Jessica Simpson's Christmas gift: She's pregnant

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Simpson's daughter has the news all spelled out: "Big Sis."Simpson on Tuesday tweeted a photo of her baby daughter Maxwell playing in the sand, the words "Big Sis" spelled out.The 32-year-old old singer and personality has been rumored to be expecting again. The tweet appears to confirm the rumors."Merry Christmas from my family to yours" is the picture's caption. Simpson used...

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Russian Prosecutor Seeks Acquittal in Magnitsky’s Death

MOSCOW — A prosecutor unexpectedly pressed Monday for the acquittal of the only official to be tried in the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer whose death in prison three years ago generated an international furor over Russian human rights abuses. The prosecutor’s turnabout, made in his closing argument, came as the Russian government has been moving aggressively to retaliate against the...

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Find room for God in fast-paced world, pope says on Christmas eve

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas, on Monday urged people to find room for God in their fast-paced lives filled with the latest technological gadgets.The 85-year-old pope, marking the eighth Christmas season of his pontificate, celebrated a solemn Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s Basilica, during which he appealed for a solution to the Arab-Israeli...

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Thousands sign US petition to deport Piers Morgan

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his "Piers Morgan Tonight" show an "unbelievably stupid man."Now, gun...

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Gifts That Keep Giving (if Not Exploding)

Gregory Tobias/Chemical Heritage Foundation CollectionsA Chemcraft set from the mid-1950s. More Photos »Ask scientists of a certain age about their childhood memories, and odds are they’ll start yarning about the stink bombs and gunpowder they concocted with their chemistry sets. Dangerous? Yes, but fun. “Admittedly, I have blown some things up in my time,” said William L. Whittaker, 64,...

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RIM’s biggest problem: It’s still scrambling to catch yesterday’s hottest mobile app

The moment I first realized that RIM (RIMM) was truly in enormous trouble was back in 2010 when I heard then co-CEO Jim Balsillie downplay the importance of apps. Yes, you read that correctly. Balsillie actually told attendees at a Web 2.0 summit in 2010 that the Internet itself was the most important “app” for mobile devices and contended that the “Web needs a platform that allows...

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'Hobbit' extends No. 1 journey with $36.7 million

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins is running circles around some of the biggest names in Hollywood.Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" took in $36.7 million to remain No. 1 at the box office for the second-straight weekend, easily beating a rush of top-name holiday newcomers.Part one of Jackson's prelude to his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the Warner Bros. release raised...

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York TimesDr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs...

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York TimesDr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs...

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Newtown Mourns Last of Its Children Killed in Massacre

NEWTOWN, Conn. — This community laid to rest on Saturday the last of the children killed in a schoolhouse massacre. In a town devastated by violence, besieged by worldwide attention from the news media and struggling to move forward, the burial of Josephine Grace Gay, 7, brought to an end a bleak procession of funerals that began not long after Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 staff members...

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