Friday, May 18th, 2012

BY JULIAN E. BARNES WASHINGTON—The Pentagon hailed new cooperation with Beijing while reiterating concerns about Chinese military growth it says is aimed at keeping the U.S. out of the western Pacific, in an annual report on China’s military modernization. China said this year that it would spend $106 billion on its military budget, an 11.2% [...]



Friday, May 18th, 2012

By JULIAN E. BARNES WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is weighing policy changes that would lift a tattered veil of secrecy from its controversial campaign of drone strikes, a recognition that the expanding program has become a regular part of U.S. global counterterrorism operations. Associated Press A Predator B unmanned aircraft taxis at the Naval Air Station [...]



Friday, May 18th, 2012

BY ARIAN CAMPO-FLORES AND CAMERON MCWHIRTER Prosecutors released evidence Thursday in the case of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch volunteer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed teenager, including a photograph from the night of their altercation showing Mr. Zimmerman with a swollen and bloody nose. The evidence was part of a voluminous [...]



Friday, May 18th, 2012

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN And EMILY MALTBY Google Inc. recently tweaked the way its search engine ranks websites, seeking to downplay sites it suspects of artificially boosting their rankings. Now some small businesses say they are scrambling to avoid being relegated to the Internet’s junk bin. Among them is Andrew Strauss, the 47-year-old co-owner of [...]



Friday, May 18th, 2012

BY MICHAEL CORKERY A representative of former baseball star Curt Schilling’s video game firm hand-delivered to the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. a $1.1 million check Thursday in an attempt to cure the company’s default on a state loan-guarantee payment. But the firm, 38 Studios, had insufficient funds to cover the check, according Governor Lincoln [...]