Panda with attitude bites zoo trespasser

BEIJING (Reuters) - A panda with a record of aggressive behavior attacked a man who jumped into its enclosure at a Beijing zoo to pick up a toy, local media said on Thursday.

The nine-year-old panda, Gugu, bit the man on his legs but was driven away by a zoo worker brandishing a broom, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

The man, who jumped into the enclosure to retrieve a toy dropped by a child, was taken to hospital and given a rabies shot, but his injuries were light, the report said.

This was not the first time Gugu has bitten somebody.

Twice before he has attacked people who climbed in to his cage, one of whom was drunk and the other who was simply curious, the newspaper added.

Scientists believe fewer than 2,000 giant pandas live in the wild in China.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

"Quantum" tops domestic James Bond box office

Thursday, Jan 08, 2009 9:17PM UTC

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Quantum of Solace" has raked in $167.1 million at domestic box offices, becoming in current dollars the highest grossing James Bond movie in the United States and Canada, the studio behind it said on Thursday.

The film surpassed 2006's "Casino Royale," the previous Bond movie, which made $167 million in the United States and Canada. "Casino" still holds the worldwide box office record for the franchise with $594.2 million.

Since it opened on November 14, "Quantum" has made $550 million worldwide, said studio Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film is still playing in theaters, and has yet to open in Japan.

Both movies star Daniel Craig as Bond, the British spy.

But adjusted for inflation, "Quantum of Solace" and "Casino Royale" trail the U.S. and Canada box office revenue of the 1965 Bond movie "Thunderball," which has an adjusted total of $538.6 million, according to tracking firm Boxofficemojo.com.

"Quantum of Solace" was produced in a partnership between Columbia and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Columbia oversaw production, marketing and distribution, but MGM will handle DVD distribution.

Starting with the next Bond movie, the franchise returns to closely held MGM. There have been 22 Bond films overall.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Xavier Briand)

Yahoo unveils partners for Web TV push

Yahoo unveils partners for Web TV push

Thursday, Jan 08, 2009 4:52AM UTC

By Gabriel Madway

Las Vegas (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc unveiled on Wednesday a list of partners to aid its push to bring the Internet and television together, hoping their joint effort will finally connect with consumers.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo said it has forged deals with companies including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, LG Electronics Inc, Sony Corp and Vizio, which will make high-definition TVs that support Yahoo's online service.

Ever since the dawn of the Internet Age, tech companies have been promising to bring "convergence" of the online and TV universes, but those efforts have failed to take off with consumers who have found such products difficult to use.

The new TVs announced on Wednesday will be in the market as early as the spring and will support widgets -- small Internet applications -- that run alongside broadcast TV content, but not over it.

The applications can be used for a wide array of Web activities, like watching videos on Google Inc's YouTube.com, social networking on News Corp's MySpace.com, tracking stocks and sports teams, buying and selling on eBay, messaging friends using Twitter, or using Yahoo's own photo-sharing website Flickr.

The widgets will allow viewers more interaction with the programs they're watching, Yahoo said. There will also be applications based on Yahoo-branded services such as Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo, which has lagged behind larger rival Google in the Web search market, will use the technology as a new avenue to sell advertising.

In an interview ahead of CES, Patrick Barry, vice president of connected TV at Yahoo, said TV "is still top of mind for advertisers," the place where people spend the most time.

He said the key to successfully bringing the online experience to TV is to preserve what people love most about the Internet -- openness, choice and personalization -- without destroying the viewing experience.

"In a lot of ways, these are two different worlds, but we believe that users are increasingly looking for more out of their media platforms."

The technology also allows outsiders to write TV applications for the platform.

The Web TV effort was originally announced by Yahoo last August in conjunction with Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker. However, Samsung, LG, Sony and Vizio will not be using Intel chips in their widget-enabled TVs, a Yahoo spokesman said.

Separately, Toshiba Corp announced that it would be making TVs featuring the Yahoo online service that do run Intel's CE 3100 processor.

Yahoo said it released the widget development kit for developers on Wednesday in partnership with Intel.

(To see blog posts from the Consumer Electronics Show, please visit MediaFile at http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile. For other CES stories, see http://www.reuters.com/news/topics/CES)

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway, editing by Tiffany Wu, Richard Chang)