Blog: The international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has another session this week. It starts April 2 in Brussels, no...

Video: New warnings to come from U.N. climate panel. One member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has looked closely at what's happening to animals. Terry Root of Stanford University talks with CNET News.com's Zamir Haider about changes that have already begun, and the threat of more extinctions to come.

Video: Tropical maladies likely to head your way. Fancy a little dengue fever? Just stick around, says Dr. Terry Root of Stanford University. She's a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is meeting in Brussels starting Monday. The panel will issue a report on effects of ongoing climate change, and one will be the spread of "tropical" diseases.

More dollars than sense

California, with its booming computer industry and an economy that ranks among the world's top 10, has wasted almost $1.4bn over the past decade because it can't build a statewide network to administer child support payments.

The proposal to create a .xxx top-level domain for porn and adult content has been rejected by ICANN several times, as the group recognizes that it really isn't a very good idea. ICANN has again rejected the proposal, saying the company behind it hadn't adequately addressed previous concerns about how content in the TLD would be policed. What's odd is that ICANN board members said the group shouldn't be in the business of overseeing internet content, because it's inconsistent with its technical role. While that's correct, the position would appear to be at odds with ICANN's approval of the .mobi TLD for mobile content, in which it's given the .mobi registrar the ability to dictate what sort of content appears on sites in the domain (though, it looks as if they won't enforce their rules if you give them enough money). And money, of course, is why all of these useless TLDs keep being proposed and approved. Don't think that the guy behind the repeated .xxx TLD proposal has any sort of altruistic purposes at all -- in his own words, he's doing it "to make a pile of money.". ICANN doesn't need to give him (or anybody else proposing another pointless TLD) that opportunity.

Tycho: You might have remembered me freaking out about this adventure game from Frogwares, as it is basically a mashup of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft. Really kind of unfair, I think, to bait the trap so richly. Unsporting, in a way. It was brought to the front of my mind by the review over at Gamespot, where it picked up decent marks. I hit up the websites for Gamestop and EB to track down the exact release date, and (apropos to today's discussion) there is no entry for it in either database. The game is completely incorporeal. It is available digitally, however, should you find yourself inexorably drawn.(CW)TB

Attackers take advantage of vulnerability in Windows animated cursor. Also: Trojan spam dupes users into thinking it's an IE 7 beta.