Ice-age art hints at birth of modern mind

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editorFigurines from the Don river valley (Images: Kirstin Jennings)The world’s oldest portrait, the world’s first fully carved sculpture, the world's oldest ceramic figure, the world’s earliest puppet - there’s no shortage of superlatives in the new exhibition of art from the ice age at the British Museum in LondonBut focus too closely on the exhibits’ record-breaking ages...

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India's Kingfisher loses $142m in third quarter

MUMBAI: India's ailing Kingfisher Airlines, whose planes have been grounded since October, posted a net loss of 7.55 billion rupees (US$142 million) in the three months to December, the company said on Tuesday.The private carrier, controlled by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, has never made a profit since it started operations in 2005 and owes millions of dollars to banks, airports, fuel suppliers...

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Pinterest rolls out revamped iPhone and iPad app

Pinterest updates its iOS app to make pin management easier.(Credit:Pinterest)Pinterest spruced up its iOS app today to make scrolling, pin management, and deleting comments easier. "We've made a few tweaks behind the scenes so scrolling is smoother when you're going through pins," the pinning social network wrote in a blog post today. "We also added some features to make it easier to manage your...

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESAThe European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility."Terrestrial...

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Sarai Sierra's 2 Young Boys Don't Know Mom's Dead

The two young sons of slain New York mom Sarai Sierra are under the impression that their father has gone to Turkey to bring their mother home - alive.Sierra, whose battered body was found near a highway in Istanbul over the weekend, was the mother of two boys aged 9 and 11.Steven Sierra, who went to Istanbul in search of his wife after she disappeared nearly two weeks ago,...

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Bug protects itself by turning its environment to gold

Mythical King Midas was ultimately doomed because everything he touched turned to gold. Now, the reverse has been found in bacteria that owe their survival to a natural Midas touch. Delftia acidovorans lives in sticky biofilms that...

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China paper rejects hacking allegations

BEIJING: The official mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party roundly rejected claims of hacking attacks from China of American media outlets, hinting instead at ulterior motives by the US. The People's Daily article echoed vehement government rejections last week after The New York Times and Wall Street Journal linked Beijing to cyberattacks. In a fresh development, The Washington...

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Surface Pro lands at Microsoft Store

Microsoft Surface Pro is now on display at the Century City Microsoft Store in Los Angeles. (Credit:Brooke Crothers)LOS ANGELES -- The Surface Pro has arrived early at Microsoft stores. Locations, such as the store near Beverly Hills, Calif., now have the Pro -- slated to go on sale this Saturday -- on display and available for anyone to use. So, I spent about an hour with Pro and came away impressed....

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Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, APThe magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg...

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Super Bowl XLVII: Ravens Hang On, 34-31

Chris Graythen/Getty Images11:11 p.m. ET: Well, that’s it for the live blog. The game is over, but there’s still a lot for football fans to talk about – lots of missed chances, maybe or maybe not blown calls or no-calls, and, in the end, an epic win for the Baltimore Ravens.11:06 p.m. ET: First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted her congratulations to the Ravens: “Great game! Congrats to the @Ravens....

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