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CARACAS, Venezuela — The authorities in Venezuela said Wednesday that they would investigate claims that illegal Brazilian gold miners massacred a village of Yanomami Indians deep in the Amazon jungle.
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LONDON — Police officials investigating phone hacking by journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers arrested a man on Thursday who was identified in news reports as Tom Crone, a former senior lawyer for the newspapers.
Concerns arise over defining storms by category
NEW ORLEANS — Why were people in Plaquemines Parish and other coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi so blase about Hurricane Isaac? The answer could have something to do with the yardstick most commonly used to measure storms.
Soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan mark Australia’s worst toll
KABUL, Afghanistan — Five Australian soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan within hours of one another Wednesday and Thursday, three of them at the hands of a turncoat Afghan soldier, making it the deadliest period in a decade of fighting here for one of the staunchest U.S. allies.
As Iranians watch, Egyptian and UN leaders rebuke Syria
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s triumphal stewardship of the Nonaligned Movement summit meeting here veered off script on Thursday when the two most prominently featured guest speakers, President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, denounced the repression of the armed uprising in Syria, a close Iranian ally.
Nuclear report on Iran puts Israel in a box
JERUSALEM — For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday offered findings validating his long-standing position that while economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation may have hurt Iran, they have failed to slow Tehran’s nuclear program. If anything, the program is speeding up.
Brazil enacts affirmative action law for universities
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s government has enacted one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws, requiring public universities to reserve half of their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation’s public schools and vastly increase the number of university students of African descent across the country.
Labor Day to bring lovely weekend weather
After a hot and windy day today, a more settled weather pattern will take hold, bringing pleasant weather for the holiday weekend.
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NEW YORK — Reversing course, city education officials said Monday that a well-regarded culinary organization that recruits professional chefs to prepare school lunches could continue doing so when the new year begins next week.
Patents case puts Apple closer to fight with Google
SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Jobs minced no words when talking about Android, Google’s mobile operating system, which he saw as too similar to the iPhone’s. He told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that Android was “a stolen product” and said, “I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
For Putin, report says, state perks pile high, set him among wealthiest
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin is rumored to be among the world’s wealthiest men, with an oil-greased fortune worth tens of billions of dollars. He denies that, vehemently, but a report to be published Tuesday suggests that the dispute may be beside the point.
After attacks, Israeli schools confront hate
JERUSALEM — Tamer Jbarah, a 17-year-old Palestinian student who speaks accentless Hebrew after years in a bilingual school that is about half Jewish, said he was not at all surprised when a mob of Jewish teenagers beat an Arab teenager unconscious this month while hundreds watched and did nothing to help.
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BP’s recent $1 billion sale of its Carson refinery in Southern California is the latest move in what has become perhaps the biggest corporate garage sale in history, as BP seeks to raise cash and slim down its global operations by divesting $38 billion in assets before the end of 2013.
Amazon quietly harnesses the coming cloud-computing future
SEATTLE — Within a few years, Amazon.com’s creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retail may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive gambit: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.
Isaac plows into Gulf; clear skies in northeast
Nearly 7 years after disastrous Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the United States Gulf Coast, Hurricane Isaac will inundate Louisiana and surrounding shorelines tonight and into Wednesday. Nearly 10”+ rainfall totals are expected across eastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi as Isaac turns northward and weakens over the Midwest through late week. Wind gusts may reach 100 mph close to the storm’s center, especially near the time of landfall over southeast Louisiana.
France says it would recognize provisional Syrian government
BEIRUT — France’s president urged the Syrian opposition movement Monday to create a provisional government and vowed to extend official recognition once it was formed.
US oil and mining companies must disclose payments
HOUSTON — Despite stiff industry lobbying against it, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted 2-1 on Wednesday to require U.S. oil and mining companies to disclose taxes and other fees they pay to foreign governments. The disclosures are aimed at curbing corruption, which is common in some major oil-producing nations.
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Americans nearing retirement age have suffered disproportionately after the financial crisis: Along with the declining value of their homes, which were intended to cushion their final years, their incomes have fallen sharply.
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HOBBS, N.M. — Mitt Romney unveiled an energy plan Thursday that he said would make North America energy independent by 2020, at what would be the end of his second term as president.
As Bangladesh becomes export powerhouse, labor strife erupts
ISHWARDI, Bangladesh — The air thickened with tear gas as police and paramilitary officers jogged into the Ishwardi Export Processing Zone firing rubber bullets and swinging cane poles. Dozens of people were bloodied and hospitalized.