Big Bear locked down amid manhunt

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead...

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Fate of Historic Landsat Mission Hinges on Upcoming Launch

Since 1972 the Landsat mission has been monitoring natural and human-made changes to our planet. But the continuity of that scientifically precious dataset could be lost unless all goes according to plan on Monday, when the Landsat 8 satellite is scheduled to be launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Landsat 8 will take over for the hobbled 14-year old Landsat...

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Humble Damon cheers Oscar hopeful, friend Ben Affleck

BERLIN (Reuters) – It seems that wherever Matt Damon goes to promote his movies he is asked about something else altogether – his old friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, whose Iranian hostage drama “Argo” is in the running for a Best Picture Oscar.Damon shared a screenplay Academy Award with Affleck for the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting” and has gone on to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood,...

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said. The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio. Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of...

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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USAJohn E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use. A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? And when, not long afterward, the dial...

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FBI searches Las Vegas home of fugitive

Federal and local authorities served a search warrant at the Las Vegas home of an ex-police officer sought in connection with...

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Apparent Facebook Widget Snafu Brings Down Sites

Several sites across the web could not be reached by some visitors on Thursday afternoon, apparently because of a problem with Facebook widgets embedded in the sites. Several sites — including Business Insider, Huffington Post and Salon — were reportedly affected, redirecting visitors to a Facebook error page.Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment,...

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California boy to be arraigned in “swatting” prank on actor Kutcher

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Prosecutors charged a 12-year-old boy on Thursday with making a false emergency call that sent police swarming to the home of actor Ashton Kutcher in a “swatting” prank.The name of the boy, who was arrested by Los Angeles police in December, was withheld due to his age. He was scheduled to be arraigned in a juvenile court in Los Angeles on Friday.The trend toward placing false...

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Peter Hauri, Psychologist Who Focused on Insomnia, Dies at 79

Peter Hauri, a psychologist who was among the first researchers to study the mysterious mechanics of a good night’s sleep, and who established widely used guidelines for avoiding insomnia without drugs, died on Jan. 31 in Rochester, Minn., where he had been director of the Mayo Sleep Disorders Center until he retired in 2000. He was 79. The cause was complications of a brain injury sustained...

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Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January

HONG KONG — January trade data from China on Friday showed a surge in exports and imports from a year earlier — a phenomenon that was largely due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, but that also supported the view that the Chinese economy is firming. Economic data from China are often severely distorted by the holiday, the highlight of the Chinese calendar, when many factories...

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