Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city
















BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.


SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.













The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.


The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.


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Ohio teen gets prison for life in Craigslist murders
















AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) – Seventeen-year-old Brogan Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for his role in the killing of three men, two of whom were lured by a Craigslist ad promising work on an Ohio farm.


Rafferty was 16 when he was arrested in November 2011, but was tried as an adult. He was convicted late last month in the murders of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Virginia; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron, Ohio; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio.













Rafferty also got 10 years for the attempted murder of Scott Davis, who was shot in the arm while escaping after meeting Rafferty and alleged triggerman Richard Beasley.


Prosecutors called the teen an apt pupil to Beasley, 53, who is also charged in the murders.


Rafferty testified that he was terrified of the man he had considered a father figure and spiritual adviser after he saw Beasley shoot Geiger in the head execution-style.


Beasley allegedly enticed Geiger with the offer of a non-existent caretaker job, killed him, stole his identity, and then drew other victims by posting the bogus job on Craigslist.


Rafferty, wearing prison stripes with hands clasped in front of him, told the court Friday that Beasley an “evil, deceitful cruel murderer,” but admitted the he bore some responsibility.


“I was involved, I didn’t like it, and now I see there were many options I couldn’t see then that I see now, but I can’t make anything better and I’m sorry,” he said.


Judge Lynn Callahan called Rafferty’s case “heartbreaking” but said she did not accept that he had no way out of his situation.


“You embraced the evil, you studied it,” she said. She said Rafferty had been dealt “a lousy hand in life,” but she found nothing in the case that could be chalked up to the recklessness of youth.


“You could have been so much more; you are so intelligent,” the judge told Rafferty.


During the trial, jurors heard testimony that the teen helped dig graves for some of the men and was found in possession of guns and knives stolen from them after Beasley shot them.


Beasley’s trial is scheduled in the same courtroom for January 7. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Both Rafferty’s and Beasley’s attorneys are under a gag order and are not permitted to talk to the media.


Under Ohio law, juveniles older than 15 who are charged with a serious offense and crimes that involve a firearm are sent to adult court for trial.


Last summer, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles. The high court found that judges and juries passing sentence on juvenile murders must weigh mitigating circumstances, including the youth’s role and family background.


A 2005 Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional to execute anyone under the age of 18.


Rafferty’s attorney Jill Flagg objected to his sentence and will appeal.


In other incidents involving Craigslist and other social media, people advertising goods for sale or responding to ads have been attacked and killed.


In 2009, a former medical student was accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist. In February, two men in Tennessee were accused of killing a man and a woman for “unfriending” the daughter of one of the suspects on Facebook.


(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Eric Walsh)


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Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez have broken up, reports say
















LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Justin Bieber and his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, a Disney actress and singer, have broken up, ending a relationship that made them one of Hollywood’s most high-profile young couples, media reports said.


Bieber, 18, and Gomez, 20, disclosed their relationship in February 2011 when they appeared together at an Oscar night party after months of rumors of their dating.













E! Online late on Friday was the first to report the split, with other media outlets including US Weekly and People also saying the relationship was over. The reports cited unnamed sources close to the couple.


Representatives for Bieber and Gomez did not returns calls or emails on Saturday.


Bieber has released two No. 1 albums in just over a year – the holiday-themed “Under the Mistletoe” and his latest, “Believe.” In September, he topped Billboard’s “21 Under 21″ list of top young musical acts. It was his second year in a row with the title.


Gomez rose to fame as a teenager in the Walt Disney Co television series “Wizards of Waverly Place” and has enjoyed success as a pop singer.


(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Greg McCune and Peter Cooney)


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California teen steps into rattlesnake nest, survives
















SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – A teenage California girl searching for a cell phone signal to call her mother in a rural area outside San Diego inadvertently stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes and was bitten six times, but survived.


