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First Solar, GE Energy Financial Services, and Verve Energy announced today a partnership to build Australia's first utility-scale solar plant.

At 10 megawatts, Greenough River Solar Farm will be the largest operating solar plant in the country, and the solar energy it generates will be put to a very specific use.

All of its energy will go toward supporting a seawater desalination plant in Western Australia currently under expansion.

The Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in Binningup, Australia, which is run by the WA Water Corporation, has signed a 15-year contract to purchase all of the solar energy generated from … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration started to discuss possible Internet regulations at an event it convened in 1996. Fifteen years later, the pharmaceutical industry is still waiting for an outcome.

A blog post from the Public Relations Society of America last week complained that "it's time for the FDA to act and to properly advise" pharmaceutical manufacturers about what kind of advertising is and isn't allowed, especially on social-networking sites. PhRMA, a trade association representing pharmaceutical makers, said this month that "we continue to wait for FDA's guidance, and to … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--Criticisms aimed at the San Francisco Bay Area's subway system for temporarily pulling the plug on cellular service have raised "very valid points," a federal regulator said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said that the agency is still investigating what happened when BART pulled the plug on cell service on August 11 in four subway stations in downtown San Francisco in anticipation of a protest. (A BART board meeting is currently under way--check back later for CNET coverage.)

"What the heck happened, what precedent does it set, were there any laws that were broken?" … Read more

Now that people rely on the Internet for love (I saw a Match.com commercial claiming one in five relationships starts online), it's only natural they would return to the Internet to recount the dates that didn't end in magic. A new Twitter page called First Date Hell, and its accompanying aggregator, Crapdate.com, give serial daters a chance to dish their first-date horror stories in 140 characters or fewer, and some of them are pretty bad.

Rhodri Marsden started Crapdate.com after relaying first-date stories back and forth with friends at a local pub. His first post about one particularly long uncomfortable silence inspired some his 17,000 Twitter followers to reply with their own real-life nightmares, like this one from @BibiLynch, whose first date took her to a Laundromat, then proceeded to pay-phone ring his dad to describe her physical assets in agonizing detail.… Read more

The San Francisco-area transit system targeted by hackers after it cut wireless service in its subway prior to a protest, posted a letter to customers today explaining its position and announcing plans for a public meeting on the issue.

"BART's temporary interruption of cell phone service was not intended to and did not affect any First Amendment rights of any person to protest in a lawful manner in areas at BART stations that are open for expressive activity," reads the letter, posted on the BART Web site and signed by Bob Franklin, president of the Bay Area … Read more

Making their debut in the 2012 version of Bitdefender's security suites are interesting new security features, a simpler, easier-to-use interface, and a mythical half-dragon, half-wolf. (They're not saying which half is which.) Check out what Bitdefender's premium suite Total Security 2012 provides in this First Look video.

You can download Bitdefender Total Security 2012 , Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 , and Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012 from CNET Download.com

The latest version of Thunderbird jumps from version 3 to version 5, matching its sibling Firefox as it joins Mozilla's rapid-release program. Thunderbird 5, available to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, is mostly a bug-fixing release that improves stability. It also shortens and improves the workflow for adding new e-mail accounts.

Watch what the program's got, and what it lacks, in this new First Look video.

The wildly anticipated Battlefield 3 has been catching on with gamers.

According to the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, preorders for the title are more than 10 times higher than they were for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the last title the company released in the franchise. It's an impressive feat. Last month, EA announced that it had sold 9 million copies of Bad Company 2 since the game's launch in March 2010.

Battlefield 3 is being called by some industry observers a possible Call of Duty killer. The game, which is scheduled to launch on October 25, is a first-person shooter that puts the gamer in the shoes of U.S. Marines. Gamers must work their way through several missions spanning Paris, Tehran, and New York City. Battlefield 3 promises gameplay that's quite similar to real-world battles--a hallmark of Activision's Call of Duty franchise.… Read more

First Solar today said a test cell using its cadmium telluride solar technology set a new world record of 17.3 percent efficiency.

The world's most valuable solar company said the cell's performance, confirmed by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab, topped the previous world record of 16.7 percent set in 2001.

A solar cell's efficiency is the percentage of sunlight that ends up being converted to electricity.

The announcement by First Solar, which rarely trumpets the performance of its test cells, comes a few months after rising competitor General Electric … Read more