Margaret Thatcher in UK hospital after operation

 Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is recuperating at a hospital after an operation to remove a bladder growth, a friend said Friday.The 87-year-old Thatcher went to see her doctor after experiencing some discomfort and subsequently had the growth removed, according to longtime adviser Tim Bell.The operation was "completely satisfactory," Bell said. He said he couldn't go into detail...

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Pope stresses family values as gay marriage gains

The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices — and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this...

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Pardon for pope's butler who stole papers expected

 The Vatican has summoned journalists for a briefing on what Italian news reports say is an expected pardon for Pope Benedict XVI'S former butler, who stole the pontiff's personal papers and leaked them in a bid to expose the "evil and corruption" in the Catholic Church.Paolo Gabriele was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found heaps of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was...

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Russia: Syrian chemical weapons under control

 Russia's foreign minister says the Syrian government has consolidated its chemical weapons in one or two locations amid a rebel onslaught.Sergey Lavrov says Russia, which has military advisers training Syria's military, has kept close watch over its chemical arsenal. He says the Syrian government has moved them from many arsenals to just "one or two centers" to properly safeguard them.U.S. intelligence...

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Margaret Thatcher in hospital after operation

 Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the country's first woman elective leader, is in hospital recovering from surgery to remove a growth on her bladder, a source close to the family said on Friday.After experiencing pain in her bladder earlier in the week, he 87-year-old went to hospital where she underwent a minimally invasive operation, Tim Bell, a public relations executive who...

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British retailers start online sales early

 British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores.Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started...

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China may require real name registration for internet access

BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for...

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Tajikistan blocks scores of websites as election looms

 Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year's election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional...

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.'s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows...

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Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas Eve outage

 An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc's streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows...

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Census: US population growth rising slowly

After two centuries of boom and bust, America's population growth may finally be leveling off.In all, the U.S. population is now increasing a bit faster, thanks to an improving economy, but not enough to lift growth above its lowest level since the Great Depression.The nation is getting older and is less likely than before to be married, with women waiting longer to have children, if at all. Immigration...

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Woman sentenced to 1 year for export violations

A judge has sentenced a woman to one year in prison for conspiring to ship material to Pakistan for a nuclear reactor.U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday also ordered Xun Wang to pay a $100,000 fine and perform 500 hours of community service.Wang, a former managing director of PPG Paints Trading Co. of Shanghai, admitted helping send three shipments of high-performance epoxy coatings...

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Assange addresses supporters at Ecuadorean Embassy

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange emerged for a rare public address Thursday, praising jailed U.S. soldier Bradley Manning in an address delivered from the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.Addressing supporters on a cold and wet English evening, the 41-year-old Australian looked fit and healthy despite half a year spent in trapped inside the small apartment he shares with Ecuador's...

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Judge allows evidence against man in GPS case

A federal judge is allowing prosecutors to use evidence in a drug conspiracy conviction that had been overturned because police used a global positioning system without a warrant.U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in Washington said in a ruling Thursday that Antoine Jones had not established that police would not have discovered the house in Fort Washington, Md., allegedly used to stash money...

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Groups urge probe of $12 million mystery donation

Two election watchdog organizations on Thursday urged the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission to investigate more than $12 million in campaign contributions that were mysteriously funneled through two little-known companies in Tennessee to a prominent tea party group. The origin of the money, the largest anonymous political donations in a campaign year filled with them, remains a secret.The...

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The Case of the 2 Billion Missing Youtube Views

Youtube released its view counts earlier this week for its biggest channels, and people who watch these things noticed that some major record companies had their numbers drop by a whopping 2 billion views. So, where the heck did they all go? RELATED: Major Record Labels Are Suing a YouTube Downloading SiteThe Daily Dot reports Universal was the biggest loser in the case of the missing views. Their...

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Developing Minds Want to Know: Q&A with Quinton Alsbury of Roambi

Roambi provides polished business analytics tools and financial expertise to a wide range of companies. Through Roambi Analytics and Roambi Flow, their unparalleled services also available on iPhone and iPad, they make it a cinch for clients to monitor important business statistics. Quinton Alsbury, co-founder and president of Product Innovation at Roambi, shared his thoughts on inspiration, innovation,...

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Top 10 Twitter Pics of the Week

1. R.I.P.A "Rest in Peace" picture dedicated to the 26 victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Friday, Dec. 14. - Tweets_Below Photo stats: 10,917 retweetsClick here to view this gallery.[More from Mashable: Psy and Bieber Face Off as ‘Gangnam Style’ Hits a Billion Views]Barack Obama, Justin Bieber and the Newtown tragedy are among the topics covered in this...

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Mark Zuckerberg Put Some Very Personal (and Creepy) Touches on the Poke App

Mark Zuckerberg usually leaves the coding to the plebes. He's a CEO now, b- you know the rest. Anyway, he's CEO now. But it turns out he put some very personal touches on Facebook's new Poke app, his company's answer to Snapchat. RELATED: How Many More Banks Does Facebook Need for Its IPO?TechCrunch reports the CEO came down from his throne to actually code some of Poke himself. "Poking," as originally...

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Boeing engineers use spuds to improve in-air Wi-Fi

If the wireless Internet connection during your holiday flight seems more reliable than it used to, you could have the humble potato to thank.While major airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi on many flights, the signal strength can be spotty. Airlines and aircraft makers have been striving to improve this with the growing use of wireless devices and the number of people who don't want to be disconnected,...

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Ofwat backs down on water licence changes

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's water regulator Ofwat backed down over controversial changes to make water company licences more flexible after the firms affected rejected the original proposals.Ofwat, which oversees Britain's water and sewage operators, is trying to change licences to increase the flexibility it has over controlling water prices, but on Friday compromised on some of those changes.Pennon...

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Pope takes anti-gay marriage stance to new level

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The pope took his opposition to gay marriage to new heights Friday, denouncing what he described as people manipulating their God-given gender to suit their sexual choices — and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy — one of his most important speeches of the year....

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UK High Court blocks drone intelligence challenge

LONDON (AP) — Britain's High Court on Friday blocked a legal bid for an inquiry into the possible role of the country's spy agencies in aiding covert CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal region.Noor Khan, a 27-year-old whose father was killed by a drone strike in northwest Pakistan in March 2011, had asked the High Court to examine whether Britain intelligence officials assisted the action...

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UK told to add break-up threat to bank reform

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain needs to introduce legislation that could break up banks if standards slip because current reform proposals fall short of what is needed, an influential parliamentary panel said.The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards also said on Friday the government could set tougher rules for how much leverage banks were allowed, adding that the committee itself would consider...

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