The Orange County Register says more and more hotels are pulling out their mini-bars. Despite the high prices of their items, hotel mini-bars were never big money makers due to the high cost of restocking and chronic theft. The paper says travelers these days care more about in-room Wi-Fi service and other amenities than they do having easy access to overpriced bottles of booze.

The Wall Street Journal says car makers are using this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to tout their strategies for equipping cars with 4G high-speed broadband. That would allow a variety of services, from streaming video to online troubleshooting of car problems. Safety regulators are keeping a close eye on the auto makers to ensure that new technology systems don’t add to driver distractions.

One New Jersey hospital is making life a little easier for parents of premature babies, by installing streaming video cameras in the NICU that allow parents to look in on their babies from anywhere. The Newark Star-Ledger says the cameras have been a huge hit with parents who are often trying to balance seeing their babies with work and other family duties.

The Philadelphia Inquirer says the country’s most prominent horticulturists are in fear for the future of the industry. Horticulture, the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables and flowers, is facing a shortage of skilled professionals. And that doesn’t bode well for the many fields that rely on horticulturists such as food production, climate science study and biofuel research.

The New York Times say for all their celebration of history, colleges and sports teams seem to be pretty fond of editing out the rough patches. From Reggie Bush’s Hesiman Trophy to Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles, the record books get editing quite often. The paper says controversial figures get erased Soviet-style to preserve an institution’s image or to comply with league sanctions.

As pay phones fade into obscurity, the Houston Chronicle looks at the history of one particular payphone. It once was a hub for the whole neighborhood, serving customers from a nearby bar that has since been replaced by condos. It’s been used more than 60,000 times, but now it’s used for just 1.5 calls a day. The company that owns it says there’s still money to be made in pay phones.

The San Jose Mercury News says the biggest technological transformation since the Industrial Revolution is happening now - as billions of ordinary items from farm cows to medicine bottles get outfitted with microchips to form a so-called “Internet of Things.” This will make for countless improvements in our lives - from better medical care to fewer plane crashes - and even better bottles of wine. The transformation could be a major windfall for Silicon Valley businesses that make chips, networking gear and software.

One year after it began, the partnership between Alicia Keys and Blackberry has ended. The Globe and Mail says the deal didn’t make sense anymore after Blackberry decided to turn its focus away from the consumer market and toward corporate and government customers. The arrangement got off to a rocky start when Keys apparently tweeted from an iPhone, though she claimed her account had been hacked.

USA Today devotes the main part of its front page today to the 20th anniversary of “The Whack Heard ‘Round the World.” The paper caught up with both Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, who’s ex-husband and friends plotted the attack on Kerrigan ahead of the 1994 Olympics. VIDEO

The face of the carnival worker running America’s fairs is changing. The Washington Post travels to the town of Tlapacoyan in eastern Mexico, home to about 3,000 people who each year venture out on the road to staff carnivals in the United States. They come to the U.S. on temporary work permits, earning $350 to $400 a week, much more than farm workers.

The Wall Street Journal sits down with Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, which makes its season 4 debut in the U.S. on PBS Sunday. Fellowes talks about the decision to kill off two major characters. The main reason is that in England, agents typically won’t allow actors to remain with a show for more than a few years. So the stars themselves decide to move on to other projects and the show writes around their departures.

The Duck Dynasty clan is putting their name on a new line of guns. Fresh on the heels of patriarch Phil Robertson’s suspension and reinstatement from the family’s A&E reality show, comes word of a deal with gunmaker Mossberg on a line that includes shotguns, rifles and an automatic pistol. The New York Post says Phil Robertson narrates promotional videos for the camouflage-covered guns.

Solar power has made its way underwater - as researchers are now using solar-powered tags to track and study sharks. The South Florida Sun Sentinel says the new tags replace battery-powered ones that would sometimes die before scientists could get all the information they needed. Because most sharks don’t swim near the surface, the tags collect data for six months using conventional batteries, then detach and float to the surface where they can get solar power so the data can be transmitted.

Target’s massive credit card security breach highlighted the fact that the United States is far behind the curve when it comes to credit card security The Buffalo News says the U.S. is the only developed nation that still uses swipe and sign credit cards. Chip cards that generate a unique verification code each time they’re used are the norm around the world. That makes the U.S. a top target for hackers.

The New York Times has a review of the Phantom 2 Vision Photo Drone. Kit Eaton says the $1200 machine could be the first flying drone you may actually consider buying. It can record video and stills from a thousand feet in the air. And it has a feature that will allow it to use GPS to return home and land itself if it loses connection with its controller.

