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A Kansas man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple in 2009 is now being taken to court by the state to pay child support.

The bizarre case began in 2009 when William Marotta answered a Craigslist ad and donated sperm to Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner. Schreiner bore the child, and Marotta relinquished all parental rights.

The trouble began when the longtime couple split and Bauer, who had supported the family, could no longer work because of an illness. The former couple turned to the state to obtain health insurance for their young daughter—and the state subsequently demanded the sperm donor’s name to pursue him for the cost.

Kansas lawyers contend Marotta’s agreement with the couple is invalid—and therefore he can be held responsible—because the artificial insemination didn't meet state guidelines. Marotta says the state’s motives are political and believes he will prevail.

Time for app pirates to raise a new Jolly Roger.

Installous—the infamous app that allowed users of jailbroken iPhones, iPads, and other iOS devices to download pirated apps for free—has been deactivated, according to its now-shuttered development community Hackulous.

Installous gave users essentially unrestricted access to thousands of apps while avoiding charges from Apple's app store. The demise of the Hackulous community would be good news for Apple, if, like a hacker hydra, two new app-pirating apps hadn’t immediately sprung up in its place.

The two new apps, Zeusmos and Kuaiyong, both provide the same free app-downloading service—except neither requires use of a jailbroken iOS device. Zeusmos, though, charges for the installer app, essentially charging pirates for the privilege of getting free apps they could have just bought to begin with.

Turns out that Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy is good business for more than just tabloids.

In the days since announcing she is expecting with boyfriend Kanye West, the reality starlet’s original claim to fame—her sex tape—has had an 80 percent jump in sales. Though perhaps an odd way to mark news of the baby, the spike follows an upward trend in sales ever since West and Kardashian began dating earlier this year.

The 2003 tape of Kardashian with then-boyfriend Ray J first leaked in 2007. Kardashian allowed it to stay on the market after she was paid $5 million by the distributor.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett plans to file a federal lawsuit against the NCAA over the tough sanctions it imposed on Penn State following the child-sex-abuse case involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Along with a four-year bowl-game ban, fewer sports scholarships, and forfeiture of more than 100 wins, the sanctions also include a $60 million fine to be used to finance child-abuse-prevention grants throughout the country. Corbett’s suit will likely object to the national distribution of these funds, calling instead to keep the money in the Keystone State. The university has already paid $12 million.

Sandusky is serving a 30-to-60-year sentence in state prison after his conviction in June on charges of sexually abusing 10 boys, despite complaints about his behavior to several staff members—including late head coach Joe Paterno.

Even after a harshly panned press conference about the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, 54 percent of Americans still say they have a favorable view of the National Rifle Association.

The new Gallup poll shows numbers in line with the NRA’s averages, suggesting its image remains intact after the shooting. The group hit a low of 42 percent approval in mid-'90s and more recently hit a high of 60 percent in 2005.

Critics called NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre tone deaf after his press conference last week in which he blamed gun violence on the media, video games, and other culprits, but not on guns themselves. He also called for armed guards in all schools.

A recent Gallup poll showed 58 percent of Americans favor stronger gun laws, but the same poll showed that most people generally do not favor bans on particular weapons.

Yes, the new iPhone 5 you got for Christmas is pretty cool, but can it dance?

One of the iPhone 5's most useful features is the Panorama camera mode, which lets you take 240-degree photos. CNET reports that the new app, Cycloramic, takes that idea one step further—by using the iPhone's vibration and sensors to spin the device 360 degrees while taking video.

You'll need a flat, hard surface, and older phones won't work. The app will cost you 99 cents at the app store, but that's a small price to pay to show off your phone's moves.

After a year that brought the discovery of several planets similar to our own, some astronomers are claiming that 2013 is the year we will discover a true alien Earth.

More than 800 exoplanets have been found since 1995, and some of them are Earth-like in mass and size. But these distant cousins all orbit their host stars too closely to be inhabitable.

By measuring the telltale dip in the brightness of a star as a planet passes in front it, the Kepler Space Telescope can identify a new planet after three transits. So far, it’s focused the search on the ones quickest to confirm—those closest to the star with smaller, more frequent orbits.

But as time passes, Kepler is spotting more distantly orbiting bodies, and now scientists say that in the coming year they are confident they will discover a rocky, wet planet in the "Goldilocks zone” around the star, where temperatures are just right for life.

Apparently not content with marrying a certain billionaire’s nephew earlier this month, Kate Winslet also reportedly plans to travel into space.

As the tabloid frenzy over her secret marriage to Ned Rocknroll dies down, Winslet is making headlines again after Rocknroll’s billionaire uncle, Sir Richard Branson, claims he purchased her a ticket to space. The $200,000 ticket is for Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture, which aims to ferry passengers 60 miles above Earth in special two-hour flights.

Winslet’s ticket is no wedding gift, though: Branson reportedly offered her the ride because she famously rescued his mother, Eve, from a fire at an estate during Hurricane Irene last year. That’s apparently when she began her romance with Rocknroll.

Other celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Ashton Kutcher also have advance tickets for the space cruises, which are not yet scheduled.

Connecticut's chief medical examiner is seeking to analyze the DNA of Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old responsible for the Newtown, Conn., massacre that left 20 schoolchildren dead.

The University of Connecticut genetics lab has offered to help, but the goal is not to find a single diagnostic gene tied to Lanza's violent acts.

According to Arthur Caplan, the head of NYU's Bioethics Division, "a particular DNA message may indicate a propensity to behavior, but at best you might find associations to greater risk." So whether or not Lanza possessed the so-called "warrior gene" that has become associated with psychopaths, we still won't have an answer as to why he did what he did.

Scientists are only beginning to understand the correlation between genes and behavior—and in any case, it takes more than just a genetic predisposition to make someone violent.