New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera

Another week, another batch of purported leaks for Research In Motion’s (RIMM) first BlackBerry 10-powered Z10. BBin claims to have most of the Z10′s final specs confirmed and it is shaping up to be a powerful device. Rumored specs for the Z10 include a TI OMAP 4470 1.5GHz dual-core processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 for the U.S. and Canada), a 4.2-inch display (1,280 x 768 resolution), quad-band...

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Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.[More...

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iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012

Distimo just released its statistics on Christmas Day app downloads and revenue growth… and the download spike is far smaller than it was last year. Back in 2011, Christmas Day iOS app download volume spiked 230% above the December average. This year, the increase was just 87% — far below industry expectations. The revenue spike came in at 70%.[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]Interestingly,...

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Leaked BlackBerry 10 slides show video calling and screen sharing for BBM

Research in Motion (RIMM) recently updated its BlackBerry Messenger application to include free Wi-Fi calling. With the release of BlackBerry 10 just around the corner, RIM is looking to add even more features to its flagship messaging app. Slides from a purported internal BlackBerry 10 presentation that were originally posted on the CrackBerry forums suggest that the company is planning to update...

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Publisher Bonnier, Flingo partner to make Smart TV Apps

 Bonnier, the publisher of magazines like Savuer and Popular Science, and Flingo, the largest publisher of apps for Smart TVs, have partnered to create a series of apps extending Bonnier's titles onto Internet-enabled TV sets and set-tops boxes like the Roku.Together, they will release a new app for each magazine, offering videos, images and archival content for fans. Savuer has a couple of web...

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Facebook unveils new privacy controls

Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company's latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world's largest social network.New tools introduced on Wednesday will make it easier for Facebook's members to quickly determine who can view the photos, comments and other information about them that appears on different...

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U.S. gun website sued for alleged ties to slayings

A prominent U.S. gun control group on Wednesday sued a gun auction website it says is linked to a mass shooting at a Wisconsin spa in October and the stalker slaying of a woman near Chicago in 2011.The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence alleges that the design of armslist.com facilitates illegal online sales to unlawful gun buyers with no background checks, and enables users to evade laws that permit...

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Obama election tweet most repeated but Olympics tops on Twitter

An election victory tweet from President Barack Obama -- "Four more years" with a picture of him hugging his wife -- was the most retweeted ever, but the U.S. election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year.Obama's tweet was retweeted (repeated) more than 810,000 times, Twitter said as it published a list of the most tweeted events in 2012. (http://2012.twitter.com/)"Within...

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Judge asks Hostess to mediate with union

 Twinkies won't die that easily after all.Hostess Brands Inc. and its second largest union will go into mediation to try and resolve their differences, meaning the company won't go out of business just yet. The news came Monday after Hostess moved to liquidate and sell off its assets in bankruptcy court citing a crippling strike last week.The bankruptcy judge hearing the case said Monday that...

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Just Explain It: What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil has been a policy goal for at least the last two U.S. Presidents.  According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020,  the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer.However, there's still some work to do.  The United States Energy Information Administration reported that 45% of the petroleum consumed by...

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Apple to produce line of Macs in the US next year

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will move production of one of its existing lines of Mac computers from China to the United States next year.Industry watchers said the announcement is both a cunning public-relations move and a harbinger of more manufacturing jobs moving back to the U.S. as wages rise in China.Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock Center," but aired...

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US economy adds 146K jobs, rate falls to 7.7 pct.

The pace of U.S. hiring remained steady in November despite disruptions from Superstorm Sandy and employers' concerns about impending tax increases from the year-end "fiscal cliff."Companies added 146,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent — the lowest in nearly four years — from 7.9 percent in October. The rate declined mainly because more people stopped looking for work and weren't...

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Just Explain It: Why the Fiscal Cliff May Trigger a Recession

Lawmakers in Washington appear to be making little to no progress in avoiding the impending so-called fiscal cliff.  House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday the negotiations are "almost nowhere." On Thursday Boehner rejected a proposal from the Obama administration saying that the Democrats need to "get serious about real spending cuts."President Obama's offer continues to call for higher...

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Woman’s ‘Dystextia’ Stroke Sign: ‘Some is where!’

Smartphone autocorrect is famous for scrambling messages into unintelligible gibberish but when one man received this garbled text from his 11-week-pregnant wife, it alarmed him:“every where thinging days nighing,” her text read. “Some is where!”Though that may sound like every text you’ve ever received, the woman’s husband knew her autocorrect was turned off. Fearing some medical issue, he made sure...

