Jerry Brown readjusts his stand on the environment vs. business

SACRAMENTO — When Gov. Jerry Brown spoke to a crowd of beaming environmentalists and renewable energy advocates at the launch...

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The Best of Exploration: Top 8 Stories of Space Exploration in 2012

Our recap of the year’s best exploratory exploits continues today with a look at the biggest developments in space exploration. 2012 saw the stunning debut of new spacecraft (Curiosity), the continued contributions of geriatric ones (Voyager), and the first full year since the end of the Space Shuttle program. Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society nominated 8 particularly meaningful developments from...

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Is Tom Cruise still a go-to action hero? Hollywood, “Jack Reacher” say yes

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Given his age and the tough year he’s had in the tabloids, is Tom Cruise still a go-to guy when Hollywood is looking for an action hero?The answer is yes, based on the performance of his current movie, Paramount‘s “Jack Reacher.” It’s taken in $ 45 million in the 10 days since opening with $ 15.6 million in a very crowded and competitive holiday market. Its second week...

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Letters: Recovery After Trauma

To the Editor: Re “A New Focus on the ‘Post’ in Post-Traumatic Stress” (Mind, Dec. 25): Social contexts are well-established predictors of adjustment following trauma. Sexual abuse survivors who are believed and supported following an abuse disclosure fare better than those who are not, and returning veterans’ social support predicts P.T.S.D. over and above the extent of military trauma exposure....

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On the Road: With Demand Dropping, Airlines Focus on Fees

IN a move being watched by competitors, American Airlines is experimenting with a new pricing option that eliminates the potential penalty fee for changing flights for customers who pay a little extra for a basic coach ticket. The initiative is arguably counterintuitive because domestic airlines have been piling up money in recent years from all sorts of fees — baggage fees and the change-penalty...

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Venezuela's Hugo Chavez said to suffer 'complications'

CARACAS, Venezuela — Hugo Chavez has suffered "new complications" after his cancer surgery in Cuba, his vice president said...

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Wired Science's Top Image Galleries of the Year

Many of our most popular posts are image galleries, and this year our readers favorite collections included microscope photos, doomsday scenarios, auroras and lots of images of Earth from space.The satellite image above of Brasilia is part of the most popular post of the year.Above: I think it's safe to say that our readers like looking at images of Earth from space almost as much as we do. Satellite...

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UK “X Factor” winner regains top chart spot

LONDON (Reuters) – James Arthur, winner of this year’s British version of the “X Factor” TV talent show, saw his debut single climb back to number one in the British pop charts on Sunday.Arthur’s “Impossible” shot straight to the top earlier this month but was overtaken last week by a tribute song to the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”,...

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Chinese Firm Is Cleared to Buy American DNA Sequencing Company

Ramin Rahimian for The New York TimesDNA sequencing machines at Complete Genomics in California. The firm dismissed concerns about its acquisition. The federal government has given national security clearance to the controversial purchase of an American DNA sequencing company by a Chinese firm. The Chinese firm, BGI-Shenzhen, said in a statement this weekend that its acquisition of Complete...

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Mattel to Give Thomas the Tank Engine a Multimillion-Dollar Sheen

LOS ANGELES — One of the oldest preschool entertainment and toy franchises, Thomas the Tank Engine, is about to get a new marketing push. Will parents get on board? Mattel agreed last year to pay a hefty $680 million for Hit Entertainment, the British owner of Thomas, a cheery blue locomotive first introduced in a 1946 book. Starting in January, the toy manufacturer hopes to turn the...

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Buddhist temple doesn't always inspire peaceful reactions

The sound of chanting echoed through the makeshift temple, to the slow steady pulse of a drum.Forty-nine days had passed since...

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Ambitious Tome Chronicles the Rise of a New Urbanist Community

Visions of Seaside is an upcoming 608-page hardcover book that documents how the theory of New Urbanism was put into practice in the construction of a small town in Florida in 1981. The book will contain over 1,000 drawings, photographs and diagrams created for Seaside, the first fully New Urbanist town, along with academic essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture...

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Praying Hitler in ex-Warsaw ghetto sparks emotion

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A statue of Adolf Hitler praying on his knees is on display in the former Warsaw Ghetto, the place where so many Jews were killed or sent to their deaths by Hitler’s regime, and it is provoking mixed reactions.The work, “HIM” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, has drawn many visitors since it was installed last month. It is visible only from a distance, and the artist doesn’t...

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Senate Leaders Racing to Beat Fiscal Deadline

WASHINGTON — Senate leaders and their aides spent Saturday searching for a formula to extend tax cuts for most Americans that could win bipartisan support in the Senate and final approval in the fractious House by the new year, hoping to prevent large tax increases and budget cuts that could threaten the fragile economy. As part of the last-minute negotiations, the lawmakers were haggling...

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Anxious New Yorkers grapple with second subway death in a month

NEW YORK — As police continued searching Friday for a woman who witnesses say sent a man to his death by pushing him into an...

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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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L.A. gun buyback program breaks a record

A one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles on Wednesday gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two rocket...

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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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KOL’s Nathan Followill, Jessie Baylin welcome baby

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Kings of Leon family has just gotten bigger.Drummer Nathan Followill and his wife, singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin, welcomed a baby girl on Wednesday. It’s the first baby for the couple and the third for the Followill family band. Nathan Followill’s brother Caleb and cousin Matthew also have children.A spokesman says Violet Marlowe Followill was born at 4:01 p.m. in Nashville....

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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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Toyota to pay big to settle suits

Toyota Motor Corp., moving to put years of legal problems behind it, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle dozens...

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