Alleged Ohio rapists may not get fair trial: defendant's lawyer

(Reuters) - Two Ohio high-school football players accused of raping a teenage girl may not get a fair trial after a photo and video allegedly associated with the case were posted on the Internet by the computer hacking group Anonymous, a lawyer for one of the accused said on Friday.Ma'lik Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with...

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Leader of Online Movie Group IMAGiNE Gets five Years for Piracy

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jeremiah B. Perkins, the former leader of internet movie group IMAGiNE, was sentenced to five years in prison on a piracy charge, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.Perkins, 40, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement in August.In addition to the prison sentence, Perkins was sentenced to three years of supervised release...

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New Jersey man accused of trying to hire "cannibal cop" to kidnap woman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New Jersey man offered to pay $5,000 to the so-called "cannibal cop" to kidnap a woman and deliver her to be raped, U.S. officials alleged on Friday.Federal authorities arrested Michael Vanhise, 23, and charged him with conspiracy to commit kidnapping with Gilberto Valle III, a New York police officer who was arrested in October and charged with conspiring to kidnap, torture,...

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Five Best Thursday Columns

Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic on Starbucks In hopes of inspiring latte-sipping lawmakers to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff, yesterday Starbucks started writing "come together" on every cup it sells in the DC area. Cute effort, right? More like misguided, argues Jonathan Cohn. He thinks the issue isn't about two warring parties reconciling—it's about convincing the Republicans...

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Why Apple's First American-Made Mac Minis Wouldn't Create Jobs

If the latest rumors are true, Apple's made-in-America shift will be an extremely experimental, low-cost operation — and if you look at the supply chain, that may point to more of a symbolic gesture than a genuine engine of job creation. The whispers, which have increasingly better sourcing, now say the tech giant will move its Mac Mini production line from China's Foxconn to the the U.S., possibly...

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Survey finds increase in e-reading, drop in paper

The tastes of the reading public are turning digital.A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called...

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New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera

Another week, another batch of purported leaks for Research In Motion’s (RIMM) first BlackBerry 10-powered Z10. BBin claims to have most of the Z10′s final specs confirmed and it is shaping up to be a powerful device. Rumored specs for the Z10 include a TI OMAP 4470 1.5GHz dual-core processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 for the U.S. and Canada), a 4.2-inch display (1,280 x 768 resolution), quad-band...

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Instagram gains users in December despite recent uproar as Zynga gets pecked to death by rivals

Zynga (ZNGA), the Facebook (FB) app behemoth, still reigns supreme on its most important platform. But the erosion of its dominant position continues as smaller rivals keep chipping away at its market share. On December 26, Zynga-owned Facebook applications had 267 million Monthly Active Users, down 20 million in two weeks. Far behind it followed Microsoft (MSFT) with 70 million MAU, King.com with...

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Hackers hook the Nexus 4 onto AT&T’s LTE network in limited markets

LTE on the Nexus 4 — it’s not just for Canadians anymore. Android Police points out the some members of the XDA-Developers forum have been able to use AT&T’s (T) LTE network on their Nexus 4 smartphones, but only in limited markets. The reason, as Android Police explains, is that the Nexus 4′s radio can pick up frequencies on the AWS band that spans from 1710 to 1755 MHz on the uplink and from...

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Cyber attacks on Gulf infrastructure seen rising

DUBAI (Reuters) - The former chief of the United Arab Emirates' air force said his country's advanced cyber infrastructure made it a favorite target for hackers, especially when tension heightened in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The last war in Gaza led to a barrage of cyber attacks because UAE has advanced telecommunications infrastructure," retired Major General Khaled al-Buainnain said. "The...

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Android 4.2′s built-in antivirus software only detects 15% of malware

The latest version of the Android operating system has been called one of the most bug-ridden releases since Honeycomb, although it has also been recognized as the safest version yet. With Android 4.2, Google (GOOG) integrated a unique and high-powered security feature into the platform that scans for malicious or potentially harmful codes in apps that are loaded onto a user’s device. According to...

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Russia backs down on proposals to regulate the Internet

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Russia-led coalition on Monday withdrew a proposal to give governments new powers over the Internet, a plan opposed by Western countries in talks on a new global telecom treaty. Negotiations on the treaty mark the most sustained effort so far by governments from around the world to agree on how - or whether - to regulate cyberspace. The United States, Europe, Canada and other...

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Editorial: If Barrett Brown's Guilty, Then So Am I

Dallas writer Barrett Brown, who was involved with the "hacktivist" movement Anonymous until earlier this year, was indicted last Tuesday (Dec. 4) on 12 counts related to possession of stolen credit-card numbers. The indictment alleges that Brown possessed at least 10 stolen credit-card numbers and card-verification values (CVVs), and also shared a link to a document that contained thousands more...

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