Govs make plea to Washington on budget cuts

The National Governors Association, a bipartisan collection of state executives meeting this weekend in Washington for their annual winter conference, delivered a timely message to lawmakers working on a deficit reduction package: balance the budget, by all means - but not at our expense. "Deficit reduction should not shift costs from the federal government to the states," said NGA chairman Gov....

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Pistorius Family: 'Law Must Run Its Course'

South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius is spending time his family today after the athlete was freed on $113,000 bail Friday."We realise that the law must run its course, and we would not have it any other way," the Olympian's uncle, Arnold Pistorius said in a statement on Saturday.The Pistorius family expressed their gratitude that the former Olympian was allowed out of jail...

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Egypt parliament election start moved to April 22

Katherine Webb, girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron, made headlines when she was spotted by ESPN's Brent Musberger at the National Championship game earlier this year.Now, the 23-year-old model - recently featured in the pages of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and a castmember on ABC's upcoming reality diving show, "Splash" -- explains how she's handling her sudden fa...

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Fighting rages in northern Mali after suicide bombs

BAMAKO: Tuareg militias battled Arab rebels in northern Mali Saturday, while French jets, US drones and Chad's elite desert forces were also in action in a major push to stamp out resistance from pockets of Islamist fighters.After recapturing the north's cities from the Al Qaeda groups that had controlled them since April 2012, the six-week-old French-led offensive took the fight to the...

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Samsung Oscars ad to feature Tim Burton

He can only add wit, surely.(Credit:The Hollywood Reporter/YouTube; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)When it comes to advertising, Samsung thinks it has Apple a touch jittery.With ad after ad, Samsung's brand image is becoming sharper, wittier, and more lovable.So the temptation to take over an awards ceremony in which actors desperately try to be sharper, wittier, and more lovable than other actors...

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LaHood: Time for GOP to "wake up" to avoid "calamity" at airports

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today warned of the "enormous impact" the looming sequester budget cuts will have on air travel in America, given that his department will have to cut nearly $1 billion from its budget, with more than $600 million coming from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As the one former Republican congressman in President Obama's cabinet, LaHood put the responsibility...

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial....

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Abe: Japan acting calmly in island dispute with China

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said he told President Barack Obama in a meeting that Japan would act calmly in its row with China over tiny islands in the East China Sea claimed by both Asian countries. "I explained that we have always been dealing with this issue ... in a calm manner," he said through a translator, while sitting next to Obama in the...

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Slovenian government slapped with no-confidence motion

LJUBLJANA: Slovenia's main opposition party Positive Slovenia (PS) filed Friday a no-confidence vote motion against the government, likely spelling an end for Prime Minister Janez Jansa's troubled administration."We have decided to bring this agony to an end," the head of PS's parliamentary group Jani Moderndorfer said after filing the motion in parliament.The centre-left party suggested...

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Difficult-to-repair Surface Pro built more like an ultrabook than a tablet

Cracking Open the Microsoft Surface ProWhen Microsoft built the Surface Pro, the designers packed the power of an ultrabook in the body of a tablet. Unfortunately, they also made the device nearly impossible for a typical consumer or even an in-house tech to service and repair. On this week's episode of Cracking Open, I take you inside the Surface Pro.Full TechRepublic teardown gallery: Cracking Open...

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Movement in budget cuts battle?

Play VideoSequestration poses threat to government agency budgetsFor the first time since the waning days of the "fiscal cliff" battle in late December, President Obama reached out to congressional Republican leaders to talk about next week's impending budget cuts known as the sequester. "He placed calls earlier today to [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and [House] Speaker [John] Boehner,"...

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Las Vegas Strip Shooting Leads to 3 Dead

A drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas strip early this morning by the occupants of a Range Rover SUV, who shot at the occupants of a Maserati, caused a multi-car accident and car explosion that left three dead.Police said that they believe a group of men riding in a black Range Rover Sport SUV pulled up alongside a Maserati around 4:20 a.m. today and fired shots into the car, striking...

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French, Malian forces fight Islamist rebels in Gao

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops fought Islamists on the streets of Gao and a car bomb exploded in Kidal on Thursday, as fighting showed little sign of abating weeks before France plans to start withdrawing some forces. Reuters reporters in Gao in the country's desert north said French and Malian forces fired at the mayor's office with heavy machineguns after Islamists were...

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Massive winter storm blankets central US

CHICAGO: A massive winter storm blanketed much of the central United States Thursday and looked set to keep dumping heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain for days as it makes its way slowly towards the east coast.The National Weather service reported that as much as 38 centimetres of snow had fallen in parts of Colorado and New Mexico by Thursday morning and warned that many areas would...

