Yahoo plans to lay off under a new CEO

Yahoo Inc. is gearing up for its third round of mass layoffs in 14 months, signaling the long-slumping Internet company is still struggling to snap out of its financial malaise under a new leadership team.

The cuts will likely affect several hundred employees, a person familiar with the plan said late Tuesday, confirming a report first published on The New York Times' Web site.

Somali Pirates

The shipping captain held hostage by Somali pirates will return to the U.S. with his crew on Wednesday.

Maersk Line Limited said Tuesday that Captain Richard Phillips and the crew of the Maersk Alabama are expected to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland late Wednesday. They are taking a chartered flight from Mombasa, Kenya.

Pirates took over the boat briefly last week before Phillips surrendered himself in exchange for the safety of his 19-member crew. Phillips was taken hostage on a lifeboat for days before Navy SEALs killed the pirates and rescued the captain on Sunday.

Phillips and crew will be reunited with loved ones at Andrews Air Force Base in a private reception area.

Conflicker

The Conficker worm, a nasty computer infection that has poisoned millions of PCs, will start ramping up its efforts Wednesday to use those machines for cybercrimes. It's unclear whether everyday PC users will even notice, but this is as good an excuse as any to make sure your computer is clean.

There are some easy ways to figure out whether a computer has the Conficker worm, and free tools available for getting rid of it.

One scary thing about Conficker is that it spreads without human involvement, moving from PC to PC by exploiting a security hole in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. The hole was fixed in October, but if your computer doesn't get automatic updates from Microsoft, you could be vulnerable.

No more Encarta

Microsoft says it is shutting down its online encyclopedia, Encarta, in October and will stop selling Encarta Software by June.

Google Inc. Music

Google Inc. and major music companies launched a free Internet music download service for China on Monday in a bid to help turn a field dominated by pirates into a profitable, legitimate business.

Streaming Video Games?

San Francisco- Music and movies can be streamed over the Internet, so why not video games?

A startup founded by technology entrepreneur Steve Perlman says it has developed a technology to deliver video games on demand, an idea that threatens to eventually take consoles out of the equation. OnLive Inc., Perlman's Palo Alto, California based company, planned to unveil its technology Tuesday night at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Seven years in the works, OnLive says it has developed a way to stream video games without any lag that humans can notice. So the instant you press a button to shoot something on the screen, the gun goes off.

AT&T workers strike

In New York union workers at AT&T are giving their leaders the authority to call a strike as part of negotiations for a new contract covering 112,500 employees. Several contracts covering workers at the phone company's landline division expire on April 4. AT&T Inc. is trying to make the employees pay more for their health care, among other concessions. The Communications Workers of America says 88 percent of members covered by the contracts voted in favor of a possible strike.