The second public beta for Internet Explorer 8 offers features similar to those found in Opera, Safari, and Firefox, plus a few extras.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Fisherman Terry Pizani turns his captain’s wheel with a mournful expression on his face. Far below, the fishing grounds off the Louisiana coast where the 63-year-old has made a living for five decades have become an aquatic graveyard known as a “dead zone.”

Popularity: 45% [?]

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Friday the U.S. economy continues to be in a recession, by his definition, and will continue to be for at least several more months.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Japan is drawing up an economic stimulus package worth eight trillion yen ($73 billion) to help businesses and consumers cope with soaring fuel and commodity prices, news reports said Saturday.

Popularity: 44% [?]

U.S. factories saw a surprisingly hefty increase in their orders for big-ticket products in July, reflecting continued strength in export sales and a boost to business investment from the government’s tax stimulus package.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Oil prices spiked to over US$118 a barrel Wednesday on growing concerns that Tropical Storm Gustav may disrupt operations in the Gulf of Mexico, home to a quarter of U.S. crude production. A weaker dollar also helped lift prices.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency. The demonstration is the latest attack to highlight fundamental security weaknesses in some of the web’s core protocols.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar Forgot your password? link. As an experiment, Thompson recently asked a few friends for permission to “hack” into their bank accounts. Using only information gathered from Web sites such as Facebook, he found his way in to each account within minutes.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Personal details of more than 1 million customers of Royal Bank of Scotland, American Express and NatWest are found on a computer sold on auction site eBay.

Popularity: 3% [?]

New experiments using Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle extend the range of quantum cryptography, an advanced method of communicating in unbreakable code.

Popularity: 3% [?]