Mystery missile launch reported off California coast

Pentagon officials say they cannot explain reports of a missile launch off the coast of California on Monday.A CBS News helicopter captured what looked like the vapour trail of a missile rising from the water about 35 miles (56 km) offshore. "Right now all indications are that it was not [defence department] involvement in this launch" Pentagon spokesman Col David Lapan said. The Pentagon does not consider the missile a threat. "So far we've come up empty with any explanation," Col Lapan said. "We're doing everything we can to try to figure out if anybody has any knowledge of what this event may have been." Under normal circumstances, the launch of a US missile would require several different authorisations and notifications, but none are evident. It is unclear if the suspected...

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'Twilight' leads People's Choice Awards nominees

Kristen Stewart, left, and James Pattinson LOS ANGELES – "The Twilight Saga" has a chance to eclipse the competition at the 2011 People's Choice Awards. Nominations were announced Tuesday, and the vampire love story and its stars racked up a leading eight bids. The film is up for favorite movie and favorite drama, and stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are nominated for favorite on-screen team. Pattinson and Lautner are also nominated individually for favorite movie actor, Stewart is up for favorite movie actress, and she and Pattinson are also nominated for favorite movie star under 25. Other multiple nominees...

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Ask.com : The End of an Era for Search

Today marks the end of Ask.com as a search engine; the once-mighty search giant will lay off the vast majority of its engineers and concede its small piece of the search market to Google and Microsoft. Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, was once one of the world’s most recognizable search engines. It launched in 1996 and quickly grew in popularity with its focus on natural language queries in addition to keyword search. At its peak, Ask.com took care of 2 million queries per day. Its mascot, Jeeves the butler, was well known by millions of people. In 1999, the company held an IPO and everything looked peachy (as most things did...

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Countering China, Obama Backs India for U.N. Council

By endorsing India for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, President Obama on Monday signaled the United States’ intention to create a deeper partnership of the world’s two largest democracies that would expand commercial ties and check the influence of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Obama’s announcement, made during a nationally televised address to the Indian Parliament, came at the end of a three-day visit to India that won high marks from an Indian political establishment once uncertain of the president’s commitment to the relationship. Even as stark differences remained between the countries on a range...

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Happy Birthday, Firefox

Today marks the 6th birthday of the popular web browser, Firefox. It was launched on November 9, 2004 as a lightweight and more secure alternative to Internet Explorer 6, which was the dominant browser at the time. Six years later, and Firefox is now the second most widely used browser with steady growth and 31.5% market share according to StatCounter. The next major version of Firefox, Firefox 4, was originally scheduled to be launched by the end of 2010 but was recently delayed into early 2011. The new version will bring several important improvements: HTML5 support, redesigned user interface, multi-touch functionality, hardware-accelerated...

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Bush admits mistakes, defends decisions

Former US President George W Bush has defended some of his most controversial decisions, in his first television interview since leaving office. He told US network NBC that use of the interrogation technique waterboarding - simulated drowning - had prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives. Mr Bush, who is publicising his memoir Decision Points, said the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not wrong. History would judge him a success, he added, but he would be dead by then. "I just didn't want to get out there anymore," he told NBC's Matt Lauer of his absence from the media since he left the White House in January 2009. "I didn't want to get...

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Sculptures confiscated by Nazis to be displayed

A sculpture collection which was condemned by Hitler's Nazis is set to go on display later at Berlin's Neues Museum. The 11 pieces of art, which date back from the early 20th Century, were discovered on a building site in the city centre last year. They belonged to a collection of 15,000 works which Hitler's regime dubbed "degenerate art". The statues were found during a dig to lay down a new underground train line. The terracotta and bronze statues were criticised by Hitler's regime for containing "deviant" sexual elements and anti-nationalistic themes. Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit said that finding the sculptures is a "small miracle"...

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