Fighting rages in northern Mali after suicide bombs

BAMAKO: Tuareg militias battled Arab rebels in northern Mali Saturday, while French jets, US drones and Chad's elite desert forces were also in action in a major push to stamp out resistance from pockets of Islamist fighters.After recapturing the north's cities from the Al Qaeda groups that had controlled them since April 2012, the six-week-old French-led offensive took the fight to the...

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Polls: Meghalaya, Nagaland witness high voter turnout

DIMAPUR/SHILLONG: Despite a boycott call by a militant outfit, Meghalaya saw a high turnout of over 85 per cent voters in the assembly polls on Saturday. In Nagaland, the other northeastern state to go to the polls along with Meghalaya, more than 83 per cent of the electorate cast their votes.Defying the 36-hour bandh called by the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) to keep people away...

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent...

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Pistorius Family: 'Law Must Run Its Course'

South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius is spending time his family today after the athlete was freed on $113,000 bail Friday."We realise that the law must run its course, and we would not have it any other way," the Olympian's uncle, Arnold Pistorius said in a statement on Saturday.The Pistorius family expressed their gratitude that the former Olympian was allowed out of jail...

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Abe: Japan acting calmly in island dispute with China

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said he told President Barack Obama in a meeting that Japan would act calmly in its row with China over tiny islands in the East China Sea claimed by both Asian countries. "I explained that we have always been dealing with this issue ... in a calm manner," he said through a translator, while sitting next to Obama in the...

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Slovenian government slapped with no-confidence motion

LJUBLJANA: Slovenia's main opposition party Positive Slovenia (PS) filed Friday a no-confidence vote motion against the government, likely spelling an end for Prime Minister Janez Jansa's troubled administration."We have decided to bring this agony to an end," the head of PS's parliamentary group Jani Moderndorfer said after filing the motion in parliament.The centre-left party suggested...

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Indian Mujahideen hand becomes clearer in Hyderabad blasts

NEW DELHI: As investigators trawl the devastated spots in Hyderabad's Dilsukhnagar for clues to Thursday's twin blasts, a debate has begun in the home ministry over whether the terror attack could have been prevented.According to reports reaching here, there is no breakthrough yet for the investigators. "We are still groping in the dark," a senior home ministry official familiar with the details of...

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent...

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial....

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French, Malian forces fight Islamist rebels in Gao

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops fought Islamists on the streets of Gao and a car bomb exploded in Kidal on Thursday, as fighting showed little sign of abating weeks before France plans to start withdrawing some forces. Reuters reporters in Gao in the country's desert north said French and Malian forces fired at the mayor's office with heavy machineguns after Islamists were...

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Massive winter storm blankets central US

CHICAGO: A massive winter storm blanketed much of the central United States Thursday and looked set to keep dumping heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain for days as it makes its way slowly towards the east coast.The National Weather service reported that as much as 38 centimetres of snow had fallen in parts of Colorado and New Mexico by Thursday morning and warned that many areas would...

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Hyderabad blasts: Dilsukhnagar has been on Indian Mujahideen radar since 1999

NEW DELHI: The twin blasts at Hyderabad are suspected to be the handiwork of Indian Mujahideen(IM) commander Riyaz Bhatkal. Although intelligence agencies are in no rush to jump to a judgment, their suspicion of IM's role is derived from the fact that the terror outfit had targeted precisely the same spot — near the foot overbridge in Dilsukhnagar — on August 25, 2007 when IM carried out serial blasts...

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Flu shot did poor job against worst bug in seniors

ATLANTA (AP) — For those 65 and older, this season's flu shot is only 9 percent effective against the most common and dangerous flu bug, according to a startling new government report.Flu vaccine tends to protect younger people better than older ones and never works as well as other kinds of vaccines. But experts say the preliminary results for seniors are disappointing and highlight the need for...

