At least 30 killed in Egypt clashes over death sentences

PORT SAID, Egypt/CAIRO (Reuters) - At least 30 people were killed on Saturday when Egyptians rampaged in protest at the sentencing of 21 people to death over a soccer stadium disaster, violence that compounds a political crisis facing Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. Armored vehicles and military police fanned through the streets of Port Said, where gunshots rang out and protesters burned...

Read More..

SPP's Chiam See Tong congratulates MP-elect Lee Li Lian

SINGAPORE: The secretary-general of the Singapore People's Party, Mr Chiam See Tong, has congratulated MP-elect Ms Lee Li Lian and the Workers' Party for their decisive win in the Punggol East by-election.Mr Chiam said the wide margin of victory shows that Singaporeans increasingly want more democracy and more opposition members in Parliament.He said, together with the Workers' Party,...

Read More..

Oppo BDP-105: Not your average Blu-ray player

The Oppo BDP-105 Blu-ray, SACD, and DVD-Audio player(Credit:Oppo)Even by Oppo's high standards the BDP-105 is an extraordinary Blu-ray player. Sure, it's loaded with up-to-the-second features -- 4K upscaling, 2D-to-3D conversion, and a high-quality USB 2.0 digital-to-analog converter -- but what really makes the Oppo special is the sound. Pop the cover and look inside and you'll see why. Most of the...

Read More..

Hackers take over gov't website

This screenshot shows the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission after it was hijacked by the hacker-activist group Anonymous, early Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago...

Read More..

Anonymous Hijacks Federal Website Over Reddit Co-Founder's Suicide

Jan 26, 2013 12:27pm (AP Photo)Activists from the hacker collective known as Anonymous assumed control over the homepage of a federal judicial agency this morning.In a manifesto left on the defaced page, the group demanded reform to the American justice system and what the activists said are threats to the free flow of information.The lengthy essay largely mirrors...

Read More..

Violence flares on anniversary of Egypt uprising

CAIRO/ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Protesters clashed with police across Egypt on Friday on the second anniversary of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak, taking to the streets against the elected Islamist president who they accuse of betraying the revolution. At least 91 civilians and 42 security personnel were hurt in violence across the country, officials said. Street battles erupted...

Read More..

Army kills six as Iraq demos call for PM to quit

FALLUJAH: Soldiers fired on an anti-government rally west of Baghdad on Friday, killing six demonstrators, the first deaths in weeks of increasingly angry protests calling for Iraq's premier to quit.The shootings came as tens of thousands rallied in majority Sunni areas of the country, railing against alleged targeting of their minority community by the Shiite-led authorities, while in...

Read More..

Public school system's e-mail sends parents to sex site

The botched link in the e-mail led to this page. Rather elegant.(Credit:Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)School officials don't always do their homework.Errors creep in -- sometimes creepy ones.Still, who cannot feel a pang of guffaw-suppressing empathy for whomever wrote an e-mail on behalf of the Chicago Public Schools system?As CBS Chicago sniggers it, parents were being notified by the Schools...

Read More..

Court: Obama appointments are unconstitutional

President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board. The unanimous decision is an embarrassing...

Read More..

Mars Rover Celebrates Milestone on Red Planet

It was never supposed to last this long. When the Mars rover Opportunity settled on the Martian surface nine years ago today, mission managers at NASA said they would be pleased if it lasted for 90 days.Instead, it's been 3,201 days, and still counting. The rover has driven 22.03 miles, mostly at a snail's pace, from one crater to another, stopping for months at a time in...

Read More..

North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "sworn enemy". The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North...

Read More..

Keppel Corp's net profit falls 22% on-year in Q4

SINGAPORE: Falling margins from building oil rigs has hit the bottomline of Keppel Corp. Net profit for the world's leading rig builder fell 22 per cent on-year to S$305 million in the fourth quarter last year.Still, full year profit for the conglomerate came in 15 per cent to S$2.24 billion.Despite lower net profit in the three months ended Dec 31, Keppel Corp still declared a final dividend...

