Violence flares in Cairo as Egyptians vote

CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamists attacked the offices of an Egyptian opposition party newspaper on Saturday, security sources said, as people voted on a new constitution intended to pull the country out of a growing political crisis. The newspaper of the Wafd party in Cairo was targeted with petrol bombs and birdshot, the sources said, in the latest of a series of violent incidents surrounding...

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Obama picks Kerry for top diplomatic post: TV

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has chosen Senator John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as US secretary of state, news networks CNN and ABC reported Saturday.CNN cited a Democratic source who had spoken to Kerry, while ABC mentioned unnamed sources. Asked for comment by AFP, the White House did not immediately confirm the reports, but Kerry is seen as a frontrunner for the role.The...

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Apple rumors never cease

The iPad Mini will be a magnet for lots of rumors in the coming months.(Credit:Apple)Apple rumors are a fact of life. And it's silly to think that tech sites will begin writing fewer stories about the latestiPad/iPhone chatter. It's like asking the Washington press corps to stop writing about Beltway scuttlebutt or Hollywood reporters to cease scribbling about la la land -- however frivolous. Ain't...

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Conn. dad recalls loving, creative 6-year-old

NEWTOWN, Conn. Fighting back tears and struggling to catch his breath, the father of a 6-year-old gunned down in Friday's school shooting in Connecticut told the world about a little girl who loved to draw and was always smiling, and he also reserved surprising words of sympathy for the gunman. Robbie Parker's daughter Emilie was among the 20 children who died in the one of the worst attacks on...

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Conn. Victim's Father Remembers 'Loving' Daughter

(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman’s bullets not claimed her life, her father said.“My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that’s the kind...

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NATO says Syrian Scuds hit "near" Turkey

BEIRUT (Reuters) - NATO accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces of firing Scud missiles that landed near to the Turkish border, in explaining why it was sending anti-missile batteries and troops to the bloc's frontier. The Syrian government, which finds itself under attack from rebels in the capital Damascus and by a diplomatic alliance of Arab and Western powers, denies firing...

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Police hunt man who threatened shooting at US mosque

LOS ANGELES: Police in California are looking for a man who reportedly walked into a California mosque saying he had a gun and threatened to kill everyone, a spokeswoman said Friday.The man entered the Ibrahim Khalilullah Islamic Center in Fremont, south of San Francisco, during afternoon prayer Wednesday, said mosque leaders, urging official action to track down the man.According to witnesses,...

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'The Hobbit' 3D technology to a reviewer's eye

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' features a new 3D technology that some people have criticized for looking too much like TV.(Credit:New Line Cinema)Now that Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" has opened in theaters around the world, the most controversial thing about it isn't even that he somehow is making three 3-hour movies out of a 300-page children's story. No, it's the way...

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Hundreds pack Conn. church for vigil after rampage

Girls embraces outside St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, which was filled to capacity, during a healing service held in for victims of an elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. A gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, killing 26 people, including 20 children. / AP Photo/Charles Krupa NEWTOWN, Conn. Hundreds of people are packing a...

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Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then driving to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with at least two handguns and at least one semi-automatic rifle.There, before turning his gun on himself,...

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U.S., rebels urge gloomy Moscow to help oust Assad

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's rebel leadership and the United States seized on Russian pessimism over President Bashar al-Assad's future to urge Moscow to help push its ally into ceding power and end the battles closing in around his capital. "We want to commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime's days are numbered," the U.S. State...

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With Rice's withdrawal, US lawmakers eye Kerry for State

WASHINGTON: US Republican and Democratic senators were fiercely split over Susan Rice's withdrawal on Thursday as candidate for secretary of state, but they appeared to unite over a likely replacement: Senator John Kerry.UN ambassador Rice, a close ally of President Barack Obama, had been a frontrunner to replace Hillary Clinton as Washington's top diplomat but fell foul of a row over...

