Dodgy tales of 'research' swirling the globe

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For a few hours last week, I had planned to write a column about the "five-second rule." Scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in England had released a study showing that some foods (ham, cookies) were safer to eat than others (dried fruit, pasta) after being left on the floor to collect germs. The Huffington Post picked up the story, as did Gizmodo and Good Morning America and the TODAY Show. But the research ? if that's even the right word to use here ? was rotten from the start.

The first warning sign was the subject matter: The five-second rule has been tested, explained and at least partially debunked over and over again, for at least as long as I've been a journalist. The most notable example was a 2006 study by Paul Dawson of Clemson University, South Carolina, who published his findings that germs can hop right onto a slice of bologna in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Microbiology. The following year it was again debunked by a couple of undergraduates at Connecticut College, then once more by a seventh-grade science-fair project in 2008. And did I mention the nine-year-old in Kentucky? "A lot of bacteria grew on the cheese," explained little Courtney Mims to a science correspondent for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

More damning was the story's overseas origin. The five-second study arrived in the American press by way of the Daily Mail, which explained in its own coverage that the work had been funded by a manufacturer of cleaning products. It then advised readers to replace their mop heads every three months to "minimise risk" from dangerous bacteria. When I contacted Manchester Metropolitan University for more details, I learned that the "researchers" and "scientists" described in media reports amounted to one person ? a lab tech named Kathy Lees, who did not respond to my inquiries.

Let's not single out the Mancunians, though: industry-funded science fluff litters the whole of the British Isles. Also in the past few weeks, the UK press fawned over a comely chip-shop girl from Kent who was found by a national television network to have a scientifically validated, perfect face. The British version of The Huffington Post reported on a mathematical formula for the "perfect sandwich" ? produced by a University of Warwick physicist in collaboration with a major bread manufacturer.

Spurious mathematical formulae concocted at the behest of PR firms compose their own journalism beat in England: In recent years, we've seen the perfect boiled egg, the perfect day, the perfect breasts, and many more examples of scientists getting paid to turn life into algebra.

As a naive magazine intern, I once took an assignment to write up one of these characteristically English equations ? a means of calculating the perfect horror movie. The team of mathematicians behind the research turned out to be a couple of recent grads from King's College London, who had watched some movies and gotten drunk on vodka on behalf of Sky Broadcasting. "We only spent a couple of hours doing it," one of them told me, "and didn't put all that much thought into whether it works or how accurate it is."

I'm not the first to notice this trend ? see Ben Goldacre's excellent "Bad Science" column in The Guardian, for example ? but it has started to worry me. A great garbage patch of science journalism has been forming across the Atlantic, and bits of flotsam are washing up on our shores. What makes the Brits so susceptible to these ginned-up studies and publicity stunts? And what happens when their faux research starts drifting across the internet?

This sounds like jingoism, I know. Vince Kiernan, a veteran reporter who now studies the history and practice of science journalism at Georgetown in Washington DC, doesn't see much difference between the coverage in Britain and the US. Science journalism is globalised, he told me, and US businesses employ their own set of PR shenanigans.

Maybe he's right: Even the New York Times makes a practice of letting companies tout their self-serving, unpublished research from time to time in its opinion pages. But it seems to me the Times would never run the shameless "labvertisements" that get play in the British press. More to the point, I don't think you'd find these cash-for-science stories even in our smaller, less scrupulous newspapers (television news may be a different story). And I can't remember ever seeing a product-sponsored mathematical formula that showed up first in the American press. Why not?

I posed this question to a few of my favourite science journalists in both countries and got some vague answers. Not all British newspapers operate according to the same (low) standards, my sources told me, but even at the best venues it can be a struggle to stay out of the gutter. "When I was at The Times [of London], I judged my success as much by what I kept out of the paper as what I got into it," said Mark Henderson, former science editor and author of The Geek Manifesto (he also claims to have taken a hard line on dodgy formulae). The Daily Telegraph, now one of that nation's most egregious purveyors of junk science, by all accounts maintained a solid reputation until a few years ago, when two of its best reporters left.

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On Thailand trip, Suu Kyi visits Myanmar migrants

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LG celebrates three million LTE phones sold worldwide, shockingly finds high speed data is awesome

LG has hitched its mobile fate to the future of LTE high speed data equipped phones basically since the technology was introduced and today it announced the fruits of its labor: three million LTE phones sold to date worldwide. While some will quibble over shipped / sold to end-user counting methods, or how this compares to figures recently touted by competition like Samsung and Apple, we need only look at LG's most recent earnings report to see the positive impact its LTE-infused lineup has had. According to LG, most of the gains have been in South Korea and North America so far, although it plans to have LTE phones in 20 countries by the end of the year. After kicking off the LTE frenzy with the Revolution last year on Verizon, it's talking up the combination of LTE and HD LCD screen features in its Optimus LTE phone, already a million seller in Korea just as its successor, the Optimus LTE II arrives on shelves.

