Scientists to resume work with lab-bred bird flu

WASHINGTON (AP) — International scientists who last year halted controversial research with the deadly bird flu say they are resuming their work as countries adopt new rules to ensure safety.The outcry erupted when two labs — in the Netherlands and the U.S. — reported they had created easier-to-spread versions of bird flu. Amid fierce debate about the oversight of such research and whether it might...

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Tech stocks lift Dow, Nasdaq; S&P holds flat

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and Nasdaq advanced on Wednesday, lifted by IBM and Google whose stronger-than-expected profits helped to alleviate growing investor concern about the tech sector. IBM's and Google's earnings, released after Tuesday's close, were the latest reassuring fourth-quarter results that pushed the Dow and S&P 500 to five-year highs as worries about the "fiscal...

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IHT Rendezvous: Reverberations After the Bolshoi Attack

When a hooded assailant flung acid in the face of Sergei Filin, the director of the Bolshoi Ballet, late on Thursday night in Moscow, the attack almost instantly made headlines worldwide.Although doctors have now said that Mr. Filin will not lose his sight in both eyes, the extent of the damage to his vision and face is not yet known. The viciousness of the intention — blindness, disfigurement, pain...

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Apple slips, BlackBerry slides and Windows Phone stalls in December

Kantar Worldpanel’s December smartphone market share numbers are out. And they are as fascinating as ever. Kantar pegs the BlackBerry market share in America as 1.1% last month, down from 1.4% in November. Surprisingly, Windows Phone’s market share also ticked down to 2.6% in December from 2.7% in November. That might be a statistical artifact, but it is surprising not to see a substantial boost in...

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Do You Recognize Matt Bomer and his White Collar Costars as Babies?

White Collar Stars' Baby PicturesAs the crime series returns to TV, see how the stars of the USA series have grown up Credit: Courtesy USA; Inset: Getty Updated: Tuesday Jan 22, 2013 | 01:00 PM EST Subscribe Now ...

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Dow, S&P 500 edge higher as earnings eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks mostly edged up on Tuesday after ending last week at five-year highs, but gains were limited with investors showing caution as the earnings season picks up speed. Both the Dow and the Standard & Poor's 500 closed at five-year highs on Friday, boosted by better-than-expected results in the early part of the earnings season. Although major companies have...

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home...

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Syria Opposition Postpones Formation of Transitional Government

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria once again failed to form a transitional government in exile on Monday, deciding instead to postpone the step while new proposals are drawn up. The development at a conference in Istanbul was apparently a setback to the opposition’s plans to fill the power vacuum created by nearly two years of ever bloodier civil war. The National...

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Rumored Xbox 720 specs: 8-core processor, 8GB of RAM, 800MHz GPU

Console gamers frustrated that their Xbox isn’t holding up well compared to high-end gaming PCs can relax a bit, because it looks like the next-generation Xbox is going to be a monster. It seems that website VGleaks has gotten ahold of leaked specifications for the Xbox 720, which it says will include an 8-core 1.6GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, an 800MHz graphics processor, a 50GB 6x Blu-ray Disc...

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Prince Harry 'Thrilled' Over Royal Pregnancy

By Simon Perry 01/21/2013 at 02:40 PM EST Prince Harry is on his way home from the war zone and says he "can't wait" to become an uncle."Obviously I'm thrilled for both of them," Harry, 28, says of his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate, joking, "It's about time." In an interview in Afghanistan, where he served since September,...

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