Egypt’s Mursi calls referendum as Islamists march

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt‘s President Mohamed Mursi called a December 15 referendum on a draft constitution on Saturday as at least 200,000 Islamists demonstrated in Cairo to back him after opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.Speaking after receiving the final draft of the constitution from the Islamist-dominated assembly, Mursi urged a national dialogue as the country nears the end of the...

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“Walking Dead” midseason finale preview: attack of the bloodthirsty killers, aka our heroes

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – (Spoiler warning: Don’t read this if you don’t want to know what happened this season on “The Walking Dead” or in the comics. We’re also giving some general details about Sunday’s midseason finale.)As eventful as this season of “The Walking Dead” has been, they’re just getting to the best stuff.Showrunner Glen Mazzara tells TheWrap that Sunday’s midseason finale will include...

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Investigation underway into N.J. train derailment, chemical leak

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Federal transportation investigators have begun interviewing the crew of a train that was carrying hazardous materials when it derailed on a railroad bridge in New Jersey, officials said on Saturday.National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said the agency would spend the next two weeks preparing a preliminary report on Friday’s accident in the industrial...

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Police: NFL player kills girlfriend, takes own life

Chiefs and Panthers will play at regularly scheduled time on Sunday: The Kansas City Chiefs announced that Sund... http://t.co/Ah1nF...

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Oliver Stone, Benicio del Toro visit Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Benicio Del Toro didn’t wait long to collect on a favor that Oliver Stone owed him for working extra hours on the set of his most recent movie, “Savages”, released this year.The favor? A trip to Del Toro‘s native Puerto Rico, which Stone hadn’t visited since the early 1960s.“I told him, you owe me one,” Del Toro said with a smile as he recalled the conversation during...

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Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen get Billboard honors

NEW YORK (AP) — Billboard named Katy Perry its woman of the year, but the pop star thought her year was 2011.Perry was interviewed by Jon Stewart at Billboard’s Women in Music event Friday in New York City. The singer said she thought her moment had passed. Perry released “Teenage Dream” in 2010, and it sparked five No. 1 hits on the Billboard charts that spilled over to 2011. This year, she rereleased...

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Supreme Court to review lawsuits over flaws in generic drugs

(Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider whether generic drug manufacturers can be subjected to personal injury lawsuits that allege flaws in the design of drugs, even if federal law would not allow such cases to go forward.The court agreed to review a bid by Mutual Pharmaceutical Co to overturn a $ 21 million jury award to Karen Bartlett, a New Hampshire woman who had taken its...

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Pelosi will try to force vote to extend tax rates

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)WASHINGTON—House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will try to force a vote on the House floor to extend current tax rates for the middle class next week if Republicans do not act, the California Democrat announced on Friday.During a press conference on Capitol Hill, Pelosi called on House Republicans, who control the chamber, to hold another...

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Lohan arrested in NY, charged also for California car smash

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested outside a New York nightclub on an assault charge early Thursday, police said, while in California, she was charged with reckless driving and lying to police over a car crash in June.Lohan, 26, was arrested shortly after 4:00 a.m. (0900 GMT) on a third-degree misdemeanor assault charge after punching another woman in the face at a...

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FDA approves Exelixis’ cabozantinib for thyroid cancer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Exelixis Inc‘s cabozantinib as a treatment for medullary thyroid cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.Cabozantinib, the company’s lead product candidate, is an oral drug designed to limit blood supply to tumors as well as block two segments of a pathway used by cancer cells to grow and spread.The FDA announcement...

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U.N. recognizes state of Palestine

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize a Palestinian state, a long-sought victory for the Palestinians but an embarrassing diplomatic defeat for the United States.The resolution upgrading the Palestinians' status to a nonmember observer state at the United Nations was approved by a more than two-thirds majority of the 193-member world body — a vote of 138-9,...

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Rapper PSY wants Tom Cruise to go ‘Gangnam Style’

BANGKOK (AP) — The South Korean rapper behind YouTube’s most-viewed video ever has set what might be a “Mission: Impossible” for himself.Asked which celebrity he would like to see go “Gangnam Style,” the singer PSY told The Associated Press: “Tom Cruise!”Surrounded by screaming fans, he then chuckled at the idea of the American movie star doing his now famous horse-riding dance.PSY’s comments Wednesday...

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A Minute With: Pop star Ke$ha on new album “Warrior”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Ke$ ha made a name for herself with infectious dance-pop hits but the singer-songwriter is stepping out of her Auto-Tune comfort zone on “Warrior”, out this week.Ke$ ha, 25, stormed the charts with hit songs about drinking, partying and having a good time, such as “TiK ToK” and “Your Love is my Drug” from her 2010 platinum-selling album “Animal”.Ke$ ha talked with...

