* The Global Times, a Communist-backed newspaper in China, reported that a researcher at a Chinese military engineering institute in Luoyang checked his e-mail (against the rules) and clicked to open a holiday card that claimed to be from a state defense office. According to the newspaper, the e-card secretly implanted computer code that allowed an unnamed foreign intelligence agency to tap into the institute's database and retrieve top-secret information about Chinese submarines. The story could not be independently confirmed, but "leaks" to Chinese media are often actually propaganda from government officials. (The New York Times) However, if the story was propagated by Chinese officials, its scare tactic dovetails with the country's censorship efforts to underscore that while the U.S. and other countries worry about Chinese cyber-spying activities--China itself is worried (to the point of taking extreme measures) about threats via the Internet to its security and political stability.
* A Democratic senator, Max Baucus of Montana, and a Republican senator, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, crafted a bipartisan jobs-creation plan that includes giving tax breaks to businesses that hire people who have been unemployed. The plan has gained support from both sides, but is at risk of sparking another partisan brawl because Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has said he would only like to move forward with the more Democratic parts of the plan that he likes.
* The latest twist in the case of 10 American missionaries arrested for trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country without permission, ostensibly for adoption purposes: The Americans' legal advisor, Jorge Puello from the Dominican Republic, is under investigation by police in El Salvador because he is suspected of leading a trafficking ring for Central American and Caribbean girls and women. (The Haiti case has been plagued with scandal--recently a lawyer for the group was dismissed for offering bribes to get the Americans out of jail.) When reached for comment, Puello told the New York Times that his name was common and it was a case of mistaken identity. The Americans are being held in the same police station currently serving as the makeshift seat of the Haitian government.
* In Vail, Arizona, near Tucson, school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92's sheet-metal frame. Students call it "the Internet bus," and take advantage of the Wi-Fi on laptop computers during the ride to and from school. Bus drivers say this has turned the bus into something like a study hall on wheels, and that rowdy behavior has "virtually disappeared."
* NBC is hoping that Ellen DeGeneres will be the next Oprah.