UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.Edwards...

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Wall Street edges up on data, S&P up for seventh week

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose slightly Friday with the S&P 500 gaining for a seventh week in the wake of upbeat consumer sentiment data, though thin trading and the modest rise showed a continuing trend of a consolidating market after strong recent gains. The S&P 500, up nearly 7 percent so far this year, is facing strong technical resistance near the 1,525 level. But investors,...

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The Lede: Spectacular Video of Meteor Over Siberia

Video posted on YouTube Friday appeared to catch an explosion caused by a meteor streaking over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.Last Updated, 12:07 p.m. As our colleagues Ellen Barry and Andrew Kramer report, Russians recorded video of bright objects, apparently debris from a meteor, “streaking through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across...

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Facebook wins German court fight on fake names ban

BERLIN (AP) — Facebook has won a court battle against a German privacy watchdog that challenged the social networking site‘s policy requiring users to register with their real names.Schleswig-Holstein state’s data protection body said Friday it will appeal the court decision. It argues the ban on fake names breaches German privacy laws and European rules designed to protect free speech online.The...

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John Mayer & Katy Perry's 'Very Cute' Night Out

Caught in the Act 02/15/2013 at 11:15 AM EST John Mayer and Katy Perry AKM-GSI Date night! John Mayer and Katy Perry joined friends for dinner at Katsuya Brentwood on Tuesday.Sitting in a booth with pals, "the mood was great," an onlooker tells PEOPLE. "John and...

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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction

BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.The findings, published online Thursday in...

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Wall Street erases earlier losses; M&A news, data support

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks erased earlier losses to trade flat by late morning on Thursday as a flurry of M&A deals and better-than-expected jobs data fed optimism to the market, although signs of economic weakness in Europe and Japan curbed appetite for risky assets. Among the M&A announcements, shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.50 after it said Warren Buffett's...

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Way of the World: Technology, Trade and Fewer Jobs

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech this week confirmed it: The pre-eminent political and economic challenge in the industrialized democracies is how to make capitalism work for the middle class. There is nothing mysterious about that. The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis...

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Xbox founder: Apple TV gaming could ‘simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox’

The Xbox is one of the best things that Microsoft (MSFT) has going for it right now, but one of the console’s founding engineers thinks the company is in grave danger of getting its hide handed to it by Apple (AAPL)… again. Nat Brown, a former Microsoft engineer who worked at the company until 1999 and who was one of the founders of the Xbox project, has written a long post on his personal blog making...

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Ashton Kutcher & Mila Kunis Put Their PDA on Display in Hollywood!

Caught in the Act 02/14/2013 at 11:45 AM EST Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher AKM-GSI Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis couldn't hide their affection for each other at the afterparty for the Oz the Great and Powerful premiere on Wednesday.Kunis and Kutcher showed up...

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