Obama spoke with House Speaker Boehner, others on “fiscal cliff”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama spoke with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner over the weekend on efforts to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of budget cuts and tax rises that threatens to tip the U.S. economy back into recession.A White House official said on Monday that Obama also spoke with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat, and said discussions among...

Read More..

Feds charge Intrade with illegally allowing bets

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators on Monday sued Intrade, the online prediction market that gained popularity as an informal oddsmaker for the presidential election, saying it illegally let customers bet on future economic data, the price of gold and even acts of war.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a complaint in federal court that Intrade and its operator solicited customers to trade...

Read More..

Dog days in Cuba: from shih tzus to schnauzers

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban capital has played host to political summits and art festivals, ballet tributes and international baseball competitions. Now dog lovers are getting their chance to take center stage.Hundreds of people from all over Cuba and several other countries came to a scruffy field near Revolution Plaza this past week to preen and fuss over the shih tzus, beagles, schnauzers and cocker...

Read More..

Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.These...

Read More..

U.S. musician Marcus Miller hurt in Swiss bus crash

ZURICH (Reuters) – U.S. jazz musician Marcus Miller was injured on Sunday along with members of his band when their bus crashed in Switzerland, killing the driver, police said.The two-time Grammy winner was travelling with 10 members of his band from Monte Carlo in Monaco to Hengelo in the Netherlands when the bus crashed on the highway near the town of Schattdorf in central Switzerland.A Swiss police...

Read More..

Detecting Cancer…With a Cellphone?

Smartphone technology is often seen as much of nuisance as it is a convenience, but having that kind of communicative power at our fingertips has a surprising advantage; it’s serving as a bridge, bringing  healthcare to third world countries that had previously been too remote and too costly to reach.The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is spearheading one use of smartphone technology in...

Read More..

Apple seeks to add more products to Samsung patent lawsuit

(Reuters) – Apple Inc has asked a federal court to add six more products to its patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co, including the Samsung Galaxy Note II, in the latest in move in an ongoing legal war between the two companies.The case is one of two patent infringement lawsuits pending in the U.S. District Court in San Jose by Apple against Samsung. An earlier lawsuit by Apple...

Read More..

Israel successfully tests missile defense system

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel successfully tested its newest missile defense system Sunday, the military said, a step toward making the third leg of what Israel calls its “multilayer missile defense” operational.The “David’s Sling” system is designed to stop mid-range missiles. It successfully passed its test, shooting down its first missile in a drill Sunday in southern Israel, the military said.The system...

Read More..

Russia blames technical error for brief YouTube blacklisting

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian officials offered assurances they were not seeking to block access to YouTube on Wednesday, saying a technical error caused the popular video-sharing website to appear briefly on a register of sites containing banned content.For about an hour, YouTube was listed on the newly-created register, which the government says is needed to fight child pornography but critics of President...

Read More..

More than 350 African migrants intercepted off Italy

ROME (Reuters) – Italian coastguards said they had intercepted and picked up 358 African migrants attempting to reach Italy in two overcrowded vessels on Saturday.Two hundred and thirty-five of the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were travelling in a rickety wooden boat and the other 123 were spotted on a rubber dinghy, said the coastguards.A coastguard spokesman, who was unable to give any information...

Read More..