By all accounts, the screen in the upcoming iPad 3 should be two times more spectacular than the display in the iPad 2, shown here. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

It’s the most definitive assurance yet that Apple’s next iPad will include a screen with a near “retina display”-quality resolution: DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim has told CNET that “production has started” for 2048×1536, 10-inch-class tablet screens, and three manufacturers — Samsung, Sharp and LGD — are supplying parts to Apple.

“It takes a couple of weeks for the production to go to the [the manufacturers],” Shim told CNET. “Th...

Many different types of crowd disturbance have bubbled up during 2011, but perhaps the oddest category has been the “flash mob robbery,” or “flash rob.”

It’s a fad that started in Washington, D.C. back in April, when around 20 people filed into a high-end jeans store in Dupont Circle and quickly made off with $20,000 in stock. Since then, the practice has spread — Dallas, Las Vegas, Ottawa, and Upper Darby, Pa. have all reported incidents since then — though the targets have gotten a bit more downscale, with most of the thefts taking place in convenience stores.

The latest crowd theft took...