"Cliff" concerns give way to earnings focus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week. Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current...

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Digital Technology Is Making Its Mark in Cuba

Jose Goitia for The New York TimesThe director Carlos Lechuga at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. HAVANA — Sebastián Miló barely had enough money to put gasoline in the aged bus that ferried his crew to the set each day, let alone to pay actors a salary. But Mr. Miló, a 33-year-old Cuban filmmaker, had a Canon 5D digital camera and a story to tell. So, during...

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Cricketer Herath alive and bowling despite death rumors

SYDNEY (Reuters) – As Mark Twain might have said, rumors of the death of Sri Lankan spinner Rangana Herath which spread like wildfire across social media late on Friday proved to be greatly exaggerated.Far from lying in a Sydney morgue alongside former test bowler Chaminda Vaas after perishing in a car crash as the reports had suggested, Herath was very much alive when he pitched up for work at the...

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Courteney Cox: I'll 'Show My Boobs' on the New Season of Cougar Town

TV Watch 01/04/2013 at 08:00 PM EST Courteney Cox is taking the term "boob tube" literally.The Cougar Town star, 48, whose show moves from ABC to TBS on Jan. 8, eagerly anticipates more um, revealing scenes once the program makes its way to the cable network. "You will not see one scene that I don't show my...

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FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are...

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Stock futures add gains after jobs report

Breakups can be painful. But on the bright side, they can lead to some creative revenge schemes. To wit: A spurned New Zealand woman sold the secret locations to her ex-boyfriend's favorite fishing spots, netting $3,000, which she then spent on herself. The drama went down in January of 2012 but is just now getting [....

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India Ink: Lawmakers in India Charged With Crime Could Face Speedier Trials

India’s Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to consider fast-tracking trials of lawmakers who are facing criminal charges, lawyers said, after activists filed a petition demanding legislators accused of abusing women be disqualified from public office.Six state legislators have charges of rape against them, and 36 have been charged with other crimes against women, according to a Dec. 20 report...

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Huawei launches the Ascend P1 in the U.S. for $450 through Amazon

Despite its attempts to attract new customers with high-end phones, Huawei (002502) remains relatively unknown to U.S. consumers. The company is looking to change that and on Thursday announced the availability of the Ascend P1 smartphone. The Android-powered device is equipped with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and an 8-megapixel rear camera. The handset...

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Gabby Giffords to Meet Privately with Sandy Hook Families

By Andrea Billups 01/04/2013 at 08:00 AM EST Gabrielle Giffords, the former member of Congress from Arizona who was gunned down at a Tucson shopping center two years ago – and then courageously fought to recover from her injuries – will meet privately Friday with the families of the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Conn.The event will be held...

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Indian court to rule on generic drug industry

NEW DELHI (AP) — From Africa's crowded AIDS clinics to the malarial jungles of Southeast Asia, the lives of millions of ill people in the developing world are hanging in the balance ahead of a legal ruling that will determine whether India's drug companies can continue to provide cheap versions of many life-saving medicines.The case — involving Swiss drug maker Novartis AG's cancer drug Glivec — pits...

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Stock futures drop after rally as investors book profit

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street was set for a slightly lower open on Thursday, as investors lock in gains after a rally Wednesday, which was spurred by a deal by U.S. lawmakers to avert a "fiscal cliff" of austerity measures that had been due to kick in this year. Earlier losses in U.S. stock index futures Thursday were capped by better-than-expected data that showed U.S. private-sector...

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Depardieu, in Tax Fight, Gets Russian Citizenship

MOSCOW (AP) — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has waged a battle against a proposed super-tax on millionaires in his native country, has been granted Russian citizenship. A brief announcement on the Kremlin website on Thursday revealed that President Vladimir Putin signed the citizenship grant following an application from the actor. The former Oscar nominee and star of the...

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Fake John le Carré Twitter Account Fakes J.K. Rowling’s Fake Twitter Death

We’ve seen “Cormac McCarthy” Tweet apocalyptic non sequiturs. “Philip Roth” promised us a bite-sized short story. Now a fake Twitter account for British spy novelist John le Carré is spreading bizarre death rumors about J.K. Rowling. After a few days of Tweeting harmless missives, the week-old handle @JLecarre dropped this would-be bombshell on its nearly 2,500 followers Wednesday...

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Brandy: My Proposal Was a 'Spontaneous Thing'

By Mark Gray 01/03/2013 at 07:30 AM EST Ryan Press and Brandy Al Powers/Powers Imagery/Invision/AP Brandy had no idea that her fiancé Ryan Press had plans to ask for her hand in marriage last week. Then again, she doesn't think her beau knew he was going to, either. "It...

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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky

NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak...

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Wall Street set for rally in wake of fiscal pact

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street was set to rally on the first trading day of 2013, after lawmakers agreed a deal to avoid massive tax hikes and spending cuts that had threatened to hurt economic growth. The gains would come after stocks ended 2012 with their strongest day in more than a month, which put the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, after a flat performance in 2011. ...

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IHT Rendezvous: Hoping to End Decades-long Kurdish Conflict, Turkey Calls on Archenemy

LONDON — Turkish intelligence agents have been making the short hop from Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara to the prison Island of Imrali in recent weeks for talks with a jailed Kurdish separatist leader who was once Turkey’s most wanted man.Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the P.K.K., has been languishing on Imrali since he was captured in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999 while on...

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Your Snapchats aren’t safe: How to secretly save videos from Snapchat or Facebook’s ‘Poke’

Argue though its executives might, Snapchat is good for two things: sending photos and videos of yourself making stupid faces, and sending photos and videos of yourself naked. The latter, of course, is the more compelling function since that is exactly what the app was designed for. When users send pictures or videos, the recipient can only view them for a set amount of time before they “self-destruct.”...

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Betty White Wants to Share Kim Kardashian's Boyfriend - in New Clip

TV Watch People Exclusive By Maggie Coughlan 01/02/2013 at 08:50 AM EST Kim Kardashian (left) and Betty White Trae Patton/NBC Talk about an odd couple.Kim Kardashian joins Betty White for the veteran actress's NBC series Betty White's Off Their Rockers – premiering...

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.It's a small study and does not prove...

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Senate approves "fiscal cliff" deal, crisis eased

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives. In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent...

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In Hong Kong, Rival Protests Are Divided Over LeaderIn Hong Kong, Rival Protests Are Divided Over Leader

HONG KONG — Thousands of demonstrators in rival marches crowded through Hong Kong’s main shopping district on Tuesday to praise or condemn the city’s chief executive, who appears to retain the confidence of leaders in Beijing despite a series of controversies at home. The New Year’s Day marches underlined deep political divisions in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory that Britain returned...

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Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

LONDON (Reuters) – Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea‘s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011...

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