Cascade Public Library

Abortion-rights backers want quick action from the president-elect, although they may not press for sweeping changes. Obama has said he is looking to find common ground on reproductive health issues.

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Evan Ratliff eschewed his identity and picked up a new one, challenging Wired readers to find him in 30 days in a contest sponsored by the magazine. Lured by a cash price, readers mobilized online in a mad dash to locate Ratliff — who got a little too cocksure for his own good.

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Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said there may be additional e-mails that could have tipped off law enforcement or military officials to the alleged Fort Hood shooter before the deadly rampage.

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The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.

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Narseal Batiste, who faced a maximum of 70 years in prison, was convicted in May of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida, plotting to blow up buildings and conspiracy to wage war against the U.S. Officials acknowledged the plot never got past the discussion stage and the group never acquired the means to carry it out.

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Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday.

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Brazil's ghettos are poverty stricken and violent. But there are people fighting against the odds to turn things around for the poor children of Rio de Janeiro. Among them is an unusual apostle: a Rio socialite who founded a school for slum-dwelling children and views education as an equalizer.

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When the Marines of "America's Battalion" first arrived in Afghanistan, they were eager to get into the fight against the Taliban. Now, as they wrap up their seven-month deployment — and after the loss of a dozen comrades — they see warfare in a different light.

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Based on studies, two panels of medical experts this week recommended fewer screening tests for breast and cervical cancer. But people don't always want to do what the data say to do.

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News from Yemen has been dominated recently by an escalating rebellion along the border with Saudi Arabia. But the country has been making news for decades because of its severe overuse of a rapidly disappearing water supply, the result of natural and political causes.

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Levies on liposuction, breast augmentation and other cosmetic procedures would generate billions of dollars to help cover the uninsured.

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Raging floods engulfed northern England's Lake District on Friday, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes. In Ireland, more than 3 feet of water shut down the center of the country's second-largest city, Cork, and more than a dozen other towns and villages.

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Police arrested three members of a gang in the Peruvian jungle that allegedly has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed doubt about an international black market for human fat, though it does have cosmetic applications.

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The Ohio school has a 20,000-seat stadium, a $3 million indoor practice facility and a live tiger for a mascot. Massillon teams have won 22 state championships and they're in the running for another one. It's football "sunup to sundown," the head coach says.

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The Senate Ethics Committee on Friday admonished Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., for making "inconsistent, misleading or incomplete" statements about the circumstances surrounding his appointment to the seat once held by Barack Obama. The committee didn't recommend any punishment.

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Thousands of University of California students converged on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles Thursday, as regents adopted a 30 percent fee hike. It's one of the latest signs of California's continuing economic crisis. UC officials say, faced with a huge deficit of their own, they have no choice but to raise the fees. Many students say they can't afford to pay more.

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The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is offering new guidelines for cervical cancer screening — delaying the start of pap smears for young women and cutting back on the frequency of the tests. These guidelines were released just days after a different group caused a furor by recommending that most women wait until they're 50 to start getting mammograms.

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The fight over health care has moved to the Senate, and that means the fight over abortion is there as well. Earlier this month, the House passed a bill that would ban federal funding of abortion, but most Democrats say it went too far. Can the Senate's version strike a compromise?

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi expects health care and Afghanistan to dominate work on Capitol Hill in the new year. Pelosi says she believes a health-care bill will pass, despite fierce debate over language about abortion. And she tells Renee Montagne that she doesn't sense wide support among House members for a significant troop increase.

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The Senate is conducting hearings into the recent shootings at Fort Hood — a tragedy that took place just miles from the site of a deadly 1991 attack. That episode, in which a gunman killed 23 people at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, reshaped how police, medical and psychological personnel respond to such tragedies.

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