Patents case puts Apple closer to fight with Google
SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Jobs minced no words when talking about Android, Google’s mobile operating system, which he saw as too similar to the iPhone’s. He told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that Android was “a stolen product” and said, “I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
For Putin, report says, state perks pile high, set him among wealthiest
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin is rumored to be among the world’s wealthiest men, with an oil-greased fortune worth tens of billions of dollars. He denies that, vehemently, but a report to be published Tuesday suggests that the dispute may be beside the point.
After attacks, Israeli schools confront hate
JERUSALEM — Tamer Jbarah, a 17-year-old Palestinian student who speaks accentless Hebrew after years in a bilingual school that is about half Jewish, said he was not at all surprised when a mob of Jewish teenagers beat an Arab teenager unconscious this month while hundreds watched and did nothing to help.
Shorts (left)
BP’s recent $1 billion sale of its Carson refinery in Southern California is the latest move in what has become perhaps the biggest corporate garage sale in history, as BP seeks to raise cash and slim down its global operations by divesting $38 billion in assets before the end of 2013.
Amazon quietly harnesses the coming cloud-computing future
SEATTLE — Within a few years, Amazon.com’s creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retail may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive gambit: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.
Isaac plows into Gulf; clear skies in northeast
Nearly 7 years after disastrous Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the United States Gulf Coast, Hurricane Isaac will inundate Louisiana and surrounding shorelines tonight and into Wednesday. Nearly 10”+ rainfall totals are expected across eastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi as Isaac turns northward and weakens over the Midwest through late week. Wind gusts may reach 100 mph close to the storm’s center, especially near the time of landfall over southeast Louisiana.
France says it would recognize provisional Syrian government
BEIRUT — France’s president urged the Syrian opposition movement Monday to create a provisional government and vowed to extend official recognition once it was formed.
US oil and mining companies must disclose payments
HOUSTON — Despite stiff industry lobbying against it, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted 2-1 on Wednesday to require U.S. oil and mining companies to disclose taxes and other fees they pay to foreign governments. The disclosures are aimed at curbing corruption, which is common in some major oil-producing nations.
Shorts (left)
Americans nearing retirement age have suffered disproportionately after the financial crisis: Along with the declining value of their homes, which were intended to cushion their final years, their incomes have fallen sharply.
Shorts (right)
HOBBS, N.M. — Mitt Romney unveiled an energy plan Thursday that he said would make North America energy independent by 2020, at what would be the end of his second term as president.
As Bangladesh becomes export powerhouse, labor strife erupts
ISHWARDI, Bangladesh — The air thickened with tear gas as police and paramilitary officers jogged into the Ishwardi Export Processing Zone firing rubber bullets and swinging cane poles. Dozens of people were bloodied and hospitalized.
Allies: attacks on Afghan troops by colleagues rise sharply
KABUL, Afghanistan — Even as attacks by Afghan security forces on NATO troops have become an increasing source of tension, new NATO data shows another sign of vulnerability for the training mission: even greater numbers of the Afghan police and military forces have killed each other this year.
Europeans to debate further aid for Greece, encourage path to reform
PARIS — Vacation is over early this year in the eurozone, with Greece and its shaky future back on the table and Spain waiting in the wings to ask for help from European bailout funds.
Signs found that Iran is speeding up work on nuclear program
WASHINGTON — International nuclear inspectors will soon report that Iran has installed hundreds of new centrifuges in recent months and may be speeding up production of nuclear fuel while negotiations with the United States and its allies have ground to a near halt, according to diplomats and experts briefed on the findings.
Shorts (right)
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s nominee to become the new ambassador to Pakistan said Tuesday that his top priority would be to press the government there to take more forceful measures against the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate whose leaders, sheltered in Pakistan, have mounted a series of attacks against U.S. and other targets in Afghanistan.
Phelps tops another Olympian, but at 77, she grins about it
LONDON — Larisa Latynina won 18 Olympic medals in gymnastics for the former Soviet Union, but she attended swimming Tuesday night. Michael Phelps was racing. He was trying to beat everyone in the pool and Latynina’s record as well. And when the moment came, she knew exactly what a great champion should do. She put on her lipstick.
Shorts (left)
Julian Castro, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, will deliver the keynote speech at his party’s national convention in September, taking the role that vaulted Barack Obama to national prominence eight years ago.
Indian electrical grid is pressed to its breaking point
WASHINGTON — The Indian electrical grid, said Arshad Mansoor, the senior vice president for research and development at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., is like “a whole bunch of rubber bands.” Cutting some, he said, might make no difference, but cutting another one could make the web fall apart.
Massachusetts aims to cut growth of its ballooning health care costs
The Massachusetts Legislature passed a first-in-the-nation bill Tuesday that seeks to limit the growth of health care costs in the state.
Pedestrian summertime weather to persist
This past July has been quite typical here in the Boston area. Based on the preliminary monthly climate report by the NOAA, the average July air temperature this year was 75.6°F, which was 2.1°F above normal. Total rainfall was 3.40 inches, merely 3 percent higher than the normal.