Ouch, Charlie! YouTube Sensation Kids Talk Christmas Toys

The infamous “Charlie Bit My Finger” video has surpassed half a billion views on YouTube — not bad for a 56-second clip of a one-year-old kid biting his older brother’s finger.

Charlie and Harry, now six and eight, returned to the web earlier this year with a new series through Viral Studios. The mini-episodes focus on the boys and their younger brother, Jasper, as they talk about toys, viral videos and — of course — biting things.

[More from Mashable: 8 Festive Christmas Tumblrs, Presented by Santa Dogs]

Mashable sat down for a Skype interview with the three boys last week. Unfortunately, the Internet connection wasn’t the greatest — Harry twice referred to me as a “man made out of boxes” because of the spotty video quality — but they were still able to talk about what toys they were most excited about this holiday season. Check ‘em out below:

[More from Mashable: Now and Then: 10 Awesome Past and Present Pics]

Charlie’s Pick: Playmobil Large Pirate Ship

Price: $ 95.50

Image courtesy of Playmobil

Harry’s Pick: Thomas & Friends Take-n-Play The Great Quarry Climb

Price: $ 19.99

Image courtesy of Fisher-Price

Jasper’s Pick: Turbo Snake Remote Control

Price: £38.45 (only available in the U.K.)

Image courtesy of Amazon

You can catch all the episodes on the “Charlie Bit Me!” series on their YouTube page. Which toys or gadgets did you score this year? Tell us below.

BONUS: 10 Gifts for People You Hate

1. 50 Used Toilet Paper Rolls

Price: $ 19.99 Mother Earth appreciates a little holiday upcycling. Your mother-in-law, on the other hand, may not. Cheaper DIY alternative: Your own toilet paper rolls.

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of Viral Studios

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Adorable Tots: Celebs and their Cute Kids!

Neil Patrick Harris

Neil Patrick Harris posted a slew of pics of his adorable family on Dec. 25, 2012, including this one of Harper. The How I Met Your Mother star tweeted: "Ms. Harper likes Mr. Potato Head's fashion sense. She is quite the looker, but I think it's a bit shortsighted."

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Whale beached in Queens, crews race to rescue ahead of low tide

Ellis Kaplan

Rescue crews are in a race against the clock after a whale beached itself this morning in Queens.

A resident reported the stranded sea mammal just before 9 a.m., a security staffer for the Breezy Cooperative told The Post.

The 50-foot-long whale is believed to be a female humpback whale. Point Breeze firefighters are using a water pump to keep the mammal alive.

"I haven't seen a whale like this in Breezy since I was a kid," said Joan Washington, who has been a resident of Breezy Point for the past thirty years.

"We started seeing wildlife like this again last summer. We see dolphins and sharks on the ocean side but not in the bay."

Ed Manley, a volunteer from Florida helping with Hurricane Sandy cleanup efforts, was the first person to get to the beach, he said.

"We got a call this morning from the police department, they said come down and help out," said Manley, who has been volunteering in Breezy Point for the past 77 days.

Manley worked nonstop for three hours in the cold, throwing buckets of water on the whale to help it survive.

"They couldn't get the pump going so I was using a bucket to keep her nice and wet."

Manley, who has worked to save whales in Florida, said the next step is to slowly pull the whale back into the water.

"Dead low tide for Jamaica Bay is 12:46 p.m.," said Dennis Dier, Chief of Security for Breezy Cooperative. "In another hour, the water will go out another five feet. The whale will be completely beached. He's up against a lot right now."

When a whale is beached, it runs the risk of being crushed by its own weight, as well as becoming dehydrated.

Wildlife rescue crews are racing to the scene.

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Case-Shiller: Home prices up 8.5 percent in South Florida in October over last year

Home prices in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties were up 8.5 percent in October from the same time last year, an increase that put them in fifth place for the highest annual gain on the Standard&Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

The index, released Wednesday morning, showed South Florida losing some ground in October from September, with prices dropping less than a percentage point. But index experts said price drops are typical during the fall months.

“Annual rates of change in home prices are a better indicator of the performance of the housing market than the month-over-month changes because home prices tend to be lower in the fall and winter than in spring and summer,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee. “Looking over this report, and considering other data on housing starts and sales, it is clear that the housing recovery is gathering strength.”

The 20-city index composite showed a gain of 4.3 percent from last year. The Tampa market was up 5.9 percent.

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Memorial set for Ex-Florida governor candidate

A memorial service for Bill McBride, the Florida Democrat who defeated Janet Reno for the party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2002 but lost to Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, will be held later this week in Tampa.

The service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday at the Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church.

McBride suffered a fatal heart attack Saturday while visiting with family in Mount Airy, N.C. He was 67.

McBride defeated Reno, who was U.S. attorney general under President Bill Clinton, in the Democratic primary to run against Bush. Before entering politics, he was managing partner at the prestigious Holland & Knight law firm.

McBride’s wife, Alex Sink, was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2010, losing to now-Gov. Rick Scott. The couple lived outside of Tampa.

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Bo Obama Interrupts Michelle Obama Reading Twas The Night Before Christmas

Last night, Michelle Obama prepared to read 'Twas The Night Before Christmas to the patients at Children's National Medical Center in Washington D.C. and The First Family's dog Bo wanted to get a good seat. The best seat, in fact.

PHOTOS - The Sweetest Moments Between Michelle and Barack!

As Michelle sat down beneath the ornate Christmas tree, Bo hopped up on her lap as if there weren't hundreds of people watching (and as if the four-year-old was still the size of a puppy)!

