RIM shares fall at the open after earnings

 Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker's Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services. RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the...

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Investors shed shares of Blackberry maker

Shares of Blackberry maker Research in Motion slumped more than 16 percent Friday with future revenue coming into question and a declining number of subscribers.RIM's stock jumped initially Thursday when the Canadian company released better-than-expected third-quarter results and a stronger cash position.Shares reversed course during a conference call later, when executives said that the company won't...

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RIM’s biggest problem: It’s still scrambling to catch yesterday’s hottest mobile app

The moment I first realized that RIM (RIMM) was truly in enormous trouble was back in 2010 when I heard then co-CEO Jim Balsillie downplay the importance of apps. Yes, you read that correctly. Balsillie actually told attendees at a Web 2.0 summit in 2010 that the Internet itself was the most important “app” for mobile devices and contended that the “Web needs a platform that allows you to use your...

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Without an ‘iTV,’ Apple’s growth could shrink to the single digits by 2015

Another analyst believes that Apple is losing its shine. Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research on Thursday trimmed his price target for the company, citing concerns that growth may be slowing. The analyst believes that iPhone sales will remain strong for at least the next two years, however Apple (AAPL) is expected to lose overall market share “if it does not bring out a lower-price device” in the...

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Windows already threatening iPhone in Southern Europe

Kantar Worldpanel’s report for November came out and much has been made of the iPhone market share surge in the United States. What I find interesting in the November numbers is just how ice cold the iPhone has gone in so many international markets, from Australia to Brazil to Southern Europe. The iOS market share showed hefty declines outside in many major markets: down 5.4 percentage points in Australia...

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Analysis: Japan's yen offensive may give Toyota an edge over Hyundai

TOKYO (Reuters) - When Toyota Motor Corp President Akio Toyoda visited northern Japan in July last year and announced a $24 million engine plant expansion, some analysts saw it as evidence of a flawed strategy that put patriotism above profitability.At the time, Toyota was struggling to rebuild its supply base after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the yen was climbing toward a post-war record...

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Treasury unveils plan to buy time under debt ceiling

 The Treasury on Wednesday announced the first of a series of measures that should push back the day when the government will exceed its legal borrowing authority as imposed by Congress by around two months.Without any action, Treasury said the government is set to reach its $16.4 trillion debt ceiling on December 31.The government is facing a crunch on the debt ceiling because the issue has...

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Stores look to week after Christmas for sales

Bargain-hungry Americans will need to go on a post-Christmas spending binge to salvage this holiday shopping season.Despite the huge discounts and other incentives that stores offered leading up to Christmas, U.S. holiday sales so far this year have been the weakest since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession.So stores now are depending on the days after Christmas to make up lost ground: The...

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US Treasury to take steps to avoid borrowing limit

The U.S. Treasury Department will begin taking steps on Friday to delay hitting the government's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit on Dec. 31.Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter Wednesday to congressional leaders that the department will use accounting measures to save approximately $200 billion. That could keep the government from reaching the limit for about two months.The move comes...

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Wall Street drops in thin session, led by retailers

Stocks fell for a third straight day on Wednesday, dragged lower by retail stocks after a report showed consumers spent less in the holiday shopping season than last year.Trading was light, with volume at a mere 4.01 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares. The day's volume was the lightest...

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Afghan bomber attacks near major US base; no dead

A vehicle apparently driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of a major U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, with initial reports indicating some Afghans were injured but no one was killed, a NATO command spokesman said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.The vehicle, probably with a suicide bomber inside, exploded at the gate of Camp Chapman, located adjacent...

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8 dead in Christmas Day fires, riot in Philippines

Angry residents beat a man to death and threw rocks at firefighters after a shantytown fire left thousands of people homeless, and another Christmas Day blaze in the Philippine capital left seven people dead, officials said Wednesday.A resident was beaten to death by his neighbors after shouting that he started Tuesday's shantytown fire in suburban San Juan city, Senior Fire Officer Domingo Cabog...

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Three Afghans dead in new blast at U.S. base in Afghan east

A suicide bomber killed three people in an attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the same base that is believed to be used by the CIA and which a suicide bomber attacked three years ago killing seven CIA employees.The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern town of Khost, saying they had sent a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives to the base."The...

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Japan's Abe gets second term, to tap allies for cabinet

The lower house of Japan's parliament approved Shinzo Abe as prime minister on Wednesday, giving the hawkish lawmaker a second chance at the top job as the country battles deflation and confronts a rising China.Abe, 58, has promised aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan and big fiscal spending by the debt-laden government to slay deflation and weaken the yen to make Japanese exports more...

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Shinzo Abe elected as Japan's prime minister

The lower house of Parliament has named conservative Shinzo Abe (shin-zoh ah-bay) as Japan's new prime minister. The rise of Abe, whose nationalist positions have in the past angered Japan's neighbors, ends more than three years at the helm for the left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan and brings back the conservative, pro-big business Liberal Democratic Party that governed for most of the post-World...

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Wall Street sinks after election as "fiscal cliff" eyed

The Dow industrials lost more than 300 points in a sell-off on Wednesday that drove all major stock indexes down over 2 percent in the wake of the presidential election as investors' focus shifted to the looming "fiscal cliff" debate and Europe's economic troubles. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index posted its biggest daily percentage drop since June, with all 10 S&P sectors solidly lower and...

