News you can use
News you can use
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that every day of slaughter in Syria is strengthening the case for tougher international action, yet stressed that military intervention would require support from the world community and Syria's ally Russia. Speaking to Danish university students, Clinton noted that U.N. and international backing made possible last year's coalition that helped force Moammar Gadhafi from power in Libya. But she lamented that Russia and China are standing in t...
BOSTON — A federal appeals court Thursday declared that the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies federal benefits to married gay couples, a ruling all but certain to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. In its unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman discriminates against gay couples because it doesn't give them the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. The court didn't r...
LOS ANGELES — "The Artist" won five Academy Awards on Sunday including best picture, becoming the first silent film to triumph at Hollywood's highest honors since the original Oscar ceremony 83 years ago. Among other prizes for the black-and-white comic melodrama were best actor for Jean Dujardin and director for Michel Hazanavicius. AP Photo/Chris Pizzello From left, Michel Hazanavicius with the award for best director for "The Artist, Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin with the award for best actor in a leading role for "...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Oscar ceremony has much to prove Sunday, including whether a blockbuster-free field can draw a TV audience and if Billy Crystal's host routine remains a crowd-pleaser. Brian Grazer and Don Mischer, the show's producers, are laughing off the challenges: "Comedy is the direction we're going in this year," said Mischer. For Crystal, who returns to the ceremony (6:30 p.m. MST, ABC) after an absence of eight years, that means jokes and patter that were being rehearsed at the last minute to avoid punch l...
DETROIT — Four days before critical primary elections, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney outlined a far-reaching plan Friday to gradually delay Americans' eligibility for Medicare as well as Social Security. Romney said the shift, as people live longer, is needed to steer the giant benefit programs toward economic sustainability. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to the Detroit Economic Club at Ford Field in Detroit, Friday. Speaking to the D...
Robert Bales boasted of being one of the good guys, a proud patriot who enlisted in the Army just two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and engaged in some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq. But the gung-ho military volunteer had a darker, more troubled and contradictory side — which surfaced over and over during his sometimes turbulent life. He is a portrait of opposites. A doting father of two now suspected in the cold-blooded slaughter of children. A one-time stockbroker who left financial disaster in h...
LOS ANGELES — Dick Clark, the ever-youthful television host and tireless entrepreneur who helped bring rock 'n' roll into the mainstream on "American Bandstand," and later produced and hosted a vast range of programming from game shows to the year-end countdown from Times Square on "New Year's Rockin' Eve," has died. He was 82. AP Photo/File Dick Clark selects a record in his station library in Philadelphia on Feb. 3, 1959. Clark, the television host who helped bring rock `n' roll into the mainstream on "American B...
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The best voices of a generation all paid tribute to her. But in the end, the most powerful voice at Whitney Houston's funeral was her own. The first notes of "I Will Always Love You," at the end of a 3 ½-hour remembrance of the pop superstar, played as her casket left the hometown church where she first wowed a congregation. AP Photo/Jason DeCrow Fans sing Whitney Houston songs as they gather a few blocks from the New Hope Baptist Church before the singer's funeral in Newark, N.J., Saturday. Her mo...
AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez George's restaurant employee David Lopez works on filling a customers order, in Waco, Texas. Fewer people sought unemployment benefits last week, adding to signs that the job market is strengthening. WASHINGTON — Fewer people sought U.S. unemployment benefits last week, adding to signs that the job market is strengthening. And in another reassuring sign for the economy, wholesale inflation remains mild outside of higher gas prices. Applications for unemployment aid dropped 14,000 to a seasonally a...
NEW YORK — He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. But Mark Zuckerberg is no boy-CEO. Facebook's chief executive turned 28 on Monday, setting in motion the social network's biggest week ever. The company is expected to start selling stock to the public for the first time and begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday. The IPO could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion, making it worth more than such iconic companies as Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods. AP P...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A resurgent Rick Santorum swept primaries in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday night, upending the race for the Republican presidential nomination as he sought to push Newt Gingrich toward the sidelines. Mitt Romney was running third in both states. "We did it again," Santorum told cheering supporters in Lafayette, La. He said it was time for conservatives to unite in an effort to defeat Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is the faraway leader in the competition for Republican National Convention d...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney collided with rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich on Tuesday in primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, hotly contested Southern crossroads in the struggle for the Republican presidential nomination. Caucuses in Hawaii were also on the calendar in the race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama this fall. There were 107 Republican National Convention delegates at stake, 47 in Alabama, 37 in Mississippi, 17 in Hawaii and six more in caucuses in American Samoa. AP Photo/David Goldman D...
LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston's last days were spent surrounded by family, catching up with old friends and doing a bit of what she was best known for: singing. Her death Saturday afternoon in a Beverly Hills hotel room came hours before she was scheduled to appear at an annual pre-Grammy party that introduced her to the industry decades ago and was expected to honor the six-time Grammy winner. AP Photo/Eric Jamison In this Sept. 15, 2004 photo, recording artist Whitney Houston performs at the 2004 World Music Awards at t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Under fierce election-year fire, President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for free birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead. AP Photo/Susan Walsh President Barack Obama, accompanied by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announces the revamp of his contraception policy requiri...
NEW YORK — From the left and the right, rival sides in the gay-marriage debate claimed they would reap Election Day benefits from President Barack Obama's long-awaited declaration that he supports same-sex couples' right to wed. For some gays, however, the politics were secondary to an emotional embrace of what they viewed as history in the making. AP Photo/Ben Margot Jase Peeples watches a television broadcast of President Obama declaring his support of same-sex marriage Wednesday, at The Mix bar in San Francisco. "Wow ...
TULSA, Okla. — Police arrested two men suspected in a deadly shooting rampage that terrorized Tulsa's African-American community, and said online postings indicated one may have been trying to avenge his father's death. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, were arrested early Sunday at a home in Turley, just north of Tulsa. Police identified both suspects as white, while all five victims in the early Friday shooting were black. England and Watts, who have not been charged, are expected in court Monday. Police and the FBI c...
WASHINGTON — The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned. The plot involved an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009. This new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al-Qaida developed a more refined detonation system, U.S. o...
WASHINGTON — The job market slowed in March as companies hit the brakes on hiring amid uncertainty about the economy's growth prospects. The unemployment rate dipped, but mostly because more Americans stopped looking for work. The Labor Department says the economy added 120,000 jobs in March, down from more than 200,000 in each of the previous three months. The unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009. But the rate dropped because fewer people searched for jobs. The official unemployment tally o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits fell to a four-year low last week, suggesting employers kept hiring in March at a healthy pace. Weekly applications dropped 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 357,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest since April 2008. AP Photo/Jim Cole Martina Ryberg, right, of Plymouth State University talks with Tara Rossetti of On Call International during a job fair for college students on Wednesday in Manchester, N.H. The number of people s...
LONDON — As if 22 medal ceremonies over the last three Olympics weren't enough, Michael Phelps was summoned back to the pool deck for one more accolade. AP Photo/Julio Cortez United States' Michael Phelps swims in the men's 4 X 100-meter medley relay at the Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Saturday. This time, he received a trophy rather than a medal, an award that sought to sum up a career like no other. "To Michael Phelps," it said, "the greatest Olympic athlete of all time." T...
Editor: Montana elections aren't known for being won or lost because of social media; however, the increased role that social media will play in this election is already visible. As a politically motivated student, I have been following all of the statewide campaigns on Facebook. I've noticed that this year more than in the past, candidates are taking advantage of social media. I have noticed that one candidate for governor seems to have a very strong online presence. Corey Stapleton, a former Naval Officer and Montana State...
NEW YORK (AP) — Adam Yauch, the gravelly voiced rapper who made the Beastie Boys one of the seminal groups in hip-hop, has died. He was 47. AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, file The Beastie Boys, from left, Adam Horovitz, known as Adrock, Michael Diamond, known as Mike D and Adam Yauch, known as MCA, arrive at the premiere of their new film "Awesome; I ... Shot That!" in New York. Yauch, also known as MCA, died Friday morning in New York after a nearly three-year battle with cancer, his representatives confirmed Friday. He had been d...
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up. The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File Job seeker Alan Shull attends a job fair in Portland, Ore., on April 24. The Labor Department also says the economy created far fewer jobs in the previous two months than first thought. It revised those figures down to show 49,000 fewer jobs created. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in A...
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Barack Obama slipped into Afghanistan Tuesday night on an unannounced visit on the anniversary of the killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Obama is signing an agreement cementing a U.S. commitment to the nation after the long and unpopular war comes to an end. The partnership spells out the US relationship with Afghanistan beyond 2014, covering security, economics and governance. The deal is limited in scope and essentially gives both sides political cover: Afghanistan gets its s...
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — On a swift, secretive trip to the war zone, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday night that after years of sacrifice the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan is winding down just as it has already ended in Iraq. "We can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he said on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak President Barack Obama addresses troops at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, Wednesday. "Our goal is to destroy al-Qaida, and we are on a path to do exactly t...
