The tech giant is planning to announce the next iteration of its wildly popular tablet next month, according to Apple blog iMore.com, which cites sources "who have been reliable in the past."
Right now, the specs of the next iPad are still sketchy and unconfirmed. But numerous Internet reports seem to have settled on a few details, namely that the iPad will be faster and feature a smaller screen.
Word has it the new iPad will come with a "retina display" boasting super high-definition resolution – 2048 x 1536 pixels. But the screen could be smaller.
Apple has been testing out a smaller, 8-inch tablet with Asian suppliers and has actually shown off the overall design to several manufacturing partners, a report from The Wall Street Journal says.
Last week, a new video surfaced claiming to show a live woolly mammoth -- an animal scientists think has been extinct for at least four millennia -- crossing a river in Russia. The suspiciously blurry footage was allegedly "caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia," according to a story in The Sun newspaper.
The video became an Internet sensation, making headlines around the world. Some Bigfoot believers and Loch Ness Monster lovers murmured their tentative approval, hoping it proved that large unknown (or assumed extinct) animals still exist in Earth's remote wilds.
While most people didn't believe that the animal in the video was really a woolly mammoth as claimed, viewers were sharply divided about what exactly it was.
Some suspected the video is an outright hoax -- a computer-generated mammoth digitally inserted into a real river scene. Many others, however, were convinced that the animal was real: not a mammoth, but instead a bear with a large fish hanging from its mouth. That would explain its relatively small size, the shape of the "trunk" on its head, and the color. Experts cast doubts on the video's authenticity; Derek Serra, a Hollywood video effects artist, concluded that it "appears to have been intentionally blurred."
Serra isn't the only expert who can shed some light on this mystery: another person is Ludovic Petho. His name may not be familiar to most people, but his work has been seen by millions; he filmed themammoth footage at the Kitoy River in Siberia's Sayan Mountains in the summer of 2011.
MILAN - Italian prosecutors are appealing to Italy's highest criminal court a decision to throw out the murder conviction of American student Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend.
After spending four years in an Italian prison, and having been convicted of participating in the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher, Knox's conviction was overturned by an appeals court and she was released last October, when she returned home to Seattle.
Prosecutors saw their case collapse over discredited DNA evidence against Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, who was also freed.
On Tuesday Perugia prosecutors filed the 111-page appeal.
Luca Maori, Sollecito's lawyer, said the high court is expected to issue its decision toward the end of the year.
When a piece of muscle in a person's heart dies from lack of blood flow, it scars over and is lost. But a team of researchers from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles has proven that those muscles may not necessarily be gone forever.
In a ground-breaking study that may change how heart attacks are treated, Dr. Eduardo Marban and his team used stem cells to re-grow damaged heart muscle. In the 17 patients who received the therapy, Marban measured an average 50 percent reduction in the size of the scar tissue
"One of the holy grails in medicine has been the use of medicine to achieve regeneration," Marban said. "Patients that were treated not only experienced shrinkage of their scars, but also new growth of their heart muscle, which is very exciting."
The stem cells were not derived from embryos, but instead were developed from the patients' own hearts. Marban's team inserted a catheter into the diseased hearts and took a small biopsy of muscle. In the laboratory, the tissue was manipulated into producing stem cells. After a few weeks of marinating in culture, researchers had enough stem cells to re-inject them into the patients' hearts. Over the course of a year, the stem cells took root in cardiac tissue, encouraging the heart to create new muscle and blood vessels. In other words, the heart actually began to mend itself.
"We've achieved what we have achieved using adult stem cells – in this case – actually specifically from a patient's own heart back into the same patient. There's no ethical issues with that – there's no destruction of embryos. There's no reason to worry about immune rejection."
While similar research has been done using stem cells from bone marrow, this is the first time that stem cells derived from a patient's own cardiac tissue have been used.
Marban believes this therapy could be broadly used in many of the 5 to 7 million Americans who suffer from heart disease every year. And he said the applications could go well beyond diseased hearts.
Italy's premier has scrapped Rome's bid for the 2020 Olympics, saying the government can't supply the required financial backing at a time of financial crisis.
Premier Mario Monti announced after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that it would be an irresponsible use of taxpayer money to fund the Olympic project.
Costs for hosting the Olympics in Rome are estimated at $12.5 billion.
The decision came a day before the deadline for formal submission of bid files to the International Olympic Committee. The IOC requires government financial guarantees.
Rome was the first of six cities to submit a bid for the 2020 Games. The others are Baku, Azerbaijan; Doha, Qatar; Istanbul; Madrid; and Tokyo.
The IOC will select the host city in 2013.
Linsanity goes north of the border this evening when Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks shoot for a sixth straight win against the Toronto Raptors at Air Canada Centre.
One night after netting a career-best 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Lincredible run continued in Minnesota, as the point guard from nowhere scored 20 points, including a go ahead free throw with 4.9 seconds remaining in the Knicks' 100-98 win over the Timberwolves.
"Obviously it was an ugly one. It was a gutsy one, it was a road win," said Lin. "Everybody was tired. But that's the duty of basketball. We never gave up. I struggled a lot tonight but I mean everyone who came in gave us a lift and picked us up."
The Knicks, who will start a five-game homestand after tonight's tilt, haven't won six in a row since a seven-game run from March 28-April 10.
"We've talked about it all year, that if we got a point guard who can set people up, then we'll be better off," head coach Mike D'Antoni said. "And it's happened."
Lin also had eight assists, while Iman Shumpert added 20 points and Landry Fields contributed 19 for the Knicks, who are expected to have Amare Stoudemire back in the lineup tonight. Stoudemire, of course, has missed the team's last four games following the tragic death of his brother.
