Synacor partners with Zynga to bring social games to pay TV

(Reuters) – Synacor Inc, partly owned by Intel Corp, said it partnered with Zynga Inc to allow pay TV and broadband providers offer social games to their customers.Zynga shares rose about 3 percent to $ 2.30 in premarket trading, while Synacor shares were up about 5 percent at $ 6.60.Synacor said certain pay-TV subscribers will get in-game currency each month as part of their subscription that can...

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Lupus forces singer Toni Braxton into LA hospital

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer Toni Braxton has been hospitalized in Los Angeles.The R&B performer says in a Tweet on Friday that she’s been hospitalized because of “minor health issues” related to Lupus. A spokeswoman confirmed the hospitalization but had no other details. “But no worries!,” Braxton wrote to fans. “I will be out any day now.”The 45-year-old singer of “Un-break My Heart” revealed two...

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On the edge of the “cliff,” U.S. cities like Charleston

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – For 37 years straight, Joseph P. Riley Jr. has sat behind the mayor’s desk here, shaping this city and its budget.On a recent afternoon, Riley, 69, reached for a draft copy of next year’s spending plan and wondered aloud about what might get cut should politicians in Washington fail to find an agreement this month, unleashing $ 600 billion worth of spending reductions...

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Good U.S. Jobs Report Comes With an Asterisk

The economy added 146,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since December 2008, the government said today in a report that was complicated by special factors of weather and politics.Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics, described the report as “something of a mixed bag” but said “on balance, it’s positive.”The drop in the jobless...

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Anger at Australian radio station over royal hoax

LONDON (AP) — It started out as a joke, but ended in tragedy.The sudden death of a nurse who unwittingly accepted a prank call to a London hospital about Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate has shocked Britain and Australia, and sparked an angry backlash Saturday from some who argue the DJs who carried out the hoax should be held responsible.At first, the call by two irreverent Australian DJs posing...

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T-Mobile to Offer Cheapest iPhone 5 in 2013

T-Mobile, the smallest of the “big four” wireless carries in the United States, already offers the country’s cheapest iPhone service — if you have an unlocked iPhone. And according to Engadget’s Brad Molen, more than a million unlocked iPhones are on T-Mobile‘s network already.Now, T-Mobile has announced that it will “add Apple products to its portfolio in the coming year,” according to parent company...

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‘Borderlands 2,’ ‘Dishonored’ win at Spike VGAs

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The cartoony post-apocalyptic shoot-’em-up sequel “Borderlands 2″ and the stealthy first-person game “Dishonored” were among the early winners at the Spike Video Game Awards on Friday.“Borderlands 2″ was picked as best shooter and multiplayer game, while “Dishonored” was awarded with the best action-adventure game trophy at the gaming extravaganza.The ceremony honors outstanding...

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NJ residents go home after toxic chemicals cleared

PAULSBORO, New Jersey (Reuters) – Residents of New Jersey evacuated after a freight train derailment last week spewed toxic vinyl chloride began returning home on Friday as tests of the air came back clean, a Coast Guard official said.Exactly one week after a bridge collapsed, derailing seven of the 82 Conrail freight-train cars crossing the Mantua Creek in southern New Jersey, residents who were...

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Office Holiday Parties Are Back, and Just as Weird as Ever

The corporate holiday party is a night when everyone’s supposed to pretend there are no organizational charts, no office hierarchies. Interns can kick back with the bosses—and theoretically do more intimate things with them—and the next morning everyone’s just supposed to snap back into normal behavior, hangovers be damned.During the boom years, startups and other profligate spenders would blow colossal...

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Protesters surge around Egypt’s presidential palace

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters surged around the presidential palace on Friday and the opposition rejected President Mohamed Mursi‘s call for dialogue to end a crisis that has polarized the nation and sparked deadly clashes.The Islamist leader’s deputy said he could delay a December 15 referendum on a constitution that liberals opposed, although the concession only partly...

