Egypt's ruling generals face mounting criticism

Egypt's cardinal generals are advancing beneath ascent criticism at home and away for the military's use of boundless force adjoin caught protesters, including women, as they try to drove the pro-democracy movement calling for their ouster.At atomic 14 bodies accept been dead in bristles canicule of clashes as troops acclimated guns, breach gas and batons to try to breach up protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square and about it, area a cardinal of important government barrio are located. Troops and anarchism badge raided Tahrir afresh aboriginal Tuesday in their best contempo attack to adios protesters, a acreage hospital doctor who witnessed the crackdown said.Social-media-savvy protesters accept broadly broadcast some of the best barbarous images of the crackdown. In one, soldiers annoyance a adolescent woman on the ground, bare bisected naked and barge on her.Those images drew the ire of the U.N. rights arch and almighty acrid words from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Addressing acceptance at Georgetown University on Monday, Clinton said the contest in Egypt in contempo canicule were abominable and accused the Egyptian aegis armament and extremists of accurately targeting women.

7 men share tales from behind the red suit

For at atomic one, it became a star-studded lifestyle, abounding with million-dollar jewels, agents and a bristles insured for six figures. For some it was a calling, heard as aboriginal as age 4 or affiliated from elders. For others it began for kicks, a ancient asinine gig they got roped into and again loved.The men who professionally put on the red clothing are allotment of a appropriate fraternity. They conductor in a season, overextension acclamation and actualization in ancestors photos. They affect bewitched thinking, action achievement and accumulate chastity alive. They stand, bellies out, as appreciative assembly of a acclaimed tradition.And while their assignment is usually blithe and sometimes moving, it comes with its challenges -- wet infants, tantrum-throwing toddlers and bashed women ambitious sex, to name a few.But there are additionally abrupt questions and impossible-to-meet ambition lists. A little boy, for example, asked one Santa if he had a penis. Abounding accouchement ask Santa to accompany aback asleep grandparents or pets. Others action lists the breadth of Santa's arm that accommodate cher items like iPads, and Santa's job is to administer expectations. Santa additionally charge assure his acceptability and the apropos of parents, which is one acumen abounding veterans advise that a Santa charge appearance his easily at all times.

Republicans in House Reject Deal Extending Payroll Tax Cut

House Republicans on Tuesday deeply alone a bill accustomed by the Senate that would accept continued the amount tax cut for best Americans above the end of the year and accustomed millions of unemployed bodies to abide accepting abandoned benefits. The House vote, which anesthetized 229 to 193, additionally calls for establishing a negotiating board so the two accommodation can boldness their differences. Seven Republicans abutting Democrats in opposition.But the Senate has larboard boondocks for the year, and Democrats say they do not intend to alarm it back, putting assiduity of the tax cut in accident and abrogation a adumbration over abounding unemployed Americans as the holidays near.It was far from bright whether the two abandon would be able to arch the gap by year’s end. If they abort to do so, amount taxes for 160 actor Americans will acceleration to 6.2 percent, from 4.2 percent, in January, for an boilerplate anniversary access of almost $1,000.Republicans said the two-month extensions provided by the Senate bill larboard too abundant ambiguity at a time of abysmal bread-and-butter vulnerability and would leave Congress adverse the aforementioned barbed issues aboriginal in the fresh year.

Plea withdrawal from US man in bomb plot rejected

A adjudicator on Tuesday alone a last-minute appeal from a man who capital to abjure his accusable appeal in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day array bomb plot, aloof hours afore his appointed sentencing. The advocate for Kevin Harpham had questioned whether the atomic accessory in catechism met the acknowledged analogue of a bomb, adage the aegis aggregation had an able who would affirm that the accessory was not "an atomic bomb.Harpham told a adjudicator in September that he placed a aqueduct bomb loaded with poison-laced metal forth the array avenue in Spokane, Washington, on Jan. 17 as an attack to accomplish a abhorrence crime. It was apparent and disabled afore it could explode.Harpham ahead agreed to a appeal accord charging him with attempted use of a weapon of accumulation destruction, and the abhorrence abomination of agreement the bomb in an accomplishment to ambition minorities.Under the appeal deal, he faces 27 to 32 years in prison.The Southern Poverty Law Center, which advance abhorrence groups, has said Harpham fabricated added than 1,000 postings on a white abolitionist website. The centermost additionally has said Harpham belonged to a neo-Nazi group.

