A troubling promise in iPad Mini's new Xmas ad

Only in her dreams, Grandad.(Credit:Apple screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)Xmas is a time for families to be together and share all the tensions they have harbored for the whole year.So to celebrate family closeness, Apple has just released an ad -- bless you, MacStories -- for theiPad Mini. It features a grandfather and granddaughter. She is singing to him over FaceTime.We see her face on a regular...

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter InstituteMounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to."You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations,"...

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'Fiscal Cliff' Leaves Boehner a Wounded Speaker

John Boehner is a bloodied House speaker following the startling setback that his own fractious Republican troops dealt him in their "fiscal cliff" struggle against President Barack Obama.There's plenty of internal grumbling about the Ohio Republican, especially among conservatives, and lots of buzzing about whether his leadership post is in jeopardy. But it's uncertain whether...

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Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondentWhen engineers at CERN invented the touchscreen, they chose not to patent it. Yet Apple, Microsoft and Nokia are among the slew of tech firms who have chosen to patent aspects of the way software responds when humans touch or interact with touchscreens. But if Apple's recent experiences are any kind of harbinger, it looks like a strategy that's beginning...

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Moments of silence, bells mark US school shooting

NEWTOWN: Mourners in Newtown, Connecticut, stood in silence under heavy rain while church bells rang to honour the 20 young children and six staff massacred in a school shooting a week ago.The sombre scene at 9:30 am local time, the moment a week earlier when a deranged local man armed with semiautomatic weapons burst into the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was echoed around the country...

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Facebook's about-face over Instagram (week in review)

It didn't take Facebook long to backtrack over controversial policy changes it intended to make regarding its photo-sharing app Instagram.A public backlash was ignited by Instagram stating that had it the perpetual right to sell users' photographs without payment or notification. Under the new policy, Facebook claimed the right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization,...

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Winter Solstice 2012: Facts on the Shortest Day of the Year

Today is the winter solstice and the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's all due to Earth's tilt, which ensures that the shortest day of every year falls around December 21.Some predicted that today would also mark Earth's doomsday, thanks to a longstanding rumor that the Maya calendar ends on December 21, 2012. But earlier this year, National Geographic grantee William...

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Amid Protest, NRA Calls for Armed Guards in Schools

The National Rifle Association stood its ground today in arguing that the answer to gun violence in schools is an armed security force that can protect students, while blaming the media and violent entertainment and video games for recent deadly shootings."The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre...

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How to reduce the toll from US gun violence

It is tragic that it took the deaths of 20 children, but it seems that the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown has finally shifted the debate about guns and violence in the US. In focusing on Newtown, Connecticut,...

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Russia's Putin denies propping up Assad

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and stressed that Moscow was only seeking to avert a perpetual civil war."We are not concerned about (Bashar Assad's fate. We understand that the family has been in power for 40 years and there is a need for change," Putin told a major Moscow press briefing.But he made no call on Assad...

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