Turkey lifts objection to NATO cooperation with Israel

Turkey has given approval for Israel to participate in non-military NATO activities in 2013, withdrawing an earlier objection driven by an ongoing dispute between the former regional allies, a Turkish official said on Monday.Relations between Israel and what was once its only Muslim ally crumbled after Israeli marines stormed the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the...

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Thousands sign U.S. petition to deport Piers Morgan over gun comments

 More than 48,000 people have signed a petition that they posted on the White House website demanding that British CNN talk show host Piers Morgan be deported over comments he made on air about gun control.Morgan last week lambasted pro-gun guests on his show, after the December 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman shot dead 26 people, including...

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Catholic Church urges Irish to oppose abortion law

The head of Ireland's Catholic Church urged followers in his Christmas Day message to lobby against government plans to legalize abortion.Ireland, the only EU member state that currently outlaws the procedure, is preparing legislation that would allow limited access to abortion after the European Court of Human Rights criticized the current regime.The death last month of an Indian woman who was denied...

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Ambushed NY firemen shot dead; two police killed elsewhere

A gunman, who spent 17 years in prison for murder, ambushed and killed two volunteer firefighters and wounded two others on Monday near Rochester, New York, as they responded to a house fire he deliberately set, police said.William Spengler, 62, shot and killed himself after a gunfight with a police officer in Webster, a Rochester suburb, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said."It was a trap set...

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Japan's policy veteran Motegi likely to serve as trade minister: media

Incoming Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to pick policy veteran Toshimitsu Motegi as trade minister, who will also take charge of energy and other key economic policies, media reported on Tuesday.Motegi, 57, a former policy affairs chief for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), will tackle energy problems after last year's Fukushima nuclear crisis, as well as issues such as the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific...

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Why we should politicize the Newtown school shooting, starting right now

Two events, each more than a century old, instruct us about how we should act in the face of what happened Friday in Newtown, Conn.On March 25, 1911, fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan. Because the owners had locked the doors and stairwells, in an effort to prevent theft and unauthorized work breaks, the garment workers were trapped in the fire; 146 of them, almost...

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A memory of Robert Bork: A bracing, imaginative teacher

Robert Bork, who died today, will be best-remembered for two things: First, he was the solicitor general who, the night of the 1973 "Saturday NIght Massacre", obeyed Richard Nixon's directive to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, when Attorney General Eliot Richardson refused to do so. Second, he was rejected by the Senate after President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme...

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5 important facts and misconceptions about Asperger's syndrome

Crucial info about the developmental disorder that reportedly afflicted the alleged shooter in the Newtown massacre — and has been linked, incorrectly, to violent tendenciesWe have a natural, if often regrettable, tendency to fear the things we don't understand. In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings that claimed the lives of 20 young children, the blogosphere seized on unconfirmed reports that...

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President Obama's gun-violence task force: A cop-out?

Some gun-control advocates are displeased that Obama isn't taking immediate actionPresident Obama on Wednesday launched a gun-violence task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that will be charged with offering recommendations by January on how to prevent massacres like the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. "The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,"...

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What the dark side of Saturn looks like

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures the gas giant from an unusual angle, making for one haunting photographThanks to a rare set of circumstances not unlike a solar eclipse here on Earth, NASA's Cassini spacecraft was able to capture this photograph of Saturn on Oct. 17, 2012, during the craft's 174th orbit around the gigantic ringed planet. Noticeably missing is Saturn's signature brownish orange hue;...

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