Webster, N.Y., sniper's ex-neighbor charged with buying him guns

WASHINGTON — A former neighbor of the Webster, N.Y., sniper who killed two volunteer firefighters on Christmas Eve illegally...

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So Last Year: RIM Dumps Cloud Hosting Acquisition

Last year, RIM — maker of the BlackBerry smartphone line — acquired NewBay, a cloud hosting service, for $100 million. But on Friday, Synchronoss, a mobile software company, announced that it is buying NewBay from RIM for $55 million cash.The New Bay acquisition was seen as a way for RIM to compete with other file hosting and sync services, such as Apple iCloud, Amazon...

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Fans to join Beyonce onstage at Super Bowl

NEW YORK (AP) — All the single ladies — and fellas — will have a chance to join Beyonce onstage at the upcoming Super Bowl.Pepsi announced Friday that 100 fans will hit the stage when the Grammy-winning diva performs on Feb. 3 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. A contest that kicks off Saturday will allow fans to submit photos of themselves in various poses, including head bopping, feet...

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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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Senate Leaders Set to Work on a Last-Minute Tax Agreement

Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesIn a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that an agreement could be reached. WASHINGTON — At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers...

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Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf dies at 78

Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces...

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John McAfee Tells World How He Fooled Cops and Escaped Belize

One of the reporters who snuck out of Belize with John McAfee earlier this month said the adventure was “dangerous, amazing, touching, and many other adjectives that I cannot remember right now.”Turns out that the words that eluded him were “rainy” and “lucky.”On the day after Christmas, McAfee posted a long blog post describing how he gave Belizean authorities the slip and snuck out of the...

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‘Rescue Me’ singer Fontella Bass dies

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Fontella Bass, a St. Louis-born soul singer who hit the top of the R&B charts with “Rescue Me” in 1965, has died. She was 72.Bass died Wednesday night at a St. Louis hospice of complications from a heart attack suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, said. Bass had also suffered a series of strokes over the past seven years.“She was an outgoing person,” Mitchell...

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7-Eleven Stores Focus on Healthier Food Options

The chain that is home of the Slurpee, Big Gulp and self-serve nachos with chili and cheese is betting that consumers will stop in for yogurt parfaits, crudité and lean turkey on whole wheat bread. 7-Eleven, the convenience store chain, is restocking its shelves with an eye toward health. Over the last year, the retailer has introduced a line of fresh foods for the calorie conscious and trimmed...

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Latest Netflix Disruption Highlights Challenges of Cloud Computing

For some on Christmas Eve, “White Christmas” was a blackout on Netflix. That’s because problems with Amazon’s cloud computing service, which provides storage and computing power for all kinds of Web sites and services, caused Netflix to go down for much of the day. In updates on a Web site that reports on the status of its online services, Amazon traced the trouble to Elastic Load...

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Deadly storm moves on to Northeast

A massive storm system upended post-Christmas travel plans Wednesday as it marched toward the Northeast after dumping snow and...

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Google Music Self-Censoring Naughty Lyrics for Some Users

Cee-Lo’s F*#$ You has a great beat and all, but it’s not the type of thing you want queuing up with grandma in the room. No worries. Google’s got you covered. Some Google Music users complain the service is randomly replacing expletive-intensive songs with the duller, cleaner versions.The Google Music Scan and Match feature has earned the wrath of some users by replacing...

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Police investigate NBC News anchor for showing gun clip

(Reuters) – NBC News anchor David Gregory is being investigated by police after displaying what he said was a high-capacity gun clip on Sunday’s broadcast of “Meet the Press,” Washington‘s Metropolitan Police Department said Wednesday.Gregory held up what appeared to be a 30-round gun magazine – which would be barred under Washington municipal code – while hosting the nationally broadcast interview...

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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 of Continuum Health Partners, which owns Beth Israel, Roosevelt and St. Luke's hospitals, said he noticed more mentally ill people in the streets now  than he had in years. 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...

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The iEconomy: Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China

The iEconomy: Factory Upgrade: Small changes are made at two factories in China.CHENGDU, China — One day last summer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift inspecting iPad cases when she received a beige wooden chair with white stripes and a high, sturdy back. At first, Ms. Pu wondered if someone had made a mistake. But when her bosses walked by, they just nodded curtly. So Ms. Pu gently...

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Lakers snap Christmas Day streak with win over Knicks

Lakers 100, Knicks 94 (final)The Lakers closed out the New York Knicks on Christmas Day to win their fifth in a row, avenging...

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A Look Inside Tarantino's <em>Django Unchained</em> Comic Book

Django Unchained opens in theaters today, but the big screen isn’t the only way to see the newest work by Quentin Tarantino. The issue of the Django Unchained comic book mini-series from DC/Vertigo Comics is available now in comic book stores (and online), and in advance of tomorrow’s film debut, Wired has a look at the Tarantino’s introduction to...

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Jessica Simpson’s Christmas gift: She’s pregnant

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Simpson‘s daughter has the news all spelled out: “Big Sis.”Simpson on Tuesday tweeted a photo of her baby daughter Maxwell playing in the sand, the words “Big Sis” spelled out.The 32-year-old old singer and personality has been rumored to be expecting again. The tweet appears to confirm the rumors.“Merry Christmas from my family to yours” is the picture’s caption. Simpson used...

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Op-Ed Contributor: Our Failed Approach to Schizophrenia

TOO many pendulums have swung in the wrong directions in the United States. I am not referring only to the bizarre all-or-nothing rhetoric around gun control, but to the swing in mental health care over the past 50 years: too little institutionalizing of teenagers and young adults (particularly men, generally more prone to violence) who have had a recent onset of schizophrenia; too little education...

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Square Feet: Pier 17 Mall Has Upgrades Planned After Hurricane Sandy

SHoP ArchitectsA rendering shows plans to transform the Pier 17 shopping mall at South Street Seaport. Nearly two months after Hurricane Sandy devastated the South Street Seaport on the East River in Lower Manhattan, Dumpsters still line its cobblestone streets and nearly all of the stores west of Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive remain closed. But the storm surge largely spared Pier 17, the seaport’s...

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Dueling Santa trackers are off and running

A screen grab from Google's Santa Tracker. (Google / December 24, 2012)...

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