Heavy snowfall in higher reaches of Uttarakhand

DEHRADUN: The higher reaches of the mountains in Kumaon and Garhwal regions of Uttarakhand today received the season's first heavy snowfall even as icy winds swept the plains. Incessant rains made way for heavy snowfall in Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamnotri, Auli and Harsil in Garhwal and Dharchula and Munsyari in Kumaon. Rains lashed Dehradun in the afternoon making the day temperature...

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again. (Learn about other fungi that invade brains.)Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers...

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Petraeus Tells Friend He 'Screwed Up Royally'

One of David Petraeus' closest friends says the former CIA director admitted that he "screwed up royally" by having an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.Retired Brigadier Gen. James Shelton has been friends with Petraeus for more than three decades and reached to out to him after he resigned from the CIA. Shelton told ABC News that the former four-star general wrote...

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Obama urges public to pressure Congress on extending tax cuts for the middle class

President Obama urged Americans on Wednesday to pressure Congress to extend an income tax freeze for the middle class, warning that failure to agree on such a measure could cost families more than $2,000 next year, harm job growth and “drag our economy down.” Speaking with 15 middle-class Americans standing behind him, Obama called on people to use a new Twitter hashtag, #my2k, and tell...

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Italy, China sign deals worth US$1.27b

ROME: Italian and Chinese firms signed deals worth $1.27 billion (984 million euros) on Wednesday in Rome at talks attended by Prime Minister Mario Monti and senior Chinese politburo member Jia Qinglin.The six deals included agreements between Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and Italian Internet provider Fastweb for $557 million and between China Everbright and Chinese-owned Italy-based...

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Times campaign: Get rid of outdated laws

After 20 years of economic reforms, our laws have still not been rid of obscure and obsolete provisions. Whether they are central or state, the laws continue to offer ample scope to 'authorities' to harass law-abiding citizens. You can be arrested, your homes and establishments raided, your businesses shut down, and your reputation affected (at least temporarily) -- for reasons that no right-thinking...

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Black Hole Blast Biggest Ever Recorded

Astronomers have witnessed a record-breaking blast of gas and dust flowing out of a monster black hole more than 11.5 billion light years away.The supermassive gravity well, with a mass of one to three billion suns, lurks at the core of a quasar—a class of extremely bright and energetic galaxies—dubbed SDSS J1106 1939. (See "Black Hole Blasts Superheated Early Universe.")"We discovered...

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Keeping the financial regulators on their toes

When members of Congress need factual information and insights into the effectiveness of the financial laws put in place after the 2008 economic crisis, they regularly turn to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Orice Williams Brown. Initially as director and now as managing director of the GAO’s financial markets and community investment section, Brown and her staff have issued...

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Experts comb for clues in deadly German blaze

TITISEE-NEUSTADT, Germany: Experts sifted through a fire-ravaged workshop for the disabled in Germany on Tuesday, hunting for the cause of a fierce blaze there that killed 14 people.Most of the dead from the fire which began on Monday at the centre in the southwestern town of Titisee-Neustadt in Germany's Black Forest region were disabled, police said.A 50-year-old female carer was also...

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Cash transfer scheme will be a game changer step for 2014 general elections: Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: Gearing up for the next general elections, scheduled in 2014, the Congress on Tuesday termed its big-ticket plan to directly transfer cash to various social welfare beneficiaries as "game changer" and "politically revolutionary" step for UPA-II."It will be a game changer," finance minister P Chidambaram said at a press conference at the Congress headquarters here."It is a politically...

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