Prison riot continues in Venezuela with 55 reported dead

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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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Singer Barry Manilow ill, Broadway comeback delayed

(Reuters) – Singer Barry Manilow on Thursday canceled the opening night and three other performances of his Broadway comeback run after coming down with bronchitis, according to Manilow‘s website.The cancellations threaten to upend the “Could It Be Magic” singer’s return to Broadway following a more than two-decade absence.The concerts, which had been slated for Thursday through Sunday, will be made...

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The Haggler: When Customer Service Is a Dead-End Street

SEVERAL readers have surprised the Haggler by rising to the defense of McDonald’s and its in-store ad for the McRib sandwich — “It’s real pork!” — as described in our last episode. The ad suggests that McDonald’s thinks that its customers have pathetically low expectations about the chain’s raw materials. Just as bad, it breaks the Haggler’s unwritten rule that companies should never boast about the...

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Protesters slam Egypt government two years after revolution

CAIRO -- Young men and boys clashed with security forces as tens of thousands of Egyptians protested Friday against the Islamist-led...

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Jonathan Coulton Explains How <em>Glee</em> Ripped Off His Cover Song &mdash; And Why He's Not Alone

Fans of indie musician Jonathan Coulton were incensed last week when an alleged Glee version of “Baby Got Back” surfaced on the internet that seemed to shamelessly rip off Coulton’s distinctive arrangement of the 1992 Sir Mix-A-Lot song. Last night, that cover version was confirmed as an official Glee track when it appeared on the mid-season premiere of the Fox show, and is currently for sale...

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Veteran showman Dick Van Dyke reflects on lifetime’s work

(Reuters) – From “Mary Poppins” to “Night at the Museum” and his own long-running TV comedy, Dick Van Dyke has done it all during a show business career spanning seven decades.On Sunday, Van Dyke, 87, gets a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles, just a year after his 1960s “Dick Van Dyke Show” co-star Mary Tyler Moore received the same honor.Reuters spoke to Van Dyke...

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DealBook: Rumble on Basic Cable, as Ackman Takes On Icahn Live

For about 15 minutes on Friday afternoon, all of Wall Street was tuned into the battle that everyone wanted to see: William A. Ackman taking on Carl C. Icahn, live on air.And the battle proved even stranger than anyone would have expected: Profanities were dropped; old battles were refought; taunts were slung.Years of bad blood between the two hedge fund magnates spilled publicly onto CNBC’s airwaves,...

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'California did the impossible,' Brown says in State of the State

SACRAMENTO -- In a strident and sweeping State of the State address, Gov. Jerry Brown declared Thursday morning that "California...

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Hands-On: Vine Is Twitter's Bet on an Easy Video-Sharing App

Twitter has just leapfrogged everyone in the mobile, social video space with Vine, a video-sharing app that’s actually easy to use. The company has introduced Vine, a new app that allows you to share six-second looping video creations with your friends on social networks. Vine also officially announced it has been acquired by Twitter, though it by no means is a Twitter-exclusive experience.We...

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Beyonce lets others do talking on lip-synch drama

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Beyonce‘s lips remained sealed on Wednesday over her headline-making rendition of the U.S. national anthem at President Barack Obama‘s inauguration, leaving others to do the talking over whether she lip-synched to a pre-recorded track.Celebrity magazine Us Weekly quoted a source saying the Grammy-winning artist was disappointed by the controversy she stirred by singing “The...

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The N.T.S.B. Sees Lengthy Inquiry Into 787 Dreamliner

Deborah A.P. Hersman, chairwoman of the board, said a battery that caught fire in a 787 parked at a gate at Logan Airport in Boston showed signs of short-circuiting and of a “thermal runaway,” in which a chemical reaction begins to overheat the battery and speeds up as the temperature increases. But Ms. Hersman described these as “symptoms,” and pointedly declined to say whether those problems were...

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Panetta opens combat roles to women

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaking during a news conference in London. Panetta has removed US military ban on women...

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Instructables, The App, Comes to iOS

DIY website Instructables released its first mobile app today, an iPhone tool that lets users view and create project how-tos from anywhere.“A lot of people don’t have a true camera in their pocket,” says Instructables founder and CEO Eric Wilhelm. “They’ve got their phone. And so we just wanted to be right there.”Wilhelm has plenty of first-hand experience, with 142 projects to his name....

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Shia LaBeouf’s “Charlie Countryman” finds love in gritty Romania

Park City, Utah (Reuters) – Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood spin a twist on classic fairytales in their new film “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman,” a modern day love story that swaps castles in the sky for the underbelly of Romania’s capital, Bucharest.The film, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this week, is a dark story of love unfolding between two unlikely people against the...

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Phys Ed: Is There an Ideal Running Form?

In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with...

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DealBook: Q. & A. on Wall Street's Untouchables

3:12 p.m. | Updated On Tuesday, “Frontline” investigated why the leaders of Wall Street had escaped prosecution for their role in the country’s financial crisis.Peter Eavis of DealBook moderating a conversation with the show’s producer, Martin Smith. Watch the show above and review the Q. and A. bel...

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From the jury pool: Former Bell officials 'raped constituents'

Dozens of jurors were waiting to be questioned Tuesday in a Los Angeles courtroom as defense lawyers and prosecutors began selecting...

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Mozilla's First Firefox OS Phones Are Here, and You Can't Have One

The first two official Firefox phones are here, but the odds are you’ll never get your hands on one. They’re for developers only.On Tuesday, Mozilla and Spanish phone-maker Geeksphone announced the first two Firefox OS developer preview handsets — the Keon and the Peak. Both models, which will be sold only to developers, fall in line with what Mozilla says the Firefox...

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Walters expects to leave hospital soon

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Walters says she expects to be home from the hospital soon after taking a spill at a Saturday night party at the British ambassador’s home in Washington.The veteran ABC newswoman thanked people who expressed concern in a statement read Monday on “The View.”She says she’s running a low-grade fever and doctors don’t want to release her until her temperature is normal. She says...

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Well Pets: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor house cat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated —...

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