| Pistorius involved in S. African club scuffle Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:33 PM PDT  Pistorius, currently on trial for his girlfriend's murder, was involved in a "bar brawl."
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| N.J. diner manager pleads guilty in murder-for-hire plot Posted: 14 Jul 2014 02:22 PM PDT  A former manager of the Tick Tock Diner in Clifton, New Jersey, pleaded guilty on Monday to hiring a hit man to murder his uncle, who co-owns the popular eatery, prosecutors said. In exchange for Georgios Spyropoulos admitting to a charge of first-degree conspiracy to commit murder, prosecutors at his sentencing on Sept. 19 will recommend sending him to prison for 10 years, said acting state Attorney General John Hoffman. Spyropoulos, 46, of Clifton, also faces up to five years of supervised release. ...
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| Alice Coachman dies at age 90 Posted:  The first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, Alice Coachman Davis died in Georgia.
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| U.K. foreign minister William Hague stepping down Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:09 PM PDT  Hague has been one of Britain's most visible statesman on international crises in the Middle East, Ukraine.
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| Man sentenced in NYC Dead Sea Scrolls case Posted: 14 Jul 2014 12:46 PM PDT  A man convicted of using digital-age tools to impersonate and malign his father's academic rivals on the ancient subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls was sentenced Monday to two months in jail after the state's highest court tossed out some of his convictions — and with them a widely used harassment law.
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| Egypt proposes Israel-Hamas cease-fire Posted: 14 Jul 2014 01:23 PM PDT  Proposal marks most serious attempt yet by international mediators to end conflict.
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| Fla. police officers linked to KKK Posted: 14 Jul 2014 01:42 PM PDT  Two police officers are no longer with the city department here after a law enforcement report tied them to the Ku Klux Klan, an official said Monday.
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| Perry-Paul launch war of words over foreign policy Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:40 AM PDT  Two leading Republicans have begun an unusually personal war of words over foreign policy, highlighting a broader divide within the GOP over international affairs in one of the first public clashes of the Republican Party's presidential primary process.
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| More than 100 evacuated as Oregon wildfire moves rapidly Posted: 14 Jul 2014 12:42 PM PDT  A fast-growing wildfire in south-central Oregon has forced more than 100 people to evacuate their homes and destroyed structures, officials said.
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| Clashes in Libya kill 13, close airports as U.N. pulls out staff Posted: 14 Jul 2014 02:44 PM PDT  The U.N. has evacuated dozens of staff from Libya, where at least 13 have been killed.
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| Morgan speaks out for first time since crash Posted:  Released from medical care, comedian Tracy Morgan talked to the media as he left his home in Cresskill, N.J.
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| Haslam-owned co. to pay $92M for scheme Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:08 PM PDT  Police: Pilot Flying J, owned by Jim and Bill Haslam, cheated patrons out of rebates, discounts.
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| Second probe into anthrax breach at fed labs finds major lapses Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:40 AM PDT  A second U.S. investigation into the anthrax breach at federal laboratories found major safety lapses, from keys left in supposedly locked refrigerators containing anthrax to the use of disinfectants that had passed their use-by dates, according to a document released by lawmakers on Monday. The findings go beyond details provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its account of lapses that led to the potential exposure of more than 80 lab workers to live anthrax bacteria in June. A subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce will hold a hearing on Wednesday about CDC's mishandling of anthrax as well as of a second deadly microbe, avian influenza. In addition to asking CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden about the anthrax and bird flu incidents, the subcommittee is expected to probe whether those biosafety lapses have implications for federal oversight of "select agents," the most dangerous pathogens, and the high-containment labs that handle them.
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| Octomom pleads no contest to welfare fraud Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:06 AM PDT  Octomom Nadya Suleman pleaded no contest Monday to a single count of misdemeanor welfare fraud for failing to disclose income she was receiving from videos and personal appearances while collecting more than $26,000 in public assistance funds to care for her 14 children.
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| Brooklyn 8th-graders earn Sony record deal Posted:  A trio of friends from Brooklyn, N.Y., who are not yet out of middle school have signed a record deal with Sony.
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| N.J. mayor lashes out over memorial for cop-killer Posted: 14 Jul 2014 01:02 PM PDT  Police say Lawrence Campbell ambushed 23-year-old officer Melvin Santiago.
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| Heavy fighting rages near Baghdad Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:50 AM PDT  Iraqi forces and allies battled to dislodge militants from a town near Baghdad, while 2 car bombs in the capital killed at least 7.
