Jose Mourinho defended Cristiano Ronaldo's form on the eve of Real Madrid's Copa del Rey quarterfinal against Barcelona, describing his performance against Mallorca as his best since the coach's arrival at the club.

Ronaldo has come under criticism after squandering chances in a 3-1 loss to Barcelona last month, but Mourinho said the forward's work ethic in the second half of Saturday's 2-1 win was better than all of his Madrid accomplishments before.

A motorized, seat-less unicycle, a video game you control with your eyes, and a mind-reading headset that serves as a game controller were among the more bizarre gadgets being shown off at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show.

Some 3,100 exhibitors attended the show, and although there were plenty of mainstream technologies on display, the show attracted a fair share of off-beat gadgets. Here's a roundup of some of the weirdest devices:

Google is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.

The educational ads will start appearing Tuesday in dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc. also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various websites.

An Austrian high school principal narrowly escaped legal action after going after potential exam cheaters with a high-tech — but illegal — idea.

Gerhard Klampfer reportedly bought and mounted a jamming device strong enough to prevent graduating classes from doing Internet research on their smartphones during final exams last summer.

British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

A Bangkok court ordered on Tuesday a Lebanese-Swedish Hizbullah suspect detained for 12 days for illegally possessing explosive materials.

Thai police charged Atris Hussein on Monday after he led them to a warehouse containing four tons of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.

Should Jake Gyllenhaal be worried?

Taylor Swift graces the cover of Vogue's February issue and tells the magazine her next album will be about an "absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak" she experienced.

Derek Fisher spent the last year wearing more suits than sweats while negotiating the union's labor deal, and he realizes his peak playing days are probably past.

But Kobe Bryant borrows a term from former coach Phil Jackson to describe anybody who doubts what the Lakers' veteran point guard can do in the clutch.

The government is setting what it calls an ambitious goal for Alzheimer's disease: Development of effective ways to treat and prevent the mind-destroying illness by 2025.

The Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer's Plan to find better treatments for the disease and offer better day-to-day care for those afflicted.

Babies don't learn to talk just from hearing sounds. New research suggests they're lip-readers too.

It happens during that magical stage when a baby's babbling gradually changes from gibberish into syllables and eventually into that first "mama" or "dada."