worldheadlines

NBC Universal is running an unprecedented 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage on television and the Internet, most of it live online, letting fans track their favorite sports in a way not possible even if they'd gone to Beijing.
Excited by the prospects, I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. on Sunday to catch cycling, handball, archery and rowing events on NBCOlympics.com as...

By the time he graduated from MIT, Jeff Ma already had led a life many guys dream about. His card-counting prowess at blackjack tables during wild weekends in Las Vegas and Atlantic City won him and his college buddies millions of dollars, inspiring a best-selling book and the recent movie "21."
Now...

Attacks by Russian hackers against Georgian Web sites, including one hosted in the United States, continued Tuesday even as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to hostilities against Georgia.
Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based Web-hosting firm Tulip Systems Inc., said the Web site of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia aiming...

A woman who made news around the world when she had five pups cloned from her beloved pit bull Booger looked very familiar to some who saw her picture: She's the same woman who 31 years earlier was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed...

U.S. oil demand during the first half of 2008 fell by an average 800,000 barrels per day compared to the same period a year ago, the biggest volume decline in 26 years, the Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.
In its latest monthly energy forecast, the EIA said the huge drop...

The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.
The research, published this week in the US-based...

Austria, which has only two brown bears left, needs to take action if it wants to prevent the species from dying out again, according to the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) local branch.
"If nothing is done, there won't be any...

NASA announced it has pushed back the launch of the Orion, the spacecraft designed to replace the agency's aging space shuttle fleet, by one year to 2014.
"The window of opportunity for us to accelerate Orion (for a 2013 flight)...

Energy and commodities markets on Tuesday were watching a couple of low-pressure systems in the Atlantic Ocean that could develop into tropical depressions over the next day or so.
Neither system, however, is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico over the next five days, if at all, according to the...

The Douglas fir has earned a towering reputation for its ability to soar higher than most trees. But there's a limit to how tall it can grow, and a new study explains why: If it grows too tall, a tree cannot transport water to the highest leaves.

This study showed that somewhere between the height of a 30- or 35-story building, Douglas...

Verizon Wireless said on Thursday it would buy rural mobile service provider Alltel Corp for $28.1 billion including debt, which would vault it to first place in the U.S. market ahead of AT&T Inc (T.N).
Under terms of the deal, Verizon Wireless would acquire the equity of Alltel for $5.9 billion...

What would an Apple developers conference be without rumors? The upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, beginning Monday, is no exception.
One persistent rumor is that the conference will see the announcement of a much-awaited 3G iPhone. Certainly, the iPhone is a major part of the conference, with nearly a third of all sessions devoted to the popular mobile device. Apple...

Federal officials unsealed two indictments Thursday charging Broadcom co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III with conspiracy and securities fraud relating to stock options backdating, as well as numerous drug charges.
The indictments allege a total of 25 counts against Nicholas, including conspiracy, securities fraud, false certification of financial reports, filing false statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, wire fraud and conspiracy...

Two astronauts began Thursday the second spacewalk of their mission at the International Space Station to give Japan's new giant laboratory cameras and prepare the installation of a stowage unit.
Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan ventured out of the station shortly after 1500 GMT for an excursion expected to last...

The start of summer is often bittersweet for gamers: there is lots of free time to play, but typically few new releases to fill the long days.
Things are different this year, though, with a strong slate of highly anticipated games over the next few weeks pointing to a possible shift...