National / International News

Michael Dell is buying back the personal computer manufacturer he founded and that carries his name for $24.4bn (£15.5bn).

Out of the 13 local MPs eligible to vote on the gay marriage bill, two voted for it to be passed, nine voted against the bill and two did not vote.

The hostility between Iran and Egypt dates to the 1970s, and the Muslim nations remain wary of one another. However, tensions have thawed in recent months.

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Hezbollah should be placed on the European list of banned terror organisations, Israel's PM says, as the group is blamed for a deadly bomb in Bulgaria.

On Wednesday, a group of talented young men will decide their future. College football coaches and hard core fans eagerly await their choices. It's National Signing Day, when top high school players commit to the NCAA powerhouse where they’ll suit up.

Most will announce their choices via a slowly dying office fixture, the fax machine. A big day for college sports is the biggest day of all for that antiquated technology.

A star high school football player may make a public commitment about where he’s going to college, and many do, in media interviews and on Twitter. But nothing is binding until there’s a signed letter of intent.

These top prospects are teenagers, after all, so they can change their minds. That can make for tense scenes on campus when signing day arrives.

"You have coaches. You have administrators, everybody staring at the fax machine," says Jonathan Bowling, associate athletics director at reigning champ University of Alabama. “And then you hear that first ring and everybody freezes.”

At Alabama and other big-time football programs, staffers prep their faxes like NASA engineers before launch. Technicians are called, toner is refreshed, test faxes sent. Other campus offices are given stern warnings not to send any faxes during signing day. Bowling says the ultimate buzzkill is when a fax turns out to be spam for cheap Caribbean vacations or insurance.

Fans hang on every page too. Many schools offer live web feeds of their fax machine. Alabama got clicks and controversy a while back when it spiced up its fax web stream by having comely, short-skirted women grab the pages. That stopped, but fans around the country still watch, eager to see which top players their school signs.

The fax is the standard because sending letters of intent by mail is far too slow for nervous coaches. The NCAA does allow recruits to scan and e-mail their letters, but few do.

Michael Bertsch of Notre Dame’s athletic department could only think of one occasion where e-mail came into play. Bad weather had knocked out fax lines for some Texas players signing up with the Fighting Irish. The humble fax prevails over e-mail in part because, unlike an e-mail attachment, the tangibility of a signed piece of paper is something that players, coaches and fans can all hang onto.

Texas A&M professor Jonathan Coopersmith is amused by the fax’s star turn in college football. He’s a historian of the fax machine, among other communication technologies. He thinks the novelty of faxing makes a huge moment in players’ lives more special in a way that clicking send on an e-mail can’t. He says that going through the motions of signing and sending a fax, something most young players have never done, “makes it a more solemn, more serious, more memorable event.”

But the shining signing moment for the fax machine doesn’t last long. The whir of faxes printing dies down in the afternoon. Fax web cams go dark as fans head to comment sections and social to dissect signings and fight about which school won the year’s recruitment war.

“For about a 24-hour period, it’s all eyes on the fax machine,” says Mike Farrell, who oversees recruiting coverage for the college sports site Rivals. “Come Thursday, it’s just another piece of office equipment.”

Kai Ryssdal: Tomorrow's a very big day in the lives of some very big young men. Wednesday is National Signing Day, when top high school football players commit to the NCAA institution they've chosen to play for next year.

Hardcore college football fans eagerly await their choices, which makes signing day the last gasp of that slowly dying office fixture: the fax machine.

Marketplace's Mark Garrison explains.

Mark Garrison: Star high school player O.J. Howard says he’s going to play for reigning champion Alabama, but it’s not official until he signs a letter of intent. Top recruits like him are teenagers afterall, and they could change their minds. That makes for tense scenes tomorrow morning on campus.

Jonathan Bowling: You have coaches. You have administrators, everybody staring at the fax machine. And then you hear that first ring and everybody freezes.

Jonathan Bowling is University of Alabama’s Associate Athletics Director. The ultimate buzzkill is when it turns out to be a spam fax for Caribbean vacations. Like other schools, they’re prepping their machine like NASA engineers before launch.

Bowling: We definitely have it looked at, make sure that the toner is filled up, make sure that we have a new ream of paper in there.

Fans hang on every page too. Many schools offer live web feeds of their fax machine. Alabama got clicks and controversy a while back when it spiced up its fax web stream by having comely, short-skirted women grab the pages.

The NCAA does allow recruits to scan and e-mail their letters, but few do. The fax is still king.

Jonathan Coopersmith: Oh, I love it. I love it.

Jonathan Coopersmith is a Texas A&M historian of the fax machine, among other things. For this huge moment in players’ lives, the novelty of faxing makes it special.

Coopersmith: They have to go back to this old technology. I’ve gotta to sign this paper and I have to put it in the machine. Bringing it back makes it a more solemn, more serious, more memorable event.