The 16-year-old, Vera Oliphant, spent four days in the intensive care unit of Sharp Grossmont Hospital, and doctors gave her 24 vials of antivenom after she was bitten by an adult rattlesnake and five young rattlers outside her uncle’s home.













“I was trying to find a signal to call my mom and text my boyfriend,” Oliphant said on Friday, a day after she was released from the hospital following the October 27 incident.


“I didn’t see them until I already stepped on their nest and I felt them biting me.”


“My vision started to go right away. First it looked like the snakes blended into the leaves and then I started seeing black spots around the edges and I started blacking out.”


She returned to her uncle’s home in Jamul, outside San Diego, and he immediately packed her into the car and rushed her to the emergency room, she said.


On the way, she talked to her mom and her boyfriend, who told her to stay calm so the venom wouldn’t spread.


“I told my mom and my boyfriend I love them in case I don’t get to see them again,” she said.


Doctors there administered 24 vials of antivenom to quash the dangerous toxins, according to a hospital spokesman. Snakebites usually aren’t fatal, although a handful of people die in the United States each year from snake bites, including bites from rattlesnakes.


Oliphant has recovered and will be returning to classes at Chaparral High School in El Cajon on Monday. She said the next time she can’t get a signal, she will handle it differently.


“Be careful where you step,” she said. “If you don’t need to, just wait until you are somewhere that you can call people.”


(Editing By Cynthia Johnston and Todd Eastham)


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Lockheed boss resigns over affair

















US defence company Lockheed Martin says its incoming president and chief executive officer has resigned over a relationship with a subordinate.













Christopher Kubasik resigned after an internal ethics investigation confirmed the “close personal relationship”, the company said in a statement.


He was due to take over as head of the company next year after serving as its chief operating officer.


Another Lockheed executive, Marillyn Hewson, will now become CEO in January.


Chairman and outgoing CEO Robert Stevens said he was “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the relationship, which he described as “inconsistent with our values and standards”.


But he said the company had a “strong leadership team and a robust succession plan”.


Lockheed Martin is a defence and aerospace company based in Maryland that employs some 120,000 worldwide.


Its net sales for 2011 were $ 46.5bn (£29bn).


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Syria opposition bloc elects Christian as leader
















DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Syria‘s main opposition group in exile has elected a Christian Paris-based former geography teacher as its new president.


George Sabra said Friday that his election as head of the Syrian National Council is a sign that the opposition is not plagued by sectarian divisions.













Sabra says the SNC‘s main demand is to receive weapons from the international community. The U.S. and some other foreign backers of rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad have so far refused to send weapons for fear they can fall into the wrong hands.


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Spotify to raise $100 million at $3 billion valuation – report
















(Reuters) – Spotify is in the middle of a $ 100 million financing round that could value the music streaming company at just over $ 3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources.


The Journal said Spotify would raise the fresh capital from multiple investors including Goldman Sachs. The WSJ report did not name any other investors.













Spotify has raised capital from outside investors several times since it set up shop in 2006, and was earlier reported to have been looking to secure a capital boost of about $ 200 million, at a valuation of about $ 4 billion.


Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners and others have invested about $ 189 million in the company in its prior financing rounds.


The company has over 15 million active users and 4 million paying subscribers, for its on-demand service, which offers unlimited music streaming of some 18 million tracks.


(Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore)


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Philip Roth says he’s done writing
















NEW YORK (AP) — Exit, Philip Roth? Having conceived everything from turning into a breast to a polio epidemic in his native New Jersey, Roth has apparently given his imagination a rest.


The 79-year-old novelist recently told a French publication, Les inRocks, that his 2010 release “Nemesis” would be his last. Spokeswoman Lori Glazer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said Friday that she had spoken with Roth and that he confirmed his remarks. Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, declined comment.













Roth certainly produced, completing more than 20 novels over half a century and often turning out one a year. He won virtually every prize short of the Nobel and wrote such classics as “American Pastoral” and “Portnoy’s Complaint.”


