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MEXICO CITY ? Mexico's political season opened last month in the western state of Michoacan, where the country's former ruling party scored a string of victories seen as a sign of its rising strength nationwide.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party's candidate defeated the sister of Mexico's president in the Michoacan governor's race. It also won a series of local contests, bolstering widespread predictions that this summer the PRI will retake the presidency itself, Mexico's highest office, after 12 years out of power.

But the highly touted victories in Michoacan were in potential jeopardy Wednesday after Mexico's highest electoral court overturned one of them partly because of a strange new form of political advertising ? a party logo emblazoned on a boxer's trunks.

Mexican welterweight Juan Manuel Marquez wore the PRI's green-white-and-red emblem on the left leg of his shorts in his match last month against Filipino Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Marquez lost the Nov. 12 bout, watched live by millions in Mexico. But after the PRI's victories in the next day's elections, the ruling National Action Party complained that the logo had violated a temporary ban on campaigning ahead of the vote, as well as a prohibition on campaigning abroad. It asked for local and statewide races to be overturned.

The federal electoral tribunal ruled in the PAN's favor on Wednesday in the case of the race for mayor of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan.

The court did not immediately release an explanation of the reasoning behind its decision, which requires the Morelia race to be run again on an as-yet-undetermined date over the next five months. But PAN officials said that they were hopeful that the same logic would apply to a pending decision on the governor's race.

The PAN and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party had also complained that Michoacan's powerful drug cartels had intimidated voters on behalf of the PRI. On the eve of the elections, one local cartel placed an advertisement in a newspaper in the town of La Piedad threatening citizens who voted for the PAN.

President Felipe Calderon has said in several public addresses that organized crime helped defeat his sister, Luisa Maria Calderon, and has described drug cartel meddling in elections as a potential national menace.

In addition, the PAN said in its complaint about the Morelia race that winning gubernatorial candidate Fausto Vallejo and Morelia mayoral candidate Wilfrido Lazaro had made unauthorized appearances on television to announce the end of their campaigns.

A high-ranking PAN official, Juan Molinar Horcasitas, said the party had made the same arguments in its appeal of the governor's race, and expected another victory in court.

"According to the law, in the same circumstances the same decision should be taken," he said. "It seems to me that, as a result, the electoral tribunal should annul the governor's race."

A new vote would be highly competitive and almost certain to draw in the national resources of the governing party, the PRI and the PRD in what could become a proxy presidential race.

"The Institutional Revolutionary Party reiterates its conviction that its candidate, Wilfrido Lazaro Medina, obtained a clear, resounding and legitimate victory," the party said in a statement. "The PRI feels that there weren't sufficient grounds to support the court's decision."

Marquez and his managers could not be reached for comment.

____

Michael Weissenstein contributed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111228/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_boxing_politics

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Plano, Texas, has some pretty ho-hum claims to fame: It?s home to junk-food headquarters Frito-Lay and the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, for starters, as well as to retail giant J.C. Penney. But it?s also America?s safest city by our determination, and that?s nothing to yawn at.

Plano, a city of 278,000 that?s just outside Dallas, boasts the lowest violent crime rate of the cities we looked at and the sixth-lowest traffic fatality rate, putting it tops on our list for the second year in a row. The Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nev., and Honolulu come in second and third, respectively.

So what makes these metropolises oases of relative tranquility? Wealth is one key factor.

?One of the underlying things, in terms of a city?s safety, would be a very strong tax base, as there are a number of services that are reliant on it,? notes Scott B. Clark, president of the New York-based Risk and Insurance Management Society. ?That includes an effective, well-staffed police department, fire department and school system.?

Forbes.com slideshow: America?s safest cities

The median household income in Plano is $79,234, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 60 percent above the national average, and 8.1 percent of residents are below the poverty line, compared to a national rate of 15.1 percent. The city is also home to a number of Fortune 500 companies.

?Plano is a very clean, affluent suburb with no inner city per se,? says John Worrall, head of the criminology program at the University of Texas at Dallas. ?Plus it has one of the few police departments in the U.S. that require four-year degrees. I don?t know that there is research to back up its making things safer, but it makes Plano unique.?

Plano boasts strong citizen involvement in public safety: the U.S. Department of Justice honored the city last year with a National Award for Excellence in Neighborhood Watch. Plano Police Chief Greg Rushin says his department works with 194 volunteers who help with tasks from patrolling neighborhoods to manning observation towers in public places and monitoring security camera feeds.

Forbes.com: Cities with the best economies

Henderson, Nev., takes the No. 2 spot despite its location within the Metropolitan Statistical Area of Las Vegas-Paradise, which ranked ninth this year on Forbes? list of America?s Most Dangerous Cities. That may be because Henderson has a relatively high median income of $61,861, a low poverty rate (7 percent) and higher median home prices than Las Vegas, points out Tamara Madensen, a criminology professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Also of help, she adds, is that ?casinos in Henderson cater mainly to local residents, which reduces traffic and the number of tourists moving about in the city.?

That?s an important point compared to Vegas: Since crime rates are calculated based on Census populations, violent crimes involving tourists inflate the numbers. ?The number of people who visit the Strip and downtown Las Vegas each year,? over 35 million, ?make it difficult to estimate the real ?risk? of crime for individuals living in Las Vegas. Tourist numbers are rarely factored into risk analyses,? Madensen says.

