A former Google China executive reportedly wrote in his blog that Apple expects to sell 10 million tablet PCs in its first year out. He also offered specifics about the hardware, and said Steve Jobs will release the tablet in January.
An Apple tablet PC in the new year is sounding increasingly likely.
Lee Kai-fu, former president [...]

AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. phone company, ended its sponsorship deal with Tiger Woods after the golfer’s admissions of marital infidelity.
“We are ending our sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods and wish him well in the future,” Michael Coe, a spokesman for AT&T, said in an e-mail today. The company began a multiyear agreement in February [...]

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell sharply last week to the lowest level in 17 months, the government said Thursday. Analysts had expected an increase.
There were 432,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Dec. 26, down 22,000 from the previous week’s revised 454,000, the Labor Department said. The [...]

ESPOO, Finland — A lone gunman killed four people in a rampage in a Finnish shopping mall Thursday and also murdered his former girlfriend before being found dead himself, police said.
The man named as Ibrahim Shkupolli, 43, opened fire in the suburban Helsinki mall where his ex-partner reportedly worked, shooting dead three men and a [...]

Tiger Woods and the Florida Highway Patrol met at an undisclosed location in Orlando on Dec. 1, the same day that authorities closed their investigation into the golfer’s one-car crash outside his mansion, WESH-TV reported Wednesday.
Woods, who was cited for careless driving but not charged criminally, was issued a $164 citation when he met with [...]

An attack by a suicide bomber at a military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday killed eight Americans believed to be CIA employees, a senior U.S. official told CNN.
Also Wednesday, four Canadian soldiers and a Canadian journalist were killed when a roadside bomb hit their armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan, Canada’s defense ministry said.
The suicide [...]

WASHINGTON — After $787 billion in stimulus spending and $700 billion in bank bailouts, 2010 is fast shaping up to be the year of the federal budget diet.
Bipartisan support is growing in Congress for action to stabilize the nation’s bulging debt, which is now $12.1 trillion. Congress is helped by influential experts, ranging from former [...]

SAN DIEGO – A magnitude-5.8 earthquake in northern Baja California rocked the U.S.-Mexico border region Wednesday, causing buildings to sway more than 100 miles to the west in downtown San Diego and southwestern Arizona.
The main quake was centered about 20 miles southeast of the Mexican border city of Mexicali, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. [...]

A Sturgis, SD woman had a blood-alcohol level of .708 percent, possibly a state record, when she was found earlier this month behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle parked on Interstate 90, according to Meade County State’s Attorney Jesse Sondreal.
A South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper discovered Marguerite Engle, 45, on Dec. 1 passed out [...]

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP)—Texas Tech fired coach Mike Leach on Wednesday, two days after he was suspended by the school as it investigated his treatment of a player with a concussion.
The school handed a termination letter to Leach’s attorney, Ted Liggett, minutes before the two sides were to appear in a Lubbock, Texas, courtroom for a [...]