LG celebrates three million LTE phones sold worldwide, shockingly finds high speed data is awesome originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 May 2012 23:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dozens of children killed in new Syria attack

BEIRUT (AP) ? Gruesome video Saturday showed rows of dead Syrian children lying in a mosque in bloody shorts and T-shirts with gaping head wounds, haunting images of what activists called one of the deadliest regime attacks yet in Syria's 14-month-old uprising.

The shelling attack on Houla, a group of villages northwest of the central city of Homs, killed more than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, the head of the U.N. observer team in Syria said.

The attacks sparked outrage from U.S. and other international leaders, and large protests in the suburbs of Syria's capital of Damascus and its largest city, Aleppo. It also renewed fears of the relevance of a month-old international peace plan that has not stopped almost daily violence.

The U.N. denounced the attacks in a statement that appeared to hold President Bashar Assad's regime responsible, and the White House called the violence acts of "unspeakable and inhuman brutality."

"This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms," said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and international envoy Kofi Annan. "Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account."

More than a dozen amateur videos posted online Saturday gave glimpses of the carnage, showing lines of bodies laid out in simple rooms, many with bloody faces, torsos and limbs. In some places, residents put chunks of ice on the bodies to preserve them until burial.

One two-minute video shows at least a dozen children lined up shoulder to shoulder on a checkered blanket on what appears to be the floor of a mosque. Blood trickled from one girl's mouth. One boy, appearing to be no more than 8, had his jaw blown off. The video shows flowered blankets and rugs covering several rows of other bodies.

Another video posted Saturday showed a mass grave, four bodies wide and dozens of meters (yards) long.

Activists from Houla said Saturday that regime forces peppered the area with mortars after large demonstrations against the regime on Friday. That evening, they said, pro-regime fighters known as shabiha stormed the villages, gunning down men in the streets and stabbing women and children in their homes.

A local activist reached via Skype said regime forces fired shells at Houla, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Homs. The shabiha entered the villages, raiding homes and shooting at civilians, Abu Yazan said. More than 100 people were killed, more than 40 of them children and most of them in the village of Taldaw, he said. Many had stab wounds, another activist said.

"They killed entire families, from parents on down to children, but they focused on the children," Yazan said.

The Syrian government blamed the killings on "armed terrorist groups" ? a term it often uses for the opposition ? but provided no details or death toll.

But like U.N. officials, the White House issued a statement directed at the regime.

The U.S. is "horrified" by the Houla attacks, National Security Council spokeswoman Erin Pelton said in a statement. "These acts serve as a vile testament to an illegitimate regime that responds to peaceful political protest with unspeakable and inhuman brutality."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms," demanding that "those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account."

"The United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end," Clinton said in statement.

U.N. observers, among more than 250 who were dispatched in recent weeks to salvage the cease-fire plan, found spent artillery tank shells at the site Saturday, and U.N. officials confirmed the shells were fired at residential neighborhoods. The head of the team, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, called the attack a "brutal tragedy."

The bloodshed is yet another blow to the international peace plan brokered by Annan and cast a pall over his coming visit to check on the plan's progress. The cease-fire between forces loyal to the regime of Assad and rebels seeking to topple it was supposed to start on April 12 but has never really taken hold, with new killings every day.

The U.N. put the death toll weeks ago at more than 9,000. Hundreds have been killed since.

The grisly images were condemned by anti-regime groups and political leaders around the world.

"With these new crimes, this murderous regime pushes Syria further into horror and threatens regional stability," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement Saturday.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released an unusually harsh statement, saying Arab nations and the international community were "partners" in the killing "because of their silence about the massacres that the Syrian regime has committed."

The Houla villages are Sunni Muslim. The forces came from an arc of nearby villages populated by Alawites, members of the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs, the activists said.

The activists said the Houla killings appeared to be sectarian between the two groups, raising fears that Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with protests calling for political reform, is edging closer to the type of war that tore apart Syria's eastern neighbor, Iraq.

"I don't like to talk about sectarianism, but it was clear that this was sectarian hatred," said activist Abu Walid.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 96 people were killed, 26 of them children and four of them army defectors.