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Apple, Samsung spar in court, ruling to come

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics squared off again in court on Thursday, as the iPhone maker tried to convince a U.S. district judge to ban sales of a number of the South Korean company’s devices and defended its $ 1.05 billion jury award.Apple scored a sweeping legal victory in August at the conclusion of its landmark case against its arch-foe, when a U.S. jury found...

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Comedian Katt Williams a no-show at arraignment

SEATTLE (AP) — Comedian Katt Williams didn’t show up at an arraignment hearing in Seattle to face assault charges stemming from several run-ins with people and police last weekend.Williams’ attorney, Thomas McAllister, told the judge Thursday that his client was under the impression that he didn’t have to attend the hearing, citing information from a Seattle Times article. McAllister says Williams...

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Men more likely to die of cancer: study

(Reuters) – Not only are men more likely than women to be diagnosed with cancer, men who get it have a higher chance of dying from the disease, according to a U.S. study.In an analysis of cases of all but sex-specific cancers such as prostate and ovarian cancer, for example, men were more likely than women to die in each of the past ten years, said researchers, whose findings appeared in The Journal...

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Trains fiasco ‘to cost taxpayer’

6 December 2012 Last updated at 20:43 ETThe collapse of the £5bn West Coast Main Line deal will bring “a significant cost to the taxpayer”, a National Audit Office report has found.The government scrapped its decision to award the franchise to FirstGroup in October, owing to faulty calculations.It has already estimated the cost of reimbursing four firms for the cost of their bids would be £40m.The...

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Toronto mayor to stay in power pending appeal of ouster

TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford can stay in power pending an appeal of a conflict of interest ruling that ordered him out of his job as leader of Canada’s biggest city, a court ruled on Wednesday.Madam Justice Gladys Pardu of the Ontario Divisional Court suspended a previous court ruling that said Ford should be ousted. Ford’s appeal of that ruling is set to be heard on January 7, but a...

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Casio’s new G-Shock smartwatch can display alerts from your iPhone [video]

Since the Dick Tracy cartoon days, every gadget nerd’s dream has been to have a smartwatch. And while smartphones have largely made the need for wearing wristwatches unnecessary, companies continue to search for ways to connect watches and smartphones. Casio’s GB6900AA G-Shock is the latest smartwatch that connects to Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. Using Bluetooth 4.0, the watch can provide...

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Grammys spread the love with 6 top nominees

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Grammy Awards celebrated the diversity of music as six different artists tied for lead nominee — Kanye West, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and fun.Auerbach received five nominations as a member of the Keys and also is up for producer of the year, earning a spot with the others at the top of the list as the Grammy’s primetime television...

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Researchers say form of Ecstasy may heal combat trauma

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – A South Carolina psychiatrist and his wife, a nurse, have taken an uncommon, controversial approach to helping war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder by treating them with MDMA, a pure form of the party drug known as Ecstasy.Their studies have found that the psychoactive stimulant decreases fear and defensiveness while increasing trust in...

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Working families ‘hit by changes’

5 December 2012 Last updated at 23:43 ETWorking families from poorer backgrounds will be hit hard by changes to tax and benefits announced in the Autumn Statement, Labour has said.A working family with children on £20,000 a year would lose £279 a year from April, the party said.Meanwhile, the Fitch agency has said the UK’s AAA rating is under threat after the chancellor said the coalition would miss...

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Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides,...

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HTC, Apple ordered to show which patents were included in their settlement agreement

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Netflix to get Disney films in TV distribution deal

(Reuters) – Walt Disney gave a much needed boost to Netflix, becoming the first major Hollywood studio to use the video service to bypass premium channels like HBO that traditionally controlled the delivery of movies to TV subscribers.News of the deal, which enables Netflix to stream Disney‘s first-run movies to its subscribers, boosted Netflix shares by 14 percent.Liberty Media Corp, whose Starz...

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Women can tell a cheating man just by looking at them: study

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Women can tell with some accuracy whether an unfamiliar male is faithful simply by looking at his face, but men seem to lack the same ability when checking out women, according to an Australian study published on Wednesday.In a paper that appeared in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that women tended to make that judgment based on how masculine-looking the man...

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