"This is exactly what he does at home," the First Lady laughed. "He tries to beat Malia and Sasha to my lap."

Michelle forged ahead with gusto and you can watch the adorable scene play out in the video below!

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Upstate NY madman left chilling suicide note before torching town and luring firefighters to death

William H. Spengler Jr.

A homicidal maniac -- bent to “do what I like doing best: killing people" -- left a chilling suicide note before torching his neighborhood and murdering two firefighters, police said today.

Ex-con William Spengler Jr., a loser mama’s boy who once spent 17 years in prison for beating his grandmother to death, penned a murderous three-page missive, telling the world why he turned a quiet lakeside neighborhood into hell on earth.

“I still have to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best: killing people,” Spengler wrote his suicide note, made public by police.

Spengler, 62, set his home -- in the tight-knit, upstate town of Webster, just outside Rochester -- ablaze early yesterday morning to lure volunteer firefighters to the scene. The gutless killer then methodically shot four of those fireman, two fatally, before blowing his brains out.

"There was no motive in the note...there were some ramblings in there, said Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering told reporters this morning. “There was intelligence information that we obtained that our investigators need to follow up on. It spoke mainly that he intended to burn his neighborhood down and kill as many people as possible."

Four whiskey bottles, filled with gasoline, were found unspent against his house, law enforcement sources told WHEC-TV.

UPSTATE MADMAN SETS BLAZE TO LURE FIREFIGHTERS TO DEATH

Spengler ignited his deadly blaze with a flare gun that was recovered at the scene, the local NBC affiliate reported.

The sadistic killer was found with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, Mossman 12-gauge shotgun and a Bushman semi-automatic AR-15 rifle with 30-shot magazine, police said. Crazed gunman Adam Lanza used the same make of Bushman rifle in the tragic Newtown, CT shooting earlier this month.

As a convicted felon, Spengler had no legal right to possess guns so cops want to trace those weapons.

REUTERS

A house burns after Spengler set fire to it.

Police are exploring connections Spengler and his late mom, Arline, had to the West Webster Fire Department, officials said.

Spengler first torched his family’s home on Lake Road, where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, at around 5:45 a.m. — then lay in wait for his unsuspecting prey.

Crouched like a sniper and armed with a rifle and a handgun, Spengler targeted responding firefighters from behind an earthen berm that gave him a clear shot, said Pickering.

“He took a position of cover to be a sniper to shoot the first responders . . . It does appear it was a trap that was set,’’ a grim-faced Pickering said.

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Miami: We’re still busiest cruise port

Florida’s ports are steaming bow-to-bow in the race to be the world’s businest cruise ship port.

Though some publications have reported Port Canaveral in the lead with 3,761,056 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, PortMiami officials Monday said they had hosted 3,774,452 passengers during the same period, putting it slightly ahead. Fort Lauderdale’s PortEverglades reported 3,689,000 passengers for the period, putting it slightly behind the others in third place.

“We’re all very close,’’ said Paula Musto, PortMiami spokeswoman.

PortMiami has slipped below its previous high of 4 million plus passengers because of changing ship deployments, she said. That number is expected to again cruise past 4 million in 2013 as several new ships homeport in Miami.

Jane Wooldridge

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Bomb squad checking “suspicious object” found in MIA luggage

The Miami-Dade Police Department’s specialized bomb squad was checking out a “suspicious” item in a carry-on bag at checkpoint J in the South Terminal of Miami International Airport late Monday morning.

Airport Director Jose Abreu said the security checkpoint and all nearby ticket counters have been evacuated, and passengers rushing to travel for Christmas are being rerouted to checkpoints J and H, also in the South Terminal.

The terminal serves mostly foreign carriers. Abreu called the item a “suspicious object,” and said the bomb squad was on the scene.

A Transportation Security Administration worker found the object inside passenger luggage. Abreu said he believes the person is being interviewed by authorities.

Monday is one of the busiest days of the year, said Abreu. The airport expects more than 100,000 passengers.

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British retailers start online sales early

LONDON (Reuters) – British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.

Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started its online sale.

Retailers in recent years have started sales online on Christmas Day, ahead of the clearances in stores from Boxing Day, but are increasingly launching their online offers before Christmas after delivery deadlines for the day have passed.

Hard-pressed shoppers have been leaving it later to buy presents in the hope that retailers would slash prices, the British Retail Consortium said.

It was forecasting that 5 billion pounds ($ 8.1 billion) would be spent in the shops on Saturday and Sunday combined, the last weekend before Christmas.

Richard Dodd, the BRC’s head of Media and Campaigns, said weekend trading had met expectations.

“Christmas, ultimately once all the final sums are done, will turn out to be acceptable but not exceptional,” he said.

He said the sector expected a modest increase in cash spending against a year go, but not necessarily any significant increase in real terms once inflation was stripped out.

Many British families‘ budgets are stretched, according to a survey from Markit that showed the biggest deterioration in household finances for seven months.

Analyst Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said the weakening in household finances could not come at a worse time for retailers, and it highlighted why many people appeared to have been careful in their Christmas shopping this year.

“The suspicion has to be that consumers will be especially keen to take advantage of genuine major bargains in the sales to acquire items that they cannot otherwise afford or are reluctant to make at the moment,” he said.

“However, we suspect that people will likely to be more careful in buying – or reluctant to buy – items that they don’t really want or need in the sales.”

($ 1 = 0.6180 British pounds)

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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