The group's head, Rami Abdul-Rahman, who relies on activists inside Syria, said all were killed in shelling, but that no forces entered Houla.

Syrian state TV condemned the opposition groups for the "massacre" in a statement Saturday.

"The armed groups are escalating their massacres against the Syrian people only days before international envoy Kofi Annan's visit in a bid to defeat his plan and a political solution to the crisis and with the aim of exploiting the blood of Syrians in the media bazar," it said.

The videos could not be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from operating inside the country.

The harsh condemnation from anti-regime groups reflects their growing frustration with international reluctance to intervene in Syria's conflict.

World powers have fallen in behind the U.N. plan. The U.S. and European nations say they will not intervene militarily, and while Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya have said they will arm Syria's rebels, no country is known to be doing so.

A spokeswoman for the opposition Syrian National Council called on the U.N. Security Council "to examine the situation in Houla and to determine the responsibility of the United Nations in the face of such mass killings, expulsions and forced migration from entire neighborhoods."

Also Saturday, the story of 11 Lebanese Shiites who were reported kidnapped in Syria this week took another strange turn.

Lebanese officials first said their expected arrival on a plane from Turkey to Lebanon late Friday was delayed for "logistical reasons."

On Saturday, Turkey's Foreign Ministry denied the men were in Turkey ? raising new questions about their fate.

Lebanese and Syrian officials blamed Syrian rebels for Tuesday's kidnapping. No group has claimed responsibility.

___

Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Paris, Zeina Karam in Beirut, Anne Gearan in Washington, Frank Jordans in Geneva and Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, contributed reporting.

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Winds, heat hamper fight to contain Southwest wildfires

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Social Media Marketing Can Create Your Manufacturer ? Vero ...

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A Very Probably Drunk Richard Dreyfuss Blasts Mark Zuckerberg and "Eric Brin" (Updated) [Watch This]

Richard Dreyfuss doesn't limit himself to five words (or, apparently, five drinks) in this Webby Awards tribute to Steve Jobs, which he uses to take jabs at Google and Facebook for not being tequila privacy violations. More »

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The Power Of Disrupt: gTar Raises $30,000 On Kickstarter In Two Hours

Incident took the stage this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and debuted the gTar. It's safe to say that they are already a major contender for the Disrupt Cup. The startup wowed the crowd with their iPhone-powered teaching guitar. The judges loved it. The crowd loved. And most importantly, fans turned to the startup's Kickstarter campaign where funding took off like a rocket. Prior to hitting the stage, the gTar had raised just a touch above $10,000. Now, almost exactly two hours after their Disrupt debut, their Kickstarter funding (a.k.a. pre-orders) is north of $42,000 and rising fast.

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Stand-in Michalak leads Sharks to vital win

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Learning Basketball Skills Made Easy by Training Aids

It is a well-known fact that most kinds of sports actually help people to get fit and make them feel better at the same time. Indeed, even something as easy as basketball shooting or basketball training can make families come together to enjoy themselves and bond with each other at the same time. Most of us have a natural competitive streak anyway so teaching kids the nuances of the game comes naturally to most parents for sure.

There is certainly more to learning then just the basics though, for most kids since it also teaches them how to play fair and right. In their development they will have to know what is right and what is wrong but having fun while they are learning seems to drive the lesson home quicker. In fact, it is a good idea for the family as a whole to get involved with fun activities so that the kids do not feel that they are being pushed into one particular sport or the other. We all know how defiant kids can get so just giving them the platform to play is often enough to get them interested for life.

Another great life skill which is learned while playing any sport is sharing. By passing the ball from one to another, children learn that they have to share things in life. The whole point of games in general is to win, obviously, but having them pass the ball will show that it is very often the team effort which wins the biggest prize. Any company will know this which is why a good workforce is necessary for a successful company.

When a kid is learning new skills, he will just love the fact that the parent or tutor is praising him when he is doing something right. This too will last him into his later years when he will know how successful he can be by just doing the right thing.

Of course, there are many skills to be learned when playing this game and to this end there are many books and videos available to help people pick up good tips. Sporting stars are often involved in these teaching aids and will spark an interest in those who are great fans of the star.

For example, imagine some great sportsman showing how to hold the ball or dribble in the most effective way. The child or parent will ultimately try to imitate the star since this is what the star has excelled at for some time. Indeed, the natural competition between father and son often is sparked by one liking one superstar while the other supports another. This makes for great fun when they are on the court for sure.