And with few exceptions, one of the last big moments for the fax machine. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

On Wednesday, a group of talented young men will decide their future. College football coaches and hard core fans eagerly await their choices. It's National Signing Day, when top high school players commit to the NCAA powerhouse where they’ll suit up.

Most will announce their choices via a slowly dying office fixture, the fax machine. A big day for college sports is the biggest day of all for that antiquated technology.

A star high school football player may make a public commitment about where he’s going to college, and many do, in media interviews and on Twitter. But nothing is binding until there’s a signed letter of intent.

These top prospects are teenagers, after all, so they can change their minds. That can make for tense scenes on campus when signing day arrives.

"You have coaches. You have administrators, everybody just staring at the fax machine," says Jonathan Bowling, associate athletics director at reigning champ University of Alabama. “And then you hear that first ring and everybody freezes,”

At Alabama and other big-time football programs, staffers prep their faxes like NASA engineers before launch. Technicians are called, toner is refreshed, test faxes sent. Other campus offices are given stern warnings not to send any faxes during signing day. Bowling says the ultimate buzzkill is when a fax turns out to be spam for cheap Caribbean vacations or insurance.

Fans hang on every page too. Many schools offer live web feeds of their fax machine. Alabama got clicks and controversy a while back when it spiced up its fax web stream by having comely, short-skirted women grab the pages. That stopped, but fans around the country still watch, eager to see which top players their school signs.

The fax is the standard because sending letters of intent by mail is far too slow for nervous coaches. The NCAA does allow recruits to scan and e-mail their letters, but few do.

Michael Bertsch of Notre Dame’s athletic department could only think of one occasion where e-mail came into play. Bad weather had knocked out fax lines for some Texas players signing up with the Fighting Irish. The humble fax prevails over e-mail in part because, unlike an e-mail attachment, the tangibility of a signed piece of paper is something that players, coaches and fans can all hang onto.

Texas A&M professor Jonathan Coopersmith is amused by the fax’s star turn in college football. He’s a historian of the fax machine, among other communication technologies. He thinks the novelty of faxing makes a huge moment in players’ lives more special in a way that clicking send on an e-mail can’t. He says that going through the motions of signing and sending a fax, something most young players have never done, “makes it a more solemn, more serious, more memorable event.”

But the shining signing moment for the fax machine doesn’t last long. The whir of faxes printing dies down in the afternoon. Fax web cams go dark as fans head to comment sections and social to dissect signings and fight about which school won the year’s recruitment war.

“For about a 24-hour period, it’s all eyes on the fax machine,” says Mike Farrell, who oversees recruiting coverage for the college sports site Rivals. “Come Thursday, it’s just another piece of office equipment.”

Kai Ryssdal: Tomorrow's a very big day in the lives of some very big young men. Wednesday is National Signing Day, when top high school football players commit to the NCAA institution they've chosen to play for next year.

Hardcore college football fans eagerly await their choices, which makes signing day the last gasp of that slowly dying office fixture: the fax machine.

Marketplace's Mark Garrison explains.

Mark Garrison: Star high school player O.J. Howard says he’s going to play for reigning champion Alabama, but it’s not official until he signs a letter of intent. Top recruits like him are teenagers afterall, and they could change their minds. That makes for tense scenes tomorrow morning on campus.

Jonathan Bowling: You have coaches. You have administrators, everybody just staring at the fax machine. And then you hear that first ring and everybody freezes.

Jonathan Bowling is University of Alabama’s Associate Athletics Director. The ultimate buzzkill is when it turns out to be a spam fax for Caribbean vacations. Like other schools, they’re prepping their machine like NASA engineers before launch.

Bowling: We definitely have it looked at, make sure that the toner is filled up, make sure that we have a new ream of paper in there.

Fans hang on every page too. Many schools offer live web feeds of their fax machine. Alabama got clicks and controversy a while back when it spiced up its fax web stream by having comely, short-skirted women grab the pages.

The NCAA does allow recruits to scan and e-mail their letters, but few do. The fax is still king.

Jonathan Coopersmith: Oh, I love it. I love it.

Jonathan Coopersmith is a Texas A&M historian of the fax machine, among other things. For this huge moment in players’ lives, the novelty of faxing makes it special.

Coopersmith: They have to go back to this old technology. I’ve gotta to sign this paper and I have to put it in the machine. Bringing it back makes it a more solemn, more serious, more memorable event.

And with few exceptions, one of the last big moments for the fax machine. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

Even as deaths in acute-care hospitals declined in recent years, the use of intensive care units in the last month of life increased. There has been greater use of hospice care, but much of it was for three days or less at the very end of life, a study finds.

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This interview may ring true for some of you -- those who've eventually realized they're looking for love in all the wrong places.

If that sounds familiar, then you'll relate to Amy Webb's story, in which she tries and fails in online dating -- and tries again. And this time, she does those matching algorithms of those online dating sites one better. Her new book is called "Data: A Love Story."

