Certain travel-oriented Web sites made it to the verboten list because they provide easy access to Cuba for Americans who choose to break the law, the OFAC says. While visiting the sites may be permitted, downloading software from them probably isn't.

It's already illegal to go to Cuba without a special Treasury Department-issued license, typically granted based on educational or professional purposes. Tourism, according to federal guidelines, is not allowed. Once licensed, travelers must make travel arrangements with an organization chosen from a list of OFAC-approved agencies.

It doesn't seem to be a crime to check Cuban weather or read up on Ernest Hemingway's ties to the island at the sites. Signing up for free e-mail lists would also be permissible, said Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise, provided that they did not include "interactive software." That's because transfer of "intangible" goods, like information, is exempt from the regulations, but goods considered tangible, such as software, are not.

"Theoretically, yes, a person can be prosecuted and subject to civil or criminal penalties by OFAC for purchasing a ticket or doing any businesses with any of these Web sites," Jacobson said.

George Bush said it was time he grew up after cycling into a policeman - on his 59th birthday.

The US president's mishap came on his mountain bike outside the G8 venue, reports the Mirror.

Mr Bush, left with cuts to an arm and hand, showed off grazed fingers to reporters and grinned: "It goes to show I should act my age."

He said: "When you ride a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you are not riding hard. The pavement was slick and the bike came off underneath me."

In May last year Mr Bush crashed his bike on his ranch. In 2002, he famously fainted and toppled off his sofa in the White House when he choked on a pretzel and in June 2003, he fell off a scooter at his estate in Maine.

Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware application is no longer flagging adware products from Claria Corp. as a threat to PC users.

Less than a week after published reports of acquisition talks between Microsoft Corp. and the Redwood City, Calif.-based distributor of the controversial Gator ad-serving software, security researchers have discovered that Microsoft has quietly downgraded its Claria detections.

According to the results published by Howes, four different builds of the Windows AntiSpyware beta detected the Claria products, but the default recommendation was "ignore."

Four blasts ripped through London during rush hour on Thursday morning, killing at least 33 people and disrupting a summit of Group of Eight leaders in Scotland in attacks Prime Minister Tony Blair called "barbaric."

Security sources told Reuters there were fatalities at all four bomb sites, and Sky Television said at least 45 people had been killed. A further 150 were seriously wounded, and hospital staff said some were unlikely to survive.

Britain has been key ally of the United States in its war in Iraq, where al-Qaida is waging a bloody insurgency. The blasts occurred one day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics.

"If what we are looking at is a simultaneous bombing, and it does look like that, it would very certainly fit the classic al-Qaida methodology which centers precisely on that: multi-seated hits on transport and infrastructural targets," said Shane Brighton, intelligence expert at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense.

A 16-year-old girl was rescued after she climbed up a 130ft crane at a building site while sleepwalking.

She walked along the narrow beam of the lifting arm while fast asleep in the middle of the night.

A fireman had to crawl along the beam to reach her in Dulwich, South East London.

She was brought down using the fire crew's hydraulic lift reports The Sun.

She only woke up when a worried relative called her mobile.

A software engineer and champion of peer-to-peer file sharing is planning legal action after being sacked for expressing his views on BBC's Newsnight.

Alex Hanff, 31, was just a week into his job as a consultant at Aldcliffe Computer Systems in Lancaster when he was invited on to last Monday's edition to comment on the US supreme court's decision to hold software companies responsible for permitting illegal file sharing over their networks.

The next day managers told him he was fired because the opinions he expressed on the show were "inappropriate", Mr Hanff claimed yesterday.

Newsnight interviewed him because in March he was served with legal papers by the Motion Picture Association of America for running a website called DVD-Core that pointed users to files of movies, some illegally copied, distributed using BitTorrent file-sharing software. It was this his employer objected to, saying he should have disclosed it when interviewed.

"As far as I was concerned they knew about it. They're an IT company with IT professionals, it wouldn't have taken five minutes on Google to find out," he said, adding that several colleagues had discussed the case with him prior to his dismissal.

The German rights organisation for composers, lyricist and publishers, GEMA, has asked 42 access providers to poison their DNS servers in order to block sites that provide links to eDonkey files. In short, DNS poisoning obstructs the process of converting a URL to a numeric IP address. The GEMA apparently expects the access providers to configure their DNS servers so that "inquiries by end-users are not passed to the correct server, but to an invalid or another pre-defined side." The GEMA also demands that the providers sign a testimony,with which they commit themselves to ensure full blockage under a contractual penalty of 100.000 euro if any of their customers can still reach the targeted site after July 25th.

The providers in question are still doing their legal evaluations of the request, or have said right out not to comply, because the GEMA is not the kind of judicial instance that can set these kinds of demands. They're considering to bring GEMA's actions to court, in order to see if GEMA has any standing.

Just when you thought ownership of intellectual property couldn't get any more absurd: The New York Times is reporting that the word 'Stealth' is being vigorously protected *in all uses* by a man who claims to exclusively own its rights. Not only has he gone head to head with Northrop Grumman, he has pursued it vigorously in the courts and has even managed to shut down "stealthisemail.com" (Steal This Email.com) because the URL coincidentally contains the word "stealth". What's terrifying is that he's gotten as far as he has.

If you're one of IBM UK's highly skilled mainframe specialists, then you may well be out of a job. IBM has shuffled a huge chunk of its mainframe support operations off to South Africa in a bid to cut costs. As a result, some of IBM's highest profile customers will find their critical mainframe support calls traveling south to a staff who recently spent just over 30 days in the UK learning the ropes.

Specifically, the South Africans were trained to handle IBM's MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage) - aka mainframe operating system - support. The workers were taught by the very people they would soon replace.

IBM won't reveal the customers affected, but our source sent a shortlist of the initial clients that will likely see their support go to Johannesburg. The list includes the likes of AT&T, ATM, Bradford and Bingley, Equifax, Heinz, Next, Royal Sun Alliance, Scottish Power, Certegy and Diageo.

A Utah woman has become the latest asset in online gambling outfit GoldenPalace.com's eBay preposterous purchase portfolio after accepting $15,000 dollars to have the casino's name permanently tattooed on her forehead.

She's not the first case of someone offering their body for permanent advertising - back in 2002, a hard-up eBayer whipped out his todger in an attempt to secure a penile sponsorship deal. In that case, however, the worst that could come of it is that the chap's long-suffering girlfriend would have to have GoldenPalace.com rammed down her throat a couple of times a month.

The Golden Palace take on this, the literally unacceptable face of capitalism, is as follows: "I think this kind of advertising will become increasingly popular as time goes on. It is a perfect way to get attention amid the clutter of advertising that people see every second of every day. Conventional forms of marketing just don't cut it anymore. To get people's attention, you have to stand out from the crowd. In light of Karolyne's story and her intentions to improve her son's education, we have given her additional $5,000 on top of the $10,000 spent on the auction."