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| Residents of 150 Philadelphia homes return after evacuation Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:44 AM PDT  Residents of 150 suburban Philadelphia homes are being allowed to return home as their houses are tested after a voluntary evacuation overnight due to a mysterious odor.
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| Sotheby's plans to broadcast live auction bidding via eBay Posted: 14 Jul 2014 02:52 PM PDT By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two of the biggest names in auction sales, the traditional Sotheby's and the digital pioneer eBay, said on Monday they are joining forces to make it easier to buy antiques, collectibles and works of fine art online. The two plan to stream selected auctions with live bidding in real time late this year or early in 2015 from Sotheby's New York headquarters. The deal will connect the 270-year-old Sotheby's, with its extensive inventory of fine art, antiques, books, jewels, watches and furniture, with eBay's 145 million active buyers around the world. "We are joining with eBay to make our sales more accessible to the broadest possible audience around the world," Bruno Vinciguerra, Sotheby's chief operating officer, said in a statement. |
| Shipwrecked Costa Concordia refloated Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:29 AM PDT  The cruise liner Costa Concordia is seen during a refloat operation at Giglio harbour at Giglio Island July 14, 2014. Technicians on Monday began a complex operation to refloat and tow away the wreck of the Costa Concordia, two and a half years after the luxury liner capsized off the Italian coast, killing 32 people. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi (ITALY - Tags: DISASTER TRANSPORT) |
| Honduras: U.S. drug policy to blame for migrant surge Posted: 14 Jul 2014 09:35 AM PDT  Honduran President Juan Hernandez blamed U.S. drug policy for sparking violence in Central American countries and driving a surge of migration to the United States, according to an interview published on Monday. Hernandez, who took office in January after winning on a pledge to be tough on crime, said only a drop in violence would curb the wave of families and unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who have overwhelmed temporary detention facilities on the U.S. border. "Honduras has been living in an emergency for a decade," Hernandez told Mexican daily newspaper Excelsior. "The root cause is that the United States and Colombia carried out big operations in the fight against drugs.
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| Anti-government fervor puts cops at risk Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:00 AM PDT  Recent police slayings celebrated on social media; rise in extremism increases safety fears.
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| Ukraine accuses Russian officers of fighting alongside rebels Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:27 AM PDT  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russian military staff officers on Monday of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country and said a newly-developed Russian missile system was being used against government forces. Poroshenko was speaking at an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell. "Information has ... been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces," Poroshenko said, adding to his charges on Sunday of movements of heavy military equipment into the country from Russia. Earlier on Monday, a military spokesman in Kiev said Russia was building up forces on its border with Ukraine, and separatists, backed by Russian "mercenaries", were firing on Ukrainian border guards in an attempt to bring armoured vehicles into the country.
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| Rash from IPads may be due to heavy metal nickel Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:57 PM PDT  If you have a strange skin condition, check your iPad. The popular tablet may contain allergy-inducing nickel.
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| Refloated Concordia now heads for scrap heap Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:07 AM PDT GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — The shipwrecked Costa Concordia has been successfully refloated in preparation for towing it away for scrapping. |
| Activist Malala joins 'Bring Back Our Girls' cause in Nigeria Posted: 14 Jul 2014 07:28 AM PDT  ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria's president promised Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai that he would meet with the parents of some of the 219 schoolgirls held by Islamic extremists for three months, she said Monday.
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| Be much more precise with kid medicine doses, says study Posted: 14 Jul 2014 07:18 AM PDT  CHICAGO (AP) — The song says a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but a study says that kind of imprecise measurement can lead to potentially dangerous dosing mistakes.
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| For Twitter, Facebook, World Cup beat its gooooooals Posted: 14 Jul 2014 06:04 AM PDT  Germany produced just one goal in its win over Argentina in Sunday's World Cup final. But the game produced a record number of Facebook and Twitter posts.
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| Former POW Bergdahl returning to duty Posted: 14 Jul 2014 08:08 AM PDT  U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl completed post-Afghanistan therapy, counseling; to head to Fort Sam Houston.
