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Love gifts in the animal kingdom By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature   Spiders are gift-giving lovers On Valentine's day, what beau could possibly resist a hand-picked gift, wrapped in perfumed silk? Certainly not female Paratrechalea ornata spiders, according to research by Dr Luiz Costa-Schmidt, an arachnid expert studying in Brazil. Male spiders of this south-American species incorporate a chemical known as a pheromone into their silk gift wrap. This encourages females to accept them as mates. Using a present, or "nuptial gift", to ensure a sexual engagement is a practice found throughout the animal kingdom but it can be startlingly different from our human perception of courtship. Here are some of the weird array of presents that animals give to potential mates. Perfumed package P. ornata are not the only spiders to give gifts to their intended: the male nursery web spider ( Pisaura mirab...

Google Motorola bid approved in EU and US   Google aims to strengthen its patent portfolio with the Motorola takeover US regulators have approved Google's $12.5bn (£7.9bn) bid for phone maker Motorola Mobility, hours after it won clearance from European authorities. The European Commission ruled the deal would not raise competition issues in the market for operating systems for devices like mobile phones or tablets. Regulators in the US agreed, although both authorities vowed to monitor the company and rivals' use of patents. Approval from China, Taiwan and Israel is needed before the deal is completed. Motorola split in two last year, prompting Google to bid for the section that makes phones and tablet computers in a bid to gain access to more than 17,000 of Motorola Mobility's patents. 'Important milestone' EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement that regulators did not think the deal would diminish competition. ...

Apple iPad China sales and shipments threat in name row   China is a major manufacturing base for Apple products. A Chinese company is to ask customs officials to block shipments of Apple's iPad both into and out of the country. If the request succeeds, it could affect global sales as China is a key manufacturing base for the company. The move follows a long-running dispute between Apple and electronics firm Proview over ownership of the iPad name. Last year Proview won an initial judgement in a mainland Chinese court, which Apple has appealed against. Proview said it is contacting officials across China with a view to blocking sales of the product. Proview lawyer Xie Xianghui said: "We are now working on a request to China Customs to ban and seize all the import and export of the iPad products that have violated the trademark." 'Worldwide rights' Local media reports said that several dozen iPads were taken from shelves in the city of S...

When Charles Dickens fell out with America   Photography was in its infancy in the 1840s. These portraits date from 1860 On his first visit to America in 1842, English novelist Charles Dickens was greeted like a modern rock star. But the trip soon turned sour, as Simon Watts reports. On Valentine's Day, 1842, New York hosted one of the grandest events the city had ever seen - a ball in honour of the English novelist Charles Dickens. Dickens was only 30, but works such as Oliver Twist and the Pickwick Papers had already made him the most famous writer in the world. The cream of New York society hired the grandest venue in the city - the Park Theatre - and decorated it with wreaths and paintings in honour of the illustrious visitor. There was even a bust of Dickens hanging from one of the theatre balconies, with an eagle appearing to soar over his head. Dickens and his wife, Catherine, danced most of the night in the company of around 3,000 guests. ...

Townsend Griffiss, forgotten hero of World War II By Stephen Mulvey BBC News It's 70 years this week since the first US air force officer was killed in Europe, following America's entry into World War II. By heading the list of 30,000 USAAF men to lose their lives in the European theatre, Lt Col Townsend Griffiss became a footnote in the history of the war. But who was he and how did he die? There is no memorial to Townsend Griffiss in the UK, but a corner of Bushy Park in west London offers the faintest of reminders. Here, half covered by grass, are a handful of tablets in the earth, marking the various blocks of Camp Griffiss, the British headquarters of the US Army Air Force, set up in the summer of 1942. It's a royal park, and the royal deer help prevent the plaques disappearing into the grass entirely. Overhead, civilian airliners pass by on their way towards nearby Heathrow. From above, the outlines can also...

Xi Jinping: Cave dweller or princeling?   Will Xi Jinping be China's next leader? Damian Grammaticas reports on what we know of the man in line to steer China through the coming years Who is Xi Jinping? It's not an easy question to answer. The man the Communist Party is busy grooming to be China's next leader can be read in so many ways. He is a communist "princeling," the equivalent of royalty in the Party, born into power and privilege but who then lived in a cave. He is a man who has spent his life in the Communist Party but who knows what it is like to be outcast. He has convinced businessmen he is their champion, while overseeing a system where the state controls huge chunks of the economy. He has shown himself to be irritated with foreign criticism of China but has sent his daughter to study at Harvard under a false name to hide her identity. His wife, Peng Liyuan, a singer, has, for m...