiles have been stolen from Northampton shire residents in the past three years.

They explain the numbers of thefts have been decreasing steadily each year but there have still been 4,219 mobile phone thefts in the north of the county, which includes Kettering, Wellingborough, Corby and Rushden, since 2006.

The number of mobile phone thefts in north Northampton shire stood at 1,482 for the period 2006 to 2007. In the following year they dropped to 1,446 and the recent annual figure was 1,291.