Karly Domb Sadof/AP

Rumors are swirling in the tech world as reports are starting to trickle out that Facebook may announce a video feature for photo-sharing app Instagram.

by Cadie Thompson Facebook may announce a video feature for its photo-sharing app Instagram at an event it is hosting Thursday.The company declined CNBC's request for comment on the matter, but according to TechCrunch, Facebook is planning to show off the new product, which will allow users to share short videos via Instagram. The publication cited a source close to the matter.The move wouldn't be surprising, considering that Facebook has taken cues from Twitter, which acquired the video-sharing app Vine in January.

End of an era.

After three years of poor viewership, ESPN has decided to drop its all-3-D channel. In a recent announcement, the company cited a lack of customer demand as the primary reason for the move. Skeptics have long feared that 3-D would be an expensive and unrealistic investment, and ESPN’s move seems to confirm those suspicions.

Read it at The New York Times

Thousands of times.

Talk about needy. Over the last six months, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for government data from the U.S. government. In announcing the number of requests, Apple joins numerous other tech companies like Facebook and Microsoft in publishing the number of requests by law enforcement. The company says that most of the requests related to missing children, locating Alzheimer’s patients, robbery, and suicide prevention.

Read it at Reuters

Thousands of times.

See you never, cable television. DreamWorks Animation has announced it will be making TV series for online streaming service Netflix. In choosing Netflix over cable TV, DreamWorks will diversify beyond the fickle movie business. The shows will be based on characters from DreamWorks movies like Shrek and The Croods and are expected sometime in the next year.

Read it at The New York Times

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And their owners on 110th anniversary of bikes.

Pope Francis just beat out practically all of his predecessors in the cool scale (some of those early popes were pretty badass though). The pontiff on Sunday blessed thousands of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and their owners during a parade to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the company. Bikers decked out in their trademark leather Harley vests crowded into St. Peter’s Square, with their engines nearly drowning out the “Our Father” prayer said in their honor. There are tens of thousands of Catholics in the Vatican for a two-day pro-life rally, which was the centerpiece of Francis’s mass on Sunday.

Read it at Associated Press

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While sporadic clashes continue in Istanbul.

Turkey’s two major unions—which consist of roughly 800,000 workers—went on a one-day strike on Monday to show solidarity with the protesters who were evicted from Gezi Park on Saturday night. Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler denounced the strike as “illegal.” Sporadic clashes between police and protesters continued in Istanbul, where police violently removed protesters on Saturday night ahead of a rally in support of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At Sunday’s rally, Erdogan told hundreds of thousands that the two weeks of countrywide protests had been manipulated by “terrorists” and denied that he was behaving like a dictator. Meanwhile, the president of the Turkish medical association told the BBC that five doctors and three nurses had disappeared since treating the protesters.

Read it at Al Jazeera English

Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

A Brazilian group’s plan to treat suitcases like air-hockey pucks beat out 617 other proposals to win Airbus’s student contest to promote more efficient air travel.

One of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers thinks the key to the best flying experience might come from green technology and is hoping that the next generation of scientists will discover it.On Friday Airbus announced the winner of its biennial Fly Your Ideas challenge, a competition that encouraged college students to brainstorm and sell their ideas on innovative and green improvements to the airplane industry.“We want to fly at the minimum cost and also in a more environmentally friendly approach.

Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty

The old Confederate states now have America’s fastest-growing economies, and populations. Joel Kotkin reports on why Northerners have been slow to notice or credit the South’s rise.

One hundred and fifty years after twin defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg destroyed the South’s quest for independence, the region is again on the rise. People and jobs are flowing there, and Northerners are perplexed by the resurgence of America’s home of the ignorant, the obese, the prejudiced and exploited, the religious and the undereducated. Responding to new census data showing the Lone Star State is now home to eight of America’s 15 fastest-growing cities, Gawker asked: “What is it that makes Texas so attractive? Is it the prisons? The racism? The deadly weather? The deadly animals? The deadly crime? The deadly political leadership? The costumed sex fetish conventions? The cannibal necromancers?” The North and South have come to resemble a couple who, although married, dream very different dreams.

Mario Tama/Getty

While the federal government stagnates, metropolitan areas lead the way to the future.

A revolution is stirring in America. Like all great revolutions, this one starts with a simple but profound truth: Cities and metropolitan areas are the engines of economic prosperity and social transformation in the United States. Our nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas sit on only 12 percent of the nation’s land mass but are home to two thirds of our population and generate 75 percent of our national GDP. Metros dominate because they embody concentration and agglomeration—networks of innovative firms, talented workers, risk-taking entrepreneurs, and supportive institutions and associations that cluster together in metropolitan areas and coproduce economic performance and progress.

Clay Enos/Warne Bros.

With $113.1 million in North America alone.

Move over, Avengers: there's a new top superhero in town. Actually, he's the oldest superhero there is. Despite lackluster reviews, the new Superman vehicle Man of Steel raked it in at the box office on opening weekend, taking in $113.1 million in North America alone, adding to a total $196.7 million worldwide. More significantly for movie-fan purposes, it beat out Toy Story 3 for the biggest June opening of all time and took 60 percent of the weekend market. It's okay, Buzz. You'll always be the best superhero in our hearts. This Is the End came in second, with $38.2 million, while Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring took in $210,000 in just five theatres in New York and Los Angeles—making it Coppola’s best opening since Lost in Translation.

Read it at The Hollywood Reporter