Read More..

French court tells Twitter it must hand over names of racist tweeters

A French court ruled today that Twitter must turn over the identities users who post racist tweets.(Credit:Illustration by James Martin/CNET)Twitter must hand over the identities of users in France who post racist tweets, a French court ruled today.According to AFP, the court's ruling stemmed from a test case "that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech," and answered a petition...

Read More..

Polar air mass keeps icy grip on Northeast

PORTLAND, Maine Polar air settled in earnest over the Northeast after trekking through the Midwest, grinding trains to a halt, bursting pipes and bringing further misery to folks still trying to recover from superstorm Sandy. The coldest temperatures were expected to continue Thursday, after which conditions should slowly moderate before returning to normal, said John Koch, a meteorologist with...

Read More..

Exterminator Charged in Pa. Doctor's Murder

An exterminator named Joseph Smith was arrested and charged today in the strangling and burning death of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti.Smith, 36, had been sent to Ketunuti's home on a service call where the two got into "some kind of argument" in Ketunuti's basement on Monday, Capt. James Clark of the Philadelphia police department said this morning."At her home...

Read More..

Cameron promises Britons contentious vote on EU future

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday promised Britons a vote on whether the country should stay in the European Union or leave, rattling London's biggest allies and some investors by raising the prospect of uncertainty and upheaval. Cameron announced the referendum would be held by the end of 2017, provided he wins the next election, and said that while Britain...

Read More..

Steady rise in government data requests: Google

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Wednesday reported a "steady increase" in government requests to hand over data from Internet users in the second half of 2012.The Web giant's semi-annual "transparency report" showed the most requests came from the United States, with 8,438 requests for information about 14,868 users.India was second with 2,431 requests for data about 4,106 users, followed by...

Read More..

Tech talk 'more confusing than a foreign language'

The most confusing word in tech. Allegedly.(Credit:Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)You might be familiar with the term "megabyte."For some, though, it represents an emotional megadeath.You might know what an ISP is, but some need ESP in order to explain to themselves what this actually means.This, at least, is the conclusion of a deeply disturbing piece of research, performed in the U.K. on behalf...

Read More..

Deep freeze grips Midwest, slides toward Northeast

MADISON, Wis. The Upper Midwest remained locked in a deep freeze Wednesday as the bitter temperatures crept eastward where at least one mountain resort warned it was too cold even to ski. Overnight, ice-covered Chicago firefighters spent hours fighting a massive fire at a warehouse on the city's South Side, hindered by the single digit chill. The cold snap arrived Saturday night as waves of Arctic...

Read More..

Clinton Says Budget Cuts Undermine Security

An energized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood her ground today, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she has overseen plans to secure diplomatic outposts around the world while cuts in State Department funding undermine those efforts.Citing a report by the department's Accountability Review Board on the security failures that led to the deaths of four...

Read More..

High turnout in Israeli election, Netanyahu frontrunner

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israelis voted in surprisingly high numbers on Tuesday in an election expected to hand hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a third term in office and bolster opponents of Palestinian statehood. However, the strong turnout, coming off the back of a long, lackluster election campaign, buoyed center-left parties which had pinned their hopes on energizing an army...

Read More..

SGX's Q2 net profit rises 17% to S$76m

SINGAPORE : Rising interest in derivatives trading helped lift earnings for the Singapore Exchange (SGX) last quarter. Asia's second-largest bourse operator reported a 17 per cent on-year rise in second-quarter net profit to S$76 million.It also attracted a large number of new bond listings in the same quarter.Derivatives trading has been the star performer in SGX.Over the October to December...

Read More..

Giottos: Honey, I shrunk the tripod

Good news for shutterbug travelers with limited luggage space: Popular tripod maker Giottos has just released a new range of "YTL" tripods that utilize a new Y-shaped center column design that's 30 percent smaller than the cylindrical columns found in typical tripods. This allows the tripod legs to be tucked into the center column closer, making the tripod more compact and allowing it to be easily...

Read More..