Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

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The World's Tweets Light Up the Globe in Stunning Live Visualization

It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page.The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas. But Ernewein has packaged it all in a subtly...

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World Chefs: Thomson dishes up Washington state from Seattle to Spokane

NEW YORK (Reuters) – When food writer Jess Thomson moved to Seattle, Washington, she expected to find the adventuresome cooking for which the city is famous. But she admits to being pleasantly surprised by the rich diversity of the rest of the state.The 150 recipes in her book “Dishing Up Washington” attempt to capture the authentic regional flavors of the entire state, from Seattle to Spokane, Yakima...

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Iceland, Prosecutor of Bankers, Sees Meager Returns

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times"Greed is not a crime. But the question is: where does greed lead?" said Olafur Hauksson, a special prosecutor in Reykjavik. REYKJAVIK, Iceland — As chief of police in a tiny fishing town for 11 years, Olafur Hauksson developed what he thought was a basic understanding of the criminal mind. The typical lawbreaker, he said, recalling his many encounters with...

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Edward Koch dies at 88; outspoken mayor led New York City comeback

In the late 1970s when Edward I. Koch won his first term as mayor of New York, the city was in shambles, its coffers and confidence...

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Twitter Hacked; Company Says 250K Users May Have Been Affected

Following a string of revelations this week from several media companies who announced they had been recently hacked, Twitter announced on Friday that it had also been the target of a sophisticated attack.The company wrote in a blog post ironically titled “Keeping our users secure” that it detected unusual patterns this week that led it to identify attempts to access user data.“We discovered...

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Mike Tyson’s Controversial ”Law & Order: SVU” Episode Moved Up a Week

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – NBC is sticking with its decision to cast Mike Tyson in an upcoming episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” In fact, it’s moving the episode up a week from its original air date.Tyson’s guest spot on “SVU” – which sparked outrage online, in light of Tyson’s rape conviction – will air February 6. The episode was originally scheduled to air on February 13.On the...

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Birth Control Rule Altered to Allay Religious Objections

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue. The proposal could expand the number of groups that do not need to pay directly for birth control...

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Mahony stripped of public church duties

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez  on Thursday announced dramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that Cardinal Roger Mahony would be stripped of public duties in the church and that Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down.Gomez said in a statement that Mahony -- who led the L.A. archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 -- "will no longer have any administrative...

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How a Boat-Plane Hybrid Shattered the Sound Barrier of Sailing

Seen from across Walvis Bay, the windswept patch of Atlantic Ocean known as Speed Spot is barely more than a sparkle of whitecaps against a long, low sandbar. As we get closer to what is one of the world’s most perfect speed-sailing areas, I scan the shore. It’s featureless save for two small shelters. We motor our zodiac toward the remote beach until we have to kill the outboard and tilt...

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Relativity Buys Into Jim Carrey Heist Comedy ”Loomis Fargo”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Relativity Media has acquired worldwide rights to the Jim Carrey heist comedy “Loomis Fargo,” which it will finance, produce and distribute, the studio announced on Thursday.Jared Hess, who co-wrote and directed “Napoleon Dynamite,” will direct the movie from a script by Emily Spivey that also counts Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer as writers. Inspired by true events, it tells...

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Insurance Industry Report Faults High Fees for Out-of-Network Care

Michael Nagle for The New York TimesAngel Gonzalez, 36, faced huge bills after emergency gallbladder surgery, despite having good insurance coverage. “I was on the hook for more than I made in a year.” Just over a year ago, Angel Gonzalez, 36, awoke with searing chest pain at 2 a.m. A friend drove him to the closest emergency room. Though he was living on $18,000 a year as a graduate...

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DealBook: Doubt Is Cast on Firms Hired to Help Banks

Federal authorities are scrutinizing the private consultants hired by banks to clean up financial misdeeds like money laundering and foreclosure abuses, taking aim at a conflict-riddled, billion-dollar industry.The well-connected consultants operate with scant supervision and produce mixed results, according to government documents and interviews with prosecutors and regulators. In one case, the consulting...

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Sen. Robert Menendez denies consorting with prostitutes

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a key player in the effort to overhaul immigration laws, denied allegations...

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Kim Dotcom's Mega Gets Third-Party Search Engine

The file-sharing site Mega, introduced two weeks ago by infamous file-sharing kingpin Kim Dotcom, just became a lot more useful to content pirates, thanks to a community-fed search engine of links to content hosted on Mega’s servers.The search engine doesn’t crawl Mega content — which is not possible because of Mega’s architecture. Instead, it relies on Mega users voluntarily...

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UK’s Prince Charles takes first “Tube” trip since 1986

LONDON (Reuters) – Four million Londoners cram onto the city’s Underground passenger railway nearly every day, but it is a rarer event for Prince Charles. He rode the British capital’s bustling commuter network on Wednesday for the first time since 1986.The heir to the British throne and his wife Camilla took a one-stop journey from Farringdon to King’s Cross on the Metropolitan Line as part of celebrations...

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.The researchers...

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