"The only positive for us during that whole week was we were watching the basketball games and we were watching Linsanity," Stoudemire said. "My family was getting a kick out of it. That's the only smiles they really had all week."
The team's other star, Carmelo Anthony, remains sidelined with a groin injury, but could return by the end of the week.
Lin's strong play was rewarded on Monday when he was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. In the four games since taken over the starting reins for New York, Lin has averaged 27.3 points, 8.3 assists and 2.0 steals. He also became the first player in NBA history to record at least 20 points and seven assists in each of his first four starts.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to snub investor pleas to back an expanded European Central Bank role in solving the debt crisis, as she pushes her demand for tighter economic ties in Europe as the only way forward.
In the days before a speech to German lawmakers tomorrow outlining her stance for a Dec. 9 European summit, Merkel has repeated her push to rework European Union rules to lock in budget monitoring and enforcement and seal off the ECB from political pressure. That risks a showdown with fellow EU leaders and extends her conflict with financial markets looking for immediate measures to end the contagion.
"The market is questioning Merkel's tough approach," Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London, said by phone today. Investors want "clarity on what the framework will look like and what the financial bridge will look like" to fund euro-area governments and banks that need aid while fiscal ties are negotiated.
Merkel's refusal to deploy the ECB is a rebuff to President Barack Obama after he exhorted Europe's leaders to take more action to combat the crisis. The chancellor is loath to agree to follow the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England in policies she views as akin to fighting debt with more debt. Enlisting the ECB in battling the crisis would violate the central bank's independence and set it on a course of action that might not work, destroying its credibility.
The ECB is independent and must choose its own method of ensuring the euro's stability "without being praised or criticized" and states must protect that independence by improving their finances, the Westdeutsche Zeitung quoted Merkel as saying in an interview released today. The government sees joint euro bonds as "the wrong remedy in this phase of European development and even damaging," she told the newspaper.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner and Nobel prize winner, had dinner with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Thursday night in a diplomatic residence in the port city of Rangoon.
The extraordinary meeting came at the end of Clinton's first full day of her historic trip to the isolated south Asian state, the first by a top-ranking American official for more than 50 years.
Earlier she met the new president, Thein Sein, and senior officials in Naypyidaw, the country's recently constructed capital.
"I am here today because President Obama and myself are encouraged by the steps you and your government have taken to provide for your people," Clinton told Thein Sein as the two sat down for talks in the vast – and apparently largely empty – presidential palace.
Thein Sein, who has led a nominally civilian administration since March, welcomed Clinton on a visit he said would be a "milestone".
"Your excellency's visit will be a new chapter in relations," he said.
Clinton's trip comes after changes in Burma that have astonished many observers. Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed after more than 20 years of house arrest and prison, and tentative moves have been made to reduce censorship and create new laws permitting limited political demonstrations.
Last year saw parliamentary elections which, despite being rigged to give the pro-regime party a huge majority, were nonetheless welcomed by observers.
Though the military dominates most institutions and much of the economy, many senior figures believe Burma, currently under US and European Union sanctions, needs to reintegrate the international community, analysts say.
Pakistan may discontinue its support of the U.S.-led war on terrorism if its sovereignty is violated again, a top official said Thursday in the latest sign of the country's continuing outrage over a deadly NATO airstrike on a Pakistani military outpost last week.
"Enough is enough. The government will not tolerate any incident of spilling even a single drop of any civilian or soldier's blood," Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told Pakistan lawmakers, according to The News newspaper.
"Pakistan's role in the war on terror must not be overlooked," Khar said.
Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers died Saturday after a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol called in an airstrike along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. NATO is investigating the apparent friendly fire incident, but the two sides have differed over the sequence of events. The NATO force reported coming under fire before requesting the strike, and a preliminary U.S. military report suggests Taliban fighters may have lured the coalition patrol into the area.
Pakistan calls for change in partnership with U.S.
NATO: Pakistan cooperates in new border raid
Pakistani officials have insisted the attack was unprovoked. Officials also claim the strikes continued for two hours despite alerting NATO that it was targeting the outpost.
American and NATO officials have expressed sympathy over the deaths, saying the incident was a mistake. The border area is infested with militants, whom NATO has long complained receive safe haven on the Pakistan side to launch attacks in Afghanistan.
The border incident has greatly strengthened anti-American sentiment, reducing the political space for those who argue that cooperation with Washington is in the country's interest. The army, which has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid since 2001 in exchange for its cooperation, however limited, against militants, has fueled the hard line by accusing NATO of a "deliberate act of aggression."
On the heels of action taken by the Arab League, Turkey and European Union, the Treasury Department on Thursday announced new sanctions against Syria and urged more pressure against Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Treasury named Muhammad Makhluf, an uncle of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and Aus Aslan, top general in the Syrian military. Under the terms of the sanctions, Americans are banned from any dealings with them.
"It has never been more critical to escalate pressure on the Syrian government to immediately cease all violence against its own people and isolate the regime from the international financial system," David Cohen, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. "We will continue to work closely with our partners in Europe and around the world to hasten a transition to democracy in Syria."
Treasury also listed the Military Housing Establishment as a Syrian government-controlled company that provides financing to the regime and Real Estate Bank, which handles borrowing for the government.
The Treasury Department sanctions come one day after Turkey announced a freeze on Syrian assets in Turkey and a ban on transactions with the Syrian central bank. The EU and Arab League also levied a series of sanctions against Damascus earlier this week.
