Egyptians vote on Islamist-inspired constitution

CAIRO (Reuters) - Early indications suggested Egyptians approved an Islamist-drafted constitution in Saturday's second-round referendum despite opposition criticism of the measure as divisive. As counting began, an official from the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, which backs President Mohamed Mursi, said a sample of a few hundred thousand votes had "yes" in the lead. ...

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Virbhadra Singh to be Himachal CM

SHIMLA: Congress Party's old warhorse Virbhadra Singh will be the next chief minister of Himachal Pradesh. This will be his sixth term as the head of the hill state. After a meeting of Himachal Pradesh Congress Legislature Party (CLP) here on Saturday, Virbhadra's name was cleared by party president Sonia Gandhi. At the CLP meet, the MLAs had sent a one-line resolution asking Sonia Gandhi to decide...

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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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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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Football: Inter Milan held by Genoa, nine points behind Juve

ROME: Inter Milan fell further behind Serie A leaders Juventus on Saturday after being held 1-1 at home to struggling Genoa.Inter, nine points behind the defending champions who beat Cagliari 3-1 on Friday, had to rely on a goal from Argentinian veteran Esteban Cambiasso five minutes from time to rescue a point.Genoa's Ciro Immobile had given the visitors the lead in the 77th minute with...

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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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Supreme Court orders to jail convicts on bail ignored for 4 years

NEW DELHI: Here is why people are increasingly getting frustrated by the absence of deterrent effect of law on criminals — the authorities ignored for four years a Supreme Court order directing immediate arrest of convicts, who were on bail, in a murder case to serve out the 10-year imprisonment sentence. In a startling case, the Supreme Court in May 2008 dismissed the appeal of one Sambu Rai, who...

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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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Critics Slam NRA's Call for Armed School Guards

Gun control advocates slammed the National Rifle Association today for its proposal to create a force of armed security guards at schools across the country as a response to the Connecticut school shooting."It is beyond belief that following the Newtown tragedy, the National Rifle Association's leaders want to fill our communities with guns and arm more Americans," Sen. Frank...

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Moments of silence, bells mark US school shooting

NEWTOWN: Mourners in Newtown, Connecticut, stood in silence under heavy rain while church bells rang to honour the 20 young children and six staff massacred in a school shooting a week ago.The sombre scene at 9:30 am local time, the moment a week earlier when a deranged local man armed with semiautomatic weapons burst into the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was echoed around the country...

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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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Customs books seven diesel smuggling cases since 2009

NEW DELHI: After gold, it's diesel that is increasingly being smuggled into the country. Multiple cases of diesel smuggling from West Asian nations have come to the notice of the finance ministry, and the government has asked Customs and Coast Guard to enhance surveillance along the western coast. Most of the cases have been detected along Maharashtra and Gujarat coastline. Customs authorities have...

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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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Manhunt Heats Up for Two Escaped Bank Robbers

The manhunt for two bank robbers who escaped from a downtown Chicago prison this week intensified overnight, with police chasing multiple leads as new footage shows the men getting into a taxi minutes after their brazen escape.Investigators say surveillance cameras captured Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, and Kenneth Conley, 38, getting into a taxi minutes after their early Tuesday...

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Russia's Putin denies propping up Assad

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and stressed that Moscow was only seeking to avert a perpetual civil war."We are not concerned about (Bashar Assad's fate. We understand that the family has been in power for 40 years and there is a need for change," Putin told a major Moscow press briefing.But he made no call on Assad...

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Clinton not responsible for Benghazi shortcomings: inquiry

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of an official inquiry into the fatal attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, did not find Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responsible for security lapses even as they outlined widespread failings within her department. The unclassified version of the report, released late Tuesday by the State Department, concluded that the mission was completely...

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Delhi HC dismisses PIL challenging Tendulkar's nomination to Rajya Sabha

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Wednesday approved the decision of the Centre to nominate cricketer Sachin Tendulkar to the Rajya Sabha. Dismissing a PIL challenging Tendulkar's nomination to the Upper House, a division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw agreed with the Centre's argument that his craft is an art for which he deserves to be considered an artist....

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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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Obama Launches Gun-Violence Task Force

Five days after deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history, President Obama said his administration plans immediate action early next year on proposals to curb an "epidemic of gun violence."At a morning news conference, Obama announced the formation of a task force to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden that will formulate a package of policy recommendations by January."The...

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