To find America?s 10 safest cities, we looked at metropolises with populations above 250,000. We ranked them by violent crime rates ? the number of violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault) per 100,000 residents in 2010, as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Because the FBI only compiles data from municipalities that submit complete reports, we were only able to look at 72 cities; Chicago was not included in our ranking.

Forbes.com: America?s most dangerous cities

We also ranked each city on the traffic-fatality rate per 100,000 residents based on 2009 data, the most recent available, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We then averaged the ranking for each city to arrive at final scores. In the event of ties, the city with the lower crime rate got the higher ranking.

In third place on our list is Honolulu, which ranks fourth lowest for violent crime and seventh lowest for traffic fatalities. The city is relatively well off, with a median household income of $54,828, above the national average of $50,046, and a below average poverty rate of 10.5 percent. Hawaii has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, and that famous relaxed aloha spirit may play a role in keeping accident and violence rates low. ?Honolulu is kind of like a big small town where everyone seems connected,? says Dave Kahaulelio, president of the Honolulu chapter of the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

Kahaulelio also notes a key factor behind Honolulu?s low traffic-fatality rate ? 4.27 per 100,000 ? is gridlock. ?Our roads are often congested because we have two main arteries,? he says.

Forbes.com: America?s dirtiest cities

Russ Rader, vice president of communications for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, concurs that congestion is a good thing when it comes to traffic safety. ?If traffic is often gridlocked, no one can drive fast enough to kill themselves or others,? he says. ?Cities, by their nature, tend to have low fatality rates because speeds are low and traffic is dense, while rural roads tend to be more dangerous.?

That certainly rings true in the biggest city ? and perhaps biggest surprise ? on our list: New York City at No. 10. Major arteries are frequently backed up there, which may well explain why Gotham ranked No. 3 for lowest traffic-fatality rates, with just 3.17 per 100,000. Good public transportation and a relatively low car ownership rate also help.

But how to explain New York City?s relatively low violent-crime rate of 582 per 100,000, 27th-lowest among U.S. cities over 250,000 in population? Criminal justice professor Mike Maxfield, of John Jay College in New York City, points out that it has most of the resources that are key to urban safety: ?wealth, effective policing and other guardianship, public spaces that are heavily used by a broad cross-section of people, institutions that attract people ? parks, museums, shopping, entertainment ? and effective governance, generally.?

Forbes.com: The most transformed neighborhoods in America

But the Big Apple is still a mixed bag. ?It?s also incredibly diverse with a great deal of inequality. That means that though New York is statistically safe as a city, safety, like wealth, is unevenly distributed,? Maxfield adds. ?All of New York is better governed and better policed than 20 years ago and violence is lower everywhere. But it?s much lower in some places than in others.?

Forbes.com: The best cities for young professionals

? 2011 Forbes.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45791562/ns/business-forbes_com/

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Twitter / The Inquirer ES: Apple asegura que apelar? ...

Apple asegura que apelar? la demanda italiana: Apple interpondr? un recurso de apelaci?n contra la multa impuest... Il y a 42 minutes via twitterfeed

Source: http://twitter.com/TheINQ/statuses/152743831043977216

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It's not often that I'm at a loss for words. But this is just so awesome I'm going to let it stand on its own merits. Congrats to Android Forums member scoty024 for being quite the artiste, and to his wife for being so ... forgiving. Even I couldn't get away with doing this. Pretty sure you just signed up for the first 1,000 diaper changes, dude. (The good news: That's only a two-week sentence.)

Dive on into the forums at the link below and give scoty024 a major high five for pulling this off.

More: My unborn son is an Android fan

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/1PNRSDn8TwM/story01.htm

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Marine bacteria light up to get a ride elsewhere

Web edition : Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

Bioluminescent bacteria glow in the ocean for the same reason roadside eateries display neon signs: They want to attract hungry diners.

New laboratory experiments bolster the longstanding theory that marine bacteria light up to get themselves a free ride to other parts of the ocean in the digestive tracts of larger beasts, scientists from Israel and Germany report online December 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

?It?s terrific to see this experiment,? says J. Woodland Hastings, a bioluminescence expert at Harvard University who was not involved in the research. ?It?s nice to see these ideas confirmed.?

Many deep-sea creatures, from bacteria to fish to squid, are bioluminescent ? meaning they generate light inside their bodies through chemical reactions. Different organisms glow for different reasons; the anglerfish, for instance, can light up a lure to attract prey, while some plankton glow to signal possible danger when a boat or swimmer passes nearby.

Bioluminescent bacteria live throughout the ocean, and may have several reasons to explain their built-in glow. More than three decades ago, researchers suggested that one such reason could be to mark the presence of a floating food particle, so that a passing fish would see it and eat it. But no one had tracked this idea all the way to its logical conclusion ? until now.

Margarita Zarubin, a graduate student at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel, started with a type of luminescent bacteria, Photobacterium leiognathi, found 600 meters deep in the Red Sea. She put one bag of glowing bacteria at one end of a seawater tank, and at the other end she put another bag of bacteria that had a genetic change that kept the microbes dark. Shrimp and other small animals clustered around only the glowing bacteria.

Next she let brine shrimp swim in water with the luminescent bacteria. After two and a half hours, the shrimp themselves began to glow from their microbial dinner. ?We could see the luminescence from inside their guts,? says Zarubin, who did the work while at the University of Oldenburg in Germany and is now with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Then she dropped both glowing and dark shrimp into a flume so they were swept past a hungry cardinalfish; the fish ate only the luminescent shrimp. Finally, the scientists tested the fish feces, and found that the bacteria had passed unscathed through the fish guts and came out intact. The whole process spreads the bacteria through the water faster than they could move otherwise, Zarubin says.?

