American Sloane Stephens had a 6-3, 6-4 win over Sweden's Sofia Arvidsson to set up a quarterfinal against Williams. She'll face a childhood hero.

"Obviously, she's been a really great influence in my tennis," the 19-year-old Stephens said. "I'm excited to play her and get on the court with her. I think it'll be fun."

Williams said she has been following Stephens' career and was "a fan" of her young Fed Cup teammate's style.

In her first tournament back since being sidelined by an abdominal injury following the U.S. Open, Stephens isn't awed by the prospect of taking on the 15-time Grand Slam winner.

"Obviously, I always was like, 'Oh, my God. I love her to death. She's amazing, whatever,'" Stephens recalled of early meetings with Williams. "Now she's like an actual person and I'm like, 'Oh, hi. How is it going?' She's not like a hero anymore. She's just a friend.

"Even if I go out there and lose, just bomb it, I don't win a game, at least if I'm able to focus on myself and do what's right for me, then it's not a loss."

Kerber recovered from 5-2 down in the deciding tiebreaker to beat Puerto Rican qualifier Monica Puig, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7).

Azarenka won her first major at the Australian Open last year during a 26-match winning streak to start the season and spent most of 2012 atop the women's rankings.

She said her focus ahead of her first major title defense was more about attacking than defending.

"I actually don't really look at defending anything. I'm just looking to win," Azarenka said. "I'm going to have the same mindset for as long as I'm playing."

The Belarusian, who won here in 2009 without dropping a set, got the better of 37th-ranked Lisicki in a match that had nine breaks of serve. Azarenka said Lisicki, who was serving at up to 121 mph, proved a tough match and a good measure of her preparations for the Australian Open, which starts on Jan. 14.

Lisicki was "serving some bombs," although the German player was only getting half of her first serves into play and had five double-faults. Lisicki mixed 36 winners with 36 unforced errors, trying to push Azarenka around the court.

Azarenka will play Kazakh qualifier Ksenia Pervak, who has ousted former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki and Urszula Radwanska in matches decided by third-set tiebreakers.

"I hope she's tired," Azarenka said, joking. "She's a young girl with a lot of potential. She's going to be really motivated. I'm looking forward to the challenge."

Kerber rallied from 4-1 down in the third set and reached the tiebreaker when Puig was two points from the biggest victory of her career.

The 19-year-old Puig, ranked No. 124, buried a swinging volley into the bottom of the net at 5-2 in the tiebreaker and it changed the momentum of the match.

"For sure, it was a surprise how she played. I didn't know her before, but, yeah, I'm sure that she'll be coming very soon into the top 50," Kerber said. "I have a lot of confidence right now that I won again (in a) very close match."

In men's second-round matches, third-seeded Gilles Simon of France beat Colombia's Alejandro Falla 7-6 (5), 7-6 (5) and No. 5 Kei Nishikori of Japan had a 6-3, 6-3 win over Tommy Robredo of Spain. Sixth-seeded Florian Mayer lost 6-4, 6-2 to 2006 Australian Open finalist Marcos Baghdatis.

In the night match, fourth-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov was leading 6-2, 4-1 when Jarkko Nieminen of Finland retired because of a migraine.

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Take Bravo, the once completely enlightened and completely failing network that, like Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel before they became A&E and TLC, once devoted itself to being a slightly less boring knockoff of PBS.In 1985, five years after its founding, Bravo's success, measured then by its 350,000 subscribers, as follows:

What has kept things afloat for the past five years has been an evolving mix of cultural programming. Nowadays, a spokesman said, approximately 70 percent of the premium service's schedule is devoted to films, nearly all of which are either from abroad, from the fringes of American production or from times past. The remainder of the schedule is given over to the performing arts -jazz concerts, ballet, opera, modern dance and the like. From Woody Allen films to documentaries about Latin America to performances by the Pina Bausch dance troupe, the offerings range from the challenging to the downright esoteric.

All that changed when NBC bought Bravo in 2002 and gave it a makeover almost completely motivated by ratings. It started with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which in its first year delivered 3.3 million viewers per episode. Then came ofTop ChefandProject Runway, which are still considered highbrow in their own way, but only in the context of their fellow reality shows likeThe Real Housewives. And let's face it: Bravo is pretty much allHousewives all the time. Well, that anda show about Silicon Valley that features .

