Wordnik, the online dictionary, brings some of the Web’s vox populi to the definition of words. It shows “what’s out there right now,” one of its founders says.
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Novelties: Wordnik’s Online Dictionary: No Arbiters, Please
The first of twin research spacecraft entered the moon's orbit Saturday, part of an effort to learn more about how it and other terrestrial bodies formed, NASA said.
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NASA gravity probe reaches lunar orbit
In this remote, sun-blasted corner of southern Yemen, there’s a battle raging that is as important to the United States as it is to this nation’s beleaguered government. Each day, American-backed Yemeni forces engage in a grueling struggle to retake territory from militant Islamists — a conventional army pitted against a guerrilla militia with grand ambitions to stage an attack on U.S. soil. Each day, the soldiers feel increasingly besieged. Read full article > >
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Militants create haven in southern Yemen
President Obama on Saturday signed a $662 billion defense authorization bill despite “serious reservations” about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.
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Obama signs defense bill ‘despite reservations’
Rescuers are searching the waters of the River Tyne in Newcastle after reports that a man has jumped from the Tyne Bridge.
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Police search for bridge leap man
IN 1918 A GERMAN scholar named Oswald Spengler produced a weighty tome titled “Decline of the West,” which had quite a vogue in the first half of the 20th century and probably still sits unread in American homes. Spenglerian prose — “Like the cosmic cycle of the blood, the differentiating activity of sense is originally a unity.” — did not prove to be the stuff of bestsellers, but as other authors have discovered to their profit, the idea of decline and fall continues to have considerable commercial appeal in this country, which despite its habitual optimism also contains a streak of doubt about its good fortune and how long it can last. Read full article > >
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The New Year
North Korea calls on the country to defend the new leader, Kim Jong-un, to the death, in a New Year’s message released by state media.
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N Korea urges Kim Jong-un loyalty
BEIRUT — Two leading factions of Syria’s political opposition moved toward forming a coalition by agreeing on a blueprint for a democratic transition of power, a step hailed and condemned by their deeply divided members. The accord by the leaders of the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change (NCC) rejects foreign intervention in Syria but calls for the protection of civilians by all legitimate means, according to a statement on the latter group’s Web site. Read full article > >
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Syrian opposition factions broker shaky agreement
Police and the fire department in Los Angeles are on high alert as a spate of arson attacks.
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VIDEO: Arson alert in LA after attacks
For all the hand-wringing about money in politics, a few Iowans spent the year hand-wringing about how little of it they were seeing. Station managers and sales teams at Iowa television stations had expected major profits but saw very little until the past few weeks, when PACs and candidate campaigns poured into their empty coffers pennies from heaven. Read full article > >
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As Iowa caucuses near, TV stations see ad buys boom after long lull
A man is detained at an airport in the US state of Texas after trying to carry explosives through security.
PHOENIX — Christina-Taylor Green’s mother made sure her daughter had a hoodie to keep her warm and was buckled into the car that would take her to grocery store where she going to meet Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The plan was for the 9-year-old budding student of politics to ask the congresswoman about global warming and then go get her toes done and eat lunch with the neighbor who arranged the outing. Green’s mother, who had to pick up Christina-Taylor’s brother at karate, told her daughter that she loved her, and her daughter did the same. Read full article > >
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Book by mother of girl killed in Tucson shooting reflects on daughter’s life, pain of attack
As they do every December 31, revelers around the world spent Saturday-into-Sunday ushering in the new year in their distinctive way. One of the most common was by watching fireworks light up the nighttime sky, though people also found other ways to celebrate and do all that they can to make sure the next 12 months proceed as they wish.
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Underwear, grapes part of traditions
As Iowa caucuses near, TV stations see ad buys boom after long lull
Saturday, December 31st, 2011Book by mother of girl killed in Tucson shooting reflects on daughter’s life, pain of attack
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
