In advance of today’s landmark vote by the Boy Scouts of America on whether to accept gay youths, five of the six scouting councils in New Jersey had urged the change be adopted. The sixth council, Boy Scouts of Northern New Jersey, ended up simply sending along the results of its survey without making any recommendation. The reason, said Pat Coviello, deputy scout executive, was there was no clear-cut consensus from members and sponsors. “There was a preconceived idea that because of where we are — the Northeast — it would be heavily weighted towards changing the policy. But that ... Read More »

By Masayuki Kitano SINGAPORE | Wed May 22, 2013 10:00pm EDT SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Japanese government bond prices dived and 10-year JGB futures tumbled a full point, prompting the Tokyo Stock Exchange to temporarily suspend trade as the dollar hit a near three-year high versus a basket of currencies on Thursday. After the resumption of trade, 10-year JGB futures recouped some of their losses but were still down 0.71 point at 141.19. The 10-year JGB yield jumped to as high as 1.0 percent, its highest level since April last year. The dollar’s rise followed U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s ... Read More »

By Harry Glass PUBLISHED: 06:45 EST, 1 May 2013 | UPDATED: 07:39 EST, 1 May 2013 The boom in ebooks continued last year but had a negligible affect on print publishing, which recorded record sales, the Publishers Association said. Consumer ebook sales rose 134 per cent in 2012, reaching £216million, with total digital sales up 66 per cent to £411million (encompassing ebooks, audiobooks downloads and online subscriptions). It meant total sales across all formats hit a record £3.3billion, up 4 per cent on last year, with ebooks accounting for 12 per cent of that – up from 8 per cent ... Read More »

Kellie Pickler came into the final “Dancing With the Stars” episode in second place but finished in first. The 26-year-old country singer won the show’s mirror ball trophy Tuesday. “This is amazing!” she beamed to her professional partner, Derek Hough. The pair earned two sets of perfect scores Monday night and another on Tuesday. Judges’ scores combined with viewer votes determine the winner. Because there were problems with voting on the ABC website during Monday’s East Coast broadcast, host Tom Bergeron said Tuesday those votes weren’t counted. Only votes cast by phone, text and Facebook factored into the final count. ... Read More »

Link to video: Sergio García: why I dislike Tiger Woods Sergio García’s ongoing spat with Tiger Woods took an unwelcome turn on Tuesday night, when the Spaniard made what could be interpreted as a racist remark about his opponent. The Spaniard was on stage at the European Tour’s gala players’ awards dinner, where he was questioned by the Golf Channel’s Steve Sands. García, who has been embroiled in verbal battles with Woods since the Players Championship at Sawgrass this month, was asked in jest if he would have the American round for dinner one night during the upcoming US Open. ... Read More »

May 20, 2013 How the fabric works Video (30 sec) Videography by Siyuan Xing/UC Davis Waterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis. The new fabric works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves, said inventor Tingrui Pan, professor of biomedical engineering. One area of research in Pan’s Micro-Nano Innovations Laboratory at UC Davis is a field known as microfluidics, which focuses on making “lab on a chip” devices that use tiny channels to manipulate fluids. Pan and ... Read More »

Changes to Chrome 27 for Android deliver search tweaks. (Credit: Google) Google made searching in Chrome for Android a bit easier with an update Wednesday to the browser. The latest stable version of Google Chrome 27 for Android (download) now displays search queries in the location bar’s Omnibox. The change obfuscates the URL display during searches, to show more results and make it easier to tweak the search terms, according to the Google blog announcing the update. Another tweak hides the location bar entirely once you start scrolling, so that you can view a Web page in fullscreen. History viewing ... Read More »