Houston beats Bengals 19-13 in wild-card playoff

Houston Texans quarterback Matt Schaub passes the ball against the Cincinnati Bengals during the first quarter of an NFL wild card playoff football game Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013, in Houston. / AP Photo/Dave Einsel HOUSTON Arian Foster ran for 140 yards and a touchdown, and the Houston Texans used a stifling defensive effort for a 19-13 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Saturday in an AFC wild-card...

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Gun Show Near Newtown Goes on Despite Anger

A little more than 40 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where last month 20 first graders and six staff members were massacred, gun dealers and collectors alike ignored calls to cancel a gun show, and gathered for business in Stamford, Conn.Four other gun shows with an hour of Newtown, Conn., recently cancelled their events in the wake of the shootings, when 20-year-old...

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Venezuela lawmakers elect Chavez ally as Assembly chief

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan lawmakers re-elected a staunch ally of Hugo Chavez to head the National Assembly on Saturday, putting him in line to be caretaker president if the socialist leader does not recover from cancer surgery. By choosing the incumbent, Diosdado Cabello, the "Chavista"-dominated legislature cemented the combative ex-soldier's position as the third most powerful...

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Turkey lifts ban on thousands of books

ISTANBUL: From communist works to a comic book, thousands of titles banned by Turkey over the decades were taken off the restricted list Saturday, thanks to a government reform.In July, the parliament adopted a bill stipulating that any decision taken before 2012 to block the sale and distribution of published work would be voided if no court chose to confirm the ruling within six months.The...

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Windows laptop sales sink -- but that's just part of the problem

Will businesses and consumers spring for a Windows 8 hybrid priced at $849 that's powered by a relatively pokey Atom processor?(Credit:Hewlett-Packard)Windows 8 PC sales aren't trending well, according to a new report. And consumers' addiction to low cost may be a factor. A blurb on Friday from the NPD Group said Windows 8 holiday sales continue to not impress. "The launch of Windows 8...did little...

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At least 3 killed after small plane hits home in Fla.

Updated 9:27 PM ET PALM COAST, Fla. At least three people were killed when a small plane crashed into a house Friday afternoon while trying to land at a central Florida airport, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The 1957 Beechcraft H35 Bonanza was heading from Fort Pierce to Knoxville, Tenn., when it began experiencing mechanical problems, FHP Lt. Justin Asbury said. The pilot told controllers that...

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Pilot Suspected of Being Drunk Stopped From Flying

An American Eagle pilot who was preparing to fly from Minneapolis to New York City was arrested today after failing a breathalyzer test.Kolbjorn Jarle Kristiansen, 48, of Hollow Lane, N.C., was taken into custody by police at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, according to an arrest report.Officers and a TSA agent smelled alcohol on Kristiansen as they passed him waiting...

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Abbas sees Palestinian unity as Fatah rallies in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Abbas predicted the end of a five-year split between the two big Palestinian factions as his Fatah movement staged its first mass rally in Gaza with the blessing of Hamas Islamists who rule the enclave. "Soon we will regain our unity," Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the 2007 civil war between the two factions,...

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Singapore, Turkey reaffirm excellent bilateral ties

ANKARA: The foreign ministers of Singapore and Turkey reaffirmed the excellent state of relations between their countries during talks in the Turkish capital, Ankara on January 4.Singapore's Foreign Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam and his Turkish counterpart, Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, also discussed ways to further broaden and deepen bilateral cooperation.In particular, they looked...

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Library of Congress digs in to full archive of 170 billion tweets

The U.S. Library of Congress said today that it has completed a process of collecting a full, ongoing stream of tweets, and that it has begun work to archive and organize more than 170 billion tweets.Under an agreement struck between the government institution and Twitter in 2010, the microblogging company is providing the Library of Congress with a full stream of all public tweets, starting with...

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Veteran's improbable survival gives heart to shell-shocked surgeon

(CBS News) AUBURN, Ala. -- The carnage Lee Warren encountered in the combat hospital at Balad, Iraq, in 2005 was like nothing he had ever seen as a neurosurgeon. And no patient was worse-off than a soldier brought in by helicopter after being hit by a roadside bomb. "I unwrapped his head in the emergency room and looked at him and thought he was dead," Warren says. He was, Warren later wrote,...

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James Holmes Defense: Was He Insane?

Jan 3, 2013 5:30pm James Holmes appears in court, Centennial, Colo., July 23, 2012. RJ Sangosti/AP Images.ABC’s Clayton Sandell and Carol McKinley report:A judge ruled Thursday that public defenders for accused Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes can call two unidentified witnesses at next week’s preliminary hearing to testify about the defendant’s “mental...

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Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said. The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. ...

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1,684 COEs available for first open bidding exercise in Jan

SINGAPORE: Details for January's first open bidding exercise for Certificates of Entitlement (COE) have been released.The total quota available for this tender is 1,684.There will be 410 COEs for Cat A (small cars), 363 for Cat B (big cars) and 462 for Cat D (motorcycles).For Cat E (open), 256 COEs will be available, while Cat C (goods vehicles and buses) will have 193 COEs.The tender...

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Toyota, Audi to show off self-driving cars at CES

Toyota's prototype Lexus LS 600h. (Credit:Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)Get ready to see more cars on the road without a driver behind the wheel.Toyota and Audi will demonstrate autonomous-driving features next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Japanese automaker posted a five-second preview video that shows one of its luxury brand Lexus...