For their part, the shrimp must balance the benefit of eating a food particle that happens to glow against the drawback of becoming luminescent themselves, thus making themselves more vulnerable to predators. But in deep dark waters where food is scarce, the advantage of getting a snack probably outweighs the disadvantage of potentially being eaten, Zarubin says.

Some animals have pigment in their guts that can block light emission as they digest glowing particles, says Michael Latz, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Only when the animal pops out a glowing fecal pellet do the bacteria become visible again, signaling another creature to eat them and keep the microbes on the move.

Such deep-sea bacterial recycling could be important for more than just understanding bioluminescence, Latz says. The guts of shrimp and other small marine creatures may serve as a highway for spreading bacterial pathogens throughout the sea, like the one that causes cholera.

Found in: Life and Zoology

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337190/title/Deep-sea_glow_serves_as_bait

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HowardForums is a discussion board dedicated to mobile phones with over 1,000,000 members and growing!

For your convenience HowardForums is divided into 7 main sections; marketplace, phone manufacturers, carriers, smartphones/PDAs, general phone discussion, buy sell trade and general discussions. Just scroll down to see them!

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If you have time check out our sister site: Niknon.com - a forum about Digital Photography.

Source: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1749621-Galaxy-Nexus-for-iPhone-4-(rogers)-Cash?goto=newpost

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Other than the one we're currently living on, that is. As discoveries of alien planets accelerates, the discovery of an "alien Earth" could be just over the horizon.?

While 2011 was a huge year for alien-planet discoveries, 2012 could bring something even more exciting: the first true "alien Earth."

Skip to next paragraph

This year saw the tally of confirmed exoplanets top 700, with NASA's Kepler space telescope flagging thousands of additional candidates that still need to be verified. And just this month, Kepler scientists announced two landmark finds ? the?first two Earth-size alien planets, as well as a larger world in its star's habitable zone, that just-right range of distances where liquid water (and possibly life as we know it) could exist.

These and other recent discoveries suggest that the prized quarry of many exoplanet hunters ??an "alien Earth"?? could be just over the horizon. In fact, such a planet may well pop up in the next round of Kepler candidates, which should be released next year, researchers said.

"I'm guessing that this next planet catalog is going to see, finally, some numbers of points that are really, truly Earth-sized and in the habitable zone," said Natalie Batalha, deputy leader of the Kepler science team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "That's something that I really look forward to, is getting those candidates." [Vote Now! Most Intriguing Alien Planets of 2011]

The year has seen a huge increase in the?number of known exoplanets. At the start of 2011, astronomers had confirmed 528 alien worlds, according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, a database compiled by astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory.

Less than one year later ? and just 16 years after the first alien planet was found orbiting a sun-like star ? the count now stands at 713. And thousands more are waiting in the wings.

On Dec. 5, Kepler scientists announced the discovery of?1,094 new exoplanet candidates, bringing the mission's total tally in its first 16 months of operation to 2,326. So far, just 33 of these potential planets have been confirmed by follow-up observations, but researchers have estimated that at least 80 percent of them will turn out to be the real deal.

These huge numbers are exciting by themselves, but the search for alien planets isn't really about increasing the tally. Rather, it's a quest to better understand the nature and?diversity of alien worlds, researchers say.

"You can only understand the diversity of systems if you have enough numbers that speak to the statistics," Batalha told SPACE.com. "You really want a large sample, and that's where Kepler's going to make a huge contribution."

The diversity of alien worlds and systems appears to be high. Astronomers have found one planet as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and another as dense as iron. And in September, the Kepler team announced the discovery of an?alien planet that circles two suns, like Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/3LQZOU_kZJo/Why-2012-could-be-the-year-we-find-a-habitable-planet

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DES MOINES, Iowa ? ?Mitt Romney returned to the airwaves in Iowa Monday with a new ad that takes a more positive tone than the Republican presidential candidate's supporters had been going with before the Christmas break, talking about making government "simpler and smaller and smarter."

"It is a moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in," Romney says in the ad in which he touts his former role as chief executive. "The experience of balancing budgets is desperately needed in Washington and I will take it there."

The ad comes as the former Massachusetts governor -- and all his GOP rivals -- prepare their final sales pitches -- bus tours and all -- ahead of next Tuesday's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

For now Romney is slightly behind Texas Rep. Ron Paul in an average of Iowa polls taken before Christmas, but the statistical dead heat -- which, if the polls' margins of error were reversed, could conceivably be a statistical landslide -- shows Paul with 22.3 percent compared to Romney with 21 percent.?

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Newt Gingrich has slipped to 14 percent in Iowa while Rick Perry on the rise with 12 percent.

Perry also has a new ad out, touting his "outsider" status and taking aim at frontrunner Paul by asking if Washington is the problem, why trust a congressman to fix it??

Also in the race are Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who former Arkansas governor and 2008 Iowa GOP victor Mike Huckabee said Sunday could be the sleeper candidate in the caucuses.

Santorum has been banking on the Iowa caucuses to give him some national legitimacy. Having spent considerable time in the Hawkeye State visiting all 99 counties, he spent Monday going pheasant shooting with well-known and socially conservative Iowa Rep. Steve King. ?

