Berlusconi Remains the Wild Card in Italy Race

ROME — One candidate promised to drop an unpopular new property tax and refund all prior payments in cash. Another called that proposal a “poisoned meatball,” disconnected from reality. A third suggested that Al Qaeda blow up the Italian Parliament — then backtracked — and the man generally considered the front-runner is campaigning on vague promises of stability, so has often been ignored. ...

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State fires contractor on tech project

SACRAMENTO – The state has fired the contractor on one of its biggest and most troubled technology projects after deep problems...

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Minka Kelly: 'I'm Not Worthy' of Acting with Oprah

By Jennifer Cress 02/08/2013 at 07:40 PM EST Minka Kelly as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Pacific Coast News It's intimidating enough to play Jackie O, but Minka Kelly felt even more pressure to perform when she found out who was joining the cast of her latest film,...

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Currents: Freedom Has Its Own Constraints

NEW YORK — On the surface, all they have in common is their Sunday airtime, at least in the United States. One television show is about English aristocrats, crisp, proper, well-dressed even in bed. The other is about four young women, often lost and very often unclothed, in a setting quite different from Yorkshire: Brooklyn, New York. But “Downton Abbey” and “Girls,” both hugely popular,...

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Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.Blacks were five times more likely than whites...

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Bar trivia is more than just fun and games

The door to the bar in Palms swung open, and strains of the theme from "Rocky III" burst into the street: "It's the eye of the...

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American Idol: Early Favorites Eliminated in Hollywood

TV Watch American Idol By Steve Helling 02/07/2013 at 10:30 PM EST From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban Michael Becker/FOX. At the beginning of Thursday's American Idol, there were 43 men left in the competition. The...

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I.H.T. Special: Social Media Firms Move to Capitalize on Popularity in Middle East

Suhaib Salem/ReutersEgyptian protesters look at Facebook during a demonstration in Cairo on January 14. DUBAI — For its most recent advertising push, the Saudi Arabian telecommunications giant Mobily did not turn to the street or television to engage with customers. Mobily paid to promote itself on Twitter. The use of social media exploded during the Arab Spring as people turned to cyberspace...

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New whooping cough strain in US raises questions

NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason the nation just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland."It's quite intriguing....

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Four Coursera online classes are deemed worthy of college credit

The new industry of large-scale online education will garner an important measure of academic respectability Thursday when the...

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Melissa McCarthy: It Was 'So Fun' to Look So Cheesy in Identity Thief

Stylewatch Style News Now 02/05/2013 at 05:30 PM ET Universal PicturesWhat’s funnier than Melissa McCarthy? Melissa McCarthy in ridiculous hair and makeup. And lucky for us, the star dons some crazy-bad (or good, depending on how...

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IHT Rendezvous: The Phantom Province in China's Economy

BEIJING – China has a “phantom province” pumping out nearly 5.8 trillion renminbi (about $930 billion) in gross domestic product last year, about equivalent to the output of its richest province, Guangdong, Chinese media reported this week.How so?Deliberately inflated figures from local officials are largely to blame, domestic media reported, as officials seek promotion for delivering the high growth...

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Critics seek to delay NYC sugary drinks size limit

NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents are pressing to delay enforcement of the city's novel plan to crack down on supersized, sugary drinks, saying businesses shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars to comply until a court rules on whether the measure is legal.With the rule set to take effect March 12, beverage industry, restaurant and other business groups have asked a judge to put it on hold at least until...

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Kids sever fingers during game of tug-of-war at school

About L.A. NowL.A. Now is the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news section for Southern California. It is produced by more than 80 reporters and editors in The Times’ Metro section, reporting from the paper’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters as well as bureaus in Costa Mesa, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Riverside, Ventura and West Los Angeles.Have a story tip for L.A. Now?Can I call...

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Snoop Dogg Gets the Party Started with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence

Caught in the Act 02/06/2013 at 06:00 AM EST Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence, inset: Snoop Lion (Dogg) Valerie Goodloe/PictureGroup; Frederick M. Brown/Getty Guess the "O" in "O.G." stands for Oscar.Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence both attended the Hollywood...

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 5

NEWS Gen. Moisés García Ochoa was blocked from becoming defense minister of Mexico after American officials expressed their concern that he had ties to drug traffickers. Ginger Thompson reports from New York, Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. On Monday, confirming what many historians and archaeologists had suspected, a team of experts at the University of Leicester...

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the...

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Friends, investigators seek answers in killing of O.C. couple

They met in college, two highly regarded basketball players who seemed to have the same winning touch on the court and off.After...

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Eva Longoria Reveals Valentine's Day (and Upcoming Birthday!) Plans

Caught in the Act 02/05/2013 at 06:00 AM EST Eva Longoria Denise Truscello/WireImage Eva Longoria already knows what she'll be doing on Valentine's Day.The actress visited the new restaurant and nightclub, She by Morton's, in Las Vegas – in which she is a part...

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The Lede Blog: Frank Video of Mass Sexual Assault in Cairo Is Released by Anti-Harassment Activists

Egyptian activists released a brutally frank video on Friday, using images recorded during the mass sexual assault of a woman last week in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to urge volunteers to join their campaign against attacks during demonstrations.The video, created by the filmmakers Aida Elkashef and Salam Yousry, uses disturbing overhead images of a crowd of men swarming around a woman being assaulted...

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the...

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Suspected child molester left L.A. archdiocese for L.A. schools

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School...

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Estonian pleads guilty in U.S. court to Internet advertising scam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included...

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What Football Game? Beyoncé Rocks the Superdome in Leather & Lace

Stylewatch Style News Now 02/03/2013 at 09:06 PM ET One thing was certain going into Super Bowl XLVII: Beyoncé was going to put on a killer halftime show, and she was going to look amazing doing it. And if she practiced until...

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IHT Rendezvous: In Villages, Praying for the Souls of Tibetan Self-Immolators

BEIJING — Since November, when winter began in the high Tibetan Plateau, thousands of Tibetan villagers have been gathering daily to pray for the souls of the nearly 100 Tibetans who have burned themselves to death in protest over Chinese rule, in a show of widespread support for the self-immolators among ordinary people, according to witness testimony from a person recently returned from the region.In...

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