US Supreme Court takes up voting rights law

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court Wednesday took up the US voting rights law, a cornerstone of efforts to guard against a resurgence of racial discrimination in American states with a segregationist past.At issue is the 1965 law's Section 5, which requires nine mainly southern states and local governments in seven other states to obtain Justice Department approval for any changes in their...

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Tim McGraw samples new system to sell album in a status update

Tim McGraw turns to Facebook to sell his latest album.(Credit:Screenshot/Jennifer Van Grove) Country singer Tim McGraw wants you to buy his album -- on Facebook. Tuesday, the recording artist became one of the first people to try out a new system for selling through status updates on the social network. McGraw's team used e-commerce platform Chirpify to encourage Facebook fans to type "buy" in the...

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Anti-virus firm makes new revelation on Stuxnet

Updated at 11:22 a.m. ET LONDON The sophisticated cyberweapon which targeted an Iranian nuclear plant is older than previously believed, an anti-virus firm said Tuesday, peeling back another layer of mystery on a series of attacks attributed to U.S. and Israeli intelligence. The Stuxnet worm, aimed at the centrifuges in Iran's Natanz plant, transformed the cybersecurity field because it was the...

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Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions."There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among...

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Egypt opposition to skip polls over transparency fears

CAIRO: Egypt's main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, said Tuesday it will boycott upcoming parliamentary elections due to a lack of guarantees of a transparent process."The decision of the Front, unanimously, is to boycott the elections," NSF member Sameh Ashour told a news conference in Cairo after a meeting of the alliance grouping mainly liberals and leftists.Ashour...

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Ubuntu Touch OS heading to slew of smartphones, tablets

The Ubuntu Touch home screen on a tablet.(Credit:Ubuntu/Canonical)The Ubuntu Touch operating system is being ported to more than 20 types of smartphones and tablets.The developer preview of the Linux-based OS was released for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones and Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets last week.And developers are working to port the OS to a far greater range of devices, including the...

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GOP Rep.: Cheney probably will go to hell for Iraq war

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., the congressman who went from coining the term "freedom fries" to becoming an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, said that there's probably a spot in hell for former Vice President Dick Cheney because of his responsibility for the conflict. "Congress will not hold anyone to blame," Jones said Saturday at an event hosted by the libertarian group Young Americans for Liberty....

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Boehner Pressures Dems to Get 'Off Their...'

Feb 26, 2013 12:48pm House Speaker John Boehner used some choice words to pressure Senate Democrats to avert the looming sequester — $85 billion of arbitrary across-the-board cuts — insisting that “the House has done its job” and the burden to offer an alternative before the cuts strike Friday is on the president’s party.“We have moved the bill in the House twice,”...

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Italy election forecasts point to political gridlock

ROME (Reuters) - Conflicting early forecasts of the result of Italy's election on Monday raised the specter of deadlock in parliament that could paralyze a new government and re-ignite the euro zone crisis. Officials from both centre and left warned that such gridlock could make Italy ungovernable and force new elections. Opinion polls have long pointed to the center-left...

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Tennis: Federer survives scare against popular Jaziri

DUBAI: Roger Federer seemed to have talked his way into a scare before beginning an up-and-down defence of his Dubai Open title with a recovery against an opponent even more popular than himself on Monday.The Grand Slam record-holder had said before the match that often took him a while to suss out players he had never previously played - and sure enough he ran into trouble against the...

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