Male artists lead 2013 Grammy nominations

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Male artists led the nominations announced on Wednesday for the 2013 Grammys, as fun., Frank Ocean, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys landed six nods each for music’s biggest awards.The nominations for New York-based indie-pop band fun. – made up of Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff – included the four main categories...

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington‘s law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans...

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Washington fears 'desperate' Assad could use chemical arms

BEIRUT/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Washington fears a "desperate" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could use chemical weapons as rebels bear down on Damascus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, repeating a vow to take swift action if he does. Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad said they had surrounded an air base near Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the...

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Sri Lanka see backlash from Aussie ‘wounded soldiers’

(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team to be wary of a backlash from Australia in their three-test series after the hosts were stung by their series defeat to South Africa earlier this week.Australia’s hopes of snatching the Proteas’ top test ranking ended in a crushing 309-run defeat in the third and final test in Perth on Monday, but Jayawardene took little comfort...

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Ex-”Malcolm in the Middle” star Muniz, 26, suffers mini-stroke

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former “Malcolm in the Middle” child star Frankie Muniz said on Tuesday he had suffered a mini-stroke, at the age of 26.“I was in the hospital last Friday. I suffered a ‘Mini Stroke‘, which was not fun at all. Have to start taking care of my body! Getting old!,” Muniz said on Twitter.Muniz put his acting career on hold six years ago to race cars for a living, and earlier this...

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Trafficked maids to order: The darker side of richer India

NEW DELHI, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) – Inside the crumbling housing estates of Shivaji Enclave, amid the boys playing cricket and housewives chatting from their balconies, winding staircases lead to places where lies a darker side to India‘s economic boom.Three months ago, police rescued Theresa Kerketa from one of these tiny two-roomed flats. For four years, she was kept here by a placement agency for domestic...

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Obama holds firm on 'fiscal cliff' amid Republican disarray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama held his ground on the "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama's demands. With less than a month left to confront the budget cuts and tax increases that will begin taking effect in January unless...

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Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.Ankara, which has been highly supportive...

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Facebook voting begins on Instagram data-sharing, email privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network‘s policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.Facebook also said it had “clarified” some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired...

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News Corp to buy Cleveland Indians sports channel: sources

(Reuters) – News Corp is expected to announce as early as this week that it will buy SportsTime Ohio, a TV channel owned by the Cleveland Indians baseball team, for around $ 230 million, sources told Reuters, marking its second acquisition of a regional sports channel since late last month.The deal would give News Corp‘s Fox Sports unit the rights to broadcast the Major League Baseball team‘s games,...

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