The buzz around Santorum is noteworthy, as his climb steadies while Gingrich's falls. Still, many voters are undecided ahead of the Jan. 3 first-in-the-nation contest, though it won't take much to win among the six candidates vying in the state, particularly if only 100,000 Iowans go to the caucuses -- an all-evening affair very unlike the in-and-out touchscreen vote in many states.?

"When you go to a caucus, you drive out for a cold evening in a drafty school house or church fellowship hall, you are there for two or three hours, maybe longer, and you're going to have to stand up in front of your neighbors, in front of your pastor, your doctor, your kid's teachers. You are going to stand up there and you are going to have to declare 'I'm for candidate A.' And everybody in neighborhood knows who you stood for," Huckabee said on "Fox News Sunday," describing the process.?

Huckabee's success four years ago is attributed to his massive organization. He had a mailing list of 420,000 evangelicals in Iowa, he went town-to-town recruiting homeschoolers and Christian youth groups.?

Nothing close to that has happened this time as candidates rely much more on commercials, debates, social media and cable television to cover the ground that go with fewer meetings. Huckabee noted that could be a disadvantage.

"There may only be 110,000 people voting in the caucus rather than half a million that might be in the primary. But the point is, those 100,000 represent the hardcore political activists and that's why the polls don't necessarily indicate what's going to happen because polls, you pick up the phone and you say, yes, I kind of like so-and-so. Caucus, you got to drive and stand up and be counted for the candidate. It's a very different kind of atmosphere," he said.

With 1,700 locations holding caucuses statewide, voters will hear five-minute speeches from each campaign's representatives, then write in their choice. If more than 120,000 show up, that would be a record turnout. Weather is a contributing factor, and forecasts today show a mild Jan. 3.?

If a candidate has signed up 40,000 supporters to attend the caucuses, that's an easy win, which is part of the reason Paul is the candidate to watch. He has a devoted following that is organized and energized even though the Texas congressman is retracting racist sentiments that appeared in newsletters in the 1990s written under his name.

And if organization is the name of the game, it's Paul and Romney, in fact, who are the ones fully able to compete nationally.

But before that, they must win the expectations game in Iowa, and while Santorum could be the benefactor of persistence as well as late buzz, both Paul and Romney are playing it close to the vest.?

Paul, who is popular with conservatives, will return to Iowa this week to meet with supporters he has kept in touch with since his unsuccessful run in 2008. Romney, who has kept the state at arm's length for most of the year, is courting supporters in phone calls on Monday as well as a speech Tuesday evening.

But it's not time to count Gingrich out yet. Last week, he criticized the negative tone of the campaign, but now he's ready to take the challenge directly to Romney on the economy, an issue Romney has made central to his campaign.

Meanwhile, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has bowed out of Iowa, keeping focus on New Hampshire, which votes in the first-in-the-nation primary one week after Iowa's caucuses.?

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/26/candidates-return-to-campaign-trail-after-short-christmas-break/

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]When a federal panel asked two journals last week to withhold details on bird flu experiments, it was only the latest example of an ages-old conflict often rooted in issues of war and advanced weaponry.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0cc346a9bc42680a84384f521875ead1

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Action Movie FX is a new app that lets you add special effects to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch videos. When we say special effects, we don?t mean boring old effects, we mean Hollywood spectacular explosions, missile attacks and car smashes.

Action Movie FX lets you add Hollywood

...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/T1Wv09Mh1wE/story01.htm

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Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/MacKinnon+like+Canada+despite+loss+Swedes+coach/5909192/story.html

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Dateline NBC

'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/vp/45781641#45781641

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Dr. Maurice Mimoun, a plastic surgeon at the St Louis hospital, holds silicone gel breast implants made by French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP, that he removed from a patient because of concerns that they are unsafe, Paris, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011. French health authorities are considering whether to suggest that an estimated 30,000 women in France get their breast implants removed, amid warnings by leading doctors about risks of rupture and possible cancer risks. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

PARIS (AP) ? Tens of thousands of women with risky, French-made breast implants should have them removed at the state's expense, the health minister recommended Friday, adding that such removals were "preventive" and not urgent.

While implants made by Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP, have not been linked to an increased incidence of cancer, the risk that they could rupture and leak a questionable type of silicone gel has been shown, Xavier Bertrand said in a statement.

"As a preventive measure not of an urgent nature, (French authorities) recommend that the removal of these implants, even those not showing signs of deterioration, be proposed," the statement said. It added that the costs of removal would be footed by France's national health care system ? presumably solely for French patients.

Some 30,000 of women in France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal and other countries in Europe and South America have had implants made by PIP. Health authorities in those countries have been following the French decision closely and could make similar recommendations, too. The implants in question were not sold in the U.S.

Women who have had their implants burst and leading French plastic surgeons had been urging the government to act. The death last month of a woman who had the implants and developed a rare cancer catalyzed worries.

About 2,000 Frenchwomen given pre-filled silicone gel implants made by PIP have filed legal complaints against the company, based in southern France. Investigators say it saved euro1 million ($1.3 million) a year by using industrial silicone instead of more expensive silicone meant for medical use.

The French government ordered a halt to production of the implants last year and the company is being liquidated.

The main concern of doctors and patients is the uncertainty surrounding the risks of the silicone used.

"I don't know what might be inside of me," said Annie Mesnil, 62, who had a breast removed after cancer in 1999, and was given a PIP implant.

After the product was recalled last year, a mammogram and ultrasound did not reveal any problem with her implant. But she had it removed anyway, at her own expense, out of fear. When her surgeon took it out and studied it, "he discovered it had already burst."

Health officials from several European countries held a conference call Wednesday to discuss the implants.

