White House Won't Rule Out $1 Trillion Coin

(United States Mint/Wikimedia Commons)White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today flatly ruled out any negotiations with Congress over raising the debt ceiling, but there’s one odd-ball solution he would not rule out:  minting trillion dollars coins to pay off the debt.“There is no Plan B. There is no backup plan. There is Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills of the United States,”...

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Depardieu skips drink-drive court for Strauss-Kahn film

PODGORICA: Gerard Depardieu skipped a drink-driving court appearance in Paris on Tuesday to work on a film in Montenegro in which he will play Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but claimed he had told French officials he would be absent and the matter had been settled.The "Cyrano de Bergerac", "Green Card" and "Asterix & Obelix" star, who has already pleaded guilty to driving his scooter while...

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Absconding Himachal MLA surrenders

PANCHKULA/DHARAMSHALA: In a face-saving exercise, the Himachal Pradesh Congress on Tuesday forced its on-the-run MLA from Doon constituency Ram Kumar Chaudhary, wanted in a murder case of a dalit woman, to surrender before a Panchkula magistrate hours before the party's newly-elected legislators took oath at Dharamshala.A police team had been camping in Dharamshala for the past few days to nab the...

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto AgencySmoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational...

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CIA Nominee May Have 'Zero Dark Thirty' Problem

Navy SEALs are seen fighting through a dust storm in the new thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, "Zero Dark Thirty." (Columbia Pictures/AP Photo)There’s only one White House staffer portrayed in the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” and it is someone described in the credits as “National Security Advisor.”It’s a position that’s possibly filled in real life by John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism...

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Court considers limits on class-action suits

The Supreme Court on Monday considered what limitations could be placed on class-action lawsuits, an increasingly active battleground for consumer advocates and corporate interests. The issue is whether plaintiff lawyers offer low-ball estimates of the damages they seek or take advantage of procedural loopholes to keep their cases in state courts, where Justice Antonin Scalia said “generous...

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AIM deal begs questions: Tan Cheng Bock

SINGAPORE: Former long-time PAP backbencher Tan Cheng Bock has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the sale of computer systems used by town councils, raising several questions in a post on his Facebook page on Monday, including whether it was right and beneficial to give up ownership of software developed using public funds.Dr Tan, who was chairman of West Coast-Ayer Rajah Town...

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Abu Jundal's bail plea dismissed

NEW DELHI: A trial court has dismissed the bail plea of LeT terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack key handler Abu Jundal, arrested for his alleged role in conspiring to launch terror strikes across the country. It also gave NIA up to 180 days time to complete its probe into the case. In an in court proceeding, District Judge (DJ) I S Mehta allowed the application of National Investigation Agency (NIA),...

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Billions of Earthlike Planets Found in Milky Way

Tens of billions of Earthlike worlds are strewn across the Milky Way, many of them circling stars very much like our own sun, astronomers said today.Earlier research suggested that rocky planets might be much more abundant around small stars than sunlike ones. (Also see "New 'Super Earth' Found at Right Distance for Life.")But a fresh analysis of data from NASA's Kepler mission, which...

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Cops Break Down as They Describe Aurora Horror

Two veteran police officers broke down on the stand today during a preliminary hearing for accused movie theater gunman James Holmes, with one officer choking up when he described finding the body of a 6-year-old girl inside the theater.Sgt. Gerald Jonsgaard needed a moment to compose himself as he described finding the little girl, Veronica Moser Sullivan, in the blood splattered...

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