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Tribune Co. chief innovation officer Lee Abrams has been placed on indefinite suspension without pay pending review of a companywide memo he sent to staff Monday that spurred a rash of employee complaints. Abrams apologized Tuesday "to everyone who was offended" by the e-mail, which included a link to a video labeled "Sluts" that included female nudity. The incident occurred less than a week after a New York Times story that characterized Tribune management as fostering a sexist "frat house" atmosphere.

Alma Nemelka said her nephew was the first to die. He was standing at the rear of the Soldier Readiness Center at Ft. Hood, Texas, when an Army officer burst in shouting, " Allahu akbar! " Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19 and soon to be deployed to the Middle East, was shot in the head. On Tuesday, the man accused of killing Nemelka and 12 others, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan of the Army Medical Corps, will appear for his first broad military hearing into the November attack. Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim and Army psychiatrist, was shot during the incident and is paralyzed from the waist down.

Jurors in the fraud trial of former Countrywide Financial Corp. executives will be allowed to see e-mails and a handwritten note from the lender's former chief financial officer, who said he feared becoming a "magnet [for] prosecution" and told his father, "I can lose my net worth or go to jail for things I don't even know," a judge ruled Friday. The documents "go to the heart of the issues in this case" by shedding light on the thinking of former CFO Eric P. Sieracki, U.S. District Judge John J. Walter said in making his decision.

Obama administration officials knew they did not have all the facts last summer when they rushed to dismiss Shirley Sherrod from the Agriculture Department after learning of a video that painted her as a racist, newly released e-mails show. The day after Sherrod's ouster, even as USDA officials acknowledged in internal memos that they had not seen the full video, a White House senior aide e-mailed them to commend the department for moving quickly so the story would not gain "traction.

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More than 60 people have been charged in international schemes that used computer viruses to steal millions of dollars from bank accounts throughout America, state and federal prosecutors said Thursday in New York. "The modern, high-tech bank heist does not require a gun, a mask, a note or a getaway car," U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara said. "It requires only the Internet and ingenuity. And it can be accomplished in the blink of an eye, with just a click of the mouse. " The cyber attacks began in Eastern Europe and included malware known as the Zeus Trojan, which was typically sent in an e-mail to computers at homes, businesses and government offices in the United States.

A divorce trial that had tilted heavily toward legal detail took a brief turn toward the salacious Monday, with the first and only reference to the affair that Frank McCourt cited in firing Jamie McCourt as the Dodgers' chief executive officer. Corey Busch, a veteran baseball consultant who worked with the McCourts on the acquisition of the Dodgers, testified Monday that he sent an e-mail to Frank — but not to Jamie — after the couple filed for divorce.

Technology executives and law enforcement officials are clashing over a nearly 25-year-old law that protects Internet users' private information. Some of the world's largest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are pushing for changes to the law — written before the World Wide Web existed — saying it makes it too easy for government investigators to gain access to their customers' Web-based e-mail and documents. That, the companies say, is bad for the bottom line.

Weary travelers may long to linger over a cup of coffee or snuggle under a plush duvet. But when it comes to airports, lingering is loathed, because it's synonymous with layover. When George Pendle found himself stuck longer than expected at a New York airport — braced for a transatlantic flight with a few gin and tonics and a Xanax — he found his mind, not surprisingly, altered. "I was in a Timothy Leary-esque state," he says, recalling the moment when his eyes locked on the spilled-soda-hiding pattern beneath his feet.

India's BlackBerry users breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday as word spread that their beloved smart-phone devices would keep beeping after Aug. 31, the deadline New Delhi had set for the company to either open up its technology or shut down its service. BlackBerry's Canadian parent company reportedly agreed to copy Indian security agencies on client e-mails and short messages, local news reports said Tuesday, citing government sources. The agencies initially must make a specific request but after November reportedly will receive automatic data feeds.