Despite long lines, the first day of legal marijuana sales in Colorado was not surprisingly, mellow, according to the Denver Post. Colorado is the first place in the world to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana. Two 24-year-olds said they drove all night from Cincinnati to be there for the first day of pot sales. They plan to stay and become residents.

The Wall Street Journal’s Scott McCartney has a list of his resolutions for making air travel more tolerable and perhaps even enjoyable. He resolves to get more elite status on airlines, which he says is the single most important way to improve air travel. Also on his list: Eating healthier while traveling, not paying baggage fees and having more sympathy for those in the middle seat.

Lindsay Vonn’s Olympic hopes remain in question as she battles a knee injury, but that seems to be of little concern to sponsors, who still love the downhill skier. The Washington Post says Vonn is among the few Olympic athletes to have attracted the attention of major sponsors. One marketing expert says Vonn has all the things a sponsor would love - with number one being that she’s gorgeous.

The Wall Street Journal says the latest maintenance issue at the International Space Station is another sign the orbiting laboratory is getting old. Astronauts will do a series of spacewalks to replace the station’s coolant system. Congress and the White House have agreed to keep the space station operational until 2020, but the Journal says NASA may want to stretch that to as far as 2028.

When the NSA’s massive surveillance program was revealed earlier this year, U.S. officials said the program was both constitutional and critical for national security. The Washington Post says both of those justifications are slowly falling by the wayside. This week a judge ruled the NSA’s program was likely unconstitutional and a White House panel concluded the program probably did not prevent any terror attacks.

Despite all the ways we keep in touch these days, the Boston Globe says the holiday letter, the object of scorn and ridicule, is still very much alive. Many holiday letter writers say the annual exercise is a way for them to take stock of their own lives while telling friends and family what’s happened over the last year. One author tells the Globe holiday letter writers can’t win: If they share good news, it sounds like bragging, and if they have bad news, it sounds like they’re complaining.

Treehouse, a Portland startup, is cutting out the middle man. The Oregonian says the tech education business got rid of all of its managers, turning nearly every employee into a front line worker. Employees now pick the projects they want to pursue. The Oregonian says there are a handful of companies doing the same thing, as a way to cut managerial costs.

The New York Times says the three major credit card companies have agreed to a rules change that would allow merchants to charge extra for using a credit instead of a debit card or cash. American Express recently agreed to a settlement allowing the change, though it still has to be approved by a judge. A judge has already signed off on the change for Visa and Mastercard. It’s still unclear how many retailers will opt for surcharges.

A&E now finds itself in a difficult position amid the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s comments about gay and black people. The Los Angeles Times says it will be difficult for the network to bring Robertson back without seeming self-serving. Times TV reporter Scott Collins says reality television is trying to capitalize on the same cultural tensions it’s exploiting.

You see it all the time in the movies. A team is losing badly, before a rousing halftime speech from the coach seems to propel them to victory. That’s mostly bull. San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Scott Ostler says the coach’s power to motivate is vastly overrated. He says most pro athletes don’t need any reminders to play at their maximum intensity.

A new Pew Research poll finds only half of Americans consider Christmas a religious holiday. One third of those polled say they view the day as a cultural celebration. Of the 69% of those polled who attended Christmas worship services as kids, only 54% plan to attend church this Christmas. The New York Daily News says the meaning of the day has been swamped by commercialism and traditions like spending time with family.

We all know the glut of sweets and treats this time of year can lead us to pack on a few pounds. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune says too many sweets can adversely affect everything from our breath to our mental health. Nutritionists say it’s especially important to watch our holiday season snacking so we can indulge a bit on special occasions.

Gone are the days when you have to worry about sweating through your dress shirt. Two entrepreneurs have come up with a sweat-absorbing shirt. The New York Times says the Mizzen & Main shirts look like regular dress shirts and come in a variety of colors. Another bonus for travelers: They’re also wrinkle-free. Designer Kevin Lavelle says he experimented with thousands of fabrics before getting the shirt just right.

The Wall Street Journal asks Retail executives for some advice about how to complain effectively. You should have a reasonable remedy in mind and have your information handy. When you call matters: Generally, the people most able to offer a solution are working Monday to Friday in the daytime. So don’t expect a creative solution from someone on a Saturday night.

The Washington Post has a great story on how the camera on your laptop computer can be used to spy on you - without warning. Researchers have long known that triggering a camera remotely was possible, but only recently have hackers been able to figure out a way to disable the light that indicates the camera is recording. The easy way to protect yourself? Put a piece of tape over your camera.