By Mark Brown, Wired UK

An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is to soar past the Earth this week and, while NASA is certain that the space rock will not hit us, it will be our closest encounter with such a large chunk of rock in three decades.

It is the “closest approach by an asteroid, that large, that we’ve known about in advance,” said principal investigate Lance Benner, from...

NEW YORK — A year after the release of the Nook Color, Barnes & Noble returns to a market suddenly crowded with “reader’s tablets,” including the red-hot Kindle Fire from its top competitor. B&N is firing right back at Amazon with a high-powered new multimedia Nook Tablet and competitive price cuts to the current Nook Color and Nook Simple Touch e-reader.

“Nook Tablet is our lightest fastest, media tablet,” said Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch. Lynch presented the $249, 7-inch Nook Tablet at a press event Monday morning. It will be available on Nov. 16, just in the nick of time for...