Today at a conference in Vienna, an European Community science working group unveiled a quantum backbone using 200-km of standard commercial optical fiber running between seven sites, the first secure quantum cryptographic key distribution network.

The United Kingdom Treasury also injects £200 000 000 000 into credit markets. British shares arrest their slide. London Interbank Rate falls! Brown says bankers refusing to lend are themselves causing the crisis. The end of the credit crunch is in sight

Thirty-five year-old Neel Kashkari, with a portfolio of money up to $700 billion, becomes one of the most influential money managers in the world.

On September 17, fissures opening in the worldwide financial system convinced Ben Bernanke he needed to act quickly. A handful of hedge funds using Lehman Brothers' to handle their trades had billions of dollars in balances frozen in bankruptcy.

“Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by Community Reinvestment Act, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.

The question is consumption. The greenest shirt is the one you don’t buy. The next greenest is the one you find at the local thrift store.

Rarely if ever has one man had such broad authority to spend government money as he sees fit. He can choose to buy from any financial institution with business in the US, or from pension funds, with wide discretion over what to buy and what price to pay.

This exploit demonstrates why passwords and password recovery systems are vulnerable.

This year things mostly went well at Burning Man, and except for dust storms, interesting and not-so-interesting art, not much breaking news happened. Longtime reporter Meredith May provides continuing coverage of Burning Man for the Chronicle.

Lap dancers earn more when they are most fertile, according to research by University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller. The results support the idea evolution has favored concealed ovulation in women and also its detection in men.