Reuters reports that separate studies from casual game publishers RealNetworks and PopCap Games reveal that more than 70 percent of casual gamers are females over the age of 40. Most of whom use gaming as a way to ease stress.

Self-help author and life coach Jennifer Louden was quoted as saying women play for self care, in all different flavours and variations.

They were so aware of what they were doing and why. They know what games to use for which situations, she said.

Some women played to dull pain, others used them to cope with insomnia.

An unfinished tale by J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring, the U.S. and British publishers announced Monday.

Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.

"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the 'Children of Hurin' as an independent work, between its own covers," Christopher Tolkien said in a statement.

The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in England.

The ScummVM developers have received notice that their use of PayPal for donations is in violation of PayPal's AUP. According to a forum post, the AUP bans 'Game enhancers (which enable the play of import software and/or back up versions of software).

PayPal has frozen Brit Mohammed Hassan's account and banned him from using the service if he refuses to fax the company a raft of personal information.

The online payments service told him his name is "similar to or a match to" a name on the US government's anti-terror assets freezing list.

"Access to your PayPal account has been denied because your name is similar to or a match to an entry on the Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. We are required to further verify your identity."

We contacted PayPal with a series of questions. They confirmed that in Mohammed Hassan's case, his account will be closed unless he faxes his passport to them - action he told us he is not willing to take on priniciple. Unlike banks, PayPal does not require identity verification to set up an account.

Mohammed works for the UK government, in a job which requires security clearance. He said: "I am not a terrorist or a criminal. How the hell can PayPal link me to that name on the SDN list, is it because my name is Arabic? Or is it because PayPal are just plain stupid?"

Two men removed from a Monarch Airlines flight from Malaga to Manchester last Wednesday were targeted because of passenger concerns over their behaviour and the fact that they may have been speaking Arabic, the BBC reports.

Monarch Airlines said passengers had "demanded the men were removed because they were acting suspiciously". Passenger Heath Schofield explained to the BBC: "We all started boarding the flight. Our daughter noticed a couple of guys that were perhaps acting a bit strange. They went to the front of the queue, went to the back of the queue, and then they went and sat down by themselves."

"It became apparent that the reason that some of the people didn't board the plane was because somebody had overheard the gentlemen in question speaking - I think it was Arabic."

Among teens aged 12 to 17 who were polled, 69 percent said they thought it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original. By comparison, only 21 percent said it was legal to copy a CD if a friend got the music for free. Similarly, 58 percent thought it was legal to copy a friend's purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19 percent thought copying was legal if the movie wasn't purchased.

Those figures are a big problem for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, both of which have spent millions of dollars to deter copying of any kind. The music industry now considers so-called "schoolyard" piracy -- copies of physical discs given to friends and classmates -- a greater threat than illegal peer-to-peer downloading, according to the RIAA.

"We've made substantial progress educating people that downloading copyrighted music for free is illegal," says Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman. "But we still confront a significant challenge educating kids that copying a CD for a friend is also a crime. This is a major focus for the entire industry."

Remember Captain Copyright? The educational program up in Canada that appeared to tell an incredibly one-sided story concerning copyrights to children? Yes, the same one who may have "copied" his entire idea from a different Captain Copyright and who was violating the copyright of others while also claiming you couldn't link to the site if you said anything negative and you couldn't even make use of fair use copying of text from the site.

Turns out the folks who created this bumbling hero are now saying they've heard the critics and are about to do a total rewrite of the Captain Copyright concept, including a much more balanced look at copyright issues -- though, as Michael Geist notes, this only comes after a bunch of schools dumped their links to Captain Copyright's site and the group behind it is getting worried about losing some funding. Geist also points out that the explanation for the bizarre and totally unenforceable linking policy makes no sense. The group claims it was put in place to "protect children from inappropriate content." Ah, right, the ever popular "to protect the children" excuse. Of course, it's hard to see how banning inbound links protects any children at all.

It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it -- thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.

Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The United States has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.

Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

Time and time again, the company's digital products have failed because Sony's made it a bigger priority to close systems and lock down products than to create open ones that are actually useful to customers. Despite the admission in early 2005 from a top Sony exec that DRM was holding the company back, the company doesn't seem to be listening: a marketing manager for the PSP says Sony hasn't yet opened an audio and video download store for the device because it hasn't yet figured out how to implement the DRM. Awesome -- instead of giving customers legitimate avenues with which to purchase digital content in a reasonable and attractive manner, they're spending time figuring out how to make the services and their devices less attractive, less valuable and less useful.

A trend may be afoot to bring social networking to the older set, but according to a new study from Forrester, it's actually -- get this -- young people who are more inclined to use social networking sites, IM and SMS. Think that seems obvious? It gets better. Among baby boomers, younger ones use new technologies more than their older counterparts. It seems these analyst firms just can't resist putting out painfully obvious studies relating to internet use. It's not clear exactly what purpose a study like this serves other than to grab a few headlines and confirm the old saw that if you want to learn how a new device works, you better find a kid. Of course, if you do find this useful, a fuller explanation of these insights are available for a mere $995.00.