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Coal company announces layoffs in response to Obama win

A coal company headed by a prominent Mitt Romney donor has laid off more than 160 workers in response to President Obama's election victory. Murray Energy said Friday that it had been "forced" to make the layoffs in response to the bleak prospects for the coal industry during Obama's second term. In a prayer circulated by the company, CEO Robert Murray said Americans had voted "in favor of redistribution,...

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U.S. to Pass Saudi Arabia in Energy Production, IEA Says: Huge Foreign Policy, Economic Implications

A new report by the International Energy Association says the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking current leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia. U.S. energy policies initiated by the George W. Bush administration and implemented by President Barack Obama have moved the U.S. toward energy independence and away from Middle East energy sources. U.S. oil production has risen...

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Eurozone back in recession in Q3

The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies. And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the debt crisis...

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Are We Regulating Ourselves Back Into Recession?

Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds," President Gerald Ford told Congress in 1975. "And let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset." While Ford was talking about the scars from the Vietnam War, his words seem relevant today. Our nation grapples with not one divisive issue, but a basket of them, each pulling and undermining our already battered confidence, while testing...

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"Bennifer" buried as Ben Affleck's star soars

It has taken 10 years of hard work and indie movies, but Ben Affleck finally has moved past his "Bennifer" nightmare. Affleck, 40, once a tabloid staple who risked becoming a laughingstock during his romance with Jennifer Lopez and their movie flop "Gigli," is back on top in Hollywood, winning accolades for his work both in front of and behind the camera. Fifteen years after Affleck shared an Oscar...

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Norman Woodland, co-inventor of bar code, dies at 91

Norman Woodland, co-inventor of the bar code, the inventory tracking tool that transformed global commerce in the 1970s and saved shoppers countless hours on the supermarket checkout line, has died, his daughter said. Woodland, 91, died Saturday from complications related to Alzheimer's disease in Edgewater, New Jersey, said Susan Woodland of New York. Today, five billion products a day are scanned...

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Actor Depardieu hits back at French PM over tax exile

Actor Gerard Depardieu, accused by French government leaders of trying to dodge taxes by buying a house over the border in Belgium, retorted that he was leaving because "success" was now being punished in his homeland. A popular and colourful figure in France, the 63-year-old Depardieu is the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter outside his native country after tax increases by Socialist President...

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Pop star Kelly Clarkson announces engagement

Kelly Clarkson, who became the first contestant to win "American Idol" a decade ago and went on to several chart-topping successes, has gotten engaged to her boyfriend, the singer said in a Twitter message on Saturday. Clarkson, 30, previously revealed she had been dating talent manager Brandon Blackstock since early this year. Blackstock is the stepson of country singer Reba McEntire. "I'M ENGAGED!"...

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Gabby Douglas, Adele among brightest young stars -Forbes magazine

Fashion designer Carly Cushnie, actress Kate McKinnon and videogame creator Kim Swift may not be household names yet, but they are destined to do great things and will be tomorrow's young stars, Forbes magazine said on Monday. Along with Olympic Gold medalist gymnast Gabby Douglas, rapper Wiz Khalifa and researcher Josh Sommer, they have been chosen by the magazine for its "30 Under 30" list of top...

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Judge asks Hostess to mediate with union

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Twinkies won't die that easily after all. Hostess Brands Inc. and its second largest union will go into mediation to try and resolve their differences, meaning the company won't go out of business just yet. The news came Monday after Hostess moved to liquidate and sell off its assets in bankruptcy court citing a crippling strike last week. The bankruptcy judge hearing the...

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Just Explain It: What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil has been a policy goal for at least the last two U.S. Presidents. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020, the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer. However, there's still some work to do. The United States Energy Information Administration reported that 45% of the petroleum consumed by the U.S. in 2011...

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Apple to produce line of Macs in the US next year

NEW YORK (AP) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will move production of one of its existing lines of Mac computers from China to the United States next year. Industry watchers said the announcement is both a cunning public-relations move and a harbinger of more manufacturing jobs moving back to the U.S. as wages rise in China. Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock...

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US economy adds 146K jobs, rate falls to 7.7 pct.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The pace of U.S. hiring remained steady in November despite disruptions from Superstorm Sandy and employers' concerns about impending tax increases from the year-end "fiscal cliff." Companies added 146,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent — the lowest in nearly four years — from 7.9 percent in October. The rate declined mainly because more people stopped looking...

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Just Explain It: Why the Fiscal Cliff May Trigger a Recession

Lawmakers in Washington appear to be making little to no progress in avoiding the impending so-called fiscal cliff. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday the negotiations are "almost nowhere." On Thursday Boehner rejected a proposal from the Obama administration saying that the Democrats need to "get serious about real spending cuts." President Obama's offer continues to call for higher...

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Niners-Seahawks a late-season classic

Under normal circumstances, Seattle's CenturyLink Field rocks from the noise of the 12th Man.Imagine how far across Puget Sound the crowd's cheers will reverberate when the Seahawks host the 49ers on Sunday night.The NFL flexed this one to prime time, and it was a wise choice. Although the 49ers (10-3-1) still can win the NFC West even if they fall to Seattle — a win in the finale against Arizona...

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