His name will remain on new releases, if only because the Library of America has been issuing hardcover volumes of his work. Roth also is cooperating with award-winning biographer Blake Bailey on a book about his life.


The author chose an unexpected forum to break the news, but he has been hinting at his departure for years. He has said that he no longer reads fiction and seemed to say goodbye to his fictional alterego, Nathan Zuckerman, in the 2007 novel “Exit Ghost.”


Retirement is rarely the preferred option for writers, for whom the ability to tell stories or at least set down words is often synonymous with life itself. Poor health, discouragement and even madness are the more likely ways literary careers end. Roth apparently is fit and his recent novels had been received respectfully, if not with the awe of his most celebrated work.


“I don’t believe it,” Roth’s friend and fellow writer Cynthia Ozick said upon learning the news. “A writer who stops writing while still breathing has already declared herself posthumous.”


His parting words from “Nemesis”: “He seemed to us invincible.”


Roth’s interview appeared in French and has been translated, roughly, by The Associated Press. He tells Les inRocks that “Nemesis” was “mon dernier livre” (“My last book”) and refers to “Howard’s End” author E.M. Forster, and how he quit fiction in his 40s. Roth said he doesn’t plan to write a memoir, but will instead go through his archives and help ensure that Bailey’s biography comes out in his lifetime.


Explaining why he stopped, Roth said that at age 74 he became aware his time was limited and that he started re-reading his books of the past 20-30 years, in reverse order. He decided that he agreed with what the boxer Joe Louis had said late in life, that he had done the best he could with what he had.


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Democrats declare Obama the winner in Florida
















MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida‘s Democratic Party declared victory for President Barack Obama in the closely divided battleground state on Thursday, as he clung to a narrow but apparently insurmountable lead in the glacially slow tallying of votes from Tuesday’s election.


If Obama wins Florida, it will add to his Electoral College margin and he will have won all of the key U.S. swing states except North Carolina, which he carried in 2008.













“On behalf of Florida Democrats, I wish President Barack Obama congratulations on his re-election and on his winning Florida’s 29 electoral votes,” Rod Smith, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said in a statement.


In a tacit concession, Republican Party of Florida spokesman Brian Burgess said in an email that he and other Romney supporters were “obviously not happy with the result” in the Sunshine State.


“But given the wave that we saw all over the country, we’re glad that we gave them enough of a fight in Florida to prolong the battle here as long as we did,” Burgess said.


As of Thursday evening, Obama had 49.92 percent of the statewide vote, versus 49.22 percent for Romney, according to the Florida Division of Elections.


Two of the three counties where ballots were still being tallied, Broward and Palm Beach, are heavily Democratic. The third county, Duval, has more registered Democrats than Republicans but has traditionally leaned Republican in presidential contests.


Just 58,055 votes separated the two candidates, but that was far more than in the 2000 election, when Republican George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and captured the White House after a recount dispute that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.


The slow-moving vote count in Florida has already made it the brunt of jokes on late-night television and conjured up ugly memories of the situation 12 years ago, when Florida was the cause of electoral gridlock.


This time, Florida seemed almost seemed irrelevant since Obama handily won re-election without its 29 electoral votes – the biggest prize of any of the nine key U.S. swing states.


HISPANICS FOR OBAMA


No officials were willing on Thursday to predict exactly when the race in the fourth most populous U.S. state, which has 67 counties, would be officially declared as decided. But barring any big surprises, Obama looked set to get a bump from Florida that would lift his electoral vote count to 332 over 206 for Romney.


“It’s appalling that two days after the election, Florida was not able to report our presidential election results,” Smith said in his statement.


“This embarrassment lays at the feet of Governor Rick Scott, who made a decision to cut early-voting in half and continually refused to extend early voting hours in light of the record turnout,” Smith said.


In comments earlier in Orlando, the Republican governor adamantly refused to accept responsibility for Florida’s failure to hold an election that was free of controversy.


