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

NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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...

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China tightens Internet controls, legalizes post deletion

BEIJING (Reuters) - China unveiled tighter Internet controls on Friday, legalizing the deletion of posts or pages which are deemed to contain "illegal" information and requiring service providers to hand over such information to the authorities for punishment.The rules signal that the new leadership headed by Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will continue muzzling the often scathing, raucous online...

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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said.The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters.Chinese police requested...

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British retailers start online sales early

British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started its online...

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China may require real name registration for internet access

China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile...

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Tajikistan blocks scores of websites as election looms

 Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year's election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional...

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.'s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows...

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Oregon Mall Shooting: Man Kills 2, Self in Rampage

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself. "I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall." Police...

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N. Korea Launches Long-Range Missile

North Korea has successfully launched a long-range rocket and appears to have put "an object" into orbit, NORAD officials said today. North American Aerospace Defense Command officials said U.S. missile warning systems detected and tracked the launch of a North Korean missile at 7:49 p.m. ET. The first stage appeared to fall into the Yellow Sea and the second stage was assessed to fall into the...

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Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar dies at 92

NEW DELHI (AP) — With an instrument perplexing to most Westerners, Ravi Shankar helped connect the world through music. The sitar virtuoso hobnobbed with the Beatles, became a hippie musical icon and spearheaded the first rock benefit concert as he introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western audiences over nearly a century. From George Harrison to John Coltrane, from Yehudi Menuhin to David Crosby,...

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White House, Boehner quietly swap ‘fiscal cliff’ offers

President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner spoke Tuesday after privately exchanging a new round of rival proposals for keeping the economy from tumbling off the "fiscal cliff" on Jan. 1, aides to both men told Yahoo News. The fresh discussion signaled a welcome bit of movement in negotiations that had appeared stalled for several days. "The speaker and POTUS (the president of...

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Michigan lawmakers approve right-to-work bills

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Over the chants of thousands of angry protesters, Republican lawmakers made Michigan a right-to-work state Tuesday, dealing a devastating and once-unthinkable defeat to organized labor in a place that has been a bastion of the movement for generations. The GOP-dominated House ignored Democrats' pleas to delay the final passage and instead approved two bills with the same ruthless...

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