At the time, Sylvia Kristel was worried about starring in the 1974 erotic movie "Emmanuelle," but consoled herself with the thought that few people would see her sexually charged performance.

That turned out to be wrong.

Google is dangling a low-priced laptop computer in front of consumers as rivals Microsoft and Apple prepare to release their latest gadgets.

The lightweight computer unveiled Thursday will sell for $249 and is being made in a partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which also makes smartphones and tablet computers that run on Google's Android software.

Stan Ovshinsky, the self-taught inventor who developed the nickel-metal hydride battery used in the hybrid vehicle industry, has died at his home in suburban Detroit after a fight with cancer. He was 89.

Ovshinsky, who ran Energy Conversion Devices, a car battery development company, also created a machine that produced 9-mile-long sheets of thin solar energy panels intended to bring cheaper, cleaner power to homes and businesses.

The U.S. news magazine Newsweek plans to end its print publication after 80 years and will shift to an all-digital format starting in early 2013. Job cuts are expected.

Newsweek's last U.S. print edition will be its Dec. 31 issue.

Nokia Corp. is expected to unveil more bad news when it reports its third-quarter results as the struggling cellphone maker faces increasing competition from rivals during its transition to using Microsoft's software in its devices.

Analysts say sales and profits will plunge, with a further drop in market share for the former industry leader that lost its top position to Samsung earlier this year. Strategy Analytics expects Nokia to sell 8 million smartphones in the quarter compared with Samsung's 55 million and Apple Inc.'s 27 million iPhones.

Twitter says it has for the first time blocked an account with its "country withheld content" function, shutting out a banned German neo-Nazi group at the behest of local authorities.

Twitter spokesman Dirk Hensen said Thursday the account (at)hannoverticker has been blocked in Germany only, where its content is considered illegal.

Now that the dust has settled in the New Mexico desert where supersonic skydiver "Fearless Felix" Baumgartner landed safely on his feet, researchers are exhilarated over the possibility his feat could someday help save the lives of pilots and space travelers in a disaster.

Baumgartner's death-defying jump Sunday from a balloon 24 miles (38.62 kilometers) above Earth yielded a wealth of information about the punishing effects of extreme speed and altitude on the human body — insights that could inform the development of improved spacesuits, new training procedures and emergency medical treatment.

Having denounced evolution as a lie "straight from the pit of hell," Republican Rep. Paul Broun has won himself a new political opponent: Charles Darwin.

An ultraconservative congressman whose district includes the University of Georgia campus, Broun told a Baptist church last month that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory were lies spread by scientists out to erode people's faith in Jesus Christ. He also claimed the Earth is roughly 9,000 years, a view held by fundamentalist Christians based on biblical accounts of creation.

A new exhibition hails Katharine Hepburn as a fashion icon, which at first blush seems odd given that she mostly wore her trademark khakis and open-collar shirt — decidedly unconventional especially in the 1930s when girdles and stockings were de riguer.

The fiercely independent Hepburn famously once said: "Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say, 'Try one. Try a skirt.'"

Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town of 40,000, say they have strong motives to help those trying to topple Syria's regime: they themselves were harassed and abused by it during three decades of de facto Syrian control of Lebanon.

But in siding with the rebels, many of them fellow Sunnis, Arsal is also deepening rifts with its Shiite Muslim neighbors in the Bekaa Valley that runs along Lebanon's eastern border with Syria. Large areas of the scenic valley are controlled by Hizbullah that is supporting and — according to the U.S. and the Syrian opposition — also fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.