Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is now renting and streaming movies online, many the same day they come out on DVD, in a second bid for a share of popular movie rental and streaming website Netflix Inc.'s business.

The world's largest retailer bought video-streaming service Vudu.com 18 months ago and Tuesday started offering 20,000 titles that can be viewed on almost any device with Internet access, from PCs to televisions to Sony's PlayStation3 and other Blu-Ray disc players.

A sentence in which tiny birds and the English language are both slaughtered took top honors Monday in an annual bad writing contest.

Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for her sentence comparing forgotten memories to dead sparrows, said San Jose State University Prof. Scott Rice. The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Again and again, 12-year-old Brianna Bowens cautiously pokes the human eyeball. On purpose.

The donated eye is tougher than you'd think. It takes a few slices with a sharp scalpel to pierce the white part — the sclera, she learns — and eventually remove the cornea in front.

Two goals in each half helped Lebanon beat Bangladesh 4-0 in the first leg of their World Cup qualifier on Saturday.

Hassan Maatouk opened the scoring in the 16th minute and then Mahmoud El Ali found the net 11 minutes later.

Comic-Con fans have boldly gone into singing mode to wish Patrick Stewart a happy birthday.

About 6,000 people in the main hall at the fan convention Saturday sang "Happy Birthday" to Stewart during a preview panel for the animated musical "Dorothy of Oz."

If Ernest Hemingway were alive, Spanish bullfighter Jose Tomas would likely be a hero of one of his novels.

Brave and fearless, but an introvert to the point of being a hermit, Jose Tomas returns to the bull ring Saturday in Spain's eastern city of Valencia after a year recovering from a goring in Mexico that almost killed him.

Wu Mingxia narrowly won the women's 3-meter title at the world championships, holding off teammate He Zi by 1.7 points to give China its ninth gold medal and 13th overall in diving.

Wu totaled 380.85 points in the five-dive round Saturday, while He finished with 379.15.

The chief villain in Britain's phone hacking scandal, the News of the World tabloid, is history, shut by owner Rupert Murdoch. But was it the only shadowy practitioner in Britain's cutthroat media market? Some celebrities think not.

Actor Jude Law is suing The Sun, another tabloid owned by Murdoch, for allegedly hacking into his voice mails. And actor Hugh Grant, now a vigorous campaigner against phone hacking, is pushing to learn who in the British media may have intercepted his phone messages.

Apple Inc. is in talks to potentially bid for video-streaming service Hulu, a person close to the situation said Friday.

The person, who said Apple is among several companies interested in Hulu, spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the matter. In early July, search giant Google Inc. was said to be among about a dozen companies in talks to potentially buy Hulu. Yahoo Inc. is also believed to be interested.

Flesh-eating zombies aren't the only worry in the second season of "The Walking Dead."

Sarah Wayne Callies, who plays one of the survivors in the hit AMC zombie apocalypse saga, teased during a Friday panel at Comic-Con that "the most dangerous things out there are the monsters inside."