Boehner faces a political cliff over budget fracas in Washington

House Speaker John A. Boehner spent much of Thursday confidently predicting that he could pass a plan to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff.” “Sure did,” Boehner acknowledged with a wry smile Friday, the day after he was forced to cancel the vote due to lack of support. The stunning rebuke by his fellow Republicans was the most critical test of Boehner’s leadership since he assumed control...

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CIA chief decries torture in Osama bin Laden hunt movie

WASHINGTON: Acting CIA director Michael Morell said that "Zero Dark Thirty," the Hollywood take on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, exaggerates the importance of information obtained by harsh interrogations.The movie by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow tells the story of the decade-long search after September 11, 2001 that climaxed in last year's dramatic and deadly raid in...

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Virbhadra Singh to be Himachal CM

SHIMLA: Congress Party's old warhorse Virbhadra Singh will be the next chief minister of Himachal Pradesh. This will be his sixth term as the head of the hill state. After a meeting of Himachal Pradesh Congress Legislature Party (CLP) here on Saturday, Virbhadra's name was cleared by party president Sonia Gandhi. At the CLP meet, the MLAs had sent a one-line resolution asking Sonia Gandhi to decide...

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter InstituteMounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to."You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations,"...

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Urban Advocates Say New Gun Control Talk Overdue

For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control.Yet the guns blazed on.It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades' worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young man invaded an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., with a military-style...

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Football: Late-show Juventus go 10 points clear

ROME: Juventus needed two goals in stoppage time to seal a come-from-behind 3-1 win at Cagliari on Friday and move 10 points clear at the top of Serie A.Cagliari, just a point above the relegation zone, went ahead after 16 minutes through a Mauricio Pinilla penalty awarded after Arturo Vidal had chopped down Marco Sau in the box.In a contentious game, Cagliari played the last 30 minutes...

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Supreme Court orders to jail convicts on bail ignored for 4 years

NEW DELHI: Here is why people are increasingly getting frustrated by the absence of deterrent effect of law on criminals — the authorities ignored for four years a Supreme Court order directing immediate arrest of convicts, who were on bail, in a murder case to serve out the 10-year imprisonment sentence. In a startling case, the Supreme Court in May 2008 dismissed the appeal of one Sambu Rai, who...

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The Healing Power of Dogs

One boy confided in the gentle-faced golden retriever about exactly what happened in his classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day—which his parents said was more than he'd been able to share with them. A little girl who hadn't spoken since the shootings finally started talking to her mother again after petting one of the "comfort dogs." Groups of teenagers began to open up and...

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Critics Slam NRA's Call for Armed School Guards

Gun control advocates slammed the National Rifle Association today for its proposal to create a force of armed security guards at schools across the country as a response to the Connecticut school shooting."It is beyond belief that following the Newtown tragedy, the National Rifle Association's leaders want to fill our communities with guns and arm more Americans," Sen. Frank...

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Boehner urges Senate to vote on Plan B; Democrats reject GOP-only tax bill

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called on Senate leaders Thursday to schedule a vote on his plan to extend tax cuts on income up to $1 million — known as Plan B — if it passes the House later in the day. But Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) pledged that the Democratic-controlled chamber would not vote on Plan B even if Boehner could muster the Republican votes...

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