The health council of Italy's health ministry held an emergency session Thursday to discuss the pending French decision, and asked hospitals to track down women who received silicone implants made by PIP. The ministry estimates that about 4,000 PIP implants are in use in Italy.

The ministry's health council also said the national health system would pay to have the implants removed if medical conditions required it, such as if they ruptured.

While saying there was no proof of any greater cancer risk among women with PIP implants, the council suggested that women with the implants contact their surgeons because there's a "greater probability of rupture and inflammatory reaction."

British health authorities say they see no reason so far to have the French-made implants systematically removed, and have said that there is not enough evidence of a link between silicone implants and cancer.

In the U.S., concerns about silicone gel implants in general led to a 14-year ban on their use. Silicone implants were brought back to the market in the U.S. 2006 after research ruled out cancer, lupus and some other concerns.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-12-23-EU-France-Breast-Implants/id-cc2cbde4944a4ea49510da0cf0bc16e1

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@gino_76ph The latest Android on the 2X is Gingerbread flavour. ICS will be coming some time next year. :) Il y a environ 2 heures via web en r?ponse ? gino_76ph

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By Rosa Golijan

When Google put out its annual zeitgeist list, it bragged that "Google+" was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year.?But that label may be a bit deceiving.

As?TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld points out,?it's no surprise that?"Google+" was such a popular search term in 2011. It didn't even exist prior to this year and people wanted to know what it's about. "On a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical," explains Schonfeld.

But that's not where the story ends, folks.?You see, apparently searches for "Google+" aren't as common as they used to be at this point.

By using the Google Insights for Search tool?? a feature which allows people to track search trends and patterns?? it is possible to see (in the chart above) that after an initial spike around the social network's launch and small bumps around other announcements, searches for the term "Google+" started dropping.

When you look at the embedded chart to the right, the picture becomes far more clear: Rival social networks such as Facebook and Twitter command far more ongoing interest in Google's own search engine, and that's in the U.S. alone, where Google+ has had more reach.

And according to Schonfeld, this is a problem:

Searches are an indication of pure intent. People search for what they intend to do. [...] If fewer and fewer people are searching for ?Google+?, it makes you wonder if anyone is actually using it. Remember, just because Google+ has tens of millions of registered users, that doesn?t mean those people ever came back after Google made them click to register.?

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/22/9634550-google-interest-on-the-wane-say-search-statistics

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KDDI's latest team-up with Sharp appears to be haunted by the ghosts of mobile past, present and future. The AQUOS IS14SH sends us spinning back to the 90's with a slide-out numerical keypad that hopes to appeal to those T9 typists who have honed the craft to a fine art. More future-facing customers may be sold on the combination of Android Gingerbread, Three Seg TV tuner, NFC wallet and eight-megapixel camera. The phone is available now in black, white and pink, though none, sadly, will land with Sharp's recently unveiled optical image stabilizer.

Sharp AQUOS IS14SH presses hold on the death of the phone keypad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Depending on how you define MFP, the HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 ($399.99 direct) either isn't an MFP at all, or it's an MFP (multi-function printer) with a difference. It's built around a color laser printer, with high-quality output for text, graphics, and photos. But instead of adding a standard scanner, HP has added something it calls a TopShot scanner, which is actually a camera that copies or scans by essentially snapping a picture. The result has some serious limitations for scanning paper, but if you need to scan 3D objects?for showing products on your company Web site, say?this might be the MFP you've been waiting for.

On paper at least, the TopShot M275 seems to be a near twin of the HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw ($349.99 direct, 3 stars) that I reviewed earlier this year. The only obvious difference is that the M175nw's standard scanner is swapped out for the TopShot scanner. Both printers offer the same claimed speed, at 17 pages per minute (ppm) for printing in monochrome and 4 ppm for color, and both share the same limited paper handling, which makes them a good choice for light duty printing only.

Like the M175nw, the TopShot M275's paper handling should be adequate for a personal printer or for a micro or home office with light-duty printing needs, but not much more. It holds only 150 sheets of paper, doesn't include a duplexer, and doesn't offer any paper handling upgrade options.

Other features the two printers share include support for both wired and WiFi network connections. Both support Apple AirPrint, which uses WiFi, and both let you print directly to the printer with an ad hoc WiFi connection to an Android smartphone or to an assortment of iThings. You can get the free HP ePrint Home and Biz apps from the Apple and Android app Web sites.

In addition, you can print through the cloud with HP ePrint, which lets you assign an email address to the printer and then send documents by email to print them. The two printers also both copy and scan, including over a network, with the M175nw equipped with its traditional scanner and the TopShot M275 using the TopShot scanner.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
Setting up the TopShot M275 is standard fare. I connected it to a wired network for my tests and installed the software and drivers on a Windows Vista system. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) it came in at an effective 3.3 ppm, the same speed as the M175nw. As a point of comparison, however, both printers are notably slower than the Editors' Choice Dell 1355cnw Multifunction Color Printer ($419.99 direct, 4 stars), at 4.5 ppm.

Output quality for the TopShot M275 is easily above par for color laser MFPs, and a bit better than the already high quality that the M175nw offers. The text quality is a touch short of what I'd want for serious desktop publishing applications, but easily good enough for any standard business need, and even good enough for marketing materials like tri-fold brochures. Graphics are similarly good enough for any business use. Most people would consider them good enough for marketing materials as well.