It is important to make sure that the child is not pushed too hard at the beginning. Making this a fun experience is what will allow them to grow and get better in any sport. However, if they can also be helped with teaching aids, they may well go on to take up the sport professionally in future.

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Arguments due in ex-US Senator Edwards' campaign finance case (reuters)

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Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy

Graphene has long-held notions of grandeur over its current silicon overlord, but a few practical issues have always kept its takeover bid grounded. Samsung, however, thinks it's cracked at least one of those -- graphene's inability to switch off current. Previous attempts to use graphene as a transistor have involved converting it to a semi-conductor, but this also reduces its electron mobility, negating much of the benefit. Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology has created a graphene-silicon "Schottky barrier" that brings graphene this much-needed current-killing ability, without losing its electron-shuffling potential. The research also explored potential logic device applications based on the same technology. So, does this mean we'll finally get our flea-sized super computer implant? Maybe, not just yet, but the wheels have certainly been oiled.

Continue reading Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy

Samsung pushes graphene one step closer to silicon supremacy originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If a Health and fitness Champ Took Steroids, What Does That Say ...

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Julie Coram Stripped of Recent FAME Title. They are saying the very best spot to hide a tree is in the forest, but so how exactly does that transcend during the world of women?s physical fitness competitions? Feminine bodybuilders have obviously applied heavy doses of anabolic steroids instead of quite a few could be surprised if one of the Ms. Olympia competition tested good. It absolutely was supposed to be considered an unique tale if the other women of all ages ?s categories arrived into engage in. Health and Determine classifications ended up seen in another way, but that may have modified.Julie Coram?s favourable exam for 3 different types of anabolic steroids could have ? relatively or unfairly ? altered the public?s perception on the sporting activities. An urine sample taken after she won the feminine muscle mass product class in the Ainsley McSorley FAME Design Search Championships in Winnipeg, Manitoba on May well 24 disclosed excessive amounts of boldenone, oxandrolone and DHEA.

Before the urinalysis was completed, Coram won a 2nd contest, the 2008 Miss Health and fitness Maintoba. After the effects were introduced, the fame Environment Tour stripped her of her title. There was no report in the Manitoba Overall body Making Association taking any action against Coram in regards on the second contest, with all the organization?s president, Tom Heffner, questioning the validity from the FAME exam. What can make this an remarkable scenario is usually that the opponents will not be ordinarily tested at FAME activities, which was a results of the judges flagging Coram for just a drug test whenever they ?saw her on phase and had been instructed her overall body size had higher considerably in excess of a brief time period,? in accordance to a report within the Winnipeg Sunlight. There are a few problems with this. Initial off, in case the judges had any doubts about Coram, then why did they offer her the championship? Next, it is not as though even one of the judges had an unbiased recollection of Coram?s physique and introduced that into account. They ended up ?told? by an unidentified 3rd occasion on the entire body improvements and utilized that because the barometer to demand the screening. It seems for being a moot point after the test was administered, but looking back, Coram can have been capable to delay as well as possess the take a look at cancelled with no valid motive to demand one. Using this type of behind us, the scrutiny may possibly start off to get intertwined concerning figure, health and bodybuilders.

Before, the Ms. Olympia stage was filled along with the style of builds which are in present day figure and health competitions. Rachel McClish established the primary typical, even starring in ?Pumping Iron two -The Females.? Cory Everson commenced the development where muscle groups and sweetness ended up merged correctly. Bev Francis then grew to become the pioneer for ?size matters? for the girls, and that has continued to today. Critics will state that if a fitness competitor is on steroids, three-fold, then the very best tier feminine bodybuilders may perhaps be cycling up to the lads.