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Link between pot, psychosis goes both ways in kids

Marijuana (cannabis) use may be linked to the development of psychotic symptoms in teens - but the reverse could also be true: psychosis in adolescents may be linked to later pot use, according to a new Dutch study."We have focused mainly on temporal order; is it the chicken or the egg? As the study shows, it is a bidirectional relationship," wrote the study's lead author Merel Griffith-Lendering,...

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Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide

About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding.Being obese as a child not only increases the risk of early-life health problems, such as joint problems,...

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One in 12 in military has clogged heart arteries

 Just over one in 12 U.S. service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had plaque buildup in the arteries around their hearts - an early sign of heart disease, according to a new study.None of them had been diagnosed with heart disease before deployment, researchers said."This is a young, healthy, fit group," said the study's lead author, Dr. Bryant Webber, from the Uniformed Services...

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Obesity declining in young, poorer kids: study

The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or "extremely obese" has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.Although the decline was only "modest" and may not apply to all children, researchers said it was still encouraging."It's extremely important to make sure we're monitoring obesity in this low-income group," said the CDC's...

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Carlyle takes on KKR in race for Reynolds and Reynolds: sources

Private equity firms Carlyle Group LP and KKR & Co LP have emerged as the lead contenders to take over Reynolds and Reynolds, a software company hoping to sell itself for $5 billion, three people familiar with the matter said. Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds, which provides business management software for auto dealers in North America and Europe, had hired technology-focused investment bank Qatalyst...

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Sandia Lab building solar test centers across US

One of the National Security Administration's three national laboratories is building regional testing centers around the country to field-test hardware for solar companies before their multimillion-dollar solar systems are installed in buildings. The Sandia National Laboratory is building test centers in Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Fla., and Burlington, Vt., the Albuquerque Journal...

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Mundie, one of Gates' successors, to retire from Microsoft

Craig Mundie, one of two Microsoft Corp executives who took over Bill Gates' role at the company, has relinquished control of Microsoft's large research organization and is to retire from the company in 2014. Mundie is taking on a new role as a senior adviser to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to a memo circulated internally earlier this month but only made public on Monday. Eric Rudder,...

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LSE trims LCH.Clearnet offer amid capital changes

London Stock Exchange PLC has reduced the value of its bid to buy up to 60 percent of European clearing house LCH.Clearnet to take into account new capital requirements being imposed by regulators. The Exchange said Monday that its offer values LCH.Clearnet at a provisional €15 ($19.83) a share, down from the March offer of around €20 a share. The overall value of the deal was not disclosed. It said...

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Stocks fall as hopes for a budget deal fade

Stocks are closing lower on concern that lawmakers will run out of time to reach a budget deal before year-end. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 52 points to close at 13,139 Monday in a shortened holiday trading session. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell three points to 1,427. The Nasdaq composite dropped 8 points to close at 3,013. Sen. Joe Lieberman said that it is now "more likely we'll...

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Actress Jennifer Lawrence named 'most desirable' woman

Jennifer Lawrence, you are the world's most desirable woman, according to an international poll released on Tuesday by the website AskMen. "The Hunger Games" star rose to the top of the list from No. 47 last year on the heels of the box-office smash while buffing her credibility as a quirky, sex-mad young widow in the independent film "Silver Linings Playbook," AskMen editor in chief James Bassil...

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"Hobbit" actor McKellen has prostate cancer

The Hobbit" actor Ian McKellen said in an interview published on Tuesday that he had had prostate cancer for the last six or seven years, but added that the disease was not life-threatening. McKellen, 73, played Gandalf in the hit "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy, and reprises the role in three prequels based on J.R.R. Tolkien's novel "The Hobbit". The first of those, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey",...

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World Chefs: Keller shares memories, spotlight in latest book

Thomas Keller, one of America's most respected chefs, shares the food memories of his childhood and his time in France in his new book "Bouchon Bakery," which is also the name of his chain of pastry shops in the United States. Keller is the only American chef who owns two three-Michelin-star restaurants - Per Se in New York City and The French Laundry in the Napa Valley wine region in California. Earlier...

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Australian DJs break silence over UK royal prank tragedy

Two Australian radio announcers who made a prank call to a British hospital treating Prince William's pregnant wife Kate broke a three-day silence on Monday to speak of their distress at the apparent suicide of the nurse who took their call. The 2DayFM Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, said the tragedy had left them "shattered, gutted, heartbroken". Greig and fellow presenter...

