Factbox: “Fiscal cliff” tax, budget provisions in detail

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The “fiscal cliff” is only days away and efforts to avert it are making little progress, with some U.S. lawmakers predicting the tax increases and federal spending cuts involved will start taking hold in January, unless a deal comes together very quickly.If these jolts to the economy are allowed to occur, a recession could follow, economists have forecast.Consumer spending power...

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China tightening controls on Internet

BEIJING (AP) — China‘s new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.The measures suggest China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors’ anxiety about the Internet’s potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their...

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Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013

Title Post: Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013Rating: 100%based on 99998 ratings.5 user reviews.Author: Fluser SeoLinkThanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comm...

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Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart most bankable Hollywood stars

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actresses Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart are Hollywood’s most bankable stars and provide studios with the highest average returns for their films, according to Forbes.com.Academy award winner Portman topped the list of best actors for the buck, providing about $ 42.70 for every dollar she earns.“Black Swan,” for which she won her best actress Oscar, was produced for an estimated...

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Starbucks’s $40,000 Bid for Bipartisanship

Starbucks’s (SBUX) campaign for a fiscal-cliff deal, in which employees of D.C.-area shops are encouraged to write “Come Together” on customers’ cups, has drawn a lot of attention – and some mockery. The Daily Beast called it “doppio,” and the move was ridiculed as as a sign of desperation on Twitter.It is no empty gesture. Starbucks expects to sell up to 200,000 cups of coffee in the D.C. metro area...

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Afghan bomber attacks near major US base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of a major U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing the attacker and three Afghans, Afghan police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.Police Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizai said a local guard who questioned the vehicle driver at the gate of Camp Chapman was killed along with two...

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An outage at one of Amazon‘s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies...

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One in 12 in military has clogged heart arteries

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Just over one in 12 U.S. service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had plaque buildup in the arteries around their hearts – an early sign of heart disease, according to a new study.None of them had been diagnosed with heart disease before deployment, researchers said.“This is a young, healthy, fit group,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Bryant Webber,...

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Egypt fears over currency lead to dollar rush

CAIRO (AP) — As Egypt prepared to release official results of the divisive constitutional referendum on Tuesday, the country edged deeper into economic crisis with some worried residents hoarding dollars for fear that the local currency could weaken significantly.The anxiety over the economy was visible at currency exchanges in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek, which ran out of dollars by...

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Toronto reaches skyward, but how dark the clouds?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barry Fenton walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in his 30th-floor uptown Toronto penthouse suite and declared, “This is the best view of the city.”To the south, a mass of steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the bright autumn sun. Several cranes were in motion on unfinished buildings, a common sight in a city in the midst of a residential building boom.“If you look...

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