Dec
30

Negotiations Break Down on Debt Agreement

Pete Souza/The White House, via NBCPresident Obama spoke with David Gregory of NBC's "Meet The Press" in the Blue Room of the White House during an interview taped on Saturday. WASHINGTON — Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew their demand that a deal...
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Dec
28

Some Arctic seals now officially listed as threatened with extinction

First came the polar bear. Now, the federal government has added two other marine mammals to the list of creatures threatened...
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Facebook Shares Fall Briefly Amid Report of Instagram Quitters

The fallout from Instagram’s terms of service change that wasn’t actually changed continued Friday. Facebook, which owns the popular social media app, saw its stock price fall 3 percent amid a report that the TOS flap cost Instagram 25 percent of its users.Whether that number is accurate — Instagram insists it isn’t — was almost beside the point as Facebook saw shares fall to $25.22 before...
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Matt Damon tackles “fracking” issue in the “Promised Land”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The hot-button topic of “fracking” has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie “Promised Land,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or “fracking,” which has sparked nation-wide environmental...
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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSenator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center. NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients. While the medical center had been treating...
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Dec
27

USC football: Matt Barkley will not play in Sun Bowl

Matt Barkley winces in pain after being sacked during USC's loss to UCLA. ...
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No One Uses Smart TV Internet Because It Sucks

People aren’t using their internet-connected smart TVs for anything beyond, well, watching TV. It turns out, nobody wants to tweet from their TV. Or read books. Or do whatever it is people do on LinkedIn. Worse, more than 40 percent of the people who buy a connected TV aren’t even using it for its ostensible primary purpose: getting online video onto the biggest screen in your home. What gives?We...
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“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72

(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big...
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New York’s Mental Health System Thrashed by Services Lost to Storm

Marcus Yam for The New York TimesDr. Richard Rosenthal, physician in chief of behavioral services for Continuum hospitals, at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. When a young woman in the grip of paranoid delusions threatened a neighbor with a meat cleaver one Saturday last month, the police took her by ambulance to the nearest psychiatric emergency room. Or rather, they took her to Beth Israel...
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Dec
26

Toyota to pay at least $1.2 billion to settle sudden-acceleration lawsuit

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