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| In some states, gays fight for right to divorce Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 06:57 AM PST  HERNANDO, Miss. (AP) — Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham wants to force Mississippi, one of the America's most conservative states, to recognize her same-sex marriage. She hopes to do so by getting a divorce. Full Story | Top |
| Officials say health care website is improved Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 05:18 AM PST  WASHINGTON (AP) — The errors are fewer, the pages load faster, and more people can log on at the same time to the government's troubled health care website, according to Obama administration officials. Full Story | Top |
| Woman hurt in Alaska plane crash aids in rescue Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 01:45 AM PST  ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — After phoning for help in resuscitating her baby, a 25-year-old woman on a plane that crashed in remote southwest Alaska led searchers hampered by cold and fog to the crash site. Full Story | Top |
| Officials: Worst tech bugs over for Healthcare.gov Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 11:17 AM PST WASHINGTON (AP) — The worst of the online glitches, crashes and delays may be over for the problem-plagued government health care website, the Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday. Full Story | Top |
| White House meets goals for HealthCare.gov, but more work ahead Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 01:25 PM PST  Two months after the disastrous launch of a website that is a key component of President Barack Obama's healthcare law, administration officials said on Sunday they had met their goal of getting the HealthCare.gov site running smoothly but warned that it needs more fixes. Obama adviser Jeffrey Zients said a five-week emergency "tech surge" had doubled the capacity of the online health insurance portal that is crucial to helping millions of people shop for insurance plans, while making it more responsive and less prone to errors. The administration said the effort's key improvement was to increase HealthCare.gov's capacity to 50,000 simultaneous users, which would allow the site to handle at least 800,000 users per day. Full Story | Top |
| Karzai accuses U.S. of cutting Afghan military supplies Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 12:14 PM PST  By Hamid Shalizi KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused his U.S. ally on Sunday of withholding military supplies to press him to sign a bilateral security deal that will shape the U.S. military presence after most foreign troops leave in 2014. "The cutting of fuel supplies and support services to the Afghan army and police is being used as a means of pressure to ensure Afghanistan ... signs the Bilateral Security Agreement," a statement from Karzai's palace said. Karzai said last week he might refuse to sign the deal until after Afghanistan's presidential election in April 2014. "There has been no stoppage in the delivery of requested fuel and we continue to process all orders as soon as they are received," the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said in a statement. Full Story | Top |
| White House Declares Obamacare Website Fixed, But Problems Persist Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 08:03 AM PST  Two months after the troubled launch of its signature health care initiative, the Obama administration on Sunday announced that its online insurance marketplace now functions smoothly for the "vast majority" of consumers seeking to shop for and enroll in coverage. "We've doubled the system's capacity... Full Story | Top |
| Doting Granddad Overspends With His Time And Money Saturday, Nov 30, 2013 09:00 PM PST DEAR ABBY: I am ready to explode. My father-in-law dotes on my 16-year-old daughter, who is his only grandchild. The biggest issue, aside from his overspending, is that he takes her to and from school every day and then expects to stay and visit. I have neither the time nor the inclination to sit and chitchat with him about the same old stuff over and over. My husband doesn't want to be involved. (He doesn't get home until after his father has left, anyway.) It would probably end up in a nasty fight.I want to politely make "Dad" understand that he doesn't need to come in every single day. ... Full Story | Top |
| China's 1st Moon Rover Launches On Lunar Journey Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 11:07 AM PST  China's first-ever mission to land a rover on the moon has begun its journey to the lunar frontier. Riding atop a modified Long March 3B rocket, China's Chang'e 3 moon lander and its rover Yutu toward the moon at 1:30 a.m. Monday (Dec. 2) local time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the country's Sichuan province. The moon landing mission was the former Soviet Union's robotic Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976. "The Chang'e probe on its way to the moon, of course, is a symbol of China's national prowess," Zhang Zhenzhoung, director of China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center, according to a translation by the state-run CCTV news broadcast. Full Story | Top |
