Lunar New Year celebrants get no rest after Western holidays

At her store in Chinatown, Tracy Tieu replaces red and green Christmas trinkets with red and gold Lunar New Year decorations...

Read More..

Zynga carries out planned games shutdown, including “Petville”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with “Petville” being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform...

Read More..

Willard completes program, avoids lewdness charge

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Fred Willard has completed a diversion program for his arrest this summer for a suspected lewd act at a Hollywood adult theater.Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney's office, said Monday that the 72-year-old comic actor completed the program in September and as a result no longer faces charges stemming from the July 18 incident.Willard was arrested...

Read More..

F.D.A. Approves Sirturo, a New Tuberculosis Drug

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday that it had approved a new treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis that can be used as an alternative when other drugs fail. The drug, to be called Sirturo, was discovered by scientists at Janssen, the pharmaceuticals unit of Johnson & Johnson, and is the first in a new class of drugs that aims to treat the drug-resistant strain...

Read More..

Hobby Lobby to defy law on contraception insurance coverage

After losing a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court, craft stores chain Hobby Lobby said it would defy a federal healthcare...

Read More..

Hillary Clinton hospitalized with blood clot after concussion

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hospitalized in New York on Sunday after doctors discovered a blood...

Read More..

Kobe Bryant Finally Joins Twitter — Kind Of

Long among the sports world’s biggest Twitter holdouts, Kobe Bryant has finally joined the social network. But he hasn’t opened an account, and won’t be around for long.Social savvy fans are being blessed with his presence thanks to Nike Basketball, which has turned over its account to Bryant since Tuesday.[More from Mashable: Avery Johnson’s Teenage Son Unloads on Twitter After NBA Firing]Nike Basketball,...

Read More..

'The Hobbit' stays atop box office for third week

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week and capping a record-setting $10.8 billion year in moviegoing.The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the beloved J.R.R. Tolkien novel, made nearly $33 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates, despite serious competition...

Read More..

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Fabio Campana/European Pressphoto AgencyRita Levi-Montalcini, the Italian Nobel laureate, in 2007. Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome....

Read More..

Champagne sales lose fizz in Europe

Champagne sales are on the wane in economically troubled Europe, but other markets — particularly Japan and the United States...

Read More..

Webster, N.Y., sniper's ex-neighbor charged with buying him guns

WASHINGTON — A former neighbor of the Webster, N.Y., sniper who killed two volunteer firefighters on Christmas Eve illegally...

Read More..

FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

LOS ANGELES (AP) — FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star's communist-leaning friends who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage.But the records, which previously had been heavily redacted, do not contain any new information about Monroe's death 50 years ago. Letters...

Read More..

Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSenator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center. NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients. While the medical center had been treating...

Read More..

Chinese court orders Apple to pay in copyright dispute

BEIJING — A Chinese court has ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan ($165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies...

Read More..

Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf dies at 78

Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces...

Read More..

Analysis: For tech investors, it’s hard to know when to bolt

(Reuters) – When Hewlett-Packard Co agreed to buy British software company Autonomy in August last year for $ 11.1 billion, two well-known investors made diametrically different bets on how the big deal would play out.To short seller Jim Chanos, who had been raising red flags on Autonomy for years and had started shorting shares of HP in 2011, the deal was another nail in the coffin of the Silicon...

Read More..

It's husband No. 3 for actress Kate Winslet

NEW YORK (AP) — Kate Winslet has tied the knot again.The Oscar-winning actress wed Ned Rocknroll in New York earlier this month. The private ceremony was attended by Winslet's two children as well as a few friends and family members, her representative said Thursday.It is the third marriage for the 37-year-old Winslet. She was previously married to film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes.The...

Read More..

Starz will face new, challenging world as public company

Pay-TV channel Starz is trying to chart a new orbit.Early next year, its parent company, Liberty Media, plans to spin off the...

Read More..

Deadly storm moves on to Northeast

A massive storm system upended post-Christmas travel plans Wednesday as it marched toward the Northeast after dumping snow and...

Read More..

Patrick Dempsey brews up coffee shop purchase

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patrick Dempsey says he wants to rescue a coffee house chain and more than 500 jobs.The "Grey's Anatomy" star said Wednesday he's leading a group attempting to buy Tully's Coffee. The Seattle-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.Dempsey said he's excited about the chance to help hundreds of workers and give back to Seattle.The actor has a strong TV...

Read More..

New York’s Mental Health System Thrashed by Services Lost to Storm

Marcus Yam for The New York TimesDr. Richard Rosenthal of Continuum Health Partners, which owns Beth Israel, Roosevelt and St. Luke's hospitals, said he noticed more mentally ill people in the streets now  than he had in years. When a young woman in the grip of paranoid delusions threatened a neighbor with a meat cleaver one Saturday last month, the police took her by ambulance to the nearest...

Read More..