Webb says "the old adage that true love will find you when you least expect it -- therefore you should sit around and wait"  isn't a good strategy in any potential conceivable sense.

After several disastrous online dates (and blind dates set up by friends and family), Webb decided to create her own matrix based on some very specific details -- a list of 72, to be exact. She says, "I really had no idea what I was looking for besides a husband."

Webb's master list included height requirements and a love of musicals (but not "CATS"). She says the key was to get as specific as possible."If I made a list, the list might have said well, smart, funny...and those are analogous to making a grocery store list that said meat and produce."

She says, others could personalize her system for their needs. "As long as you have a list and you prioritize that list in some way, using stickers, using checkmarks, using emoticons, whatever makes sense. That framework can be totally personalized and individualized for everybody."

And Webb's story has a happy ending.

Three weeks after putting her matrix to work, she found a match. And they went on a date. And now they're married.

Her husband, Brian calls himself "very, very lucky." Webb showed him the list after their first couple of dates. He says he went through the list and checked off all the qualities he had. And he says, "I had this brief moment of, did she conjure me?"

A new book about ninjas paints a very different picture of these Japanese archetypes. No nunchucks, no throwing stars, and it was more about spycraft than fancy footwork.

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Mexican immigrants who are eligible for U.S. citizenship are much less likely to apply for naturalization than those from other immigrant groups, a study found.

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President Obama urges Congress to pass short-term spending cuts and tax reforms to delay larger cuts next month, a plan rejected by Republicans.

The Xlerator high-speed hand dryer is made almost entirely of U.S.-made parts and manufactured by a small workforce in Massachusetts. But its motor, like almost all nonindustrial motors, is made in Asia — meaning it's very difficult for small manufactured goods to be entirely American made.

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Tom Ince scores twice as England Under-21s beat Sweden 4-0 in friendly at a rain-drenched Banks's Stadium in Walsall.

The trip, Obama's first presidential visit to Israel, comes at a time when Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have stalled.

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The firm that failed to provide enough security guards for the Olympics is close to agreeing a compensation deal, the BBC learns.

When you consider typical breakfast beverages, near the top is a nice chilled glass of orange juice. A simple pleasure.

Or is it?

Turns out there's way more going on in that carton of O.J. than you might be aware of.

Duane Stanford covers the beverage industry for Bloomberg and wrote most recently about how Coca-Cola gets all that Vitamin C goodness to the breakfast table.

He says the soft drink giant has been building its orange juice empire for the last few years. They've focused on O.J. in a carton instead of the frozen concentrate stuff you buy in a can, because it makes more money.

"One of the innovations that Coke has developed over recent years is to basically figure out how to predict Mother Nature -- and a lot of that involves collecting data points on everything from the acidity on orange juice to weather patterns," said Stanford.

He says they use a computer model to figure out how to blend their orange juice into a standardized flavor that O.J.-drinkers expect.

You likely drink orange juice all year round, but the growing season for oranges is only about three or four months. It's a battle against Mother Nature. Stanford says they store the orange juice up to eight8 months at a time in large vats. And yes, that means the last glass of orange juice you had was "at least blended in part from orange juice that could be up to eight months old."

You probably wouldn't have guessed that from marketing campaigns.

Despite all that high-tech planning to get the orange juice to your table, the oranges are still picked from the tree by hand.

Thirsty yet?

A study finds that guys who watched a lot of TV had lower sperm counts than more active fellows. The effect held true even when other factors, such as body weight and diet, were taken into account.

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Defaults on federal Perkins loans reached almost $1 billion during the 2010-11 school year. Those are loans for the lowest-income college and grad students. Some colleges have turned to the courts to try to get that money back. Schools like Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have been in the news for suing their former students for unpaid Perkins loans.

Unlike other federal loan programs, the college lends the money and is responsible for getting it back.

“They could be much more flexible and they have more discretion before they litigate these cases, to work with borrowers and to provide some assistance,” says Deanne Loonin with the National Consumer Law Center. But she says the law actually requires colleges to be aggressive.

Lawsuits are a last resort, says Harrison Wadsworth, executive director of the Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations. The group represents schools that participate in the Perkins loan program. He says the money recovered helps other low income students pay for college.

“Every dollar that is collected in repayment for Perkins loans goes to make education possible for a current student,” he says.

Wadsworth says defaults on Perkins loans have actually been falling. That may be because the dollar amounts are smaller than other student loans. He says the average loan is around $2,000 per year.

Turns out, the sugar in regular soda helps slow down your body's absorption of the alcohol in cocktails. So switching to diet in your rum and cola will save you calories but may leave you spinning.

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A bus bombing that killed five Israelis and a driver in Bulgaria was most likely the work of Lebanon's Hezbollah militants, Bulgarian officials say.