Shipment

SAN DIEGO - In the ocean off Coronado, a Navy team has discovered a relic worthy of display in a military museum: a torpedo of the kind deployed in the late 19th century, considered a technological marvel in its day. But don't look for the primary discoverers to get a promotion or an invitation to meet the admirals at the Pentagon - although they might get an extra fish for dinner or maybe a pat on the snout. The so-called Howell torpedo was discovered by bottlenose dolphins being trained by the Navy to find undersea objects, including mines, that not even billion-dollar technology can detect.

Global television shipments declined last year for the first time in more than a decade as demand for flat-panel TVs cooled, reflecting saturation in the market. Television shipments last year fell to 238.5 million units, down 6.3% from 254.6 million the previous year, according to a report Monday by IHS iSuppli. Shipments aren't expected to near 2011 levels until 2015, when the market research firm estimated them to reach 253.1 million units. Manufacturers, meantime, are expected to offer more deep discounts and tout newer features, such as improved Internet-connected capabilities, to attract consumers.

The MacBook Pro with Retina, the star of last month's Worldwide Developers Conference, has finally seen an improvement to its shipping time from Apple's online store. After launching June 11, the MacBook Pro with Retina quickly sold out and saw its shipping time jump up to an estimated waiting time of three to four week before arrival. Now that time has finally been cut, but sadly, it's just a slight improvement of one week. MacRumors reported the improvement late last night, saying the change was first seen in Apple's Asia-Pacific market.

A coalition of environmental groups says it has discovered that large-scale shipments of low-quality heavy crude oil from Canada's tar sands are being delivered by rail for processing by Southern California refineries. The groups on Tuesday called for an investigation by air-quality officials to evaluate the effects on health, air quality, safety and the climate of processing the heavy Canadian crude, which requires intensive processing to remove higher levels of sulfur to meet U.S. standards.

The final shipment to Europe of Volkswagen's legendary "bug," the biggest-selling car of all time, was unloaded at the port of Emden, West Germany. The company is withdrawing the model from the European market because of falling sales. More than 20.6 million Beetles have been built, 8 million of which are thought to be still on the road, a spokesman said. The final 3,000 cars for Europe were made in Mexico.

CIA counterterrorism chief Duane (Dewey) Clarridge has acknowledged that he made logistical plans for arms shipments to Iran in late 1985, even after being told by superiors that his actions were illegal without the explicit approval of President Reagan, according to testimony released Wednesday by Congress' Iran- contra committees. Clarridge's testimony, taken by the committees in closed session Aug.

Customs agents discovered an extra ingredient in a shipment of Colombian coffee: nearly half a ton of cocaine. U.S. Customs Officer Troy Simon said that Monday's cocaine find was his agency's biggest at the Port of New Orleans since more than 2 tons turned up in a transformer shipment about 10 years ago.

Pamela Cury was bringing a shipment--some of Latin America's finest--from Guatemala into Los Angeles. " Primo stuff," she called it. "It was absolutely like gold." The cargo was shrimp, more than 29,000 pounds of top-grade, pond-raised jumbos, miniatures and all sizes in between, frozen in ice, loaded on a trailer rig and headed for a market near you. But then, on Friday, the $157,000 load reached a U.S. Customs Service facility in South Gate.

A Santa Monica start-up wants to take the financial pain out of shaving. Dollar Shave Club is a new membership-only website that promises to "shave time, shave money" by sending customers a shipment of razor blades automatically every month. The company estimates that it will save members as much as $292 a year on shaving. "For a very long time people have been flummoxed by the price of brand-name razors, so they hang on to their blades for longer than they should and milk their blades," company co-founder and Chief Executive Michael Dubin said.

A shipment of radioactive rods that went missing Thanksgiving Day was found Friday in Tennessee by the shipping company FedEx. Though the materials, used for medical equipment, posed little threat to the public, the misplaced shipment underscores the need to track low-hazard materials that could be used in small-scale terrorist attacks, experts say. The rods, used to calibrate quality control in CT scans, contain little energy and a low...

Last spring, the creators of the Pebble smartwatch shocked the tech community when their Kickstarter campaign raised $10 million .  It was still a long road from when the campaign closed in May to when Pebble finally started shipping its first smartwatches to backers in January. And while the initial batch of watches came out in a slow trickle, the pace kicked up in late February and early March. And now, 10 months later, Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky is thrilled with the reception the product is receiving and to finally be getting feedback from users.

PARIS - In barely five minutes, thieves in Belgium pulled off one of the most spectacular and dramatic diamond heists in years. A Helvetic Airways jet on the tarmac at Brussels Airport was preparing for takeoff to Switzerland shortly before 8 p.m. Monday. The passengers were on board, the bags were in the hold, the doors were closed and the crew was going through the last safety checks. Brinks security guards had just finished transferring a consignment of cut and uncut diamonds worth an estimated $50 million from their armored vehicle to the plane.

WASHINGTON - The sharp slowdown in U.S. manufacturing that began last spring appears to be over, setting the stage for moderate expansion in the factory sector in coming months - with a little boost from companies bringing overseas production back to America. Although exports and backlog orders continued to weaken in December, manufacturers reported increasing shipments and U.S. investment heading into the new year, according to a quarterly survey by the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, a trade group.

The global PC market is having a rough year, with shipments set to decline for the first time in 11 years. Worldwide shipments are expected to fall 1.2% to 348.7 million units, down from 352.8 million last year, according to information and analytics provider IHS. Not since 2001 has the global PC industry suffered such a decline, the group said. “There was great hope through the first half that 2012 would prove to be a rebound year for the PC market,” said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for computer systems at IHS. “Now three-quarters through the year, the usual boost from the back-to-school season appears to be a bust, and both AMD and Intel's third-quarter outlooks appear to be flat to down.

The MacBook Pro with Retina, the star of last month's Worldwide Developers Conference, has finally seen an improvement to its shipping time from Apple's online store. After launching June 11, the MacBook Pro with Retina quickly sold out and saw its shipping time jump up to an estimated waiting time of three to four week before arrival. Now that time has finally been cut, but sadly, it's just a slight improvement of one week. MacRumors reported the improvement late last night, saying the change was first seen in Apple's Asia-Pacific market.

A new report says tablet shipments will surpass notebooks by 2016 to become the dominant type of mobile computer sold around the world. The report, put out by NPD Display Search , finds that the number of tablets that will be shipped between now and 2017 will increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 28%. That would take the number of tablet shipments up from 121 million units this year to more than 400 million five years from now....

Police seized 1 1/2 tons of hashish worth more than $6 million hidden in a shipment of furniture at the port of Aqaba, newspapers reported Monday.

Twenty people, including "The Color Purple" novelist Alice Walker and two Catholic priests, were arrested Friday during the third day of a four-day demonstration at the Concord Naval Weapons Station. About 400 demonstrators showed up for the protest against the base's alleged role in the shipment of arms to Central America.

Worldwide television shipments fell nearly 8% year over year in the first quarter, marking the steepest rate of decline since the second quarter of 2009. TV shipments totaled 51 million units for the quarter, according to a report from market research firm NPD DisplaySearch. The firm said the biggest contributor to the decline was a slowdown in shipments of LCD TVs, which fell year over year for the first time in the history of the category. "Soft demand and cautious expectations about the upcoming year in many parts of the TV supply chain have led to a slowdown in shipments," said Paul Gagnon, director of North America TV Research for NPD DisplaySearch.