Venezuelan Court: Chávez Swearing-In Can Be Postponed

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles is condemning the Supreme Court's endorsement of a delay in President Hugo Chavez's inauguration. The Supreme Court sided with Venezuela's government and ruling party earlier Wednesday in the heated dispute with the opposition while the ailing leader struggles with complications a month after cancer surgery in Cuba. ...

Read More..

Men and Women of (Limited) Letters: Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013

Scientific American editors voted in recent weeks on the 20 most informative Twitter accounts to stay abreast of the latest ideas, issues and developments in science and technology. We weeded through hundreds of lists and feeds to select the most brilliant and engaging, as well as the quirkiest of the bunch.Our picks are often witty, sometimes eccentric and occasionally silly, but each brings valuable...

Read More..

David Bowie's New Single Is No Splashy Comeback

By Chuck Arnold 01/09/2013 at 05:00 PM EST "Where Are We Now?" ponders a plaintive David Bowie on his comeback single after seemingly retiring from music. Indeed, this august, atmospheric ballad previews his first album in 10 years, The Next Day, due out March 12. Out of nowhere the song was dropped in the middle...

Read More..

Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in...

Read More..

Wall Street rises after Alcoa reports earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season. Stocks had retreated at the start of the week from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday, on worries about possible earnings weakness. Shares of Alcoa Inc were down 0.5 percent to...

Read More..

British Soldier Killed by Afghan Soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan — A British soldier who was helping to build new quarters for the Afghan National Army at a small base in southern Afghanistan was fatally shot by an Afghan soldier in the first insider attack of 2013, military officials said Tuesday. The attacker, who struck on Monday evening, also shot and wounded six other British soldiers in the engineering regiment, three of them seriously,...

Read More..

Google offers New York City neighborhood free WiFi

(Reuters) – Google Inc and a New York redevelopment organization are providing a Manhattan neighborhood with free public WiFi Internet access, making it the largest area of coverage in New York City.The search giant and the non-profit Chelsea Improvement Co are making Internet access available outdoors in Chelsea, which is home to Google’s New York offices and several technology start-ups.The neighborhood...

Read More..

Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer."There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer...

Read More..

Wall Street slips as earnings season gets under way

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Tuesday, retreating from last week's rally on the "fiscal cliff" deal in Washington, as companies started to report results for the fourth quarter. After a 4.3 percent jump in the two sessions around the close of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the S&P has declined a bit, with investors finding few catalysts to extend the rally that took the benchmark...

Read More..

Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/ReutersAn aerial view of a tar sands mine in Alberta, where cancer-causing compounds have been rising according to a study. OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than...

Read More..