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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Army Goes Goth With 'Super-Black' Materials

Get ready to break out the eyeliner and the candelabras, because the Army is going goth.In its latest round of solicitations for small businesses, the Army is asking for proposals for super-black material. That is, material so black that it absorbs 99 percent of all light. But it isn’t really black paint, exactly. The plan is to use either an “antireflective coating or surface treatment process...

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Thousands sign U.S. petition to deport Piers Morgan over gun comments

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – More than 48,000 people have signed a petition that they posted on the White House website demanding that British CNN talk show host Piers Morgan be deported over comments he made on air about gun control.Morgan last week lambasted pro-gun guests on his show, after the December 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman shot dead...

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News Analysis: Getting Polio Campaigns Back on Track

How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is that they are protecting children — are gunned down in the streets? Nine vaccine workers were killed in Pakistan last week in a terrorist campaign that brought...

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