A Virginia court on Friday heard arguments in a lawsuit pitting a space tour agency and a Japanese millionaire seeking a $21 million refund for a canceled trip to space. Lawyers of Daisuke Enomoto, who paid Virginia-based Space Adventures $21 million for a tour in orbit and the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006, told U. S. District Judge James Cacheris that he should be refunded the amount after the firm disqualified him from the tour and replaced him with another space tourist because he refused to invest in the company.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has indefinitely banned employees from using flash drives and confiscated all such devices issued to them after a virus was accidentally released its computer network. The ban was issued last week after a Navy staff lost classified information from his computer after inserting a flash drive infected with a global virus or worm. An unnamed Navy rear admiral on Thursday described the virus as a worm, which is spreading rapidly in military computer networks.

Five sheriff's deputies will be disciplined after two undercover deputies zapped a North Carolina man with a Taser while he was serving as a pall bearer at his father's funeral and loading the coffin into a hearse. Another pall bearer said the incident was so frightening that the other pall bearers nearly dropped the casket of 70-year-old Gladwyn Taft Russ Jr. , who was being buried with military honors.

The former prostitute who had a February tryst with ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer that soon cost him his job, has apologized to Mrs. Spitzer in her first magazine interview after the scandal. "I'm sorry for your pain," Ashley Dupre said in an interview with People magazine which will hit newsstands Friday.

Hit the road Jack, was the advice Amtrak officials gave passengers when it announced it was canceling its popular popular Auto Train service between Florida and the metro Washington, D. C. area through Wednesday at least because of safety concerns. The announcement stunned some stranded vacationing passengers in Florida who had to choose between staying longer in the sunshine state or using their cars to make the long drive home.

The British government will publish Wednesday a proposal that would impose stiff penalties on customers of women forced into prostitution. Among the sanctions eyed is a charge of rape, which has a potential life sentence for males caught having paid sex with women who were trafficked or handled by a pimp. The measure seeks to curb prostitution in the United Kingdom. According to the Metropolitan police, 70 percent of 88,000 women prostitutes in England and Wales are under the control of traffickers.

A Florida boy was bitten on the finger by a rabid bat while trying to get his dog away from the animal. The 12-year-old Lake Wales boy is receiving a series of shots to protect him from developing the fatal disease after the bat tested positive for rabies. Although human deaths from rabies are rare in the United States, many wild animals carry the disease, which can be transmitted to family pets and then to their human owners.

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested for attaching a home made bomb to a stuffed teddy bear and leaving it on a Brockton, MA street Monday afternoon. A judge will decide what to do with the unidentified minor on Tuesday.

A tool bag slipped away from an astronaut repairing the joint of a solar panel of the International Space Station on Tuesday. The tool bag the size of a small backpack floated away as the spacewalking Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper was wiping away lubricants from her gloves and a camera. The lubricant accidentally leaked from a grease gun.