E Mail

Question: On Sept. 1, I booked a Jan. 9 cruise on Carnival and was told by the booking agent that my balance would be due in November. He said I would receive an e-mail with my booking confirmation and that I would get an e-mail with a notice to pay the final balance. It would have a hyperlink to the [Carnival] website. A few days later, I received another booking confirmation but for a different passenger whose first name was also Vanessa (different last names and different cruises)

They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq. They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They're often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there's an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar. "An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad)

GETTING THERE From LAX , Air New Zealand, Air Pacific and Qantas all fly to Auckland, New Zealand, nearest major airport to Coromandel Town. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,328. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 64 (the country code for New Zealand) and the local number. WHERE TO STAY Bachcare Holiday Homes, 9-361-1550, http://www.bachcare.co.nz , or e-mail enquiries@bachcare.

The mayor of Anaheim was irate. Planners at the California High-Speed Rail Authority were suggesting that local officials consider moving a proposed multimillion-dollar transportation mega hub to the other side of a freeway so it would be easier to connect tracks for a bullet train. "This borders on complete incompetence," Mayor Curt Pringle fumed in a message to the state agency's top executive. "I am very angry.... I am NOT KIDDING!" On one level, the outburst wasn't surprising.

Costa Mesa Police Chief Chris Shawkey and Capt. Ron Smith have been placed on administrative leave, City Manager Allan Roeder has announced in an e-mail to police personnel Capt. Les Gogerty, who has been with the department since 1985, will serve as interim commander. "Police Department personnel, please be advised, as of this date Chief Shawkey and Captain Smith are on leave," Roeder wrote in an e-mail Thursday. "As this involves potential personnel matters, I would respectfully ask that you not speculate nor discuss this matter out of respect for these two individuals and the professional integrity of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

It's called the "emergency scam" because its victims are typically asked to wire money to assist some friend or family member in trouble. This month, the Arcadia Police Department issued a warning that local seniors have been receiving calls from someone claiming to be a relative who needs bail money to get out of the slammer. The calls, needless to say, are bogus. But more often than not, the emergency scam is perpetrated online, usually after someone's e-mail or Facebook account has been hacked.

In a bold challenge to its rivals, Facebook Inc. is launching a new messaging service for its more than half a billion users, setting off a battle that could shape the future of communication on the Internet. Facebook Messages will meld the three major forms of communication ? e-mail, instant messages and text messages ? so that users can manage all their communications through a single inbox on their personal computer or mobile device. The common gateway will be an "@facebook.

The Los Angeles Police Department has temporarily dropped efforts to adopt a new e-mail system run by Google Inc. after it ran up against federal security requirements for storing law enforcement records, city officials said Tuesday. The new federal requirements, which the city and Google said they found out about in August, could delay implementing the system in the department by at least a year, city technology officials said. The latest wrinkle is a setback for Google's efforts to cut into Microsoft Corp.

Google Inc., pushing to expand its e-mail and cloud computing business, took the federal government to court to change a bidding process that it said stacks the deck in favor of rival Microsoft Corp. Google, which has been battling Microsoft across the country to gain a foothold in the $20-billion office software market, sued the U.S. Department of the Interior for allegedly excluding Google's bid to provide its e-mail system for the agency's 88,000 employees. According to the lawsuit, the department specified that it would consider only systems that used Microsoft's business e-mail software, a limitation Google called "unduly restrictive of competition.

Looking to get people to spend more time on its website, Yahoo has redesigned its free e-mail service, calling it the biggest overhaul in five years. Yahoo says the new version that began rolling out Wednesday will run twice as fast and include several new features. One of those features is the ability to connect e-mail accounts to Twitter, making it possible to see new Twitter updates and to post to Twitter directly from e-mail. Yahoo already has that feature with Facebook.