Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual...

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At Washington’s James Bond exhibit, villains are forever

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fans of fictional super spy James Bond rely on the durable film franchise for must-have elements, such as jaw-dropping stunts, great clothes, sultry women – and villains who are drop-dead evil.An exhibition that opened on Friday makes clear that the nasty types that 007 has battled for five decades have changed but one constant remains....

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Tulsa Town Hall: Nutrition a valuable tool in health care

Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers. The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”Changes in diet can be an effective...

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Warning over hidden customer data

16 November 2012 Last updated at 18:47 ETThe UK government has repeated its threat to legislate if businesses do not voluntarily release data gathered on customers who ask to see it. An initiative called Midata calls on firms to provide details to the public in a “machine-readable” format.Ministers had warned in August...

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes...

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How Obama’s Tech Team Helped Win the Election

The Obama campaign‘s technologists were tense and tired. It was game day and everything was going wrong.Josh Thayer, the lead engineer of Narwhal, had just been informed that they’d lost another one of the services powering their software. That was bad: Narwhal was the code name for the data platform that underpinned the campaign and let it track voters...

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Film defrocks church hierarchy over handling of sex abuse

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four deaf Wisconsin men were some of the first to seek justice after suffering childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and a new documentary about the Catholic Church‘s poor handling of such cases stemming from the Vatican seeks to make their voices heard.“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” explores the impact...

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Older Women With HER-2 Breast Cancer May Want to Reconsider Herceptin

FIRST PERSON | New research shows that older women with HER-2 breast cancers are at a higher risk for heart problems than previously thought. The risk is intensified when used as part of a cancer treatment containing anthracycline drugs for chemotherapy. Science Codex reports that Yale University published the study.At age 50, I do not consider myself...

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Wall Street cuts losses after constructive talk on fiscal cliff

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks pared losses on Friday, with the Dow and the S&P 500 turning positive, after congressional leaders said their meeting with President Obama about the “fiscal cliff” was constructive.The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 15.59 points, or 0.12 percent, at 12,557.97. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX>...

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Canada’s Carney says rate hikes “less imminent”

TORONTO (Reuters) – Interest rate hikes have become less imminent than the Bank of Canada once expected, although rates are still likely to rise, central bank Governor Mark Carney said in an interview published on Saturday.“Over time, rates are likely to increase somewhat, but over time, so a less imminent timing relative to our expectation,” Carney said...

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Springsteen, McCartney, Kanye set for Sandy show

NEW YORK (AP) — Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band and Kanye West will hit the stage at a Superstorm Sandy benefit concert next month at Madison Square Garden.MSG announced Thursday that Billy Joel, The Who, Alicia Keys and Jon Bon Jovi will also perform at the Dec. 12 show, dubbed “12-12-12.” More performers will be announced at...

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s diabetes problem is getting worse, and health officials say the biggest changes have been in Oklahoma and a number of Southern states.The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled over 15 years, and also boomed in Southern states like Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama. Most cases are the kind...

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The Coffee Bean’s Endangered Gene Pool

Is the world’s coffee supply threatened by global warming? A recently published scientific study concludes that as much as 99.7 percent of wild Arabica coffee—the bean that accounts for 70 percent of the global market– may fall victim to rising temperatures by 2080. Farmers will still be able to cultivate Arabica coffee–at least for a while–but the bean’s...

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Beating tax cheats key to Italy’s recovery plan

ROME (AP) — Good plumbers may be worth their weight in gold, but when one was spotted zipping around in a bright red Ferrari, Italian tax police were fast on his trail.Stamping out entrenched tax evasion is crucial to Premier Mario Monti‘s quest to keep Italy from succumbing to the European debt crisis, and it is critical to fellow eurozone members in...

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Wakeman reworks rock epic Journey to Centre of Earth

LONDON (Reuters) – The story behind the upcoming re-issue of Rick Wakeman‘s 1974 concept album “Journey to the Center of the Earth” sounds almost as unlikely as the Jules Verne tale that inspired it.Progressive rock veteran Wakeman had presumed the original orchestration to his chart-topping disc was lost for good when his record company MAM, where the...

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