Notorious patent troll hits RIM with new lawsuit, seeks BlackBerry sales ban

Well-known patent troll Wi-LAN has filed a new lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Wi-LAN, which describes itself as “a leading intellectual property licensing company,” claims RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,260,168, owned by Wi-LAN, which relates to Bluetooth implementation....

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TNT: Funeral coming for J.R. Ewing on new 'Dallas'

NEW YORK (AP) — J.R. Ewing will get a send-off with a proper funeral on "Dallas."TNT begins the second season of its "Dallas" revival next month. The network said Tuesday that it will hold a funeral for Larry Hagman's memorable character at some point in the 15-episode season but that it hasn't been filmed or scheduled yet. Hagman died at age 81 over the Thanksgiving weekend.TNT spokeswoman Erin Felentzer...

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Global Update: Hand-Held Device Locates Hot Spots of Lead Contamination

Using a hand-held scanner to map hot spots where the soil is full of lead could protect children in mining towns against brain damage, scientists at Columbia University concluded in a new study. Touched to the ground, the device, an X-ray fluorescence scanner,can measure the soil’s lead content in less than a minute, said Alexander van Geen, a geochemist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth...

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Barry Diller Sells TripAdvisor Shares

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Barry Diller is stepping down as chairman of TripAdvisor after selling his stake in the travel website to Liberty Interactive. Liberty Interactive bought 4.8 million shares of TripAdvisor Inc.'s common stock from Diller and The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation for a total of about $300 million, making it the travel website's new majority shareholder. ...

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Project Seeks to Map and Reduce Ocean Noise Pollution

When a hurricane forced the Nautilus to dive in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Captain Nemo took the submarine down to a depth of 25 fathoms, or 150 feet. There, to the amazement of the novel’s protagonist, Prof. Pierre Aronnax, no whisper of the howling turmoil could be heard. “What quiet, what silence, what peace!” he exclaimed. That was 1870. Today...

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RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone

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Singer feared dead in Mexican plane crash

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Mexico's music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar.Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera's relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged...

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Doping at U.S. Tracks Affects Europe’s Taste for Horse Meat

PARIS — For decades, American horses, many of them retired or damaged racehorses, have been shipped to Canada and Mexico, where it is legal to slaughter horses, and then processed and sold for consumption in Europe and beyond. Christinne Muschi for The New York TimesA slaughterhouse in Saint-André-Avellin, Quebec, where meat is processed for sale in Europe. ...

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The Media Equation: For Wall Street Journal, Leadership at a Crossroads

Betting against Rupert Murdoch hasn’t gone very well for many people, including me. When he bought The Wall Street Journal in 2007 and brought in a trusted associate, Robert Thomson from The Times of London, I said that he might ruin one of the country’s most important newspapers. That did not happen. Mr. Thomson’s version of The Journal, with a stronger focus on general news, a beefed-up...

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'Skyfall,' 'Guardians' duel for box-office win

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Bond is in a box-office photo finish with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny over what looks to be the last slow weekend of the holidays.According to studio estimates Sunday, Sony's Bond tale "Skyfall" took in $11 million to move back to No. 1 in its fifth weekend.That put it narrowly ahead of Paramount's "Rise of the Guardians," the animated adventure of Santa, the Easter Bunny...

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