Obama takes his case to people for "fiscal cliff" deal

REDFORD, Michigan (Reuters) - Making no visible headway in direct talks with Republicans, President Barack Obama took to the road on Monday to apply pressure on his political opponents to agree to a "fiscal cliff" deal that would raise taxes on the richest Americans.Wearing shirtsleeves with no suit coat and speaking in front of an array of auto workers, Obama plunged into his new campaign a month...

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Who's living past 100 in the U.S.? Mostly white women

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women have long been known to live longer than men, but when it comes to hitting the century mark the difference is stark: just 2 out of 10 Americans who live to 100 or longer are male.Of the 53,364 Americans age 100 and older, more than 80 percent are women, a U.S. Census Bureau report released on Monday showed.The agency's findings, based on data collected from its 2010 census,...

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Cold, mold loom as hazards in Sandy disaster zones

NEW YORK (AP) — A month after Sandy's floodwaters swept up his block, punched a hole in his foundation and drowned his furnace, John Frawley still has no electricity or heat in his dilapidated home on the Rockaway seashore.The 57-year-old, who also lost his car and all his winter clothes in the flood, now spends his nights shivering in a pair of donated snow pants, worrying whether the cold might...

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Japanese chef dishes on North Korean leader and missile launch

The Japanese chef who cooked for North Korean leaders for 13 years – before finding a pretext to return to Japan – believes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has no desire to upset other countries by sanctioning the firing of a long-range missile later this month.“It’s hard to understand why surrounding countries are so sensitive,” says Kenji Fujimoto, who left North Korea in 2001 but returned for...

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Human rights report names names in Kashmir, invokes international law

Two prominent human rights groups in India-administered Kashmir Thursday accused New Delhi  of institutionally blocking justice in thousands of cases of crimes like enforced disappearance, killings, rape, and torture allegedly committed by its forces in the disputed region during the past two decades.A report "Alleged Perpetrators: Stories of impunity in Jammu and Kashmir" released by the groups...

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McAfee's rise and downfall via technology

Computer protection guru John McAfee’s high-profile run from the law is over, and it may have been a simple slip in digital security that helped lead to his downfall.Mr. McAfee, on the run for nearly a month since his neighbor in Belize turned up dead, was arrested Wednesday in Guatemala for crossing into the Central American country illegally. He is being held in a detention center with other migrants,...

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In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's 'trial of power'

This morning I stumbled across a long story I wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood's struggles with the Mubarak regime  in June 2005 and found plenty of resonance for events today (as well as some personal chagrin in the fact that I'd used the phrase "Arab spring" back then).Egypt is now finding out something that had been an object of speculation for decades: What the Muslim Brotherhood would...

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Merkel meets Netanyahu as Israel and Germany hit rocky patch

With German-Israeli relations unusually tense, Chancellor Angela Merkel is scrambling today in an apparent effort to assure Israel that the two are still friends as usual.When Germany abstained in last week’s vote to change the Palestinian Authority's status at the United Nations to a non-member observer state, rather than vote against it, Israel took it poorly.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained...

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Egypt's anti-Morsi protests spread beyond Cairo

Violence erupting in the capital between supporters of President Mohamed Morsi and his political opposition is being mirrored outside of Cairo, revealing the extent of divisions across the country as the political crisis over a proposed new constitution continued to spiral today.Clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators broke out in Suez, the port city at one end of the famed canal of the...

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How deadly would chemical weapons in Syria be?

Serious concerns have been raised about chemical weapons in Syria as unnamed US officials on Wednesday told NBC News that Syrian forces have loaded sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into bombs that can be dropped by planes.The officials said the bombs had not been loaded onto planes and there was not yet a decision from Syria's leader to use them.President Obama has said the use of chemical weapons in Syria...

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