As protests and military retaliation against protesters are escalating in Libya, Moammar Gadhafi is losing control of his country and finding that even some of the armed forces are not siding with him.  Estimates that at least 1,000 people, mostly in the Tripoli region, are dead are offset by the growing wave of support for the protesters among the military.  On the western border with Tunisia, soldiers from that area refused to open fire on protesters and chased officers away.  They now guar...
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The latest drink fad is extremely dangerous, according to the Food and Drug Administration, because you can't feel its effects affecting your body.  We're talking about the slew of alcoholic, caffeinated energy drinks that are so popular on college campuses and with underage drinkers.  These drinks, sold under such names as Four Loko and Joose, give a double whammy to its consumers so potentionally bad that the FDA has sent warnings to the four major manufacturers, giving them 15 days to eith...
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Broadcast television greed has once again reared its ugly head.  You may have noticed that there are now fewer TV shows to watch online.  That's because a few weeks ago broadcasters blocked access to a lot of their shows online in order to boost their profits.  The greedy bastards who run the networks believe that if they delay when their shows go on the Web, they will secure more viewer retention and stem the flow of the audience who are ditching cable and satellite TV for the Internet.  Whi...
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Anything bad that happens to Wal-Mart is good news, and this one had me rolling on the floor.  Earlier this year, the retailing giant passed a series of large price cuts, known in Wal-Martese as "rollbacks".  Wally M hoped that this would generate a higher customer count in stores, and it did, but not with the expected results.  Savvy shoppers walked in, bought the "rollback" items, then went on to their regular stores for the rest of their grocery shopping, leaving Wal-Mart bleeding heavily....
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Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental hotel is trying to set a new world record price by offering the highest price ever for a hotel in a deal to commemorate its fifth anniversary.  The offer will allow use of the entire hotel, including its nine restaurants and all 178 rooms for $671,000 a night, each period going from three in the afternoon to noon the next day, and the hotel will apply for the record as soon as a night is booked at this price.  The catch?  You can only rent it on a day when there are ...
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More trouble for the Vatican, but this time it's a financial matter, not a sexual one.  Italian officials have siezed a bit over $30 million from the Vatican Bank's funds early this morning as part of an investigation of its two most powerful people into moey laundering.  Police seized the money from the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano Spa and relocated it to JP Morgan in Frankfurt, Germany and Italy's Banca del Fucino.  It appears that the Vatican can't supply the source of the money to inv...
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A huge chunk of the Petersen Glacier has broken off in Greenland and is heading south, believed to be a victim of global warming.  This ice island, three times the size of Manhattan, may be heading for the Canadian shore of Newfoundland, where there are numerous oil rigs.  If such a massive piece of ice moves into that area, the danger of yet another massive oil spill is a possibility.  This is the same area where an iceberg sank the Titanic in 1912.  To further emphasize the size of this ice...
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Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry phones, has been singled out as a security threat recently in the Middle East because of the secure encryption it uses, which makes it impossible for outside sources to decode E-mails and messages sent with these phones.  Saudi Arabia has issued a ban on BlackBerries, which may be lifted as soon as that country can evaluate the security and encryption codes that Research In Motion has supplied them with.  India is getting in on the action now, citing Bl...
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Popular writer Anne Rice, most famous for her book "Interview With A Vampire", announced in a posting on her Facebook page that she is no longer a Christian.  The post, worded like a prayer and ending with "amen", confirmed her growing feelings of doubt with Christianity.  Rice, who lives near Palm Springs, California and is 68 years old, says she has begun to doubt the church in the wake of the sex scandals and its lack of action about them.  In addition, she says that she is shocked that a ...
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Ice T, who has played NYPD detective Fin Tutuola on NBC's "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" was himself arrested on July 20 by New York cops.  He was stopped at the intersection of West 40th Street and 11th Avenue because he wasn't wearing a seat belt while driving a 2009 Cadillac.  Police say that when they ran a check, they discovered his license was suspended.  The rapper/actor was ticketed and then released, but he used his Twitter account to deny the claim, stating he has a valid New...
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Two paleontologists have concluded a 10-year study of two ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs) and reached a startling conclusion.  John Scannella and Jack Horner have been poring over in excess of 50 specimens of Triceratops and the lesser known Torosaurus and revealed that Torosaurus, rather than being a different dinosaur, was actually the adult stage of Triceratops.  The scientists pointed out that skull changes as ceratopsians got older is normal, and the skulls of Triceratops and Torosaurus ...
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There's no rest for the dead, apparently, in some cases.  Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion who died in 2008 at age 64, is involved in a paternity suit and authorities in Iceland exhumed his body to get DNA samples early on June 5. 
Marilyn Young, who lives in the Philippines, says that she was in a relationship with Fischer and that her 9-year old daughter, Jinky, is a product of that relationship.  If she expects to get money out of this, she may have a very long wait.

Bobby was an ...
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