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McLaren P1 supercar to debut as plug-in hybrid

McLaren has been track-testing its P1 supercar, but only now revealed its plug-in hybrid drivetrain.(Credit:McLaren)When McLaren showed off its P1 supercar as a concept at last year's Paris Motor Show, I predicted it would have a similar engine to McLaren's other car the MP4-12C. Turns out I was half right.McLaren announced that the P1, which receives its production debut at the Geneva auto show the...

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Pistorius prosecution: Error in "testosterone" testimony

PRETORIA, South AfricaThe investigating officer in the Oscar Pistorius murder case made an error in his court testimony Wednesday when he identified a substance found in the athlete's bedroom as testosterone, the national prosecutor said. Medupe Simasiku, the spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecution Agency, told The Associated Press that it was too early to identify the substance as it was...

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Arias Can't Remember Gory Death of Ex-Boyfriend

Accused murderer Jodi Arias told an Arizona jury today that her ex-boyfriend became enraged when she dropped his new camera, body slammed her to a tile floor and threatened to kill her, and in the frantic struggle that followed she remembers a gun being fired accidentally but does not remember stabbing him.Her version of Travis Alexander's death was the culmination of more than...

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Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's government resigned on Wednesday after mass protests against high power prices and falling living standards, joining a long list of European administrations felled by austerity during four years of debt crisis. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, an ex-bodyguard who took power in 2009 on pledges to root out graft and raise incomes in the European Union's poorest member,...

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EU nears national budget oversight

BRUSSELS: The EU moved closer Wednesday to centralised oversight on national budgets, negotiators said, an increasingly sensitive topic as Brussels readies to issue new economic forecasts with France in the firing line over puny growth and a probable deficit overshoot.Long-contested tweaks to a package of laws designed to harmonise economic governance especially across the eurozone met...

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Google looking for Glass Explorers

Wednesday's CNET Update does a barrel roll: Google looking for Glass Explorers Google wants you to fall in love with the idea of a computer on your face. It has released another promo video showing what Google Glass could do (even though it's not a real product yet), and launched a contest for a chance to buy a $1,500 prototype. But as Forbes points out, people are using the #ifihadglass hashtag...

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Pistorius' account of shooting, in his own words

Oscar Pistorius, the famed double amputee South African Olympian, has been charged by prosecutors with intentionally murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his Pretoria home. Play VideoPistorius: I thought girlfriend was a burglarHe has said it was an accident, that he mistook her for a burglar when he fired several rounds through a locked bathroom door with a 9mm pistol. When a judge ruled...

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'Celebrity Rehab' in Spotlight After McCready's Death

Dr. Drew Pinsky defended his show "Celebrity Rehab" on "The View" today, saying that he received messages of support from former participants after the death of Mindy McCready. . She was the fifth person who has appeared on the show to die in the past two years.Dr. Drew was defending his show in the face of fresh criticism from the public and recovery advocates who say the process...

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Syria "Scud-type" missile said to kill 20 in Aleppo

AMMAN (Reuters) - A Syrian missile killed at least 20 people in a rebel-held district of Aleppo on Tuesday, opposition activists said, as the army turns to longer-range weapons after losing bases in the country's second-largest city. The use of what opposition activists said was a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds against an Aleppo residential district came after rebels...

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Pistorius says "no intention" to kill girlfriend

PRETORIA: South African Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday tearfully denied the premeditated murder of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, telling a court he shot at her through a locked bathroom door believing she was an intruder."I am absolutely mortified by the events and the devastating loss of my beloved Reeva," Pistorius said in an affidavit at a court hearing in the capital...

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Where, oh where are all the grounded 787 Dreamliners?

Boeing's 787 Dreamliners on the assembly line at the aviation giant's Everett, Wash. facility.(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)There's been no shortage of publicity and investigation surrounding the grounding of the world's 787 Dreamliner fleet after recent battery fires aboard the Boeing airplanes. But there's one question that has gone unanswered: Where are all those Dreamliners?Thanks to our friends...

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Jerry Buss, longtime Lakers owner, dead at 80

LOS ANGELES Jerry Buss, the Los Angeles Lakers' playboy owner who shepherded the NBA team to 10 championships from the Showtime dynasty of the 1980s to the Kobe Bryant era, died Monday. He was 80. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant. 23 PhotosJerry Buss: 1933-2013 Buss had been hospitalized for most of the past 18 months while undergoing cancer...

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