Scott’s decision not to extend early voting, after it was cut back to eight days from 14 by the Republican-controlled legislature, has been cited by many Floridians as a cause of exceedingly long voter lines on Tuesday.


Scott told Reuters, “We did the right thing” when asked about the decision, which many saw as a move to blunt voter turnout for Obama.


The length of ballots, which included 11 proposed state constitutional amendments backed by the legislature, has also been blamed for long lines at polling places and delays in tallying final results. Scott said: “The amendments don’t go through the governor. The amendments only go through the legislature.”


Smith attributed Obama’s victory, at least in part, to what he described as “the strongest, largest ground game” Democrats had ever mounted in Florida, all part of a carefully calculated get-out-the vote effort.


The Obama campaign also cited a large turnout by the state’s 1.4 million Hispanics, who voted heavily for the president. Obama won a record 61 percent of Hispanic votes in Florida, up from 57 percent in 2008, according to exit polling data compiled by Bendixen & Amandi, research and media consultants for the Obama Hispanic campaign.


Democrats made surprising inroads in the Cuban-American community, capturing 48 percent of the traditionally conservative Cuban-American vote, according to Bendixen & Amandi, surpassing the 35 percent mark set by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1996.


“This really is a sea change,” said Sergio Bendixen, a longtime Miami pollster. “The Cuban community is no different from anywhere else in the country. It is lower middle-class, it does not have health insurance and it wants to have it. It counts on Medicare and Social Security and it’s finally figured out which party is defending their interests.”


He said the growing population of 380,000 Puerto Ricans in central Florida was also pivotal. They preferred Obama over Romney by a margin of 83 percent to 17 percent.


(Additional reporting by David Adams in Miami, Barbara Liston in Orlando and Michael Peltier in Tallahassee; Editing by Philip Barbara and Peter Cooney)


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Asian stocks sink on US fiscal cliff fears
















HONG KONG (AP) — Asian stock markets sank Friday, weighed down by fears over the so-called U.S. “fiscal cliff” that investors see as a big threat to the economic recovery.


Japan‘s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.9 percent to 8,757.39 and Hong Kong‘s Hang Seng shed 0.5 percent to 21,453.49. South Korea‘s Kospi retreated 1 percent to 1,894.85 and Australia‘s S&P ASX 200 dropped 0.5 percent to 4,462.20.













The slump in Asia mirrored the trend in markets worldwide as investors have refocused on challenges to the world economy following U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election. Many worry that gridlock in Washington will prevent the president and Congress from reaching a deal before the package of tax increases and government spending cuts kicks in on Jan. 1.


Declines were more muted in mainland China, where investors were awaiting a number of economic indicators that would provide the latest update on the slowdown in the world’s second biggest economy.


The Shanghai Composite Index dipped 0.3 percent to 2,065.92, while the Shenzhen Composite Index lost 0.3 percent to 828.78.


The Chinese benchmarks briefly swung into positive territory after a report released just after trading started showed October inflation had eased to 1.7 percent, giving room for more stimulus. But investors stayed cautious as they awaited industrial production, fixed asset investment and retail sales figures later in the day.


“Markets may stabilize and possibly rebound on Chinese data for October, which we expect to show acceleration of output amid muted price pressures,” strategists at Credit Agricole CIB wrote in a research note.


On Wall Street, the Dow closed down nearly 1 percent to 12,811.32, bringing its two-day loss to 434 points. The Standard and Poor’s 500 index fell 1.2 percent to 1,377.51 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite slipped 1.4 percent to 2,895.58.


In currencies, the euro weakened to $ 1.2748 from to $ 1.2750 late Thursday. The dollar strengthened to 79.49 Japanese yen from 79.38 yen.


Crude oil for December delivery was up 12 cents to $ 85.22 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 65 cents to close at $ 85.09 on Thursday.


Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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