| India's Mars mission enters second stage; outpaces space rival China Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 11:25 AM PST  By Shyamantha Asokan NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's first mission to Mars left Earth's orbit early on Sunday, clearing a critical hurdle in its journey to the red planet and overtaking the efforts in space of rival Asian giant China. The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would carry India into a small club, which includes the United States, Europe and Russia, whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars. India's venture, called Mangalyaan, faces more hurdles on its journey to Mars. "While Mangalyaan takes 1.2 billion dreams to Mars, we wish you sweet dreams!" India's space agency said in a tweet soon after the event, referring to the citizens of the world's second-most populous country. Full Story | Top |
| Blue ribbon panels stumble on trimming red ink Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 11:17 AM PST  WASHINGTON (AP) — Since the end of World War II, more than a dozen high-profile bipartisan panels have been convened to tackle the nation's thorniest fiscal problems. Seldom have their recommendations spurred congressional action. Full Story | Top |
| Nobel Prize economist warns of U.S. stock market bubble Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 08:50 AM PST  An American who won this year's Nobel Prize for economics believes sharp rises in equity and property prices could lead to a dangerous financial bubble and may end badly, he told a German magazine. Robert Shiller, who won the esteemed award with two other Americans for research into market prices and asset bubbles, pinpointed the U.S. stock market and Brazilian property market as areas of concern. But in many countries stock exchanges are at a high level and prices have risen sharply in some property markets," Shiller told Sunday's Der Spiegel magazine. "I am most worried about the boom in the U.S. stock market. Full Story | Top |
| Stay classy, Bismarck! Will Ferrell anchors local North Dakota newscast as Ron Burgundy Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 10:23 AM PST Actor Will Ferrell surprised viewers in North Dakota on Saturday, co-anchoring KXMB-TV's newscast as Ron Burgundy, his mustached character from "Anchorman." Full Story | Top |
| Jeff Bezos' '60 Minutes' Surprise: Amazon Drones Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 05:14 PM PST  60 Minutes, though almost definitely not a fan of surprises at its own expense, tried to give one to its viewers tonight, promoting its interview with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as having a "big surprise" with "something he wanted to unveil for the first time" to correspondent Charlie Rose, who saw it and let out an "oh my god!" Full Story | Top |
| Unforgotten fighter of Korean war: U.S. pensioner a POW at 85 Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 05:23 AM PST  By Ju-min Park and James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - As autumn descended on a Korean countryside devastated by three years of intense war, a group of anti-communist guerrillas presented U.S. serviceman Merrill Edward Newman with a gold ring. He returned to North Korea last month as an American tourist and was snatched by authorities from his plane moments before it was due to depart for Beijing. The North Korean regime has nourished memories of the 1950-53 Korean War as the inspiration for the country's identity and acts as if the conflict is still happening. No peace treaty was signed between the United States, South Korea and North Korea. Full Story | Top |
| Obama administration declares victory on fixing HealthCare.gov Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 06:48 AM PST  The Obama administration declared victory on Sunday in its effort to get HealthCare.gov working smoothly for the vast majority of users, saying the site had reached a goal of handling 50,000 simultaneous users after a five-week "tech surge." In a six-page progress and performance report, administration officials said the troubled website could now handle at least 800,000 visitors per day, with the system remaining up at least 90 percent of the time. The new performance levels mark significant improvement after the Obamacare website's disastrous October 1 launch, when it crashed in the face of high traffic volumes and remained down 60 percent of the time for weeks. Full Story | Top |
| Ancient 'Ghostbuster Demon' Creatures Pooped Together Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 07:43 AM PST  Enormous herds of rhinolike animals turned parts of what is now Argentina into minefields of dung, new fossils reveal. These massive herbivores were dicynodonts, mammal-like reptiles that looked something like a cross between a rhinoceros and the demon dogs from "Ghostbusters." Argentine researchers have now found that these dicynodonts pooped in communal latrines, designated areas for depositing dung. "This is the only case of megaherbavore latrine and it's the oldest," found fossilized, said study researcher Lucas Fiorelli of the Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica in La Rioja, Argentina. Fiorelli and his colleagues began excavating in northwest Argentina two years ago and quickly uncovered fossilized poop — known as coprolites — by the bucket load. Full Story | Top |
