A Bitcoin transaction services company says that hackers broke into one of its brokerage accounts last week, nabbing more than $12,000 worth of the digital currency. That attack knocked Bitinstant offline over the weekend. The company says that while it lost Bitcoins, no customers were affected by the hack.The criminals were able to take control of Bitinstant’s internet domains by convincing its domain registrar, Site5, to hand over control of the company’s Domain Name Service.

Bitcoin sounds like something from science fiction: A purely digital currency, created by an anonymous hacker, that operates outside the world's traditional banking systems. The four-year-old currency is very real, though, and it's trading an all-time high, tripling in value in the last two months alone. One bitcoin is was worth about $40 U.S. dollars on Tuesday, and surged on Wednesday to nearly $49. That's up from around $13 in January, and 5 cents in 2010, according to Mt. Gox, the bitcoin market's main exchange.

87-year-old Lorraine Bayless collapsed at Glenwood Gardens senior living facility in Bakersfield, California. A nurse named Colleen called 911 and was instructed by the dispatcher, Tracey Halvorson, to perform CPR to save the woman’s life, but Colleen replied that it was against their policy and she couldn’t do it, so she watched Lorraine die.

Audio of the 911 call has been released which is chilling to the bone, and mainstream coverage of the story is almost as terrifying.

Names put forward this year include Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who has admitted sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the secrecy-busting website WikiLeaks and 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, an education activist who was shot in the head by Taliban militants while on her way home from school in Pakistan.

Eight former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs said Tuesday that the federal government needs to act now or it might lose the chance to nullify Colorado and Washington's laws legalizing recreational marijuana use.

The word “FREEDOM” is among the list of banned vanity license plate slogans for Washington D.C., according a government file obtained by a Freedom of Information Request...

VALLEJO, Calif. (KGO) -- The ABC7 News I-Team has uncovered a new complaint of excessive force against Vallejo police -- the incident, caught on camera. The department is already reeling after a violent year, including six people shot and killed by officers.

A copyright battle between the AP and an online news-clipping service is reaching a climax, and the case could have significant implications for fair use. AP sued Meltwater Group last year, arguing the "reputation management" company had a "parasitic business model" that violated copyright. Meltwater is arguing that it is merely a search engine. Last week, the nation's largest newspapers lined up to tell the New York federal judge considering the case that they support the AP.

bitcoinstore.com, an electronics retail outlet that only accepts Bitcoins as payment. Bitcoinstore.com stands out among potential competitors because the site's investors have only one goal – to urge major online retailers to start accepting Bitcoin.

"The idea behind the site entirely is to force Amazon and Newegg to accept Bitcoin by saying 'Hey, look at our prices, we beat you, now beat us,'" said bitcoinstore.com head of marketing Jon Holmquist.

To do that, bitcoinstore.com sells its products at 0 percent markup.

The statement below was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O’Brien at Thursday’s pretrial hearing. O’Brien provided Salon with the full transcript.