AP IMPACT: Steroids loom in major-college football

WASHINGTON (AP) — With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight — 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes — without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid...

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Wall Street opens flat on "cliff" deadlock

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Open Road Films will release Arnold Schwarzenegger's action thriller "Ten" nationwide on January 24, 2014, the company announced on Wednesday. Directed by David Ayer ("End of Watch"), the former governor leads an elite DEA task force that takes on the world's deadliest drug cartels. When the team executes a high-stakes raid on a cartel safe house, they think their work...

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The Lede Blog: Accounts of a Siege in Syria Differ on Rebel YouTube Channels and British Television

As my colleagues Liam Stack and Hania Mourtada reported, Syrian activists said last week that members of a pro-government militia known as the shabiha had massacred dozens of civilians this month in the village of Aqrab, northwest of the city of Homs, just outside the town of Houla.What made the claim of a massacre in the village unusual were the accounts of witnesses, identified as survivors of the...

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donating $500 million in stock to Silicon Valley charity

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday he is donating nearly $ 500 million in stock to a Silicon Valley charity with the aim of funding health and education issues.Zuckerberg donated 18 million Facebook shares, valued at $ 498.8 million based on their Tuesday closing price. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a non-profit that works with donors to allocate...

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Prince William and Kate Lunch with the Royal Family

By Simon Perry 12/19/2012 at 09:30 AM EST The Duchess and Duke of Cambridge REX USA It's been a busy pre-Christmas week for William and Kate.Wednesday brought a festive lunch with Queen Elizabeth and other members of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, following Tuesday's lunch with their...

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering...

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Wall Street edges up, tech shares gain

In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving...

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Pentagon to Reimburse Pakistan $688 Million

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon quietly notified Congress this month that it would reimburse Pakistan nearly $700 million for the cost of stationing 140,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan, an effort to normalize support for the Pakistani military after nearly two years of crises and mutual retaliation. The biggest proponent of putting foreign aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan on...

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Iran leader gets the clicks with Facebook rumor

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Facebook page purportedly created by Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attracted nearly 10,000 followers on Tuesday although the site’s content and style raise serious questions about its authenticity.Iranian authorities had no immediate comment on the site, which apparently went online last week but only recently gained prominence among social media...

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Gossip Girl's Identity Revealed in Series Finale!

TV Watch TV News By Aaron Parsley 12/18/2012 at 09:20 AM EST Did you figure it out?The series finale of Gossip Girl, which aired Monday on the CW, had it all: two weddings (Blair marries Chuck; Serena marries Dan), two stunning wedding gowns (powder blue, beaded Elie Saab Couture on B, and a gold and white strapless...

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