Feds warn nuclear plants about online threats

WASHINGTON -- Government regulators are warning nuclear plant operators about computer outages caused by Internet infections, confirming disruptions of two important internal systems in January at a nuclear power plant already shut down.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said safety was not compromised at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant along Lake Erie in Ohio, partly because the plant was shut down in February 2002 after workers found a hole in the 6-inch-thick steel cap covering the plant's reactor vessel.

The two computer systems affected by the widespread "Slammer" Internet disruption in January are regularly used by plant operators for monitoring pressure and temperature during accidents, but they are not formally considered safety equipment, NRC spokesman Matthew Chiramal said.

In an information notice disclosed Tuesday, the commission urged operators of the nation's 103 nuclear plants to take steps to prevent similar problems. The government did not make these steps mandatory although outside computer experts said the recommendations were common sense.

Feds arrest Florida man in online porn scheme

NEW YORK -- Federal agents Wednesday arrested a man they say runs Web sites that exploit misspellings by computer users to direct children looking for Disneyland or the Teletubbies to explicit sex instead.

Officials said it was the first prosecution in the nation under a provision of the new Amber Alert legislation that makes it a crime to use a misleading Web address to draw children to pornography. The provision calls for a prison sentence of up to four years.

John Zuccarini, 53, was arrested at a motel in Hollywood, Fla., where authorities believe he had been living for months.

Zuccarini registered thousands of Internet addresses and was earning up to $1 million per year off them -- much of it from sex sites that paid him when he sent Web users their way, U.S. Attorney James Comey said.

The trick: Zuccarini used real, popular Web addresses, but with omitted or transposed letters, officials say. Computer users who misspelled or mistyped a Web address often ended up in a porn site instead.

Trial opens in shooting of Sikh gas station owner

MESA, Ariz. -- A man accused of fatally shooting an Indian immigrant four days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was acting out of a rage fueled by prejudice, a prosecutor said in opening statements of the man's trial. The man's attorney argued mental illness was to blame.

On the day of the terrorist attacks, Frank Silva Roque was overheard saying he would shoot people whom he described with an ethnic slur, prosecutor Vince Imbordino said as the murder trial opened Tuesday.

Roque is accused of killing gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 49-year-old who wore a beard and turban as part of his Sikh faith.

Sodhi was neither Muslim nor from the Middle East, as the terrorist hijackers had been. Yet authorities say he was targeted by Roque on Sept. 15, 2001, because of his appearance.

-- From wire reports