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Las Vegas Strip Shooting Leads to 3 Dead

A drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas strip early this morning by the occupants of a Range Rover SUV, who shot at the occupants of a Maserati, caused a multi-car accident and car explosion that left three dead.Police said that they believe a group of men riding in a black Range Rover Sport SUV pulled up alongside a Maserati around 4:20 a.m. today and fired shots into the car, striking...

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Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's government resigned on Wednesday after mass protests against high power prices and falling living standards, joining a long list of European administrations felled by austerity during four years of debt crisis. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, an ex-bodyguard who took power in 2009 on pledges to root out graft and raise incomes in the European Union's poorest member,...

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EU nears national budget oversight

BRUSSELS: The EU moved closer Wednesday to centralised oversight on national budgets, negotiators said, an increasingly sensitive topic as Brussels readies to issue new economic forecasts with France in the firing line over puny growth and a probable deficit overshoot.Long-contested tweaks to a package of laws designed to harmonise economic governance especially across the eurozone met...

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Delhi airport Metro link operator got 'undue benefits': CAG

NEW DELHI: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said that there were serious irregularities, flouting of government norms and undue financial benefits to the private player in the Delhi airport Metro link.The country's first Metro rail project under the public-private partnership (PPP) model - Delhi Airport Metro Express Line (DAMPEL) - has been riddled with concessions to DAMPEL, the joint...

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Obama admin. tackles colonoscopy confusion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new health law requires that most insurance plans cover all costs for preventive care, including colon cancer screening.But it didn't turn out to be that simple.Many patients ended up with a bill when the doctor performing the colonoscopy removed precancerous growths known as polyps. Why the bill? Because a preventive screening had turned into a procedure.Now the Obama administration...

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Arias Can't Remember Gory Death of Ex-Boyfriend

Accused murderer Jodi Arias told an Arizona jury today that her ex-boyfriend became enraged when she dropped his new camera, body slammed her to a tile floor and threatened to kill her, and in the frantic struggle that followed she remembers a gun being fired accidentally but does not remember stabbing him.Her version of Travis Alexander's death was the culmination of more than...

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Syria "Scud-type" missile said to kill 20 in Aleppo

AMMAN (Reuters) - A Syrian missile killed at least 20 people in a rebel-held district of Aleppo on Tuesday, opposition activists said, as the army turns to longer-range weapons after losing bases in the country's second-largest city. The use of what opposition activists said was a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds against an Aleppo residential district came after rebels...

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Pistorius says "no intention" to kill girlfriend

PRETORIA: South African Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday tearfully denied the premeditated murder of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, telling a court he shot at her through a locked bathroom door believing she was an intruder."I am absolutely mortified by the events and the devastating loss of my beloved Reeva," Pistorius said in an affidavit at a court hearing in the capital...

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Bihar records 11.95% growth, highest among states

PATNA: Despite global economic slowdown and sagging domestic demand, Bihar has managed to record 11.95% annual growth rate, the highest among all the states, during the 11th Plan period. According to the Economic Survey 2012-13 tabled by deputy CM and finance minister Sushil Kumar Modi in the state legislature on Tuesday, Bihar almost remained untouched by the overall global slowdown but for some...

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UK patient dies from SARS-like coronavirus

LONDON (AP) — A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have...

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'Celebrity Rehab' in Spotlight After McCready's Death

Dr. Drew Pinsky defended his show "Celebrity Rehab" on "The View" today, saying that he received messages of support from former participants after the death of Mindy McCready. . She was the fifth person who has appeared on the show to die in the past two years.Dr. Drew was defending his show in the face of fresh criticism from the public and recovery advocates who say the process...

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Time to refer Syrian war crimes to ICC: U.N. inquiry

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations investigators said on Monday that Syrian leaders they had identified as suspected war criminals should face the International Criminal Court (ICC). The investigators urged the U.N. Security Council to "act urgently to ensure accountability" for violations, including murder and torture, committed by both sides in an uprising and civil war that has killed...

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