It's a milestone for robots: One has learned to smile and make realistic facial expressions on its own for the first time,Wired reports. University of California researchers put their Einstein robot in front of a video camera attached to facial recognition software, which gave it feedback as it randomly contorted its 31 artificial facial muscles. The experiment could shed light on how babies learn to make expressions.

"The robotic approach is the ultimate in helping us understand learning and development," one expert said. “There’s so much we can learn by actually trying to make it happen instead of just watching kids try to move their faces—it’s like having a baby as opposed to just watching a baby.” The team now plans to teach the robot to socialize. SOURCE: Wired

North Korea has not yet sent Lisa Ling or Euna Lee to a prison labor camp, keeping them instead in a “guest house,” according to a University of Georgia political scientist who recently visited the country. It's a sign that Pyongyang still wants to negotiate the girls' fate with the US the scholar said, predicting that North Korea would soon schedule talks.

The new, smaller GM will be 61% owned by the US; Canada and the United Auto Workers will hold the rest of shares. Now the hard part starts, the Times notes, as the company battles poor sales and adapts to a much smaller market share. The US will have pumped $50 billion into GM by year’s end; the government hopes it can go public again next year. “We are here to get the government out of the auto business,” says the US auto chief. SOURCE: New York Times

Pentagon health officials are proposing a phased-in ban over the next 20 years. A Pentagon spokesman says the DoD is committed to smoke-free military, but wouldn't comment on what would likely be an unpopular move in the trenches. The military currently subsidizes tobacco sales to troops.  SOURCE: USA Today

This isn't a working class girl, cruelly attacked by the media and “the elites.” “The elites made her.” It was the Republican elite that plucked her from obscurity. The media meanwhile would like nothing better than to continue the freak show. But the Republican Party ought to find a serious, thinking candidate, “because that is what a grown-up responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.” SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

Coming after the recent Beltway debate over coordination between Huffington Post’s senior news editor, Nico Pitney, and the White House over a question about Iran at a recent presidential news conference as well as President Obama’s decision to call on another Huffington Post reporter at his first White House press conference, the choice of Froomkin to oversee reporters as Washington bureau chief seemed to solidify the site’s identity as a progressive voice heavily invested in Obama’s success.

Arianna Huffington, the site’s founder, would agree on the progressive part. But in a recent interview with POLITICO, she also defined what she says the site is not: “There’s absolutely no way you’d call the Huffington Post a partisan defender of the Obama White House,” she said.       http://jamesnews.blogster.com/

Huffington’s response invites the larger question of what a website the New Yorker described last year as having ambitions to “reinvent the American newspaper” has become with Bush back in Dallas, Barack Obama in the White House, and the passions that both generated having cooled.   Read More

A Philadelphia summer camp says it may take legal action after a suburban swim club rejected its campers, theInquirer reports. On their first visit to the pool, the children said they’d overheard other poolgoers complaining about black people frequenting the swim club; soon after, management refunded the $1,950 the camp had paid for weekly pool visits over the summer. A statement from the club president cited “concern” over the “complexion” of the club.

 Not only is Baywatchcoming to the big screen: Pamela Anderson may be coming with it. The actor and her red swimsuit are rumored to be making a cameo appearance in the “tongue in cheek” comedy, the New York Daily News reports. Elsewhere:

• The wives of Eddie Furlong (of Terminator 2fame) and David Alan Grier (In Living Color) both filed for divorce, TMZ reports.

• Call them K-Rod: Things seem to be going well for Alex Rodriguez and Kate Hudson. The Yankee superstar and the starlet “were holding hands and whispering in each other's ears the whole time” at a recent dinner, a source tells the New York Post.
• Michael Moore’s upcoming film about the global economic meltdown will be titledCapitalism: A Love Story, reports Variety. The professional gadfly's latest effort is due out Oct. 2. SOURCES: New York Daily News, TMZ, TMZ, New York Post

The bankruptcy filing says Dykstra owes cash to “credit-card companies, banks, lawyers, printing companies, and private aviation companies,” theInquirer notes. “Sometimes the difficult decisions in life are the most necessary," he said. "In the end, the restructuring will definitely be a good thing.” SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer