How Drought on Mississippi River Impacts You

Woe is the Mississippi. A barge carrying light crude hit a bridge near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Sunday, causing an oil spill.But if you think that is the worst thing that's happened this winter to the river, you'd be wrong.The middle Mississippi—the 200-mile (322-kilometer) stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois—is experiencing drought conditions unrivaled in the last 50 years. That's...

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Arias' Ex-Boyfriend Kept Affair Secret

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was kept away from the Mormon friends of her lover Travis Alexander and their torrid sex affair was kept secret by Alexander who was an elder in the Mormon church and was supposed to be a virgin, according to court testimony today.The testimony in Arias' trial for killing Alexander in 2008 was intended to bolster the defense's argument that she killed...

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Brazil night club owner attempts suicide

SANTA MARIA: An owner of the Brazilian night club where 235 people perished in a weekend fire tried to commit suicide, police said Wednesday, as the number of survivors seeking medical treatment after the disaster continued to rise.Elissandro Sphor tried to kill himself with a plastic shower hose, said senior police official Lilian Carus in the town of Cruz Alta 125 kilometres from Santa...

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Anna launches 'Jantantra Morcha', aims to change system

PATNA: Anna Hazare on Wednesday launched a new outfit " Jantantra Morcha" at a rally in Patna. "Now a change in the system is our aim. The change can be brought about by passing the Jan lokpal Bill and decentralizing power to gram sabhas and ward sabhas," he told a public meeting. The social activist said the new outfit would not join electoral politics and the occasion marked the beginning of the...

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Water Demand for Energy to Double by 2035

Marianne Lavelle and Thomas K. Grose The amount of fresh water consumed for world energy production is on track to double within the next 25 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects.And even though fracking—high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations for natural gas and oil—might grab headlines, IEA sees its future impact as relatively small.By far the...

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Jodi Arias Trial: Defense Attacks Ex-Boyfriend

Defense attorneys for accused murderer Jodi Arias went on the attack today, drawing testimony from an ex-girlfriend of Travis Alexander in order to portray Alexander as an insensitive philanderer who was obsessed with sex.Arias is charged with killing Alexander in a jealous rage in June 2008, and her lawyers are attempting to convince the jury that it was a case of self defense...

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US Senate confirms Kerry as next secretary of state

WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed Senator John Kerry as the next secretary of state, approving President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton by a wide majority.The Senate voted 94-3 in favour of Kerry, after the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination earlier in the day.His nomination was pushed through the Senate in a matter of days, given...

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Intellectuals come out in support of Ashis Nandy

NEW DELHI: The paradox of a champion of social justice being booked under the caste atrocities law has prompted an array of intellectuals and artistes to come out in support of academic Ashis Nandy from India and abroad. They include Romila Thapar, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, Aparna Sen, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Charles Taylor, Rajeev Bhargava and Yogendra Yadav. Referring...

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier. But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several...

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Palin and Fox Part Ways, but Is She Really Over?

Sarah Palin's break up with Fox News should not have been, well, breaking news, as she had publicly complained in August on Facebook that the network had canceled her appearances at the Republican National Convention. And going back even further, Palin didn't give Fox the scoop in October 2011 when she announced she wasn't going to run for president. Still, the news of the...

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