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And remember ?It was founded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, along with NASA. Really! Then in came Discovery as the new boss, and with itAmerican Chopperand, eventually, TLC'sToddlers & Tiaras, which birthedHoney Boo Boo not to mention major ratings.Arts & Entertainment has long been a corporate entity, but it gave way from highbrow post-Nickelodeonfare and devolved into, you know,Dog the Bounty Hunterand whatever Gene Simmons is up to these days.

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It's all a little reminiscent of the days whenUsmagazine was actually a glossy movie magazine that Hollywood stars loved to pose for.The New York Timesstarted it! Then came a partnership with Disney, and J.Lo, and on and on to the supermarket tabloid you now know asUs Weekly, one of the most successful print publications on Earth.

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So, in the slowly dwindling technological world of the e-reader and its advancedbrethren, Amazon's Kindle is like old-school TLC and the B&N Nook is maybe a little younger and cooler, like Bravo, but still failing;the iPad, however, has Here Comes Honey Boo Boowritten all over it. Not that there's anything wrong with what Amazon and Barnes & Noble were trying to do a small audience might enjoy a device that has novels and long biographies and maybe some newspapers and little more. But the majority of people these days want to spend their downtime with HBO Go and Netflix apps, with games and email and other ways to relax their entire brains... not just the fancy parts of it. With tablet prices falling to more affordable levels Amazon sells a Kindle Fire for $159 and a Kindle Paperwhite for $119 of course today's readers are going to choose the thing that helps them go beyond boring old reading. It might not have that easy-on-the eyes screen, but the majority of time spent on tablets isn't spent reading books but answering emails, reading the news (a shorter reading experience than an entire book), and playing games, . Plus, the iPad has its ownKindle app, for those times when you do, after all, feel like indulging in something a bit more highbrow. Because people do, still read a lot of books. They just like doing everything else a lot more. If the death of the e-reader is nigh, maybe the age of the straight-and-narrow, undistracted smartypants isn't far from ending, either.

The smartphone/mobile app industry thus held four of the top-10 viral video slots in 2012 the rest of the list is a motley crew of names ranging from Invisible Children and Red Bull to Intel and M&M. It is telling that the smartphone/mobile app cluster is the only industry or cultural phenomenon that generated more than one spot on the list. Popular interest in mobile content continues surging.

It might also be a sign of the times that() did not hit thetop-10. Samsungs ultra-aggressive promotional efforts have started bearing fruit. What was once a boring, stale copycat brand in 2008 has suddenly started gripping the imaginations of consumers in a completely new way.

But perhaps even more interesting is that a mobile app company with less than 100 million euros in sales in 2011 managed to beat the mighty Samsung marketing machine in 2012. Rovio is in the vanguard of spreading mobile gaming into demographic niches that have never been all that interested in technology or gaming.

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"He is not yet fully recovered, but he has sufficiently moved forward so that he can be discharged," Mac Maharaj told local broadcaster eNCA.

"He is sufficiently well to be home."

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, ending a nearly three-week stay during which he was treated for a lung infection and had surgery to remove gallstones.

Mandela, who has been in frail health for several years, is now receiving care at his suburban Johannesburg home.

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to when he contracted tuberculosis while in jail as a political prisoner. He spent 27 years in prison, including 18 years on the windswept Robben Island off Cape Town.

The former president was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on December 8 and this was his longest stay in a hospital since he was released from prison in 1990.

Current President Jacob Zuma visited Mandela on Christmas Day and said the former South African leader was doing much better, making progress and in good spirits.

Mandela was also admitted to a hospital in February because of abdominal pain but released the following day after a keyhole examination showed there was nothing seriously wrong with him.

He has spent most of his time since then in another home in Qunu, his ancestral village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province.

(Reporting by David Dolan; editing by Todd Eastham)

Trading was light, with volume at a mere 4.01 billion shares traded onthe New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares. The day's volume was the lightest full day of trading so far in 2012. Many senior traders were still on vacation during this holiday-shortened week and major European markets were closed for the day.

Many investors said concerns about the "fiscal cliff" kept shoppers away from stores, suggesting markets may struggle to gain any ground until that issue is resolved. The CBOE Volatility Indexor VIX, Wall Street's favorite barometer of investor anxiety, rose 4.46 percent, closing above 19 for the first time since November 7.

