World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease. The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical...

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S.&P. Streak Comes to an End on Fiscal Worries

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index ended its six-day winning streak Thursday, retreating as worries intensified that Washington’s fiscal negotiations were dragging on with little progress. Anxiety about the talks between Democrats and Republicans was enough to offset encouraging data on retail sales and jobless claims. Investors are concerned that tax increases and spending...

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'Straw' buyer of arms linked to border agent's death is sentenced

PHOENIX — A federal judge sentenced a Phoenix man Wednesday to nearly five years in prison for purchasing firearms for a Mexican...

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Redbox Instant Enters Crowded Instant-Streaming Field With Public Beta

The streaming-video market is getting streamier as Redbox Instant, the Redbox/Verizon mashup aimed squarely at the Netflix juggernaut, goes into the public beta phase by the end of December.In addition to streaming videos like Netflix, $8 bucks a month gets subscribers as many as four DVDs a month at the giant red box in their local convenience store or supermarket....

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How “Life of Pi” animators visualized Ang Lee’s blank slate

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Life of Pi” is a movie that has the proverbial cast of thousands… of animals, that is. In one shot set on the ocean, there are 40,000 flying fish. In another one set on a floating island, there are 60,000 meerkats. And not one of them was living and breathing, of course.“No real meerkats were used,” senior animation supervisor Erik-Jan De Boer told the audience at an effects-themed...

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U.S. designates Syria rebel group a terrorist organization

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has formally designated a rebel group fighting in Syria as a terrorist organization in...

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Google Pins Gmail Outage on 'Routine Update' Gone Wrong

Monday’s Gmail outage didn’t last long — just 18 minutes, according to Google — but it disrupted an awful lot of users. When the popular webmail service went down around 9 a.m. PST, as much as 40 percent of all users were affected.On Tuesday afternoon, Google published its explanation of what went wrong. The problem, the company said, was a “routine” update that caused Google’s load-balancing...

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Lawsuit claims A&E’s ‘Storage Wars’ show is rigged

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some of the valuables found hidden in abandoned lockers on A&E’s “Storage Wars” have been added by producers to deceive viewers, a former cast member of the show claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.David Hester‘s suit claims producers have added a BMW Mini and newspapers chronicling Elvis Presley‘s death to lockers in order to build drama for the show and that his complaints about...

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesAt William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks. PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines. The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like...

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Daily Stock Market Activity

Stocks rose on Tuesday, led by gains in technology companies, helping the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to end at its highest level since Election Day. A 2.18 percent gain, to $541.39, in Apple’s stock lifted the Nasdaq composite index, as the company rebounded from a week in which investors took profits before a possible tax increase next year. Before Tuesday’s trading, Apple...

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