Ala. child hostage situation enters third day

Updated at 8:02 a.m. ET MIDLAND CITY, Ala. A standoff that started when a man boarded a school bus full of children near his home in a rural Alabama neighborhood, killed the driver and took one 5-year-old boy hostage entered its third day Thursday. The suspect and the child hostage have not been identified by police. People who live along the rutted red clay road said the suspect is a retired...

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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

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Merkel urges Egypt's Mursi to hold crisis dialogue

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Egypt's Islamist president on Wednesday to open a dialogue with all political forces in the crisis-ridden Arab country after a week of violence that has killed more than 50 people. President Mohamed Mursi flew to Germany to try to convince Europe of his democratic credentials, but in a sign of the political tensions back home,...

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UE plans to launch rival bid for WBL Corp

SINGAPORE: Another corporate fight is brewing as property and engineering group United Engineers plans to launch a rival bid for WBL Corp at S$4 a share. United Engineers said the company's growth has reached its peak after the property and construction firm raked in record revenue of S$1.19 billion in 2011.The company is now looking for more recurring income.To do that, United Engineers...

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RIM now rebranded to 'BlackBerry'

The new ticker symbols for BlackBerry.(Credit:Sarah Tew/CNET)Research In Motion (RIM) is no more.At the BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York City today, CEO Thorsten Heins announced that RIM has been retired for simply, BlackBerry. "Our customers use BlackBerrys, our employees work for BlackBerry," Heins said before a packed house.With its name change comes a change to its ticker symbol. On the...

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Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."She told the Senate to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside her astronaut husband Mark Kelly as...

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Army warning: unrest pushing Egypt to brink

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief said political strife was pushing the state to the brink of collapse - a stark warning from the institution that ran the country until last year as Cairo's first freely elected leader struggles to contain bloody street violence. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a U.S.-trained general appointed by President Mohamed Mursi last year to head the armed forces,...

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US Senate committee approves Kerry nomination

  WASHINGTON: Senator John Kerry easily cleared the first hurdle of his confirmation as the next secretary of state Tuesday with a unanimous vote of approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Kerry, President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation's top diplomat, must still be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate later in the day, but that was expected...

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Verizon clears Jetpack 4G mobile hotspot for take off

Need a way to surf almost anywhere without relying on sketchy public Wi-Fi? Verizon sure thinks you do and hopes to entice subscribers with a new Jetpack mobile hotspot.Called the Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 510L and made by Novatel, this gadget ships January 31 for $19.99 and continues the carrier's line of portable 4G sharing products. The hockey puck shaped 510L can spread its 4G LTE data...

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Report: A-Rod, Cruz, Gonzalez linked to PED probe

New York Yankees' $275 million man Alex Rodriguez, Washington Nationals All-Star Gio Gonzalez and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz are among the players connected to performance-enhancing drugs in a new investigative report by the Miami New Times. A former employee of a South Florida clinic called Biogenesis gave the Miami New Times "an extraordinary batch of records" showing athletes received...

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