China's smog taints economy, health

BEIJING — When a thick quilt of smog enveloped swaths of China earlier this month, it set in motion a costly chain reaction...

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Crazy Alien Weather: Lightning-Filled Rocket Dust Storms of Mars

Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes,...

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Disney says JJ Abrams to direct next ‘Star Wars’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s official. The force is with J.J. Abrams.The Walt Disney Co. issued a statement Friday night confirming reports that had been circulating for two days that Abrams, Emmy-award-winning creator of TV’s “Lost” and director of 2009′s “Star Trek” movie, has been pegged to direct the seventh installment of the “Star Wars” franchise.“J.J. is the perfect director to helm this,” said...

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday. If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States...

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized...

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Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. <em>Period</em>.

Facebook recently ran an experiment. Inside a test lab, somewhere behind the scenes at the world’s most popular network, engineers sidled up to a computer server loaded with software that typically drives the Facebook website and started messing with the CPU.Every processor includes something called a cache — a place to temporarily store data without sending it all the way back to a machine’s...

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“Hansel and Gretel” is Grimm news for weekend box-office rivals

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Hansel and Gretel,” a Grimm’s fairy tale on special effects and 3D steroids, is ready to wreak some box-office havoc this weekend on its way to the number one spot.Paramount has exerted considerable marketing muscle behind the R-rated action fantasy, and it seems to be connecting. “Hansel and Gretel” will take in more than $ 25 million over the three days, industry analysts...

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The New Old Age Blog: Time to Recognize Mild Cognitive Disorder?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published and periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association, is one of those documents few laypeople ever read, but many of us are affected by.It can make it easier or harder to get an insurance company or Medicare to cover treatments, for example. It factors into a variety of legal and governmental decisions.And on a personal...

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ENI Makes a Push Toward the Top of Oil and Gas

MILAN — Tucked away in a building on the outskirts of Milan is the “nirvana room,” so called perhaps because of the good tidings it contains. There, geologists working for the Italian oil company ENI don 3-D glasses to contemplate day-glow images of underground geological formations and try to divine which might be worth tens of millions of dollars in exploratory drilling. The mood around...

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California unions grow, bucking U.S. trend

The latest snapshot of the U.S. working class shows that unions are in trouble, their ranks thinning amid a backlash against...

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Lookin' Hot in the Cold: Technical Outerwear for Winter

Winter outerwear has come a long way from the clammy straight-jackets your mom would wrap around you every time you wanted to go outside.Every year, we see jackets, shells, bibs and pants that are more breathable, lighter, stretchier, and just plain better-looking than last year's crop. We sifted through the countless options on the racks and selected a dozen or...

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From bombastic to beloved, Joachim Sauer’s trip to Wagner’s “grail”

BERLIN (Reuters) – In his youth, theoretical chemist Joachim Sauer found the music of Richard Wagner “bombastic”. All that changed when he was in his early 20s with a chance encounter with Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’.Now the annual Wagner summer festival in Bayreuth is one of the few occasions when the media-shy Sauer is seen in public with his wife, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.This year, the bicentenary...

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Euro Watch: Data Point to Slow Recovery in Euro Zone

The euro zone economy took a step closer to recovery this month as the rate of decline in the bloc’s private sector eased more than expected, a business survey showed on Thursday. But in an indication of the hurdles left to scale, Spain’s unemployment surged to 26 percent in the fourth quarter, a record high since measurements began in the 1970s, as a prolonged recession and deep spending...

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Dodgers near TV rights deal with Time Warner Cable

The Los Angeles Dodgers have negotiated a long-term television deal that would pay the team $7 billion to $8 billion, a move...

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Falling Photos Force Us to Face Our Fundamental Fears

Kerry Skarbakka wants to capture the feeling you get when you’re about to eat it — wrecking your bike, tripping down the stairs, falling off a ladder — and you know it. The ground comes flying up and for a split second you’re resigned to letting events take their course. To do that, he voluntarily throws himself off of things and takes a photo in midair.He sets up these falling photos by scoping...

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Vegan pizza, smoked salmon Oscars on offer at post-Oscars ball

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hollywood’s elite will chow down on vegan pizza and kale salad in addition to the traditional smoked salmon Oscars at the annual Governor’s Ball after next month’s Academy Awards ceremony, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced on Tuesday.Unveiling his menu for the year’s biggest movie party, Puck said chicken pot pie with shaved black truffles, mini Kobe burgers, Japanese...

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The New Old Age Blog: Study Links Cognitive Deficits, Hearing Loss

There’s another reason to be concerned about hearing loss — one of the most common health conditions in older adults and one of the most widely undertreated. A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests that elderly people with compromised hearing are at risk of developing cognitive deficits — problems with memory and thinking — sooner than those whose hearing is intact.The study...

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DealBook: Microsoft May Back Dell Buyout

The effort to take Dell private has gained a prominent, if unusual, backer: Microsoft.The software giant is in talks to help finance a takeover bid for Dell that would exceed $20 billion, a person briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. Microsoft is expected to contribute up to several billion dollars.An investment by Microsoft — if it comes to pass — could be enough to push a leveraged buyout of the...

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County official calls car leasing contract procedure 'embarrassing'

Auditors reviewing a $1.75-million car leasing contract given to a company with a politically connected lobbying firm found...

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Fitness Trackers Are Long on Hype, Short on Credibility

We are awash in personal data trackers. There are wristbands, headbands, watches, smart scales, helmets and even forks to help us track our weight, heart rate, blood pressure and glucose level while logging how far we walk and how many calories we burn. All this information is supposed to give us behavior-morphing insights into our personal health habits.Trouble is, no one can say for sure...

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