Urban Advocates Say New Gun Control Talk Overdue

For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control.Yet the guns blazed on.It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades' worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young man invaded an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., with a military-style...

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Egypt constitution approved in vote: Islamist official

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's new constitution, which was drafted by an Islamist-dominated assembly, was approved by 64 percent of voters in a two-round referendum, an official in the Muslim Brotherhood said on Sunday citing the group's unofficial tally. The result followed votes held on December 15 and on Saturday. "According to our calculations, the final result of the second...

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Avramovic: It's not about me

SINGAPORE: In his near decade-long spell as Singapore's national coach, Radojko Avramovic has always cut an intriguing figure - a fuss-free man of few words, gruff at times, but always charming with the occasional dose of deadpan humour.And in typical understated fashion, he played down his role in masterminding the Lions' path to victory in the 2012 ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki...

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Punjab’s toxic water kills in womb: Study

CHANDIGARH: The toxic groundwater in Punjab villages along five major waste drains ——Buddha, Hudiara, Kala Singha East Bein and Tung Dhab —is having dangerous fallout. It is resulting in rise in stillbirths and spontaneous abortions as well as delayed language learning and mental growth in children under the age of 12. These startling facts have come out in a study recently published in an international...

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Predicting who's at risk for violence isn't easy

CHICAGO (AP) — It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., and now Sandy Hook: People figure there surely were signs of impending violence. But experts say predicting who will be the next mass shooter is virtually impossible — partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes.Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including...

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Obama Still an 'Optimist' on Cliff Deal

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty ImagesWASHINGTON D.C. – Ten days remain before the mandatory spending cuts and tax increases known as the “fiscal cliff” take effect, but President Obama said he is still a “hopeless optimist” that a federal budget deal can be reached before the year-end deadline that economists agree might plunge the country back into recession.“Even though Democrats and Republicans are...

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Italy PM Monti resigns, elections likely in February

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way to a highly uncertain national election in February. The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he...

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Judge halts Argentine woman's wedding to sister's killer

BUENOS AIRES: An Argentine judge has blocked planned nuptials between a 22-year-old woman and her twin sister's convicted killer after a formal complaint by her mother.Edith Casas insists that Victor Cingolani did not murder her sister Johana Casas, a fashion model. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence in southern Santa Cruz province for her murder in 2010.The twins' mother Marcelina...

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HC vacates stay on results for 14,000 new PGT posts

CHANDIGARH: While vacating the stay on the announcement of results for around 14,000 new posts of Post Graduate Teachers (PGTs), the Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday held that only those who clear the Haryana Teachers Eligibility Test (HTET) would be eligible for teaching posts in Haryana. With these orders, candidates having qualified the eligibility test of state, other than Haryana or...

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AP IMPACT: Big Pharma cashes in on HGH abuse

A federal crackdown on illicit foreign supplies of human growth hormone has failed to stop rampant misuse, and instead has driven record sales of the drug by some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, an Associated Press investigation shows.The crackdown, which began in 2006, reduced the illegal flow of unregulated supplies from China, India and Mexico.But since then, Big Pharma has been...

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Boehner Pulls Plan B Option

In a surprise development late Thursday night, House Speaker John Boehner pulled his so-called "Plan B option" -- an extension of current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year -- from the House floor, admitting that it did not have the support necessary to pass and leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in question."The House did not take up the tax measure...

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Syrian rebels fight for strategic town in Hama province

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria's central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad's minority sect, activists said. The operation risks inflaming already raw sectarian tensions as the 21-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule - during which the president's Alawite sect...

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User revolt causes Instagram to keep old rules

SAN FRANCISCO: Instagram on Thursday tried to calm a user rebellion by nixing a change that would have given the Facebook-owned mobile photo sharing service unfettered rights to people's pictures."The concerns we heard about from you the most focused on advertising, and what our changes might mean for you and your photos," Instagram co-founder and chief Kevin Systrom said in a blog post."There...

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NIT staff eligible for Central government pension: Punjab and Haryana high court

CHANDIGARH: In a relief to the staff of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra and Jalandhar, the Punjab and Haryana high court has ordered the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) to implement Central government pension scheme to cover the NIT staff.With these orders, hundreds of employees of these two NITs, who had joined the institutions before 2004, would now get pension...

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AP IMPACT: Steroids loom in major-college football

WASHINGTON (AP) — With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight — 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes — without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid...

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days."If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference."I...

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U.S. State Dept officials resign under pressure over Benghazi killings

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three senior U.S. State Department officials were asked to resign after an official inquiry harshly criticized their offices for failing to provide adequate security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, before it came under attack in September, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Eric Boswell, the assistant...

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Review slams BBC over Savile report but says no cover-up

LONDON: An official report strongly criticised the BBC's handling of allegations of child sex abuse against late presenter Jimmy Savile, but cleared the world's biggest broadcaster of a cover-up.The findings by an independent inquiry sparked the resignation of the BBC's deputy director of news, and led to the editor and deputy editor of the programme at the centre of the scandal being...

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Himachal Pradesh assembly elections 2012: Neck-and-neck contest predicted

SHIMLA: Himachal Pradesh is all set to decide its political future with counting scheduled on Thursday. The poll fight, which began on November 4 with a record turnout, seems to be a neck-and-neck contest between the ruling BJP government and the Congress party. Since the assembly elections 46 days ago, candidates have been trying to determine voters' mood. While the Congress appears confident...

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering...

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Newtown Shooting: Bushmaster Under Fire

When the private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday it would unload its interest in Bushmaster – the company that built the weapon used in last week's mass murder of 20 Connecticut first graders -- it marked the beginning of what experts say is likely to be a challenging period for the North Carolina-based weapons manufacturer."They are looking at...

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