News feeds

Here is the link to Thursday's live blog. Please check the page regularly for updates.

7:45am PDT: The BBC has a disturbing first hand video report from a hospital in Port-au-Prince where, last night, injured people waiting for treatment slept amongst dead bodies.

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It looks like absolute victory could be around the corner for Freya Svensson, the unhappy Volvo owner who turned to the internet, especially videos of herself singing and wearing a viking hat, to shame the car company into replacing her faulty transmission. One of her latest posts says she got a call from Bill Casey at Volvo Customer Care who is sending out a special engineer on December 9th to scrutinize her car and records and figure out what's going on. "Volvo recognizes it’s an issue that I have so many problems with my car, despite following recommended service schedules... Ben Popken http://www.consumerist.com

The observation deck on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world, closes only a month after it opened.

Toyota recalls thousands of Prius hybrid cars in Japan because of braking problems, as it tries to limit damage from a stream of problems.

Migrating insects have evolved to take advantage very efficiently of high speed winds (up to 60 MPH, possibly more) to travel hundreds of kilometers in relatively short periods of time, all that while correcting for crosswinds taking them off-course, and expanding as little energy as possible.

Opposition politicians in Sri Lanka begin talks to decide what to do following the arrest of their defeated presidential candidate.

The benefits of marijuana in tempering or reversing the effects of Alzheimer's disease have been challenged in a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.

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TOKYO/DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said it is recalling nearly half a million of its flagship Prius and other hybrid cars for braking problems as it seeks to address criticism over the handling of its worst safety crisis.

We've been showered in tablet talk in the wake of the Apple iPad announcement, and while we have our problems with it (and so did you), we're still left wondering: Are you interested in some form of tablet computing?

Every new year means a fresh start and the promise of great things to come. What's in store for moviegoers in 2010?

The worldwide recall will affect about 436,000 units of the 2010 Prius, the Lexus HS 250h and other hybrid models, according to the company’s filing.

A strange looking vessel took a leisurely sail on San Francisco Bay - a shakedown voyage for a plastic, fantastic adventure that should finally start next month. The boat is the 60-foot-long catamaran Plastiki, which David de Rothschild, the 31-year-old scion of the British banking family, plans to sail across the Pacific to Australia in March.

Doctors and aid workers are wrestling with proving that they are not illegally transporting children, whose risk of dying is rising while the paperwork awaits.

South Carolina's first lady, Jenny Sanford, said Monday that writing her much-anticipated memoir of her husband's affair was a "cathartic" and "cleansing" experience.

The average American is expected to spend nearly $1,000 this year on services like cable, Internet and video games.

Wow. Didn't see this coming at all. Pakistan's had a decent history in Summer Olympics but for the first time they will be represented at the Winter Olympics.

Fewer than 50 wild tigers remain in China, a conservation group said Monday, voicing hope that the Year of the Tiger would not be the last for the endangered cats.

Some Pacific island nations have been evacuated. Now the Inuits are watching their ice disappear. Party on!!!!!!

More than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York, many of them adolescent Orthodox Jews, have been sickened with mumps since August, health authorities said Monday.