Opposing views on Obama and future of the country split Ohio community

FREMONT, Ohio — On the same day, in the same county of northern Ohio, two new grandparents prepared to drive to the same factory for work. They had started their careers at Arm & Hammer in the same year, and for more than two decades they had stood together on a concrete floor and watched baking soda roll down an 80-foot production line. But, on this morning, what they saw looked nothing...

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Algeria hostage crisis ends in bloodshed

IN AMENAS, Algeria: Algerian troops stormed a remote gas plant on Saturday to end a hostage crisis that killed 23 foreigners and Algerians, seven of them executed by their Islamist captors in a final military assault.Twenty-one hostages died during the siege that began when the Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen attacked the In Amenas facility deep in the Sahara desert at dawn on Wednesday, the interior...

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JBT scam: Convicted retired staff & kin in a shock

NEW DELHI: Four days after the CBI court gave its verdict in the junior basic trained (JBT) teachers' recruitment scam, 50 retired Haryana primary education department employees, who were convicted by the court, and their families are in a state of shock.Having lost the legal battle following the CBI court's conviction, the former government employees of the education department on Saturday pleaded...

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Ex-Teammate: Armstrong Showed 'Genuine Emotion'

While critics railed against Lance Armstrong for coming off as detached in the two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Thursday and Friday nights, former teammate and friend, Tyler Hamilton, told "Good Morning America" today that he felt Armstrong was displaying "genuine emotion.""I've never seen Lance shed a tear until last night. Before I even heard one word from...

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Earl Smith is the man behind a military patch that President Obama prizes

AUSTIN, Tex. — That February morning in 2008 found Barack Obama decidedly out of sorts. He was locked in one battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination that showed no signs of ending — and another with a vicious cold that felt the same way. As he rode the service elevator in the backway of a convention hotel here, the snowy-haired African American operating it...

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US stocks mostly higher; Intel pulls Nasdaq down

NEW YORK: US stocks ended mostly higher on Friday helped by news that Republicans might give way to a short-term rise of the debt ceiling to avoid a new crisis, but poor earnings from Intel pulled the Nasdaq lower.The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 53.68 points (0.39 percent) to 13,649.70.The broad-based S&P 500 added 5.04 points (0.34 percent) at 1,485.98.But the tech-heavy Nasdaq...

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Nirbhay to be test-fired in February

HYDERABAD: Nirbhay, India's first subsonic cruise missile, will be test-fired by the end of February, said V K Saraswat, director general of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and scientific advisor to defence minister A K Antony. Saraswat was speaking to the media during a seminar on 'Nurturing, Managing and Institutionalising Innovation' organised by the Defence Research and...

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Manti Te'o Hoax Incredibly Detailed and Complex

Fresh details have emerged about how complex and layered was the hoax involving Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend, "Lennay Kekua."According to ABC News interviews and published reports, Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother,...

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First Human Contact With Large Emperor Penguin Colony

One of the largest emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica was discovered last month by a team from the International Polar Foundation's Princess Elisabeth station.The penguin colony had previously been identified through satellite imagery by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey. The penguins themselves didn't show up very clearly, but their excrement stains on the ice did.Expedition...

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Amazon says music catalogue open to Apple users

SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon said Thursday its 22-million song music catalogue was now "optimised" for users of Apple devices, making it easier for iPhone owners to circumvent the iTunes store.The move is part of a new initiative by the Internet retail giant challenging Apple's dominance of the digital music market."For the first time ever, iPhone and iPod touch users can discover and buy digital...

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Murder accused MLA makes Cong insecure in HP

SHIMLA: The disqualification of murder accused Congress MLA Ram Kumar Chaudhary has jeopardized the party's position in 68-member House of Himachal Pradesh. The Doon MLA's ouster has left the party with 34 MLAs only. For clear majority, the government should have the support of 35 members. If Chaudhary is disqualified, the party will be left with no option but to seek the outside support.The MLA's...

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Opinion: Lance One of Many Tour de France Cheaters

Editor's note: England-based writer and photographer Roff Smith rides around 10,000 miles a year through the lanes of Sussex and Kent and writes a cycling blog at: www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.ukAnd so, the television correspondent said to the former Tour de France champion, a man who had been lionised for years, feted as the greatest cyclist of his day, did you ever use drugs in the course...

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'Catfish' Star Reaches Out to Manti Te'o

Nev Schulman, the star and creator of the MTV show "Catfish" that follows Internet dating hoaxes, has reached out to Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o and offered to help solve his girlfriend hoax.Te'o and Notre Dame claim he was a "catfish" victim when it was revealed that the woman he said was his girlfriend and died of leukemia never existed.The "Catfish" television show...