Photos are in the top tier for color laser MFPs. Mount them in a frame behind glass, and they could pass for true photo quality, unless you looked closely. They're certainly good enough for printing your own marketing materials.

Other Issues
The TopShot scanner demands more attention than we usually give scanners on MFPs, because it's so different from what you're probably used to. The scanner consists of a white platform, plus a camera (although it doesn't look much like one) along with lights for flash photography. Both the camera and the lights are at the end of a movable arm. The platform normally sits on top of the printer over the output tray, but lifts off easily if you need it to. The scanner arm folds down so it can lie flat against the platform when you're not using it.

To scan, you rotate the arm up, so it's over the platform, much like the document camera it basically is. You then put whatever you want to scan or copy on the platform and give the appropriate command. The camera takes six shots according to HP: three with flash from different angles and three with ambient light. The MFP then integrates the images to eliminate shadows and glare. If you gave a copy command, it then prints the image. If you gave it a scan command, it treats the photo as scanned data, sending it to a file on your computer or to your computer's email program, opening a new message and adding the file as an email attachment.

I tried the scanner with both 3D objects and typical paper documents. The results with 3D objects were terrific compared with traditional scanners, but not as good as I'd expect from using a camera. In scans of a black, shiny handheld scanner, for example, some areas turned to blue, possibly from a reflection of something in the three images taken with ambient light. Even so, if you're not an accomplished photographer, and don't have an appropriate setup for taking product pictures, the results may be better than what you can get from taking a photo.

For scanning sheets of paper, the scanner is limited at best. Granted, it's easier to put each sheet down on the platform rather than position a page on a standard flatbed under a lid, but it takes a relatively long time to snap each page. Also, because there's nothing holding the page flat, any tendency for the paper to curl will get translated into a distortion in the image. One scan of a photo, for example, had curved edges, because the paper curled up from the platform.

Ultimately, the HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 is something of a niche product, with the TopShot scanner the most compelling argument both for and against it. If you don't need to scan 3D objects, the limitations for scanning documents leave you with no reason to consider it. If you need to scan 3D objects?to put the images in marketing materials, on your own Web site, or on eBay, say?and you don't want to deal with taking photographs, the scanner makes it a slam dunk choice, and the high-quality print output is a welcome extra.

More Multi-function Printer Reviews:
??? Canon imageClass MF4570dw
??? HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275
??? HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One
??? HP PhotoSmart 7510 e-All-in-One
??? HP PhotoSmart 6510 e-All-in-One
?? more

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NEW YORK (AP) ? Lady Gaga has been voted The Associated Press Entertainer of the Year.

There were 135 ballots submitted by U.S. news organizations that make up the AP's membership. Editors and broadcasters were asked to cast their ballots for who had the most influence on entertainment and culture in 2011.

Lady Gaga narrowly edged out the late Apple founder Steve Jobs by three votes. Her year was dominated by the release of her second studio album, "Born This Way."

Previous winners of the AP Entertainer of the Year include Betty White, Taylor Swift, Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-12-19-YE-Entertainer%20of%20the%20Year/id-23fd5da6c00241469f9c273750c652d9

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MUMBAI, India (AP) ? India's central bank held key interest rates steady as it struggles to foster growth amid high inflation, and took steps to curb currency speculation, lifting the rupee from all-time lows Friday.

The Reserve Bank of India kept the short-term lending rate, or repo rate, at 8.5 percent and the reverse repo rate ? the rate it pays to banks for deposits, at 7.5 percent. The bank also kept the cash reserve ratio for commercial lenders unchanged at 6.0 percent.

"Downside risks to growth have clearly increased," the bank said in a statement. "However, it must be emphasized that inflation risks remain high."

Ambushed by a horde of reporters Friday, RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao declined to say when the bank would start lowering rates.

"I cannot speculate on the timing because I don't know," he said.

Growth slipped to a two-year low of 6.9 percent in the September quarter and industrial production fell 5.1 percent in October, its first contraction since June 2009. But inflation remains above 9 percent.

The bank's 13 rate hikes since March 2010 have kept it out of step with many other emerging economies, which have started to ease monetary policy as global growth slows.

The Reserve Bank noted that Brazil, Indonesia, Israel and Thailand have all cut their policy rates, while China cut reserve requirements.

In India, the Reserve Bank has been waging a lonely ? and largely ineffective ? fight on inflation. New Delhi has failed to back the bank with fiscal consolidation or enact difficult policy changes that could unlock supply-side bottlenecks, pushing down prices and unleashing growth.

India is largely a cash economy, so rate hikes have little direct impact on most consumer demand. They do, however, hit investment, which can curtail supply and make inflation even worse.

"You've killed investment," said Jay Shankar, chief economist at Religare Capital Markets. "Supply responses have weakened significantly. Demand has not weakened. That's leading to inflation pressures."

He said "virtually nothing" is being done on the fiscal side to contain inflation.

He said by restoring excise and customs duties to the levels they were at before the 2008 global financial crisis, India could bring its fiscal deficit down from about 5.7 percent of GDP to 4.7 percent of GDP.

The central bank is now under enormous pressure from New Delhi and business leaders, who want a quick, politically expedient fix for flagging growth.

Businesses said they were disappointed Friday that the bank hadn't taken more drastic action.

"I would like to see RBI do a major rate cut now," B. Muthuraman, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry and vice chairman of Tata Steel, told CNBC-TV18 before the policy decision.

He said he would have liked the bank to cut rates by half a percentage point and reduce the cash reserve ratio to boost lending. That would help small and medium sized businesses ? which are crucial to jobs and output in India's manufacturing sector ? get more affordable financing to grow.