A number of 2012's strongest performers advanced, a sign that portfolio managers may be engaging in "window dressing," a practice where market participants buy securities with big gains to improve the appearance of their holdings before presenting the results to clients. Bank of America Corp , which has more than doubled in 2012, added 2.6 percent to $11.54 on Wednesday.

Holiday-related sales rose 0.7 percent from October 28 through December 24, compared with a 2 percent increase last year, according to data from MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. The Morgan Stanley retail indexskidded 1.8 percent while the SPDR S&P Retail Trustslipped 1.7 percent.

"With the 'fiscal cliff' hanging over our heads, it was hard to convince people to shop, and now it's hard to convince investors that there's any reason to buy going into year-end," said Rick Fier, director of trading at Conifer Securities in New York, which has about $12 billion in assets under administration.

President Barack Obama is due back in Washington early Thursday for a final effort to negotiate a deal with Congress to bridge a series of tax increases and government spending cuts set to begin next week, the so-called "fiscal cliff" many economists worry could push the U.S. economy into recession if it takes effect.

Coach Incfell 5.9 percent to $54.13 as the S&P 500's biggest decliner, followed by Amazon.com , down 3.9 percent at $248.63, and Abercrombie & Fitch , off 3.5 percent at $45.44. Ralph Lauren Corp , Limited Brandsand Gap Incalso ranked among the S&P 500's biggest decliners.

The Dow Jones industrial averageslipped 24.49 points, or 0.19 percent, to 13,114.59 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexshed 6.83 points, or 0.48 percent, to 1,419.83. The Nasdaq Composite Indexdropped 22.44 points, or 0.74 percent, to 2,990.16.

J.C. Penney Cowas a notable exception to the weakness in retail stocks, surging 4.4 percent to $20.75 as the S&P 500's biggest gainer. It was followed closely by Bank of America and Genworth Financial , which each gained nearly 3 percent for the day.

"People want to show they own names like these, making them prime 'window dressing' candidates," said Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst at John Thomas Financial in New York.

"Bank of America keeps going up even though it's overbought and you'd expect a pullback at these levels. No one wanted it when it was under $10 a share, but they want it now."

The S&P 500 has fallen 1.5 percent over the past three sessions, the worst three-day decline since mid-November. The Dow Jones Transportation Average , viewed as a proxy for business activity, fell 0.6 percent.

A Republican plan that failed to gain traction last week triggered the S&P 500's recent drop, highlighting the market's sensitivity to headlines centered on the budget talks.

During the last five trading days of the year and the first two of next year, it's possible for a "Santa rally" to occur. Since 1928, the S&P 500 has averaged a gain of 1.8 percent during that period and risen 79 percent of the time, according to data from PrinceRidge.

"While it's unlikely there could be a budget deal at any time, no one wants to get in front of that trade," said Conifer's Fier. "Investors can easily make up for any gains when there's more action in 2013."

Data showed U.S. single-family home prices rose in October, reinforcing the view that the domestic real estate market is improving, as the S&P/Case-Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas gained 0.7 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the New York Stock Exchange by a ratio of about 2 to 1, while on the Nasdaq, more than five stocks fell for every three that rose.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

In a unanimous decision, the court held that a dentist did not violate the state's civil rights act when he terminated a female dental assistant whom his wife considered a threat to their marriage.

The dental assistant, Melissa Nelson, who worked for dentist James Knight for more than 10 years and had never flirted with him, according to the testimony of both parties, sued, saying she would not have been fired if she were a man.

At trial, Knight testified he had complained to Nelson on several occasions that her clothing was too tight, revealing and "distracting."

But sometime in 2009, he also began exchanging text messages with Nelson. Most of these were work-related and harmless, according to testimony. But others were more suggestive, including one in which Knight asked Nelson how often she had an orgasm. She never answered the text.

In late 2009, Knight's wife found out about the text exchanges and demanded her husband terminate the dental assistant because "she was a big threat to our marriage."

In early 2010, he fired her, saying their relationship had become a detriment to his family.

Nelson sued, saying that she had done nothing wrong, that she considered Knight a friend and father figure, and that she would not have been terminated but for her gender.

Knight argued that Nelson was terminated not because of her gender - all the employees of his practice are women but because of the way their relationship had developed and the threat it posed to his marriage.

The seven justices, all men, said the basic question presented by the case was "whether an employee who has not engaged in flirtatious conduct may be lawfully terminated simply because the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction."

The high court ruled that bosses can fire workers they find too attractive and that such actions do not amount to unlawful discrimination.