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Chavez to troops: thanks for the 'loyalty and love'

CARACAS: Lying in a Havana hospital bed as he recovers from cancer surgery, President Hugo Chavez thanked Venezuela's military for their loyalty and love, the vice president said Wednesday.Nicolas Maduro told a military audience the president expressed this message to Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, who is also Chavez's son-in-law and with him in Cuba."He told us to pass on to the armed...

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HC seeks status report on Khurshid trust probe

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Wednesday ordered the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of UP police to present the status report on the inquiry done so far into allegations of anomalies in the trust run by external affairs minister SalmanKhurshid. The court has sought the report on February 1.The order was passed by a division bench of Justice Uma Nath Singh and Justice Satish...

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How Far Off Is a Better Flu Shot?

As you waited in line for your flu shot last weekend, you may have been wondering: Why must I go through this every year?The answer is that the influenza virus is a slippery character. Some viruses barely change at all over time. The measles virus, for example, is "as stable as stone," said William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University.Chicken...

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Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence

Flanked by four children from across the country, President Obama today unveiled a sweeping plan to curb gun violence in America through an extensive package of legislation and executive actions not seen since the 1960s.Obama is asking Congress to implement mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales; reinstate a ban on some assault-style weapons;...

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House set to vote on Hurricane Sandy relief package

The House is set to vote Tuesday on $50 billion in relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, a package designed to speed aid to devastated communities in New York and New Jersey, and a vote that could provide an early test of the resolve of Republican deficit hawks. The package is likely to be approved on the strength of votes from Democrats and Republicans who hail from communities hit hard...

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Oil prices fall on weak German, US data

NEW YORK: Oil prices retreated Tuesday after unimpressive economic data out of Germany and the US raised questions about the strength of petroleum demand.Prices of US benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures settled at US$93.28 a barrel, down 86 cents. European benchmark Brent crude futures settled at US$110.30 a barrel, down US$1.58.German gross domestic product shrank by about 0.5 pe...

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Speaker should have expunged abusive proceedings right away: Somnath

CHANDIGARH: Former LokSabha Speaker SomnathChatterjee, who set an example by refusing to follow the party line to vote against the Congress-led government in a crucial July 2008 confidence vote, on Tuesday strongly differed with the handling of the abusive CD row involving Punjab minister BikramMajithia, saying that the expunging of assembly proceedings should not have come as an "afterthought".The...

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Arias Called Boyfriend 4 Times After Killing Him

Jodi Arias tried to cover her tracks after killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, by making a flurry of phone calls to his cell phone and hacking into his voice mailbox, prosecutors alleged today.Phone records presented in court today showed Arias persistently calling Alexander in the days before the killing. Ten calls were made from Arias' cell phone to Alexander's cell...

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"Fantastic" New Flying Frog Found—Has Flappy Forearms

Scientists have stumbled across a new species of flying frog—on the ground.While hiking a lowland forest in 2009, not far from Ho Chi Minh City (map), Vietnam, "we came across a huge green frog, sitting on a log," said Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney and lead author of a new study on the frog.Rowley later discovered that the 3.5-inch-long (9-centimeter-long)...

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Obama promises diversity in White House, Cabinet

(Alex Wong - GETTY IMAGES) It seemed President Obama might have been a bit defensive, at his press conference Monday, when he was asked about diversity in his Cabinet picks.His first term had “as diverse... a White House and a Cabinet than any in history,” he said, adding that he “would just suggest that everybody kind of wait until they’ve seen all my appointments... before...

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US student could "doodle" way to college money

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Monday launched a competition that will let a US student "doodle" his or her way to cash for college along with landing grant money to fund technology education at their grade school.The California-based Internet titan announced its sixth annual "Doodle 4 Google" contest in which students from kindergarten to 12th grade vie to create a winning "doodle," a creative...

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Cold wave persists in Himachal

SHIMLA: Cold wave persisted in most parts of Himachal Pradesh even as mercury rose marginally across the state and stayed close to normal level.The high-altitude tribal areas and other higher hills had mild snowfall while some places in mid and lower hills had light rains with Nadaun in Hamirpur district recording 3 mm of rainfall.While tourist spot Manali recorded minimum temperature of minus 0.4...

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Space Pictures: 7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023

Space AvailablePhotograph courtesy Mark Greenberg, Virgin GalacticWhile humans may be running out of unexplored regions on Earth, space remains a deep and intriguing frontier, especially...

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