This bus' next stop: doing good

Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't...

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Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers. The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them. After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition...

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Crafters send mittens with a message to Newtown

“Chester Raccoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried. ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ he told his mother. ‘I want to stay home with you. I want to play with my friends. And play with my toys. And read my books. And swing on my swing. Please may I stay home with you?’” — “The Kissing Hand,” by Audrey Penn.___NEW YORK (AP) — Imagining the horror for Sandy Hook Elementary students when they walk...

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated PressThe H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus. A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V. Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to...

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Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesKevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying...

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Boehner's 'fiscal cliff' plan fails

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly canceled a vote on his Plan B tax proposal late Thursday after failing to...

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Hard to Handle

The 2013 Mustang Shelby GT500 is many things: imposing, populist, expensive. It’s also the last car Carroll Shelby had a hand in building. And true to the legacy of the legendary racer and auto designer who helped define the modern sports car, the GT500 is a Mustang with more power than any sane individual needs.Its 5.8-liter supercharged V8 puts out a massive manufacturer-claimed 662 horsepower...

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Martha Raddatz, Hot Off Debate Performance, Promoted at ABC News

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Martha Raddatz, widely praised for her moderation of the vice presidential debate in October, has been given an expanded role as ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent. Jonathan Karl, meanwhile, will become the network’s new chief White House correspondent, filling the void left by Jake Tapper‘s exit to CNN.Raddatz will replace Tapper as the primary substitute for George...

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesSpeaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.” WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that...

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.The space agency said it has been flooded with...

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This Is How You Craft 16,000 Candy Canes in a Day

It might not be Christmas every day at Kencraft Candy, but it smells like it. At the height of the season, the Utah sweets factory churns out 16,000 candy canes per day. Click through the image gallery above to see how they do it.CookSixty pounds of corn syrup, 70 pounds of sugar, and 1.5 gallons of water (above) are loaded into a vacuum cooker and simmered at 272 degrees for 20 minutes. Then cooks...

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Why “Les Misérables” Looks Like a Holiday Box-Office Smash

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Moviegoers are storming online ticketing sites in advance of the Christmas release of “Les Misérables,” and the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical has all the makings of a holiday smash.With a cast that includes Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, expectations are enormous, but based on advance tracking, so is the box-office potential.The film, made for a reported...

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Jury awards $6.9 million to boy molested by L.A. Unified teacher

A jury has awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested by a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher when...

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The 15 Most Dangerous People in the World

There used to be an established order to the world. A structure to things. You couldn't print a gun like a term paper. It was impossible to wreck a nuclear production plant with a few lines of code. Flying robots didn't descend on you in the dead of night and kill you in your home. But that order has been upended. Cheap videos in California help spark riots in Cairo. Lynchpins of the Middle East...

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“Castle” star Nathan Fillion to preside over Writers Guild Awards show

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Pretend writer Nathan Fillion will help honor real writers on February 17, when he hosts the Writers Guild Awards West Coast show, the Writers Guild of America, West said Monday.Fillion, who plays a mystery novelist on ABC’s “Castle,” joked that he was “confused” when he was tapped for the hosting gig.“When I first accepted the honor of hosting the Writers Guild Awards,...

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care...

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry...

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Mahout, There It Is! Open Source Algorithms Remake Overstock.com

SALT LAKE CITY — Judd Bagley set out to build a web app that would serve up a never-ending stream of news stories tailored to your particular tastes. And he did. It’s called MyCurrent. But in creating this clever little app, Bagley also pushed online retailer Overstock.com away from the $2-million-a-year service it was using to generate product recommendations for web shoppers, and onto a...

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Ricky Gervais in negotiations for “The Muppets” sequel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ricky Gervais is in negotiations to star in “The Muppets” sequel at Disney, a representative for the actor told TheWrap.Ty Burrell was cast in the film earlier this month after Christoph Waltz dropped out.James Bobin, who directed the 2011 Muppets film, is directing the sequel, which he co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller.Filming is expected to begin in Europe early next year.The...

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Helping Unhappy Couples

A post on Monday discussed the forces that can make an older couple’s good marriage suddenly go bad — an array of subtle, and often-misunderstood, mental, physical and emotional factors that can upset the equilibrium of even the happiest marriages.Now we have consulted marriage counselors and geriatricians to find out what caregivers — either the grown children of the couple, or one of the spouses...

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Poland Finds It’s Not Immune to Euro Crisis

WARSAW — The Fiat factory in Tychy, Poland, has long been considered one of the most productive auto plants in Europe, often singled out for praise by the Italian company’s demanding chief executive, Sergio Marchionne. Rafal Klimkiewicz/The New York TimesThe assembly line at Fiat's Tychy factory in Poland, shown in 2009. Fiat recently announced layoffs at the factory. ...

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