Balance Sheet

Assets

Border Busters

Congress slaps the INS for slapping whistleblowers. The agency had transferred and threatened employees who said the borders were a mess.

Seed Scene

Biotech firms Syngenta and Monsanto pledge to make public aspects of the technology behind genetically modified rice. On the downside, anti-GM activists say it still won't make the crops safe.

Magic Beans

Ward Connerly revs up the Racial Policy Initiative, an attempt to get Californians to vote on racial bean counting. Should his intiative pass, the state stops most of its check-box labeling schemes.

Up Periscope

A fed-up Kentucky lawmaker introduces a bill to buy the USS Louisville from the Pentagon and turn it loose in the Ohio River. The target: Indiana's state-licensed riverboat casinos.

Watt Answer

Forget microradio: Picoradio looms. Berkeley's Wireless Research Center builds a wireless network that uses almost no power yet can control complex systems such as high-rise thermostats.

Bad Water

More than a decade on, the final independent counsel report on Whitewater concludes with what was nearly self-evident from the start: Bill and Hillary did the kinds of deals that got other folks indicted.

Dutch Treat

A Dutch court rules that file-trading company Kazaa is not responsible for copyright violations committed by people using the Napster-like program. It is the first such "safe harbor" decision for swapping software.