IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (Yahoo News) 29/01/2014

House reaches compromise on farm bill

Maggie Barcellano prepares dinner at her father's house in Austin, Texas on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014. Barcellano, who lives with her father, enrolled in the food stamps program to help save up for paramedic training while she works as a home health aide and raises her three-year-old daughter. Working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps, a switch from a few years ago when children and the elderly were the main recipients. (AP Photo/Tamir Kalifa)

Deal would preserve food stamp benefits for most, keep generous subsidies for farmers.

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Dem senators to file amicus brief in Hobby Lobby birth control case

FILE - This May 22, 2013 file photo shows customer at a Hobby Lobby store in Denver. The Supreme Court has agreed to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees. The justices said Tuesday they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception. The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

In a brief to be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, 19 Democratic senators are siding with the Obama administration against evangelical Christian businessmen who argue that paying for their employees’ birth control, a requirement under Obamacare, violates their company’s religious freedom.

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Mexico legalizes vigilantes, nabs cartel leader

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2014 file photo, an armed man belonging to the Self-Defense Council of Michoacan, (CAM), stands guard at a checkpoint set up by the self-defense group at the entrance to Antunez, Mexico. Mexico essentially legalized the country’s growing “self-defense” groups Monday, Jan. 27, 2014, while also announcing that security forces had captured one of the four top leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel, which the vigilante groups have been fighting for the last year. The government said it had reached an agreement with vigilante leaders to incorporate the armed civilian groups into old and largely forgotten quasi-military units called the Rural Defense Corps. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Mexico essentially legalized the country's growing "self-defense" groups Monday, while also announcing that security forces had captured one of the four top leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel, which the vigilante groups have been fighting for the last year.

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Assad future blocks progress in Syria peace talks

Monzer Akbik, center, a Syrian opposition spokesman, leaves after a short press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Switzerland, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Akbik said the coalition was still determined to stay for the political talks set to begin Monday despite accusing the government of stalling. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

GENEVA (AP) — The key issue of a transitional government to replace President Bashar Assad blocked any progress Monday in Syrian peace talks, described by one delegate as "a dialogue of the deaf."

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GOP tries to school candidates to avoid disaster

FILE - In this combination of file photos are U.S. Senate candidates, from left: Shane Osborn, Nebraska; Matt Whitaker, Iowa, and Terri Lynn Land, Michigan. Having watched several promising campaigns collapse in 2012 after candidates made catastrophic mistakes, Osborn, Whitaker and Land are three contenders summoned by national Republican leaders to a first-of-a-kind training at the GOP’s Senate campaign headquarters in Washington, to learn in part, what not to say and how not to say it. (AP Photo/File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Having watched several promising campaigns collapse in 2012 after candidates made catastrophic mistakes, national Republican leaders are leaving nothing to chance as they prepare for this year's midterm elections.

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Mexico vigilantes agree to join government forces

MEXICO CITY (AP) — "Self-defense" groups confronting a drug cartel in the western state of Michoacan have agreed to join government law enforcement forces after months of firefights with gang members, many times as federal police and troops stood by.

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APNewsBreak: Arias defense costs top $2 million

File-This May 15, 2013, file pool photo shows Jodi Arias looking at the family of Travis Alexander as the jury arrives during the sentencing phase of her trial at Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix. Arias' legal bills have topped $2 million, a tab being footed by Arizona taxpayers that will only continue to climb with a new penalty phase set for March, officials said Monday Jan. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Rob Schumacher, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — Jodi Arias' legal bills have topped $2 million, a tab being footed by Arizona taxpayers that will only continue to climb with a new penalty phase set for March, officials said Monday.

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Police: Student fire apparent suicide attempt

A police cruiser blocks the entrance to Standley Lake HIgh School, where classes were cancelled after an apparent suicide attempt by a student, in Westminster, Colo., Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Police say a 16-year-old boy was critically injured after setting himself on fire at the suburban Denver high school. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

WESTMINSTER, Colo. (AP) — A 16-year-old boy set himself on fire at a suburban Denver high school on Monday in an apparent suicide attempt that left him critically injured, authorities said.

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Scientists find ancient plague DNA in teeth

In this Jan. 17, 2014 photo provided by McMaster University, graduate biology student Jennifer Klunk examines a bone sample at McMaster University's Ancient DNA Centre in Hamilton, Canada. Scientists say two of the deadliest pandemics in history were caused by strains of the same plague and warn new versions of the bacteria could spark future outbreaks. Researchers found tiny bits of DNA in the teeth of two German victims killed by the Justinian plague about 1,500 years ago. With those fragments, they reconstructed the genome of the oldest bacteria known. They concluded the Justinian plague was caused by a strain of Yersinia pestis, the same pathogen responsible for the Black Death that struck medieval Europe. The study was published online Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014 in the journal, Lancet Infectious Diseases.(AP Photo/McMaster University)

LONDON (AP) — Scientists say two of the deadliest pandemics in history were caused by strains of the same plague and warn that new versions of the bacteria could spark future outbreaks.