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Google Maps chief on ideas behind new iPhone version (podcast)

Daniel Graf, Google's director of Google Maps for mobile.(Credit:Google)Google Maps for iPhone is getting off to a very good start. It quickly became the No. 1 free iPhone app with lots of five star user reviews. To find out a bit more about what Google was thinking when it developed the app -- and to get some tech support on how to use its swiping features -- I spoke with Daniel Graf, Google's director...

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Donation-based hospital rescues Afghanistan's wounded

(CBS News) KABUL - In Afghanistan, an American soldier and two Afghans were killed by a car bomb Thursday. It happened near the U.S. airbase in Kandahar, a few hours after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta left there to meet with Afghan President Karzai. Taliban attacks have grown more frequent, causing a sharp rise in civilian casualties. There's one place where many of those lives are saved or lost....

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Health-Exchange Deadline Looms

All of the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," doesn't go into effect until 2014, but states are required to set up their own health care exchanges or leave it to the federal government to step in by next year. The deadline for the governors' decisions is Friday.The health insurance exchanges are one of the key stipulations of the new health care law. They will offer...

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North Korea rocket launch raises nuclear stakes

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents. The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver...

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Philippines typhoon death toll tops 900

MANILA: The death toll from the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year has climbed above 900, with hundreds still missing, the government said Thursday.Typhoon Bopha killed 902 people mostly on the southern island of Mindanao, where floods and landslides caused major damage in nearly 2,000 villages on December 4, the civil defence office said.A total of 615 people remain missing,...

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NYC may launch pilot program with app to hail taxis

A pilot program that lets users hail taxis with a smartphone app will soon be voted on.(Credit:Declan McCullagh/CNET)Whether people call a taxi or hail one can be a contentious matter in New York City -- because of rules set up between yellow cabs and for-hire vehicles. So, it's no surprise that a smartphone app that let users beckon yellow cabs is a topic of hot debate with the New York City Taxi...

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Bruce Springsteen kicks off Sandy benefit

Updated: 9:00 p.m. ETMusic filled New York's Madison Square Garden Wednesday night for the "12-12-12" gig all in the name of helping superstorm Sandy victims. Bruce Springsteen kicked off the star-studded concert, a fitting start for the benefit, which will aid hard-hit storm areas such as the rocker's native New Jersey. The Boss launched into "Land of Hope and Dreams" as audience members rose to...

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Mall Shooter Quit Job, Was Going to Hawaii

In the days before he stole a semiautomatic weapon and stormed into an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people in a shooting spree, Jacob Roberts quit his job, sold his belongings and began to seem "numb" to those closest to him.Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, told ABC News today that the man who donned a hockey mask and opened fire on Christmas shoppers...

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Egyptian army to host unity talks as crisis deepens

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief will host national unity talks on Wednesday, seeking to end a growing political and economic crisis in the Arab world's most populous nation. The meeting scheduled for 1430 GMT was called in response to a wave of protests since President Mohamed Mursi awarded himself sweeping powers on November 22 to push through a new constitution shaped by his Islamist...

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No attempt to shoot down N.Korea rocket: Japan govt

TOKYO: Japan did not try to shoot down a North Korean rocket as it passed over its southern island chain of Okinawa, the government said Wednesday, strongly condemning the launch.Tokyo confirmed the launch had taken place and that said it believed parts of the rocket had fallen into the sea off the Korean peninsula, with another part dropping into the ocean near the Philippines."Launch...

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Tech companies push Congress for feds' wireless spectrum

A group of tech companies is pressing Congress to provide more spectrum for use by portable electronics devices such astablets and smartphones.A letter sent to lawmakers today and signed by Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, and Samsung urged the technology committees in the House and Senate to consider auctioning some of the spectrum currently used...

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Suspect, two others, killed in Ore. mall shooting

Updated 8:40 p.m. ET PORTLAND, Oregon A gunman opened fire Tuesday in a Portland, Oregon-area shopping mall Tuesday, killing at least two people. Clackamas County sheriff's Lt. James Rhodes said the shooter is also dead, although he did say how the shooter was killed. An unknown other number of people were injured. Rhodes said they were still trying to get more details about the situation at the...

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