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| Did somebody wire the Appalachian Trail? Time for a selfie! Posted: 14 Jul 2014 05:49 AM PDT  By Barbara Goldberg HARRIMAN STATE PARK N.Y. (Reuters) - Maybe it was guilt over alarming her parents when she inadvertently dialed 911 from the Appalachian Trail, but Caitlin Belcher wishes she could ditch her cell phone for the rest of the 2,180-mile (3,508-km) hike. I just want to be out in the woods, isolated," said Belcher, 23, who has called home to Fredericksburg, Virginia, twice weekly since her journey began in April and gets constant texts from her parents, who even call her hiking partner's phone as well. Then Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina used "hiking the AT" as an excuse for disappearing for six days in 2009, while in fact he was on a rendezvous in Argentina with his mistress. Today camping gadgets such as a twig-fueled stove that can charge a smartphone while it heats baked beans, and online tips such as using an empty foil-lined potato chip can to boost Wi-Fi signals, mean there is no need to go off the grid while on the trail. With Twitter, Instagram and blogs, hikers may be safer but lose the solitude and silence once found in the woods. "The whole idea of the Appalachian Trail is to get away from it all," said Bill Bryson, whose best-selling 1998 book "A Walk in the Woods" about the trail is being made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. "I am all in favor of gadgets, but my fear is that most people spend all their rest time texting and staring at little screens and miss out on all the glorious solitude around them," Bryson said. Summer is high season on the trail that draws up to 3 million visitors a year, including 1,100 "thru hikers" like Belcher who hope to conquer the entire 14-state route.
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| Russian 'crucifixion' accusation against Ukraine revives Nazi-era epithets Posted: 14 Jul 2014 04:48 AM PDT  Russian state television has provoked a storm of criticism after it aired an uncorroborated report claiming that the Ukrainian army publicly nailed a three-year-old boy to a board in a former rebel stronghold. Ukraine accused Russia of ratcheting up its propaganda war by airing an interview in which a woman gave graphic details of the alleged incident in the Ukrainian flashpoint city of Slavyansk, which neither AFP nor other media have been able to confirm. Channel One television at the weekend broadcast footage of a woman who said she recently saw Ukrainian soldiers round up people in central Slavyansk, which the army took over this month after three months of clashes with separatists, and nail an insurgent's child to a notice board. A spokeswoman for Ukraine's interior ministry, Natalya Stativko, on Monday slammed the report as "following in the footsteps of Goebbels," Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda.
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| Spy flap frays CIA, White House ties Posted: 14 Jul 2014 01:45 AM PDT  When Germany kicked out CIA station chief, tensions ratcheted up.
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| Tougher justice takes wind out of Somali pirates' sails Posted: 13 Jul 2014 05:00 AM PDT  Mohamed Abdi Hassan, another notorious pirate nicknamed Afweyne, or "Big Mouth," said earlier he was getting out of the game. Things are changing in East Africa's high-profile pirate business: A combination of greater force at sea and swifter justice on land means the bottom has fallen out of the kind of Somali piracy vividly depicted in "Captain Phillips," the 2013 film about the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. "With a few very small exceptions, we've had two years now without any successful piracy attacks," says Alan Cole, regional coordinator of the maritime crime program for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
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| Ukraine says Russian army officers fighting alongside rebels Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:43 AM PDT  Kiev says it had ended a rebel blockade of a strategic airport in the east as it traded charges and threats with Russia over violations of their joint border.
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| 'Tragedy tourism' on the rise Posted: |
| Egypt proposes cease-fire between Israel, Hamas Posted: 14 Jul 2014 04:38 PM PDT  JERUSALEM (AP) — Egypt presented a cease-fire plan Monday to end a week of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip that has left at least 185 people dead, and both sides said they were seriously considering the proposal.
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| Citigroup to pay $7B in subprime mortgages probe Posted: 14 Jul 2014 04:23 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Citigroup has agreed to pay $7 billion to settle a federal investigation into its handling of risky subprime mortgages, admitting to a pattern of deception that Attorney General Eric Holder said "shattered lives" and contributed to the worst financial crisis in decades, the Justice Department said Monday.
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| Vote deal will work, Afghan candidate tells AP Posted: 14 Jul 2014 03:49 PM PDT  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Declaring his nation "is not Iraq," one of two contestants in Afghanistan's deadlocked presidential election told The Associated Press on Monday that both he and his rival are committed to lead their war-ravaged nation inclusively in cooperation with international partners.
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| Answers on link between injection wells and quakes Posted: 14 Jul 2014 02:58 PM PDT  FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — States where hydraulic fracturing is taking place have seen a surge in earthquake activity, raising suspicions that the unconventional drilling method could be to blame, especially the wells where the industry disposes of its wastewater.
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| Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl returned to regular Army duty Posted: 14 Jul 2014 12:48 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army has given Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a desk job, ending the formal phase of his transition from Taliban prisoner to not-quite-ordinary soldier, and setting the stage for Army investigators to question the Idaho native about his disappearance that led to five years in captivity.
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