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Some women overwhelmed by cancer treatment options

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – More than one in five women with early-stage breast cancer in a new study said they were given too much responsibility for treatment-related decisions – and those patients were more likely to end up regretting the choices they made.The findings don’t mean women should not be fully informed about their treatment options, researchers said, but rather that doctors may need...

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Behind the curtain of the Great and Powerful Grover Norquist

(Michael D'Antuono/www.artandresponse.com)WASHINGTON—If aliens landed in Washington, D.C. right now, they might assume in their search for a terrestrial leader that a bespectacled man called "Grover Norquist" controlled the planet's most powerful nation. They might also conclude that this person had magical powers.The misunderstanding wouldn't necessarily be their fault.Grover Fever has swept the...

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Rugby-England add flyhalf Burns to squad for All Blacks’ test

LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) – England called up uncapped Gloucester flyhalf Freddie Burns on Tuesday to their squad for Saturday’s test against New Zealand in place of the injured Toby Flood.Flood sustained ligament damage to a big toe during the 16-15 loss to South Africa at Twickenham last Saturday.Owen Farrell, whose last start was in the first test in South Africa this year, is set to replace Flood...

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AIDS fighting spirit flagging, will miss 2015 targets: charity

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world has lost momentum in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, with millions of new people infected last year, the ONE foundation said in a report given on Tuesday.The conclusion contrasts with a UN report last week, which found that an end to AIDS was in sight due to better access to drugs.But ONE says “the beginning of the end of the AIDS” remains out of reach, as the...

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W.H. blasts GOP 'obsession' with Rice

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee—flanked by fellow committee …The White House sharply escalated its attacks Tuesday on Republicans trying to stop Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice from succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. Press secretary Jay Carney described GOP lawmakers as being gripped by a politically fueled...

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Dog days in Cuba: from shih tzus to schnauzers

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban capital has played host to political summits and art festivals, ballet tributes and international baseball competitions. Now dog lovers are getting their chance to take center stage.Hundreds of people from all over Cuba and several other countries came to a scruffy field near Revolution Plaza this past week to preen and fuss over the shih tzus, beagles, schnauzers and cocker...

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ChannelAdvisor says eBay sales up 57 percent early on Cyber Monday

(Reuters) – ChannelAdvisor said client sales on eBay Inc‘s online marketplace jumped 57 percent from a year before early on Cyber Monday.The sales growth rate was five times higher than during the same period last year, said ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more on websites including Amazon.com Inc and eBay.com.Client sales on Amazon.com were up 52 percent during the first part of Cyber...

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Actor: CBS comedy ‘Two and a Half Men’ is ‘filth’

NEW YORK (AP) — The teenage actor who plays the half in the hit CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men” says it’s “filth” and through a video posted by a Christian church has urged viewers not to watch it.Nineteen-year-old Angus T. Jones has been on the show since he was 10 but says he doesn’t want to be on it. He says, “Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth.”The video was posted...

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U.S. kids getting recommended amount of sleep: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children in the U.S. appear to be getting as much shut-eye as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends, according to a new study.“We can’t say this is the amount that they should be sleeping,” said Jessica Williams, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles.“All we could really do is compare our...

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Bin Laden movie based on controversial first-hand accounts

It was the greatest manhunt of all time, the stealthy nighttime raid by the elite SEAL Team Six on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, which led to the death of the world's most wanted terrorist leader.It is the subject of "Zero Dark Thirty," a riveting new film by director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, both of Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker" fame. But when they began making a film...

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Israel successfully tests missile defense system

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel successfully tested its newest missile defense system Sunday, the military said, a step toward making the third leg of what Israel calls its “multilayer missile defense” operational.The “David’s Sling” system is designed to stop mid-range missiles. It successfully passed its test, shooting down its first missile in a drill Sunday in southern Israel, the military said.The system...

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Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.These...

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U.S. musician Marcus Miller hurt in Swiss bus crash

ZURICH (Reuters) – U.S. jazz musician Marcus Miller was injured on Sunday along with members of his band when their bus crashed in Switzerland, killing the driver, police said.The two-time Grammy winner was travelling with 10 members of his band from Monte Carlo in Monaco to Hengelo in the Netherlands when the bus crashed on the highway near the town of Schattdorf in central Switzerland.A Swiss police...

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Detecting Cancer…With a Cellphone?

Smartphone technology is often seen as much of nuisance as it is a convenience, but having that kind of communicative power at our fingertips has a surprising advantage; it’s serving as a bridge, bringing  healthcare to third world countries that had previously been too remote and too costly to reach.The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is spearheading one use of smartphone technology in...

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Violence, economic unrest as Egypt's political foes dig in their heels

CAIRO (AP) — Supporters and opponents of Egypt's president on Sunday grew more entrenched in their potentially destabilizing battle over the Islamist leader's move to assume near absolute powers, with neither side appearing willing to back down as the stock market plunged amid the fresh turmoil.The standoff poses one of the hardest tests for the nation's liberal and secular opposition since Hosni...

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