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Avalanches cut off only road to Alaska city

This Jan. 24, 2014 photo provided by the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities shows multiple avalanches that crossed the Richardson Highway in the Thompson Pass region of Valdez, Alaska on Friday Jan. 24, 2014. Alaska highway officials say the only highway into the city of 4,100 people will be closed until further notice, for at least a week, if not much longer. (AP Photo/Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Highway access to the city at the end of the trans-Alaska pipeline has been cut off indefinitely by avalanches, including one that dammed a river and created a lake up to a half-mile long across the roadway in a 300-foot wide mountain canyon.

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Quentin Tarantino sues website over leaked script

FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, director Quentin Tarantino delivers a speech before receiving the Lumiere Award during the 5th edition of the Lumiere Festival, in Lyon, central France. Tarantino sued Gawker Media LLC on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014, in Los Angeles for copyright infringement over the site's posting of a story that linked to a leaked copy of his script for a planned film called

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Quentin Tarantino sued the news and gossip website Gawker on Monday over a post that directed readers to a leaked copy of the Oscar-winning screenwriter's latest movie.

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Deep freeze in Midwest puts normal routines on ice

Pedestrians making their way along State Street are well-bundled against the region's return to bitterly cold conditions, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart)

CHICAGO (AP) — Parents brought kids to work or just stayed home because schools were closed, again. Office workers hailed cabs to ride a block — or less. And companies offering delivery services were inundated with business as Artic air blasted the central U.S. on Monday for the second time in weeks, disrupting the lives of even the hardiest Midwesterners.

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Stocks fall worldwide on emerging-market fears

A specialist on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange checks a screen, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Stocks are mostly higher on Wall Street as investors shrug off worries about emerging markets that tanked the market last week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) — Stock markets fell across the globe on Monday, but at least it wasn't another rout on Wall Street.

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U.S. frees tech companies to disclose more spying data

Illustration file picture shows a man typing on a computer keyboard in Warsaw

By David Ingram WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. technology companies may give the public and their customers more detail about the court orders they receive related to surveillance under an agreement they reached on Monday with the Obama administration. Companies such as Google Inc and Microsoft Corp have been prohibited from disclosing even an approximate number of orders they received from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They could give only an aggregate number of U.S. demands that combined surveillance court orders, letters from the FBI, subpoenas in run-of-the-mill criminal cases and other requests. The deal frees the companies to say, for example, approximately how many orders they received in a six-month period from the surveillance court.

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Notorious Nazi's letters home are chillingly mundane

1935 photo provided by German newspaper 'Die Welt' shows a family photo of Heinrich Himmler in Valepp, Bavaria. The picture shows Himmler with his daughter Gudrun, front, his son Gerhard, right, and a friend of Gudrun, left. The photo is part of a trove of letters, notes and photos that were in possession of an Israeli family. The letters are believed to be written by Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler and had not been shown to the public. The newspaper said the material is contained in an eight-part series it plans to publish. Himmler is considered one of the Nazis most responsible for the Holocaust. (AP Photo/Realworks Ltd./DIE WELT, HO) MANDATORY CREDIT Realworks Ltd./DIE WELT - http://www.welt.de/geschichte/himmler/article124223862/Insight-into-the-orderly-world-of-a-mass-murderer.html

Heinrich Himmler was one of the most notorious leaders of Hitler's Nazi Party, responsible for the deaths of millions of men, women and children. Excerpts from chilling letters he wrote his family were recently published on the German news site Die Welt.

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Ukrainian gov't claims to make key concession

Anti-government protesters look out from barricades in Independence Square in Kiev

Deal to scrap harsh anti-protest laws that sparked clashes reported in online statement.

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NSA leak reveals gov't spies eyed data from smartphone apps

Reports outline how data could be harvested from apps such as Angry Birds or Google maps.

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U.S.: Afghanistan to free 'dangerous' prisoners

FILE - In this March 23, 2011 file photograph, Afghan detainees, seen through a mesh wire fence, prepare for noon prayers inside the Parwan detention facility near Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. The Afghan government has begun the process of releasing three dozen prisoners, officials said Monday, Jan. 27, 2014, despite U.S. protests that they are highly dangerous, the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two countries ahead of the year-end withdrawal of most international combat troops. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)

Move stretches relations already strained over plans for U.S. troop presence past 2014.

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Looted art saved by WWII 'Monuments Men' up for auction

By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Paintings looted by the Nazis during World War Two and retrieved by the Monuments Men, the Allied group tasked with returning masterpieces to their rightful owners, will be sold at auction on Thursday in New York. The works, which will go under the hammer during Sotheby's sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, were among the tens of thousands of works recovered by the art experts whose story is told in the George Clooney film "The Monuments Men," which opens in U.S. theaters on February 7. "The scale of looting was absolutely extraordinary," said Lucian Simmons, Sotheby's head of restitution. The Monuments Men managed to recover and return the majority of those," he said in an interview.

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Egypt's miiltary puts commander forward for president

Egyptians wave the national flag and hold up pictures of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the edges of Cairo's Tahrir square on January 25, 2014

Army says its commander, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, can run for the presidency; dozens dead in weekend strife.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

IT News Head Lines (Yahoo News) 29/01/2014

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