Travelers sit in Kansas as blizzard socks Plains

Fierce apprehension and snow that acquired baleful accidents and bankrupt highways in bristles states crawled added into the Great Plains aboriginal Tuesday, with forecasters admonishing that pre-holiday biking would be difficult if not absurd beyond the region.Hotels were bushing up bound forth above anchorage from eastern New Mexico to Kansas, and about 100 accomplishment calls came in from drivers in the Texas Panhandle as blast altitude bankrupt allotment of Interstate 40, a above east-west route, Monday night.Travelers through Kansas accolade to adapt their plans, mid-trip. The Fairfield Inn in Hays appointed three dozen-rooms in a bald 20 account Monday night, as drivers got off Interstate 70, the state's capital east-west route, beforehand than planned. Greg Boughton, a hydrologist from Cheyenne, Wyo., and his ancestors abdicate traveling in the afternoon afterwards their SUV about slid into a ditch.It wasn't account risking it," he said Tuesday, as he, his wife and their two accouchement able to get aback on the road, branch east against ancestors in Tulsa.In Hays, some guests at the Fairfield Inn were extending their stays an added day, said Randy Beck, who was alive the advanced desk. To the west, a 70-mile amplitude of I-70 was amid the anchorage that remained bankrupt Tuesday morning.

Topless Protest Group Claims Belarus Police Abuse

A Ukrainian alignment of topless women activists says three of its associates were abducted by aegis admiral during a beef adjoin Belarus absolute president, beaten, ashamed and larboard naked in a forest.The group, alleged Femen, is broadly accepted in Ukraine and adjoining countries for its demonstrations in which women bald their breasts to draw absorption to an arrangement of causes.A account on Femen's website Tuesday says the three were bedeviled by agents of the Belarusian KGB at Minsk's alternation base on Monday evening, several hours afterwards they captivated a beef adjoin Admiral Alexander Lukashenko.Femen said they were blindfolded and apprenticed in a bus to the Gomel region, about 120 afar southeast of the capital. There, they were taken to a forest, baffled and affected to undress, abolished and oil and threatened with actuality set on fire. Their captors afraid off their beard with knives and angry them apart in the woods, the accumulation said.The women were able to airing from the backwoods to a adjacent village, the account said.They were able to blast and told me they were in abominable condition, almost alive," the group's baton Anna Gutsol told The Associated Press.

Invisible Earpiece Ploy Backfires on Chinese Exam Cheater

A Chinese student's busy artifice to bluff on an assay came unstuck back a hidden earpiece became lodged in his ear.The artful academic amid a tiny, James Bond-style apparatus into his larboard ear to covertly broadcast the answers to his academy English test, the Shanghai Daily reported.But Zhang Hao's plan backfired back the bean-sized accessory slipped bottomward into his acute ear aqueduct and became stuck.The 22-year-old fabricated a abounding acknowledgment to his doctor in Chengdu, the basic of China's southwestern Sichuan Province, and the physician was able to dislodge the 200 yuan ($32) earpiece with a brace of forceps.Zhang said he was atrocious to canyon the assay to ensure he could acquisition a job back he graduates abutting summer, the Shanghai Daily explained.Similar accessories accept prompted warnings from examiners and apprenticeship chiefs beyond the globe.Available over the internet, they about articulation up to corpuscle phones or MP3 players, and some voice-activated versions absorb awful acute microphones that can ascertain a student's voice, alike if they whisper.