Newtown church evacuated after phone threat

NEWTOWN, Conn. Police say there's no danger at a Connecticut church following a phoned-in threat days after 20 children and six adults were massacred at a school.Deborah Metz, a Trumbull police officer on the scene, gave the all-clear after an hour in which armed police in SWAT gear searched the St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church and adjacent buildings.The evacuation unnerved worshipers in the...

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Obama Offers Newtown 'Love and Prayers of a Nation'

President Obama told the grieving community of Newtown, Conn., that the nation has wept with them for the loss of 20 children and six teachers and school staff members killed in a senseless massacre.Grim-faced, Obama took the stage at Newtown High School auditorium to speak at a memorial service for the first graders, teachers, principal and other school staff members killed...

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Japan's next PM Abe must deliver on economy, cope with China

TOKYO (Reuters) - Conservative ex-premier Shinzo Abe will get a second chance to lead Japan after his Liberal Democratic Party surged back to power in Sunday's election, but he must move swiftly to bolster a sagging economy and manage strained ties with China to avoid the fate of his short-lived predecessors. Abe, whose party won by a landslide just three years after a crushing defeat,...

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Actor Depardieu 'giving up French passport' in tax row

PARIS: France's leading actor Gerard Depardieu said Sunday he is giving up his French passport after the prime minister called him "pathetic" for seeking to avoid taxes by moving to Belgium.In an open letter to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the 63-year-old "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Jean de Florette" film star said he had been treated unfairly after years of supporting France, and paying...

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iPhone 5 sales in China surpass 2 million in first weekend

Apple's iPhone 5.(Credit:CNET)It's been just three days since Apple's iPhone 5 launch in China and already 2 million devices have already been sold. The tech giant announced today that this latest model of its popular smartphone is selling faster than ever in the Far East country. "Customer response toiPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever...

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Conn. dad recalls loving, creative 6-year-old

NEWTOWN, Conn. Fighting back tears and struggling to catch his breath, the father of a 6-year-old gunned down in Friday's school shooting in Connecticut told the world about a little girl who loved to draw and was always smiling, and he also reserved surprising words of sympathy for the gunman. Robbie Parker's daughter Emilie was among the 20 children who died in the one of the worst attacks on...

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Conn. Victim's Father Remembers 'Loving' Daughter

(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman’s bullets not claimed her life, her father said.“My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that’s the kind...

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Violence flares in Cairo as Egyptians vote

CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamists attacked the offices of an Egyptian opposition party newspaper on Saturday, security sources said, as people voted on a new constitution intended to pull the country out of a growing political crisis. The newspaper of the Wafd party in Cairo was targeted with petrol bombs and birdshot, the sources said, in the latest of a series of violent incidents surrounding...

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Tokyo votes in governor election

TOKYO: Voters in Tokyo went to the polls Sunday to pick a successor for controversial governor Shintaro Ishihara, a firebrand blamed for worsening a row over islands disputed with China.Polls in the metropolis of 13 million came the same day as a nationwide lower house election expected to return the conservative Liberal Democratic Party to power after three years in the political wilderness.Ishihara,...

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Google will alter search to end FTC antitrust inquiry, says report

The Federal Trade Commission may bring its two-year antitrust investigation of Google to a close by allowing the company to make voluntary changes to its search business, according to a report.The search giant is said to be readying an announcement about changes to its use of "snippets," bits of text culled from sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor and displayed in search results, Politico reports,...

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