IHT Rendezvous: 2012: The Year of Extreme Weather

The weather reports are in. 2012 was the hottest and the most extreme year on record in many places.While parts of China are enduring the harshest winter in 30 years, the Antarctic is warming at an alarming rate. In Australia, out of control bushfires are partially the result of record-breaking weather (new colors were added to weather forecast maps, to account for the new kind of heat). In the United...

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Come for a Tour of China’s Unlicensed ‘World of Warcraft’ Theme Park

World of Warcraft Theme ParkImage credit Francesca TimbersClick here to view this gallery.[More from Mashable: 20 Tweets That Prove Skittles’ Social-Media Team Inhaled the Rainbow]Changzhou, China is home to a bizzarre world of rides, food and fun: A World of Warcraft-style theme park that’s completely unlicensed by Blizzard, maker of the Warcraft series.The park opened in the summer of last year....

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Lena Dunham Says Boyfriend Jack Antonoff Is 'Someone Great'

01/14/2013 at 12:35 PM EST As Hannah Horvath on the hit HBO series Girls, creator and actress Lena Dunham often finds herself struggling with romance.But when it comes to her real life relationship with Fun guitarist Jack Antonoff, the two-time Golden Globe winner says she's found love. "I know there's some...

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Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest...

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S&P, Nasdaq dip as Apple weighs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street slipped on Monday, weighed down by shares of Apple in the face of demand concerns, while investors faced a busy week for earnings in what is expected to be a lackluster quarter. Apple lost 2.8 percent to $505.84 as the biggest drag on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> indexes after reports that the tech company has cut orders for LCD screens...

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India Ink: Woman Raped by Seven Men in Punjab, India, Police Say

NEW DELHI — Police said Sunday that a  29-year-old woman had been raped by a bus driver, a bus conductor and five other men in the north Indian state of Punjab, in an incident that recalls the recent attack in Delhi that has caused widespread outrage.The woman boarded a bus on Friday bound for Gurdaspur, to visit her in-laws, the police chief of Gurdaspur, Raj Jit Singh, said in a telephone interview....

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Women pry open door to video game industry’s boys’ club

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When video game developer Brenda Brathwaite Romero started her career in the 1980s, she could count the number of female developers in the industry on one hand.Today, many “Women in Games” roundtables she attends are filled to capacity with new faces. The 46-year-old, sometimes referred to as the longest-serving woman in the video game arena, jokes that these days one can...

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Girls Star Lena Dunham Has Another TMI Moment

Stylewatch Style News Now 01/10/2013 at 12:30 PM ET Startraks (2); AP; RetnaWhile everyone else is buzzing about what the four stars of Girls wore to the season two kickoff event, it was what creator Lena Dunham didn’t wear that has us in the PEOPLE offices talking.The actress arrived in a strapless...

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Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest...

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street. The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets. ...

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