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HTML Ready Article You Can Place On Your Site. (do not remove any attribution to source or author) <title>Articlez Plus | If a Health and fitness Champ Took Steroids, What Does That Say For Female Bodybuilders?</title><h3>If a Health and fitness Champ Took Steroids, What Does That Say For Female Bodybuilders?</h3><p>By: </p><p>Julie Coram Stripped of Recent FAME Title. They are saying the very best spot to hide a tree is in the forest, but so how exactly does that transcend during the world of women's physical fitness competitions? Feminine bodybuilders have obviously applied heavy doses of anabolic steroids instead of quite a few could be surprised if one of the Ms. Olympia competition tested good. It absolutely was supposed to be considered an unique tale if the other women of all ages 's categories arrived into engage in. Health and Determine classifications ended up seen in another way, but that may have modified.Julie Coram's favourable exam for 3 different types of anabolic steroids could have - relatively or unfairly - altered the public's perception on the sporting activities. An urine sample taken after she won the feminine muscle mass product class in the Ainsley McSorley FAME Design Search Championships in Winnipeg, Manitoba on May well 24 disclosed excessive amounts of boldenone, oxandrolone and DHEA.</p><p>Before the urinalysis was completed, Coram won a 2nd contest, the 2008 Miss Health and fitness Maintoba. After the effects were introduced, the fame Environment Tour stripped her of her title. There was no report in the Manitoba Overall body Making Association taking any action against Coram in regards on the second contest, with all the organization's president, Tom Heffner, questioning the validity from the FAME exam. What can make this an remarkable scenario is usually that the opponents will not be ordinarily tested at FAME activities, which was a results of the judges flagging Coram for just a drug test whenever they "saw her on phase and had been instructed her overall body size had higher considerably in excess of a brief time period," in accordance to a report within the Winnipeg Sunlight. There are a few problems with this. Initial off, in case the judges had any doubts about Coram, then why did they offer her the championship? Next, it is not as though even one of the judges had an unbiased recollection of Coram's physique and introduced that into account. They ended up "told" by an unidentified 3rd occasion on the entire body improvements and utilized that because the barometer to demand the screening. It seems for being a moot point after the test was administered, but looking back, Coram can have been capable to delay as well as possess the take a look at cancelled with no valid motive to demand one. Using this type of behind us, the scrutiny may possibly start off to get intertwined concerning figure, health and bodybuilders.</p><p>Before, the Ms. Olympia stage was filled along with the style of builds which are in present day figure and health competitions. Rachel McClish established the primary typical, even starring in "Pumping Iron two -The Females." Cory Everson commenced the development where muscle groups and sweetness ended up merged correctly. Bev Francis then grew to become the pioneer for 'size matters' for the girls, and that has continued to today. Critics will state that if a fitness competitor is on steroids, three-fold, then the very best tier feminine bodybuilders may perhaps be cycling up to the lads.</p><p>Boldenone<br />Equipoise</p><p><b>Article Courtesy of</b> Articlez Plus<br /></p>

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MacBook Pro and iMac with next-gen Ivy Bridge processors crop up on benchmarks (update)

Yup, Apples are bound to flow beneath the Ivy Bridge at some point, but how much of a performance boost will they deliver? If you're happy to hold onto a little skepticism, then two unexpected appearances on the Geekbench site could offer some early answers. The first purports to be an unknown 'MacBookPro9,1' laptop powered by an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3820QM running at 2.7GHz, which achieved a benchmark of 12252 -- that's around 17 percent better than a current equivalent Core i7 15-inch or 17-inch MacBook Pro. The second benchmark comes from an 'iMac13,2' running off Intel's next-gen Core i7-3770 desktop chip clocked at 3.4GHz, which only merits a score of 12183 because it's hobbled by 4GB of RAM. If you exclude memory and compare only the CPU integer and floating point scores, then you're looking at a roughly nine percent gain over a current 27-inch iMac with a 3.4Ghz Core i7-2600 processor. Now, these benchmarks could be faked, or represent non-final hardware, but the motherboard codes look valid (see the source links) and they generally tally with what we've come to expect from Ivy Bridge: a healthy oar-stroke forwards, but nothing that would frighten the fish.

Update: 9to5Mac has done some digging and come up with a few more interesting tidbits about the upcoming MacBook Pro refresh. For one, code pulled from the Mountain Lion beta appears to indicate that the Ivy Bridge machines will boast USB 3.0 and a new GPU in the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M. The site also claims that the laptops will be slimmer than the current gen, a rumor that we've been hearing for quite some time now.

MacBook Pro and iMac with next-gen Ivy Bridge processors crop up on benchmarks (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ashley Tisdale and Scott Speer: Back Together?

Sorry, fellas. But Ashley Tisdale and her buttocks remain committed to one man.

Following reports in December that she had split from Scott Speer, E! News is now reporting that the actress and her music video-directing boyfriend are actually going strong.

There may have been a lull at some point, but Tisdale and Speer have been spotted out multiple times recently, with one source saying they spent all of last weekend together as a "coming out" to prove they were, indeed, back together.

Speer and Tisdale started dating in 2009. She recently wished him a "great day" on Twitter, solidifying the reconciliation once and for all.

[Photo: WENN.com]

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Top Republican rejects Panetta's defense budget criticism (reuters)

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WATCH: Carrie Underwood & Jimmy Kimmel's Hilarious Duet

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How gay-marriage issue could alter the 2016 presidential race (Los Angeles Times)

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