| Haslam-owned co. to pay $92M for customer-cheating scheme Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:23 AM PDT  Pilot Flying J, owned by Cleveland Browns owner Jim Haslam and Tenn. Gov. Bill Haslam, cheated patrons out of rebates, discounts.
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| Second probe into anthrax breach at fed labs finds major safety 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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| N.J. mayor lashes out over memorial for cop-killer Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:53 AM 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 10:23 AM PDT Sotheby's and eBay announced a partnership on Monday to make it easier to buy antiques, collectibles and works of fine art online. The international auction house and the online marketplace plan to broadcast live auctions from the New York headquarters of Sotheby's that will include real-time bidding from anywhere in the world. The deal will connect 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 11:17 AM 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: |
| Israel downs Gaza drone along southern coast Posted: 14 Jul 2014 09:42 AM PDT  JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said it downed a drone launched by militants in the Gaza Strip on Monday, the first time it encountered an unmanned aircraft since the start of its offensive last week, as new Israeli airstrikes pushed the death toll from a weeklong Israeli offensive to at least 175.
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| Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl returned to regular Army duty Posted: 14 Jul 2014 09:27 AM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant who spent nearly five years as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan, was returned to regular duty Monday with a desk job that makes him available to Army investigators for questioning about his disappearance in 2009.
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| Citigroup to pay $7B in subprime mortgages probe Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:22 AM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Citigroup agreed Monday 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.
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| Afghan candidate tells AP vote deal will work Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:36 AM PDT KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — One of two contestants in Afghanistan's deadlocked presidential election has told The Associated Press that a U.S.-brokered deal for a full ballot audit pulled the country back from the brink and put government legitimacy back on track. |
| Ukraine: Military plane shot down by rocket Posted: 14 Jul 2014 09:21 AM PDT KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian military transport plane was shot down Monday along the country's eastern border with Russia but all eight people aboard managed to bail out safely, the defense ministry said. |
| Shipwrecked Concordia floated for tow to Genoa Posted: 14 Jul 2014 10:15 AM PDT  GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — The shipwrecked Costa Concordia was successfully refloated Monday in preparation to be towed away for scrapping, 30 months after it struck a reef and capsized, killing 32 people.
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| Facing deadline, US and Iran press nuclear talks Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:38 AM PDT  VIENNA (AP) — The U.S. and top Iranian diplomats searched Monday for a breakthrough in nuclear talks, their efforts complicated by crises across the Middle East and beyond that have Washington and Tehran aligned in some places but often opposed.
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| Church of England says yes to women bishops Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:19 AM PDT  LONDON (AP) — The Church of England ended one of its longest and most divisive disputes Monday with an overwhelming vote in favor of allowing women to become bishops.
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| Archie to be shot saving gay friend in comic book Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:36 AM PDT  LOS ANGELES (AP) — Archie Andrews will die taking a bullet for his gay best friend.
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| Brazil's upside-down Cup: Bad on field, good off Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:32 AM PDT  RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — For Brazil, it was the upside-down World Cup.
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| Israel says it shot down Gaza drone as calls for truce mount Posted: 14 Jul 2014 11:31 AM PDT  A U.N. aid agency said around a quarter of Beit Lahiya's 70,000 residents have fled, fearing Israeli attacks.
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| Influence game: Shaping railroad safety rules Posted: 14 Jul 2014 01:20 AM PDT  A string of fiery train derailments across the country has triggered a high-stakes but behind-the-scenes campaign to shape how the government responds to calls for tighter safety rules.
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| U.S., Iran say disputes remain in nuclear talks as deadline looms Posted: 13 Jul 2014 12:02 PM PDT  Major differences persist between Iran and six world powers negotiating on Tehran's nuclear program, with a week to go before a deadline for a deal.
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| No Iran breakthrough with Kerry in Vienna Posted: 13 Jul 2014 05:30 PM PDT  VIENNA (AP) — Joint efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and three other Western foreign ministers failed Sunday to advance faltering nuclear talks with Iran, with the target date for a deal only a week away.
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| Gotze hands Germany World Cup title Posted: |
| Link-up between Yemen and Syria Islamists of 'extreme concern': US Posted: 13 Jul 2014 01:22 PM PDT  US Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday that intelligence suggesting Islamist bombmakers from Yemen have teamed up in Syria is "more frightening than anything" he had seen before. In an interview with ABC News, Holder called the alleged cooperation between expert bomb-makers in Yemen and jihadists fighting in Syria's civil war a "deadly combination." ABC News, citing unidentified sources, said US intelligence suspects Yemeni bombmakers in Syria have designed an explosive device small enough to fit in a laptop computer.
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| Iraq parliament postpones decision on new leaders Posted: 13 Jul 2014 08:49 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's deadlocked parliament failed Sunday to overcome the deep divisions hampering the formation of a new government, making no progress on choosing new leaders who could help hold the nation together and confront the Sunni militant blitz that has overrun much of the country.
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