| Record crowds over weekend, but spending declined Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 04:18 PM PST  NEW YORK (AP) — Did stores shoot themselves in the foot? Full Story | Top |
| Officials: Speed a factor in Paul Walker crash Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 11:53 AM PST  LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fans of "Fast & Furious" star Paul Walker created a makeshift memorial Sunday at the site where a car he was riding in crashed, killing the actor and a friend. Full Story | Top |
| China launches lunar probe carrying 'Jade Rabbit' moon buggy Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 10:47 AM PST  China launched its first ever extraterrestrial landing craft into orbit en route for the moon in the small hours of Monday, in a major milestone for its space program. The Chang'e-3 lunar probe, which includes the Yutu or Jade Rabbit buggy, blasted off on board an enhanced Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China's southwestern Sichuan province at 1:30 a.m. (12.30 p.m. EDT). President Xi Jinping has said he wants China to establish itself as a space superpower, and the mission has inspired widespread pride in China's growing technological prowess. If all goes smoothly, the rover will conduct geological surveys and search for natural resources after the probe touches down on the moon in mid-December as China's first spacecraft to make a soft landing beyond Earth. Full Story | Top |
| Iran 'will never abandon Arak heavy water reactor' Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 03:38 AM PST  Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi has said Tehran will never abandon the Arak heavy water reactor, considering it a "red line" in talks with world powers, media reported Sunday. "Your actions and words show you don't want us to have the Arak heavy water reactor which means you want to deprive us of our rights," Salehi was quoted as saying by the website of state broadcaster IRIB. Arak is of concern because, in theory, it could provide the Islamic republic with plutonium -- an alternative to highly enriched uranium used for a nuclear bomb. Full Story | Top |
| Philippines' embattled taxman takes aim at the famous Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 01:01 AM PST  The Philippines' taxman has long struggled to compel the country's elite pay its fair share, but a name-and-shame campaign targeting one of history's greatest boxers and the "sexiest woman alive" is aiming to change that. A crusade against wealthy Filipinos is part of President Benigno Aquino's high-profile effort to curb tax evasion throughout all sectors of society, a central plank of his quest to fight widespread corruption. Boxing hero Manny Pacquiao became the latest to be caught in the crosshairs when the Bureau of Internal Revenue froze his bank accounts last week for refusing to pay a $50-million tax bill related to earnings in the ring in 2008 and 2009. The boxer says he has already paid the required taxes in the United States and paying in the Philippines would equate to double taxation. Full Story | Top |
| New Zealand airline reveals image of Hobbit dragon Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 04:44 PM PST  AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's national airline unveiled a giant image Monday of the dragon Smaug on one of its planes to celebrate the premiere of the second movie in the Hobbit trilogy. Full Story | Top |
| China launches its first moon rover Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 09:55 AM PST  Beijing (AFP) - China launched its first moon rover mission early Monday, state TV showed, the latest step in an ambitious space programme seen as a symbol of its rising global stature. Full Story | Top |
| Doctor Shortage Could Rise Under Medicaid Expansion Sunday, Dec 01, 2013 02:30 AM PST  The major expansion of Medicaid coverage for low-income Americans under the Affordable Care Act is proving to be a double-edged sword for patients and the medical profession. Nine million uninsured people, many older and with complicated medical problems, will likely receive health insurance coverage in the coming year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Under Obamacare, the federal government will pay the entire cost of expanded health care coverage for the first three years and then 90 percent of the cost thereafter, with the states covering the rest. Only 25 states and the District of Columbia have signed on so far, however, as Republican governors and GOP-dominated state legislatures in most of the remaining states have opted out of the expanded program – either to protest Obamacare in general or out of fear that their states may end up having to pay a much larger share of the expanded Medicaid costs than the Obama administration promised. Full Story | Top |
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