Norway: After a decade of research European renewable energy giant Statkraft has announced that they will be opening the first osmotic power plant in the world not far from Oslo. Crown Princess Mette-Marit will open the plant. Osmotic power is generated by salt water and fresh water mixing. The technology is quiet, non-polluting, and could produce half or the EU's power requirements. The first plant will be for research but a commercial plant is planned. "In an era of major climate change and an increasing need for clean energy, we are proud to be presenting a renewable energy source which has never been harnessed until now," said Bard Mikkelsen, Statkraft's CEO.

Man Tunnels Through Mountain to Park His Car

India: Ramchandra Das, 53, had no way to park his car in front of his house due to a large mountain that blocked his path. When authorities refused to help, he took a hammer and chisel and started to create his own tunnel. "I had to leave my truck miles away, so I decided to do something about it myself" Das said. 14 years later, Das completed his 14-feet-wide, 8-mile-long tunnel. Local government and villagers (who previously had to trek for miles to get around the mountain) are praising Das for his hard work.

Paper Battery on the Way

Scientists at Stanford University in California have successfully created a paper battery that is lightweight and is high-performing. They have coated the paper with an ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials. The process is similar to the feature that allows ink to adhere to paper. "Taking advantage of the mature paper technology, low cost, light and high-performance energy-storage are realised by using conductive paper as current collectors and electrode." The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

French Military Picks Mozilla Email Client Over Microsoft Outlook

The blog site TorrentFreak claims that the movie Star Trek was downloaded illegally 10 million times by Internet users. Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Ice Age:Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and 2012 rounded out the list. TorrentFreak also noticed that what the box office stated as the most popular were not necessarily mirrored on the site. All the data was collated from the largest of the BitTorrent trackers. Despite heavy fines and possible jail time, unauthorized copying of new release films is rampant.

And the Darwin Award for 2009 Goes to...

The Darwin award for the person who improves the gene pool the most by removing themselves has been awarded to two Belgian thieves who tried to blow up an ATM and ended up blowing up the entire building with them inside. The pair beat Florida nominee Shawn Motero, who hopped out of his car in a traffic jam, leaped over a concrete barrier, and died following a 65 foot fall. He reportedly needed to pee and didn't 'look before he leaked'. Also noteworthy was a woman who drowned under the impression that the rubber wheels on her moped would get her through a flood, and a robber who spray-painted his face gold as a disguise, was identified anyway, and died from the paint fumes.

Torturing Terror Suspects: Why Ask if You Can´t Deal With the Answer?

During an interview on a live radio show, Don Cherry, host of Hockey night in Canada, was asked for his views on the allegations of the torturing of suspected terrorists. His response was: "If hooking up one raghead terrorist prisoner`s testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camelshagger will save just one Canadian life, then I have only three things to say:

1. Red is positive

2. Black is negative

3. Make sure his nuts are wet"

According to Microsoft the attempt to hack Google and access email accounts belonging to human rights activists was partly carried out using a newly discovered vulnerability that exists in Internet Explorer 6. "Microsoft continues to... actively investigate this issue... Microsoft has not seen widespread customer impact, rather only targeted and limited attacks exploiting IE6," said Microsoft´s Security Response Center director Mike Reavey. The incident has put Google on a collision course with the Chinese government. The company is now refusing to censor search results and is threatening to leave the country. (SN reported)

German Government: Stop Using Internet Explorer

Germany: The Federal Office for Information Security has warned users to stop using all versions Microsoft Internet Explorer after details of the vulnerability used to attack Google in China appeared online. Microsoft has voiced its disagreement, saying that changing the security zone to high minimises risk. The German government says that it isn´t enough to make the browser safe. Running IE in high security mode makes many web sites unusable. Microsoft is next scheduled to release patches on February 9 but this issue may force a release in the interim. Providing a fix for three different versions of the browser without making anything else go wrong is likely to be quite challenging.

Samsung Unveils 32 GB microSD Card, 64 GB moviNAND Flash Module

Samsung Electronics has announced the availability of 64 GB flash memory modules and plans on mass-production of their 32 GB microSD card next month. Both products are based on the 32 nm manufacturing process. The 64 GB moviNAND embedded NAND flash memory module consists of 17 30-micron-thick dies stacked on top of each other: one controller and 16 32-gigabit, 2-bit multi-level cell NAND chips, all of which are 30 microns thick. Samples of the 32 GB microSD card, a stack of eight 32-gigabit NAND chips and a controller, are already in the hands of OEMs. It is estimated that 530 million 32 GB (or larger) cards will be sold this year, and 9.5 billion for the year 2013.

Avatar to Contain Deleted Sex Scene on DVD