NEW YORK — A majority of Americans (57 percent) favors allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements that would give them many of the same rights as married couples, a status commonly known as civil unions. Only 37 percent oppose the idea, according to the...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday added sexual identity to the federal government’s definition of hate crimes. The measure, an amendment to H.R. 2647 — the $680-billion, must-pass National Defense Authorization Act — still requires Senate approval before...

SWEDEN – Opponents of online piracy would like nothing more than to get directly at the individuals who are illegally sharing and receiving copyrighted works online. The matter isn’t so simple for the courts, however, who often have to choose between assisting the owners of...

CYBERSPACE – Pepsi found out the hard way recently that the same rules that allow beer companies to exploit sexually suggestive marketing campaigns don’t necessarily apply to soda companies. The company fell under heavy online criticism recently after it released a free app for...

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. – Seymore Butts’ sexual how-to book for men, Rock Her World: The Sex Guide for the Modern Man, is scheduled to hit bookstores Nov. 12. Publisher Gotham Books, a division of Penguin, describes the 240-page hardcover tome with the arousing teaser, “From pick-up...

LOS ANGELES – Playboy Playmate and actor Lorenzo Lamas’ ex-wife Shauna Sand readily admits she and a boyfriend made several sex tapes. However, she equally fervently avows, none of them were for public consumption.“Yes, I did make a sex tape with my boyfriend earlier this year,”...

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Networking technology provider Cisco has bowed a new product it claims can assist administrators in nearly ridding their networks of pornography and other noxious material.Cisco’s IronPort Web Usage Controls attack what Cisco calls the “Dark Web.” According to...

CHICAGO – Bart Simpson, the lovably frustrating brat in Matt Groening’s cartoon The Simpsons, very well may consider dropping the “don’t” from the beginning of his famous exhortation, “Don’t have a cow, man.” His mother, the blue beehive hairdo-crowned Marge, has bared all for...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Now that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is mostly free of control by the U.S. government, pundits predict all sorts of dire consequences — from thorough meltdown of the domain name system to paralyzing efforts to please all sides in...

CHICAGO – A recent survey of Chicago residents indicated many of them could go without sex, but don’t ask them to give up their cell phones.Commissioned annually by Samsung Mobile to evaluate the changing ways in which people relate to their cell phones, the email survey...