Syrian rebels blew up a luxury hotel turned army base in the historic heart of Aleppo on Thursday after tunneling under the front line that divides the main northern city. State television gave no word on any casualties from the attack that leveled the famed Carlton Citadel Hotel just across the road from the city’s UNESCO-listed Citadel. But the Syrian …

“Eczema may reduce risk of skin cancer: Condition means sufferers are more likely to shed skin containing cancerous cells,” reports the Mail Online. This headline follows a study which found that mice with a defect in their skin barrier were less likely to develop benign skin tumours. But the mice that did develop tumours were more likely to develop malignant …

Veteran journalist Gao Yu has been detained by police over charges of leaking “state secrets” to foreign contacts in Beijing, Xinhua said today. Gao, 70, leaked a secret document to an overseas website in August last year, SCMP relays. She admitted to being “deeply remorseful” for her actions and was “willing to accept legal punishment”.

In last year’s This is The End, Seth Rogen’s character Seth Rogen describes gluten as a blanket term for things that are bad for you, from calories to fat. While this isn’t entirely accurate (it’s actually a composite wheat protein), the definition seems to work well enough for plenty of people as a solid reason to go gluten-free.

News reports now say that the Georgetown Police Department in Texas has withdrawn its allegation that a man arrested for fraud also may have been involved in the Target Corp. data breach from last December that compromised 40 million credit and debit card details and the personal information on 70 million customers.

Electric car maker Tesla Motors said Wednesday that it lost nearly $50 million in the first quarter, as development costs grew compared with a year ago. Tesla’s loss of 40 cents per share contrasts with a profit of 10 cents per share in the January-March period last year. Revenue grew 10 percent to $620.5 million. Tesla produced a record 7,535 …

Adobe today announced Adobe Voice, a new iPad app that allows users to make simple animated video “stories” that incorporate voice, photos, icons, music, animated themes, and more. Designed for people that have little to no filmmaking experience, Adobe Voice imagines itself as a useful presentation creation tool for everyone from small business owners to students.

An Andalusia, Illinois woman’s successful weight-loss story has gone global, after Shape Magazine in New York, denied posting the fitness blogger’s picture in a two-piece bathing suit. It began when Shape magazine told Brooke Birmingham, who has lost 170 pounds, that they wanted to feature her in their “success story” column. She agreed, but just days after she sent the …

Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a judge on Wednesday to declare the federal death penalty unconstitutional, citing recent bungled executions in Ohio and Oklahoma and arguing there’s mounting evidence innocent people have been executed.

Valerie Harper, who rose to fame on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda” will head to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to advocate on behalf of fellow cancer survivors during a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Harper, who was initially diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, found out last year her cancer had spread to her brain.

Scientists have created the first “semi-synthetic” micro-organism with a radically different genetic code from the rest of life on Earth. The researchers believe the breakthrough is the first step towards creating new microbial life-forms with novel industrial or medical properties resulting from a potentially massive expansion of genetic information. The semi-synthetic microbe, a genetically modified E. coli bacterium, has been …