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Inside David Lynch's Paris art-studio hideaway

Behind the doors of a 19th-century printworks in south-central Paris, filmmaker and painter-by-training David Lynch takes a cigarette break after hours of etching abstract shapes and twisted limbs onto stone and wood. Although best known for dark, surreal movies such as "Eraserhead", "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive", Lynch was an artist before he began filmmaking and since 2007 has been using...

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4 SKoreans freed after being kidnapped in Nigeria

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Four South Korean construction workers and a Nigerian colleague who were kidnapped in southern Nigeria have been freed. The five employees of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. were preparing for the construction of factories when they were abducted by unidentified gunmen Monday in Bayelsa state. Bayelsa State police chief Kingsley Omire said Saturday that the kidnappers "freely...

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Burger King's Whopper returns to France

PARIS (AP) — For the first time in 15 years, Burger King served its flame-grilled Whoppers in France, a country better known for its gastronomy than fast food. Burger King Worldwide opened a restaurant at Marseille airport on Saturday, returning to France thanks to an agreement with Autogrill, which operates restaurants at highway service stations. The burger chain, the world's second biggest behind...

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Obama tries to rescue fiscal talks for post-Christmas deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday tried to rescue stalled talks on a fiscal crisis after a Republican plan imploded in Congress, but there was little headway as lawmakers and President Barack Obama abandoned Washington for Christmas. In remarks before flying to Hawaii for a break, Obama suggested reaching a short-term deal on taxes and extending unemployment insurance to avoid the worst...

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EU to give Spain, France more time to cut deficit: press

MADRID (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose giving Spain, France and several other euro zone states more time to cut their public deficits below the target limit of 3 percent of GDP, newspaper El Pais said on Saturday. Citing senior Spanish and European Union sources, the Madrid-based daily said France could get an extra year, allowing it to narrow its fiscal gap by 2014, while Spain would...

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Will he or won't he? Italy awaits Monti's decision

ROME (AP) — Italy's president dissolved parliament Saturday, setting the stage for general elections in February and leaving only one lingering question from Premier Mario Monti's 13-month term trying to fix Italy's troubled finances: whether he will run. Monti will announce his decision Sunday, ending weeks of speculation and jockeying that have dominated Italy's political discourse and preoccupied...

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World Series Goes to Game 7 After an Epic Win by St. Louis

After being one strike away from elimination in back-to-back innings, the St. Louis Cardinals twice rallied from two runs down towin an 11-inning classic and force Game 7 of the World Series. RELATED: The Texas Rangers' Campaign Against 'The Wave' The Cards trailed Texas by two runs in both the ninth and tenth innings, but got multiple clutch hits from the likes...

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Baseball Had A Really Good Night on Friday

So much for the risk of major media-market teams missing the World Series. Twenty-five million people watched Game Seven between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers.RELATED: A Wet World Series Forecast; NBA Players Plot World TourIt's a truism of sports journalism — at least of the shouty AM radio call-in show variety — that no one's really going to care about the World Series if a marquee...

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The Los Angeles Dodgers Are for Sale

After a months-long battle over the fate of one of baseball's iconic franchises, beleaguered owner Frank McCourt has finally agreed to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers. Major League Baseball announced the deal late last night, ending a bitter dispute that sent the team into bankruptcy and caused loyal fans to revolt.RELATED: L.A. Dodgers Set Record with $2 Billion SaleAccording to the Los Angeles Times,...

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Major League Baseball Catcher Is Kidnapped in Venezuela

Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos has reportedly been kidnapped in his home country of Venezuela. Four gunman took him from his house on Wednesday, but no demands have been made yet.RELATED: Pakistani Cricket Players Receive Jail Time for Fixing MatchesThis is the not the first time that a Major League Baseball player has been targeted for kidnapping, although usually it is family members...

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Warriors beat Hornets at home to stay hot

(Reuters) - The Golden State Warriors staved off a late fourth-quarter challenge to beat New Orleans Hornets 103-96 for a successful home return on Tuesday.David Lee had 26 points and nine rebounds while Klay Thompson added 19 points as the Warriors triumphed in their first game at Oracle Arena since a recent seven-game road trip that saw them finish 6-1.Despite the Golden State controlling the Hornets...

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TC to delay Google anti-trust probe decision: source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had been expected to wrap up an anti-trust probe into Google within days, will now delay its decision for weeks, a source said on Tuesday. Google has been accused of giving competitors in lucrative areas like travel a lower ranking in search results, thus making it harder for their customers to find them. Google has repeatedly denied...

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