Congress tightens belt, trims spy budget for 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress has drastically trimmed the budget for U.S. spies and satellites for 2013, though not quite as deeply as the White House wanted.In one of the last votes of the year, House lawmakers voted Monday 373-29 in favor of a Senate-passed bill to slightly boost the president's $72 billion budget request for intelligence agencies including the CIA, adding extra cash for the counterterrorism...

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Shell drill ship runs aground on island off Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC's foray into Arctic offshore drilling has suffered a serious setback after one of its two Alaska drilling rigs ran aground in shallow water off a small island.Officials at a unified command center run by the Coast Guard, Shell, state responders and others said the Kulluk grounded Monday night on rocks off the southeast side of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited...

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Analysis: Economy would dodge bullet for now under fiscal deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A deal worked out by Senate leaders to avoid the "fiscal cliff" was far from any "grand bargain" of deficit reduction measures.But if approved by the House of Representatives, it could help the country steer clear of recession, although enough austerity would remain in place to likely keep the economy growing at a lackluster pace.The Senate approved a last-minute deal early...

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Bill to avert fiscal cliff heads to House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to negate a fiscal cliff of across-the-board tax increases and sweeping spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies is headed to the GOP-dominated House after bipartisan, middle-of-the-night approval in the Senate capped a New Year's Eve drama unlike any other in the annals of Congress.The measure cleared the Senate on an 89-8 vote early Tuesday, hours...

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Senate approves "fiscal cliff" deal, crisis eased

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives.In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent low tax...

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Pudding Monsters tops iPhone Games of the Week

Now that the holiday season is behind us, we get to sit in that awkward bit of time at the end of the year. That time that is so utterly devoted to reminiscence and top games of the year lists. As such, it’s hard to find out about notable new releases, and most developers avoid this time like the plague. Thankfully, last week was so utterly packed with releases that there’s enough for a second list....

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Number of e-book readers increasing in United States: survey

The popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released on Thursday.The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year, while print readers fell from 72 to 67 percent in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center."The move toward...

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Marvell has options as it faces $1 billion patent verdict

 As Marvell Technology Group Ltd embarks on a legal process to void a $1.17 billion damages verdict in a patent dispute with Carnegie Mellon University, it has some reasons to be optimistic.The verdict was delivered on Wednesday by a jury in Pittsburgh, which found that Marvell had infringed two patents owned by Carnegie Mellon related to how accurately hard-drive circuits read data from high-speed...

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Working conditions begin to improve at Apple partner’s factories

It has been nearly a year since Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook addressed the unsafe working conditions in the company’s supply chain factories. Following an investigation from the Fair Labor Association that found a number of Chinese labor law violations, Apple and Foxconn (2038) agreed to improve conditions. The companies planned a series of reforms, including reduced hours and significantly higher wages....

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Lumia smartphones see deep discounts from Verizon, T-Mobile and Amazon

Lumia line of smartphones is now seeing post-holiday discounts at a variety of retailers shortly after launching in the United States. The phones, which run Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 operating system, are the company’s latest gamble after a string of launches that were not well received. Verizon’s (VZ) Lumia 822 can now be had for free with a new two-year agreement, as can T-Mobile’s Lumia...

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