Ala. Standoff: Students Say Suspect Threatened to Kill

A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board."I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like,...

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Turkish leftist group claims U.S. embassy bombing: website

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish leftist group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy and accused Washington of using Turkey as its "slave", according to a statement posted on the internet. The Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C) said it carried out Friday's attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his...

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Colonial flags fly in Hong Kong as anger grows

HONG KONG: Sixteen years after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, public discontent with Beijing is swelling and protesters have been rallying around an unexpected symbol - the British colonial flag.Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in recent months in marches against Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who took over from Donald Tsang last July after being elected by a 1,200-strong...

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Forty years ago, the Ohm F speaker was a game-changer; it still is

The Ohm F speakers(Credit:Ohm)Lincoln Walsh died a year before his radically innovative speaker technology made its commercial debut in the Ohm Acoustics F in 1972. The speaker featured an omnidirectional Walsh driver that projected a massive stereo soundstage. At the time of its introduction the $900 per pair Ohm F was hailed as one of the greatest speakers of all time by the international press....

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Clinton's legacy: Smart power, celebrity status

(CBS News) After four years as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was officially replaced by Sen. John Kerry Friday. An improbable pick after a tough primary battle with Barack Obama back in 2008, Clinton has used her celebrity status around the world to make changes both at home and abroad. John Kerry sworn in as secretary of state In a heartfelt goodbye to thousands of State Department employees...

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Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled

The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan...

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Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber from a far-left group killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street. The attacker blew himself up inside U.S. property, Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall and could be heard a mile away....

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Motor Racing: Ferrari's Alonso predicts tighter 2013 F1 race

MILAN, Italy: Fernando Alonso said on Friday the battle for Formula One supremacy could be a lot tighter this year ahead of his bid to improve on two runner-up places behind Sebastian Vettel with a maiden title for Ferrari.Last season's world championship was remarkable for the fact there were seven race-winners in the first seven races before Alonso went toe-to-toe with Red Bull ace Vettel...

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Temple Run 2 scores record as fastest-growing mobile game

Temple Run 2 for Android(Credit:Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)Temple Run addicts have propelled its sequel into new territory.In 13 days, Temple Run 2 has been downloaded more than 50 million times by iOS, Android, and Kindle users, developer Imangi Studios said yesterday, making it the fastest-growing mobile game ever.In reaching this milestone, the action game topped the previous record holder,...

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Cell users complain: Too many Amber Alerts

LOS ANGELES The next time a child is abducted near you, your cell phone may shriek to life with an alert message. A new national Amber Alert system officially rolled out earlier this month to millions of cell phones, and because the alerts are automatically active on most newer phones, the messages have already taken tens of thousands of people by surprise. The newly-expanded emergency alert system...

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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

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Syrian rebels make slow headway in south

AMMAN (Reuters) - The revolt against President Bashar al-Assad first flared in Deraa, but the southern border city now epitomizes the bloody stalemate gripping Syria after 22 months of violence and 60,000 dead. Jordan next door has little sympathy with Assad, but is wary of spillover from the upheaval in its bigger neighbor. It has tightened control of its 370-km (230-mile) border with...

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Scoot airlines to increase fleet, expand routes

SINGAPORE: Scoot, the low cost long haul subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, has flown about 600,000 passengers after seven months of operation.This means carrying about 85,000 travellers per month. The carrier also has a passenger load factor of about 81 per cent and currently flies to eight destinations, including Tianjin, Shenyang and the Gold Coast. Speaking at the "world's low cost...

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iOS 6.1 wins over 22 percent of iOS users, says report

Apple's iOS 6.1 has lured in a hefty number of users, at least according to data out yesterday from Onswipe.Released on Monday, Apple's latest OS update was downloaded by 21.8 percent of iOS users within just 36 hours. Among the iOS users tracked by Onswipe, 24 percent were iPhone owners and 21 percent iPad owners.Further, Onswipe data sent to CNET showed that 11.3 percent of users had already upgraded...

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Child-hostage taker, Ala. police keep up standoff

Updated at 11:29 a.m. ET MIDLAND CITY, Ala. A standoff that started when a man boarded a school bus full of children near his home in a rural Alabama neighborhood, killed the driver and took one 5-year-old boy hostage continued for a third day Thursday. Police have not identified the suspect or the child hostage. People who live along the rutted red clay road said the suspect is a retired truck...

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Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."She told the Senate to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside her astronaut husband Mark Kelly as...

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Merkel urges Egypt's Mursi to hold crisis dialogue

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Egypt's Islamist president on Wednesday to open a dialogue with all political forces in the crisis-ridden Arab country after a week of violence that has killed more than 50 people. President Mohamed Mursi flew to Germany to try to convince Europe of his democratic credentials, but in a sign of the political tensions back home,...

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BlackBerry 10 unveiled, with company name change

NEW YORK: BlackBerry launched its comeback effort Wednesday with a revamped platform and a pair of sleek new handsets, along with a company name change as part of a move to reinvent the smartphone maker.Canadian-based Research in Motion said it had changed its name to BlackBerry as it launched the BlackBerry 10, the new platform aimed at helping the firm regain traction in a market now...

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BlackBerry goes glam, enlists Alicia Keys

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins greets Alicia Keys as the company's new global creative director. (Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET) BlackBerry wants to be hip, and it's going to to Alicia Keys for help. The Canadian smartphone maker, which previously called itself Research in Motion, today named Keys as its global creative director. The position is one BlackBerry created to help "inspire the future" of the company....

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Possible suspect for NYC mom missing in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey Turkish police on Wednesday were trying to trace a contact who apparently corresponded with a New York City woman through social networking sites before she went missing, an official said. Undated photo of Sarai Sierra/Facebook Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old mother of two from Staten Island, N.Y., has been missing since Jan. 21 when she was supposed to return home from a solo vacation...

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Obama's Immigration Plan to Have More Direct Path

President Barack Obama is expected to lay out his principles for immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas today that will include a potentially quicker path to citizenship than the bipartisan plan a group of senators unveiled earlier this week.The president will offer some new details about the White House's immigration reform plan, which expands on a blueprint it released in...

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Army warns unrest pushing Egypt to the brink

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief said political unrest was pushing the state to the brink of collapse - a stark warning from the institution that ran the country until last year as Cairo's first freely elected leader struggles to curb bloody street violence. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a U.S.-trained general appointed by President Mohamed Mursi last year to head the armed forces,...

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US Senate committee approves Kerry nomination

  WASHINGTON: Senator John Kerry easily cleared the first hurdle of his confirmation as the next secretary of state Tuesday with a unanimous vote of approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Kerry, President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation's top diplomat, must still be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate later in the day, but that was expected...

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