France extends deadline for publishers' talks with Google

 The French government said it would extend to the end of January the deadline for talks between Google Inc and the French press to settle a dispute over the search engine's links to online news articles.Press associations in France, and other European countries, want Google to pay when it displays links to newspapers in Internet searches.In reply, Google has threatened to stop indexing articles...

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Wells Fargo Web site troubles persist, U.S. OCC issues cyber alert

 Wells Fargo & Co customers on Friday had trouble accessing the bank's Web site for a fourth day, as a federal regulator reiterated the need for banks to have systems in place to ward off cyber attacks.A spokeswoman for the No. 4 U.S. bank by assets said some customers may have intermittent access to their online banking, although the high volume of traffic that has flooded the site has declined."Our...

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Facebook Poke App Is Frustrating as Hell

Facebook Poke: Startup ScreenPoke, the new iPhone app from Facebook, lets you send short messages, photos and videos to friends that automatically self destruct after a few seconds. If you have the Facebook app on your phone already, logging in is effortless.Click here to view this gallery.[More from Mashable: 2012′s Biggest Winners and Losers]I was never a big poker on Facebook. When I joined the...

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HTC upgrades Android devices faster than any of its rivals

The problem with Android has always been the erratic schedules manufacturers and carriers use to update devices. Due to custom user interfaces that are used to differentiate devices from the large pool of Android vendors, manufacturers often require more time to update devices than Google (GOOG) does for its own Nexus line of smartphones and tablets. Smartphone makers must then submit their update...

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Google, Motorola plotting a so-called ‘X Phone’ to take on the iPhone and Galaxy S III

Motorola engineers are said to be working on a “sophisticated” smartphone that will “provide more potent competition” to the iPhone, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Google (GOOG) hopes the handset, which is known internally as “X Phone,” will stand apart from existing devices, although the company is said to be running into some obstacles. The device will reportedly be equipped...

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Margaret Thatcher in hospital after operation

LONDON (Reuters) - Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the country's first woman elective leader, is in hospital recovering from surgery to remove a growth on her bladder, a source close to the family said on Friday.After experiencing pain in her bladder earlier in the week, he 87-year-old went to hospital where she underwent a minimally invasive operation, Tim Bell, a public relations...

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Margaret Thatcher in UK hospital after operation

LONDON (AP) — Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is recuperating at a hospital after an operation to remove a bladder growth, a friend said Friday.The 87-year-old Thatcher went to see her doctor after experiencing some discomfort and subsequently had the growth removed, according to longtime adviser Tim Bell.The operation was "completely satisfactory," Bell said. He said he couldn't go...

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Pope stresses family values as gay marriage gains

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices — and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year....

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Pardon for pope's butler who stole papers expected

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has summoned journalists for a briefing on what Italian news reports say is an expected pardon for Pope Benedict XVI'S former butler, who stole the pontiff's personal papers and leaked them in a bid to expose the "evil and corruption" in the Catholic Church.Paolo Gabriele was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found heaps of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment....

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Russia: Syrian chemical weapons under control

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's foreign minister says the Syrian government has consolidated its chemical weapons in one or two locations amid a rebel onslaught.Sergey Lavrov says Russia, which has military advisers training Syria's military, has kept close watch over its chemical arsenal. He says the Syrian government has moved them from many arsenals to just "one or two centers" to properly safeguard them.U.S....

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