The case was Melissa Nelson v. James H. Knight DDS, PC and James Knight.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher in Chicago; Editing by Eric Beech)

Reid, 56, chairman and chief executive of Epic Records, told "Access Hollywood," the television program and website, he has decided to leave the Fox reality singing show to return to the record label full time.

"I have decided that I will not return to 'The X Factor' next year," Reid told "Access Hollywood" late Thursday. "I have to go back and I have a company to run that I've kind of neglected, and it saddens me a little bit, but only a little bit."

He added that the show was "a nice break, it was a nice departure from what I've done for the past 20 years, but now I gotta go back to work."

Fox declined to comment on Reid's departure on Friday.

Reid joined "The X Factor" when Cowell introduced the show in the United States in September 2011. Reid sat alongside Paula Abdul, former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger and Cowell.

Cowell fired Abdul and Scherzinger after a disappointing first season and brought in pop stars Britney Spears and Demi Lovato.

But "The X Factor" audiences have dropped this year to an average 9.7 million from about 12.5 million an episode in 2011.

The show broadcasts a two-part finale next week with the winner earning a $5 million prize and record contract.

Epic Records, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment, which commands a roster of artists including Avril Lavigne, will sign the winners of "The X Factor."

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Jeffrey Benkoe)

The researchers found that when Dartmouth undergraduates and members of a remote Cambodian hill tribe were asked to use sliding bars to adjust traits such as the speed, pitch, or regularity of music, they used the same types of characteristics to express . What's more, the same types of patterns were used to express the same emotions in animations of movement in both cultures.

"The kinds of dynamics you find in movement, you find also in music and they're used in the same way to provide the same kind of meaning," said study co-author Thalia Wheatley, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth University.

The findings suggest music's intense power may lie in the fact it is processed by ancient brain circuitry used to read emotion in our movement.

"The study suggests why music is so fundamental and engaging for us," said Jonathan Schooler, a professor of brain and psychological sciences at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. "It takes advantage of some very, very basic and, in some sense, primitive systems that understand how motion relates to emotion."

Universal emotions

has been an enduring mystery. Scientists have found thatthan humans and that brain regions stimulated by food, sex and love also light up when we listen to music.than nonmusicians.

Past studies showed that the same brain areas were activated when people read emotion in both music and movement. That made Wheatley wonder how the two were connected.

To find out, Wheatley and her colleagues asked 50 Dartmouth undergraduates to manipulate five slider bars to change characteristics of an animated bouncy ball to make it look happy, sad, angry, peaceful or scared.

"We just say 'Make Mr. Ball look angry or make Mr. Ball look happy,'" she told LiveScience. []

To create different emotions in "Mr. Ball," the students could use the slider bars to affect how often the ball bounced, how often it made big bounces, whether it went up or down more often and how smoothly it moved.

Another 50 students could use similar slider bars to adjust the pitch trajectory, tempo, consonance (repetition), musical jumps and jitteriness of music to capture those same emotions.

The students tended to put the slider bars in roughly the same positions whether they were creating angry music or angry moving balls.

To see if these trends held across cultures, Wheatley's team traveled to the remote highlands of Cambodia and asked about 85 members of theto perform the same task. Kreung music sounds radically different from Western music, with gongs and an instrument called a mem that sounds a bit like an insect buzzing, Wheatley said. None of the tribes' people had any exposure to Western music or media, she added.

Interestingly, the Kreung tended to put the slider bars in roughly the same positions as Americans did to capture different emotions, and the position of the sliders was very similar for both music and emotions.

The findings suggest that music taps into the brain networks and regions that we use to understand emotion in people's movements. That may explain whyto move us it's activating deep-seated brain regions that are used to process emotion, Wheatley said.

"Emotion is the same thing no matter whether it's coming in through our eyes or ears," she said.

The study is detailed today (Dec. 17) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Martin is making headlines for an abusive series of tweets prompted, apparently, by the Conservative government's failure to invite him to an announcement in his Winnipeg Centre riding.

The tweets include some particularly scathing and personal insults aimed at Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the Conservative party.

Martin describes the Conservatives as "truly bad people" who won last year's federal election using "American-style dirty tricks."

It's not the first time Martin has used his access to the social-networking service to raise eyebrows.

In November 2011, Martin went on a similar tirade when the government used procedural tools to shut down debate on a budget bill.