NEWTOWN, Conn.—
An official with knowledge of Connecticut school shooting tells the Associated Press that 27 people are dead, including 18 children. Many of the shootings took place in a kindergarten classroom, sources told the Hartford Courant. The gunman is reported dead.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way, says the man apparently had two guns.

The shooting was reported at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, in western Connecticut. …

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The Los Angeles City Council will take up a resolution Friday calling for Southern California Edison to apply for a formal license amendment and hold a public hearing in order to restart two reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Clemente.

Unit 3 of the plant has been shut down since Jan. 31, when station operators detected a leak in one of its steam generator tubes. Inspectors later found premature wear in a …

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Amid a deepening involvement by the US in the ongoing civil war in Syria, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced he has ordered the deployment of two Patriot missile batteries and 400 US soldiers to Turkey as part of a wider NATO effort to militarize the border between the two countries.

Panetta signed the order shortly before an unannounced visit to the country on Friday. Speaking from the US Air Base in Incirlik, he said: “We …

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Today’s ruling on the CIA’s detention and rendition of German national Khaled El-Masri is a historic moment because for the first time it holds a European state accountable for its involvement in the secret US-led programmes and is a milestone in the fight against impunity, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said.

The European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia) was responsible for the …

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THANKS to apartheid, broken job markets and monopolistic mining, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The top 10% of households pocketed 58% of the income in 2008, according to researchers at the University of Cape Town. The country’s Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, was 0.7.

But South Africa’s inequality may soon be equalled by an unexpected rival: communist China. According to a new …

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Some 1,500 African elephant tusks — the biggest seizure ever — were found this week hidden within timber planks and destined for China’s ivory market. Shocked conservationists noted 2012 will now go down as the worst year in 24 years of records — and warned that 2013 could be even worse.
“In 2011 we thought the threats to elephants couldn’t get any worse and 2012 draws to a close with the depressing news that the slaughter …

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House speaker John Boehner has left open the door for a quick bill that would halt tax increases for the vast majority of Americans on January 1.

Boehner twice ducked questions from reporters during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday about whether he was prepared to allow a vote on a bill that would see the top 2% of the country’s richest face tax rises but exempt the remaining 98%.

With just over two weeks …

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North Korea launched a satellite into orbit via a multi-staged rocket this past Wednesday, fueling harsh criticism and demands for sanctions from the United States, Japan and South Korea. The US and its allies feared that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has made significant steps toward long range nuclear missile capability.

Japan has pushed for an emergency meeting of …

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The United Nations has announced a ten year $2.27 billion dollar program to end cholera in Haiti. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is seeking donations to fund the plan which will focus mostly on improving Haiti’s poor water and sanitation infrastructure which helps spread the disease. Cholera has killed close to 8,000 people in the tiny island nation of …

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“We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth others are here for I don’t know.” — W.H. Auden …