FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are...

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"Cliff" concerns give way to earnings focus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week. Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current...

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India Takes Aim at Poverty With Cash Transfer Program

Manish Swarup/Associated PressPoor and homeless people waited for food on Tuesday at a New Delhi temple. NEW DELHI — India has more poor people than any nation on earth, but many of its antipoverty programs end up feeding the rich more than the needy. A new program hopes to change that. On Jan. 1, India eliminated a raft of bureaucratic middlemen by depositing government pension and scholarship...

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Ohio sheriff confronts protesters in football rape case

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (Reuters) – A county sheriff under fire for how he has handled a high school rape investigation faced down a raucous crowd of protesters on Saturday and said no further suspects would be charged in a case that has rattled Ohio football country.Ma’lik Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old...

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Bethenny Frankel Divorcing Jason Hoppy

By Sarah Michaud 01/05/2013 at 05:00 PM EST Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy Albert Michael/Startraks It's official – Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy's marriage is over.Having announced a separation over the holidays, the reality star began the divorce process...

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FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.The long-overdue regulations are aimed at reducing the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria...

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S&P 500 finishes at 5-year high on economic data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index ended at a five-year high on Friday, lifted by reports showing employers kept up a steady pace of hiring workers and the vast services sector expanded at a brisk rate. The gains on the S&P 500 pushed the index to its highest close since December 2007 and its biggest weekly gain since December 2011. Most...

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Fatah Celebration in Gaza Signals Easing of Rift With Hamas

JERUSALEM — Turning the streets of Gaza City into a swarm of sunshine-yellow flags, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians celebrated the anniversary of the Fatah faction on Friday in the heartland of its militant Islamist rival, Hamas, the latest in a series of signals heralding possible reconciliation between the parties after their bitter five-year rift. The rally, which came on the heels...

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“GameStick” Will Be the Size of a USB Memory Stick, Plug into Your TV

When the Ouya game console (scheduled to launch in April) made headlines last year, it was for three reasons. One, its size and price — the $ 99 box, which plugs into a TV, is the size of a Rubik’s cube. Two, its choice of operating system — it runs the same Android OS which powers smartphones and tablets. And three — its rise to fame on Kickstarter, where it shattered records and received millions...

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Aww! Ava Totes Tennessee While Reese Witherspoon Snaps a Picture

Mom & Babies Celebrity Baby Blog 01/04/2013 at 05:00 PM ET Life’s a beach for Reese Witherspoon, who spend New Year’s in the sand with her family.The actress was spotted in Hawaii with husband Jim Toth, their newborn son Tennessee James, 3 months, and her elder children Deacon, 9, and Ava, 13.Witherspoon,...

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CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel."If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton...

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Fed minutes short-circuit Wall Street rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dipped on Thursday after signs the Federal Reserve has growing concern about its highly stimulative monetary policy, giving investors reason to pull back after a two-day rally. The minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting, released on Thursday, showed increasing reticence about adding to the central bank's $2.9 trillion balance sheet, which it expanded...

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Hezbollah Leader Urges Lebanon to Aid in a Solution for Syria

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, openly urged the Lebanese government on Thursday to take a more active role in finding a political solution to the civil war in neighboring Syria and to open its border to refugees to avert further bloodshed. Mr. Nasrallah, the head of the Shiite militant movement in Lebanon, addressed a ceremony in the town of Baalbek, near the...

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Samsung and Apple are still the only winners in the mobile market

The duopoly of the U.S. mobile market intensified dramatically in 2012. Despite increased efforts from Motorola, LG (066570), HTC (2498), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) to gain market share, Samsung (005930) and Apple (AAPL) continue to steal customers away from every other company. During a three-month period ending in November, comScore found that Samsung’s lead in the U.S. smartphone market increased...

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Anne Hathaway Says Falling Fast for Adam Shulman Was 'Scary'

By Andrea Billups 01/03/2013 at 05:45 PM EST Adam Shulman and Anne Hathaway Dave Allocca/Startraks Anne Hathaway believes in love at first sight – in fact, she experienced it with her husband, Adam Shulman."I knew from the second I met him that he was the love...

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.It's a small study and does not prove...

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Wall Street starts new year with a bang after "cliff" deal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks kicked off the new year with their best day in over a year on Wednesday, sparked by relief over a last-minute deal in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatened to derail the economy's growth. In 2013's first trading session, the S&P 500 achieved its biggest one-day gain since December 20, 2011, pushing the benchmark...

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Dozens of Syrians Killed in Explosions Around Damascus

Andoni Lubaki/Associated PressRebel fighters patrol a neighborhood in Aleppo on Wednesday. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Dozens of Syrians were killed or wounded in an explosion at a gas station east of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Wednesday, and explosions in another Damascus suburb killed at least six people and wounded many more, including women and children, according to videos and reports from antigovernment...

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Ubuntu se mete en los celulares con un sistema operativo propio

Al igual que otras plataformas que buscan una convergencia entre el mundo móvil y la PC, Canonical confirmó el arribo de su sistema operativo Ubuntu a los dispositivos móviles. Disponible en una primera instancia como una instalación no oficial para la línea de smartphones Nexus 3, la versión de Linux utilizada en más de 20 millones busca posicionarse como una alternativa ante un mercado dominado...

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Julianne Hough: I Was Physically Abused as a Child

By Mike Fleeman 01/02/2013 at 04:45 PM EST When Julianne Hough was 10 years old, she lived in London, away from her parents in Utah, studying dance.That's when the abuse began, she says. "I was abused, mentally, physically, everything," she says in Cosmopolitan's February issue, on newsstands Jan. 8. While attending...

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.It's a small study and does not prove...

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