"Government inaction is a big cause of concern for industry," Muthuraman said, citing coal shortages, land acquisition difficulties and slow decision making. "We can have a growth rate in excess of 8 percent, if only we'd had reforms. It's a very sad story."

The rupee, which has been trading at record lows, strengthened Friday, after the central bank took to steps to curb speculation.

Since U.S. debt was downgraded Aug. 5, the rupee has fallen about 17 percent, breaching 54 to the dollar on Thursday.

Shankar said the depreciation of the rupee was alarming because of its speed, not its magnitude. India's inflation has been higher than that of its trading partners, so the rupee's depreciation normalizes inflation-adjusted exchange rates, helping Indian exporters, he said.

The bank has stopped short of massive intervention to prop up the currency, but it has lifted foreign investment limits in debt, raised rate ceilings on nonresident bank deposits, and enacted administrative measures to discourage speculation. Traders say the bank has also been selling dollars.

Meanwhile, India's NDTV reported that pilgrims in the southern city of Hyderabad were praying for divine intervention to stop the rupee's slide.

"All that the measures have done is to restrict the pace of INR depreciation," HDFC chief economist Abheek Barua said Friday. "The turn in the INR will only come once European sovereign concerns subside."

The rupee was at 52.8 in afternoon trade in Mumbai on Friday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-16-AS-India-Economy/id-a658bd59c23c4176840c568c1be3d819

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Author and staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens died yesterday, Vanity Fair reported. How did the man who could write on everything begin his life of learning? The bookmobile ? a vital entity now in danger of becoming obsolete. Hitchens' mind was a testament to their ongoing necessity.

The death of Christopher Hitchens, the iconoclastic journalist and staunch atheist known for the breadth of his intellect and the depth of his convictions, is an occasion to reflect on what we?ve lost now that such a stellar mind is no longer a part of the public scene. But Mr. Hitchens? passing should also be a time to consider how a mind like his was sparked in the first place.

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How did the man who could write on everything from Charles Dickens to Mother Teresa and Benazir Bhutto to Saul Bellow begin his life of learning?

Hitchens, in an essay published not long before his death, traced his intellectual origins to a bookmobile.

?When I was very young I lived in a remote village on the edge of an English moorland,? Hitchens recalled. ?Every week, a mobile library would stop near my house, and I would step up through the back door of a large van to find its carpeted interior lined with bookshelves.... If I live to see retirement, I would quite like to be a driver of such a vehicle, bringing books to eager young readers like a Librarian in the Rye.?

Hitchens, alas, didn?t live to indulge his senior years behind the wheel of a bookmobile. And even if he had survived, the celebrated essayist and political commentator might have had some trouble finding a job as a bookmobile driver.

As gas prices rise, more reading services migrate online, and local governments face cutbacks, bookmobile services in some communities have been curtailed or eliminated. As libraries increase digital collections, many of which can be accessed at the click of a button, bookmobiles might seem obsolete.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/nHq4fNZuD4s/Christopher-Hitchens-God-is-not-great-but-bookmobiles-are

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New York ? The late beauty's diamonds and other baubles fetched a whopping $137.2 million over a two-day Christie's auction. Here's how it breaks down

With eight marriages to seven men, Elizabeth Taylor was never concerned with living a life of restraint. Fitting then that the late beauty's possessions are fetching far more than expected at auction as profligate bidders clamor for a piece of her legacy. An auction of her jewelry at Christie's in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday brought in a record $137.2 million, far surpassing the predicted $30 million. Other items from Taylor's estate, including fashions and film scripts, are also being auctioned off this week. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers:

$137.2 million
Record amount that pieces of Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry collection fetched at auction Tuesday and Wednesday. That makes it "the most valuable sale of jewelry in auction history," according to Christie's.

SEE ALSO: The 'Nazi haircut': A 'jarring' new trend for men?

?

$115.9 million
Amount in jewelry sales on Tuesday night alone

80
Number of pieces from Taylor's jewelry collection auctioned off Tuesday. The remaining 189 went on Wednesday.

SEE ALSO: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade: A visual history

?

$30 million
Amount that experts predicted the jewelry auction would bring in. "They clearly underestimated the power that is Elizabeth Taylor," says Lindsay Mannering at The Stir.

$11.8 million
Amount for which a pearl, diamond, and ruby necklace known as "La Peregrina" was sold. It was a gift from husband Richard Burton to Taylor in 1969.

$2 million or $3 million
Pre-auction estimate of La Peregrina's value. Many items sold for ten times their estimated worth.

SEE ALSO: 7 strange places women have given birth

?

$37,000
Amount Richard Burton paid for the necklace

33.19
Number of carats in a diamond ring that sold for $8.8 million

SEE ALSO: The 'annoying' rise of U.S. women's 'growling speech'

?

$2.6 million
Amount the auction of Taylor's haute couture brought in Wednesday, about ten times the estimate

$362,500
Amount a silver-encrusted brocade Dior evening gown with matching bag fetched ? over 70 times the items' estimated worth of $5000. "A protracted bidding war among several determined would-be buyers" drove the price way up.

SEE ALSO: Can sitting all day make your butt bigger?

?

$60,000
Amount that Michael Steinhardt, a collector of art and former hedge-fund manager, paid for a pair of Gucci rock crystal and gold ear pendants. "He is really the best husband in the world," his wife, Judy, said. "There's never a dull moment."