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Al Jazeera acquires Al Gore's Current TV

LOS ANGELES Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab news channel that struggled to win space on American cable television, has acquired Current TV, boosting its reach nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes. With a focus on U.S. news, it plans to rebrand the left-leaning news network that cofounder Al Gore couldn't make relevant. The former vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement...

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Tax Deal Done - but How Can Obama Sign It?

Jan 2, 2013 6:29pm AP Photo/Charles DharapakCongress officially delivered the bill to avert the fiscal cliff to the White House this afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner’s office told ABC News.Now the question is when will the President sign it?The bill, passed late on New Year’s Day, expires tomorrow at 11:59 a.m. when the current session of Congress concludes....

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Central African Republic rebels halt advance, agree to peace talks

DAMARA, Central African Republic (Reuters) - Rebels in Central African Republic said they had halted their advance on the capital on Wednesday and agreed to start peace talks, averting a clash with regionally backed troops. The Seleka rebels had pushed to within striking distance of Bangui after a three-week onslaught and threatened to oust President Francois Bozize, accusing him of reneging...

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Football: Redknapp eyes salvation after shock win at Chelsea

LONDON: Harry Redknapp believes Queens Park Rangers' shock 1-0 win at Chelsea could be the turning point in his side's season.Redknapp, who also revealed he missed out on the chance to sign Liverpool's Joe Cole, saw his side defy the odds to produce one of the most unexpected results of the season thanks to Shaun Wright-Phillips's goal on Wednesday.The win was only their second league...

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Six states outlaw employer snooping on Facebook

Six states have officially made it illegal for employers to ask their workers for passwords to their social media accounts. As of 2013, California and Illinois have joined the ranks of Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware in passing state laws against the practice, according to Wired. With Congress not being able to come to agreement on the Password Protection Act of 2012, individual states...

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Pa. gov. to sue NCAA over Penn State sanctions

HARRISBURG, Pa. Gov. Tom Corbett said Tuesday he plans to sue the NCAA in federal court over stiff sanctions imposed against Penn State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. The Republican governor scheduled a Wednesday news conference on the Penn State campus in State College to announce the filing in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg. The sanctions, which...

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House Plans Up-or-Down Vote on 'Cliff' Deal

House Republicans have agreed to have an up-or-down vote on the bipartisan Senate deal to avert the "fiscal cliff," rather than trying to amend the Senate bill with more spending cuts before voting, according to a senior GOP leadership aide.The vote will likely come tonight despite top House Republicans' earlier opposition to the deal, which the Senate passed in the wee hours...

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At least 61 crushed to death in Ivory Coast stampede

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - At least 61 people were crushed to death in a stampede after a New Year's Eve fireworks display at a stadium in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan early on Tuesday, officials said. Witnesses said police had tried to control crowds around the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium following the celebrations, triggering a panic in which scores were trampled. "The estimate...

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HDB resale prices up 2.5% on-quarter in Q4 2012

SINGAPORE: Resale prices for HDB flats reached another record high in the 4th quarter of 2012. Flash estimates showed HDB's Resale Price Index rose by 2.5 per cent over the previous quarter.The index provides information on the general price movements in the public residential market. The index for the full quarter and more detailed public housing data for the 4th Quarter of last year...

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Anonymous: 'Expect us 2013'

The hacking collective Anonymous has clarified that it has no plans to fade away in the New Year. It issued a statement over the weekend that warned the world to "Expect us 2013." Along with the statement, the group created a video that boasts of its campaigns and exploits carried out in 2012. The video details the group's temporary shutdown of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music,...

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New technology to keep drunk drivers from driving

(CBS News) CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The message from police to party-goers this New Year's Eve is: "Drive sober or get pulled over." There were nearly 10,000 deaths from drunk driving in the U.S. last year, down 2.5 percent from the year before. There is now a debate over technology that could prevent drunk drivers from starting their engines. Meredith and Matt Eastridge, in an undated photo/CBS News...

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Biden Pitches 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal to Senate Dems

The so-called "fiscal cliff" will come at midnight with no congressional fix in place -- but now there is a specific deal on the table to try to soften it after the fact, according to congressional sources.Vice President Joe Biden must still convince Senate Democrats to support the proposal -- which would extend Bush-era tax cuts permanently for people making less than $400,000...

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North Korean leader, in rare address, seeks end to confrontation with South

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media. The address by Kim, who took over power in the reclusive state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011, appeared to take the place...

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N.Korea leader calls for easing of tensions with S.Korea

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un called Tuesday for an easing of tensions with the South and flagged a "radical turnabout" in the national economy in a rare voiced message broadcast on state television."An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the North and the South," Kim said in a New...

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Reddit's visitors skyrocket in 2012 with 37 billion page views

Whether readers want to learn the complexities of how the Mars Curiosity rover was able to enter the Red Planet's atmosphere or just see photos of cats being weird, they can go to Reddit. The social news site announced today its end-of-year stats and it appears that users are frequenting the site at an ever-increasing rate. Reddit revealed that in 2012 it received 37 billion page views, 400 million...

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Nine killed in Oregon tour bus crash

Updated 9:09 p.m. ETLA GRANDE, Ore. A tour bus careened through a guardrail along an icy Oregon highway and several hundred feet down a steep embankment Sunday, killing nine people and injuring more than 20 others, authorities said. The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84, according to the Oregon State Police. ...

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