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LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have identified a primitive area of the brain that makes us adventurous -- a finding which may help explain why people routinely fall for "new" products when shopping. Using brain scans to measure blood flow, British researchers discovered that a brain region known as the ventral striatum was more active when subjects chose unusual objects in controlled tests. The ventral striatum is involved in processing rewards in the brain through the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine. Scientists believe the existence of this age-old reward mechanism indicates there is an evolutionary advantage in sampling the unknown.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Wednesday cut the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to $500 million. The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), but not as much as a federal appeals court determined. Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million compensation. Exxon asked the high court to reject the punitive damages judgment, saying it already has spent...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has struck down a Louisiana law that allows the execution of people convicted of a raping a child. In a 5-4 vote, the court says the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

RIYADH (AFP) — OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has arrested 701 Islamists in the past six months on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil industry installations, the interior ministry announced on Wednesday. Security forces "carried out several operations against followers of the deviant ideology and arrested a total of 701 people of various nationalities," said a ministry spokesman, quoted by the official SPA news agency. Of those arrested since the start of the year, "520 are still being held for their implication in the organisational and ideological plans of the deviant ideology". 'Deviant ideology' is the term used by Saudi officials...

Eight years after the furor over the repatriation of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba possibly cost Al Gore the state of Florida in his 537-vote loss to George W. Bush, the international custody saga has returned to haunt another Democratic presidential nominee: Barack Obama. Having two top advisers who played key roles in the episode — Greg Craig, who represented Gonzalez's father in Cuba, and Eric Holder, then a Clinton administration deputy attorney general when federal agents stormed the Miami home of Gonzalez’s relatives to remove the then-6-year-old and return him to Cuba — Obama now finds himself on the wrong...

Republican voters in Utah ousted Rep. Chris Cannon in Tuesday’s GOP primary, expressing their dissatisfaction with the six-term congressman over his left-of-center positions on immigration by nominating a challenger who made crackdowns on illegal immigration a central part of his platform. Cannon was trounced by Jason Chaffetz, the former chief of staff to Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-Utah.) With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Cannon trails Chaffetz by 20 points – 60 to 40 percent. The AP has called the race for Chaffetz.

Judges are banning terms such as 'rape' and 'victim' as prejudicial to defendants Call it the age of the Loaded Word. A steadily increasing number of courts across the United States are prohibiting witnesses and victims from uttering certain words in front of a jury, banning everything from the words "rape" to "victim" to "crime scene." Prosecutors and victims' rights advocates nationwide claim the courts are going too far in trying to cleanse witness testimony, all to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial. Concerns and fears over language restrictions have been percolating ever since judges in Nebraska and...

WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press. Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez's trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation. Gutierrez told the AP on Thursday he could...

Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research. The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online. Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention. Search rules Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed. (snip) This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other...

PASADENA, Calif. -- A NASA spacecraft today sent pictures showing itself in good condition after making the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars. The images from NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander also provided a glimpse of the flat valley floor expected to have water-rich permafrost within reach of the lander's robotic arm. The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to taste and sniff the northern polar site's soil and ice. "We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space,...

Schools and universities could soon be facing a different kind of drug problem: a rise in students taking brain-enhancing pills to boost their exam results. Government advisers warned yesterday that new drugs to treat conditions as varied as Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit disorder, and narcolepsy are in danger of being misused by students eager to bump up their grades. The use of brain-boosting drugs, many of which are designed to improve memory and attention span in people with serious degenerative brain diseases, could become as big a problem for the education system as performance-enhancing drugs are in sport, the experts...

Sen. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary election in Kentucky by 2 to 1, according to Fox News. Kentucky has 51 delegates to the Democratic Convention. The results for the Democrat primary in Oregon, also being held today, are expected after 11 p.m. eastern.

Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News star, is mounting an extraordinary televised assault on the chief executive of General Electric, calling him a "pinhead" and a "despicable human being" who bears responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. On the surface, O'Reilly's charges revolve around GE's history of doing business with Iran. But the attacks grow out of an increasingly bitter feud between O'Reilly and the company's high-profile subsidiary, NBC, one that has triggered back-channel discussions involving News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker and General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt. Ailes...

The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise. In this respect, it doesn't matter who wins the Democratic nomination or even who wins the general election in the fall. I was going to try to write this column without using the word "paradigm," but already I've failed: Regardless of who takes the oath of office in January, the paradigm that reigned for nearly three decades -- the notion that government is useless, if not inherently evil -- is no longer operative. All three of the remaining presidential...

If the McCain campaign is still trying out songs, there's one by a couple of Brits, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, that it should consider. We have to change the words "an Englishman" to "American" to get it to work, but, that done, the song expresses succinctly and entirely the case for John McCain and, by implication, against Barack Obama: For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is American! That he is American! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sum total of the Republican message this year. That is why McCain's first...

The sky is falling on House Republicans and there is no sign of it letting up. The GOP loss in Mississippi’s special election Tuesday is the strongest sign yet that the Republican Party is in shambles. And while some Republicans see a light at the end of the tunnel, that light more likely represents the Democratic train that is primed to mow down more Republicans in November. The third straight House special election loss in three conservative districts this year is a clear indication that the GOP brand is turning off voters and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is...

BREAKING NEWS: Barry Bonds is charged with 14 counts of lying and one count of obstruction of justice in a new indictment stemming from a steriod probe. Full article coming shortly.

The general election has apparently begun. This week, the liberal media launched a pre-emptive attack on Republican campaign tactics even as TV interviewers slobbered all over Barack Obama. Here are the Media Research Center’s "Worst of the Week" (audio and video links below the fold): # GOP: Merchants of Slime and Hate. It’s Hillary Clinton’s campaign, not the GOP, which has pummeled Barack Obama these past weeks, but journalists are nevertheless impugning Republicans as dirty campaigners. The May 19 Newsweek cover story channeled Democratic talking points to claim "the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968." (Ever listen...

SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft Corp. launched its WorldWide Telescope late Monday, bringing the free Web-based program for zooming around the universe to a broad audience. WorldWide Telescope, developed by Microsoft's research arm, knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others. Computer users can browse through the galaxy on their own or take guided tours of different outer-space destinations developed by astronomers and academics. The site lets users choose from a number of different telescopes and switch between different light wavelengths. http://www.worldwidetelescope.org

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The Pentagon has dropped charges against a Saudi at Guantanamo who was alleged to have been the so-called "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks, his U.S. military defense lawyer said Monday. Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of six men charged by the military in February with murder and war crimes for their alleged roles in the 2001 attacks. Authorities say al-Qahtani missed out on taking part in the attacks because he was denied entry to the U.S. by an immigration agent. But in reviewing the case, the convening authority for military commissions, Susan Crawford,...