$8,000
Pre-auction estimate for the Burton wedding bands, the final lot in the jewelry auction

SEE ALSO: Homes with dramatic mountain views: A slideshow

?

$1 million
Amount that the two eternity bands in gold and white gold with baguette- and single-cut diamonds ended up fetching

15
Number of minutes of "intense" bidding over those rings, the longest bidding war of the jewelry auction

SEE ALSO: Dear Me: 8 celebrities' letters to themselves

?

11
Number of years Burton and Taylor were married. The two wed and divorced twice. They first tied the knot in 1964 and divorced in 1974. The next year, they remarried, only to divorce again in 1976.

Sources: About.com, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, The Stir

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Barack Obama marked the impending withdrawal of the last American soldiers from Iraq not as mission accomplished, but as "a final march toward home".

The US President yesterday sought to pronounce a symbolic end to a war that has cost the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,500 Americans since it began almost nine years ago.

Speaking ahead of a 31 December deadline for the withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq, Mr Obama applauded the "extraordinary achievement" of service members. "The war in Iraq will soon belong to history, and your service belongs to the ages," he told soldiers in a speech delivered at Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.

Mr Obama, appearing with his wife. Michelle, recalled the start of the war, a time when he was an Illinois state senator in opposition to the invasion, and many of the warriors before him were in grade school. "We knew this day would come. We have known it for some time now," he said. "But still, there is something profound about the end of a war that has lasted so long."

It was the President's first visit to Fort Bragg, home to Army Special Operations, the 18th Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne, among others. Special Forces troops from Fort Bragg were among the first soldiers in Iraq during the 2003 invasion and its paratroopers helped lead the 2007 troop increase.

Mr Obama has pledged the US will continue civilian assistance for Iraq as it faces an uncertain future in a volatile region of the world. Despite a drop in violence since its peak in the sectarian conflicts of 2006 and 2007, extreme violence and sporadic attacks are still common in Iraq. This was illustrated as recently as 5 December, when at least 20 people were killed in three bomb blasts about 50 miles south of Baghdad. Yesterday, four bombs went off across the country, killing three people.

In his speech, Mr Obama conceded that Iraq "is not a perfect place". But, he added,"We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.

"We are building a new partnership between our nations. Because of you, we are ending these wars in a way that will make America stronger and the world more secure," he told the assembled troops.

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TOKYO (Reuters) ? The United States is in close contact with all parties including China on new sanctions against Iran, suspected by the West of developing nuclear weapons, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman said on Thursday.

Poneman also said the United States would work with partners to ensure the global oil market remains well supplied.

"The United States is in very frequent and close contact with many members in the international community, certainly including China, our key partner in the U.N. Security Council," he told reporters of consultations on the sanctions.

"So we have very robust and continued consultation with all of those partners, including China."

His comments came a day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday that would expand sanctions on Iran, cracking down on a wider range of energy issues and closing some loopholes in existing energy and financial sanctions.

Some senators in both parties are also working on legislation to tighten sanctions on Iran, the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter.

"We'll have many consultations with U.S. Congress and I think you'll end up hearing the United States and the international community speaking with one voice in terms of the importance of Iran responding to these global requirements to comply with their international commitments," Poneman said.

Asked if the United States was concerned if China, the biggest buyer of Iranian crude, kept importing while other countries cut, he declined to comment directly but said it was important the oil market was well supplied.

"If the market remains well supplied, then alternatives to Iranian purchases are going to be available. That is why we particularly welcome continued efforts by the existing producers. I'm pleased also to see the production coming back," he said, referring to output resumption from Libya and Iraq.

"As long as we can work, with producers and consumers, to make sure that global market requirements and those of individual nations are met, that's the best thing we can do in the short term."

In the long term, it was important to change excess dependence on oil imports and diversify to other types of energy sources, such as nuclear power and renewable, he said.

Poneman was visiting Tokyo to discuss issues including nuclear cooperation with Japan following the radiation crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

(Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Michael Watson)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/pl_nm/us_usa_iran_sanctions_japan

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BEIJING ? U.S. officials say food aid to North Korea could resume depending on the outcome of talks between the sides in Beijing.

The United Nations and U.S. charities say aid is badly needed, but the U.S. government is concerned that North Korea, which has plowed resources into a nuclear weapons program, could divert food aid to political elites and its vast military.

U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues Robert King and senior U.S. aid official Jon Brause were meeting Thursday with North Korea's director-general for American affairs, Ri Gun.

The talks are expected to last at least two days and are to focus on strict monitoring mechanisms should the U.S. decide to give aid.

The last U.S. food handouts ended in March 2009, when North Korea expelled U.S. aid groups that were monitoring the distribution. That occurred shortly before the North conducted long-range rocket and nuclear tests that drew stiff international sanctions.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Wednesday said the aid could include vitamin supplements and high-protein biscuits for malnourished people in addition to regular foodstuffs.

Such items would be unlikely to end up "on some leader's banquet table," Nuland said.

"They (North Korean officials) know that we were obviously deeply dissatisfied with the way this went before and that we need more discussions about it," Nuland told a news conference.

The U.N. reported last month that North Korea had an improved harvest this year despite a harsh winter and summer floods, but malnutrition among children has increased. It said nearly 3 million people will continue to require food assistance next year.

North Korea has suffered chronic food shortages for the past two decades because of a combination of economic and agricultural mismanagement and natural disasters. It suffered a famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_re_us/us_nkorea_food_aid

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