Taylor Swift and One Direction's Harry Styles: Are They Dating?

By Patrick Gomez 11/17/2012 at 10:40 PM EST Taylor Swift and Harry Styles Janet Mayer/Splash News Online; Don Arnold/Wireimage Taylor Swift appears to be taking her love life in a new direction.The "Never Ever Getting Back Together" singer is seemingly taking...

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Migration officials say cholera in Haiti on rise

GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest agency that deals with global migration says cholera is again on the rise in Haiti.The International Organization for Migration says Haitian officials have confirmed 3,593 cholera cases and another 837 suspected cases since Hurricane Sandy's passage.IOM spokesman Jumbe Omari Jumbe told reporters Friday in Geneva "the numbers are going up" particularly in camps around...

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Banks seen shrinking for good as lay-offs near 160,000

LONDON (Reuters) - Major banks have announced some 160,000 job cuts since early last year and with more lay-offs to come as the industry restructures, many will leave the shrinking sector for good as redundancies outpace new hires by roughly two-to-one. A Reuters analysis of job cuts announced by 29 major banks showed the lay-offs were much bigger in Europe than in Asia or the United...

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Egypt feelers open tiny window to Gaza truce

GAZA (Reuters) - Egypt opened a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy in Gaza on Friday, but hopes for even a brief ceasefire while its prime minister was inside the bombarded enclave to talk to leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement were immediately dashed. Prime Minister Hisham Kandil visited the Gaza Strip on Friday officially to show solidarity with the Palestinian people after...

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In Gaza, new arsenals include “weaponized” social media

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – There have long been the tools of warfare associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: warplanes, mortars, Qassam rockets. Now that list includes Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.This week the worldwide audience got a vivid look at conflict in the social media era as the Israeli military unfurled an extensive campaign across several...

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The X Factor Reveals Its Top 12

TV Watch The X Factor 11/15/2012 at 11:00 PM EST Demi Lovato and Simon Cowell Double elimination time on The X Factor!The top 12 performed songs by divas the night before – and then faced a night of diva-worthy drama on Thursday's show. And it was a particularly...

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Booze calories nearly equal soda's for US adults

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans get too many calories from soda. But what about alcohol? It turns out adults get almost as many empty calories from booze as from soft drinks, a government study found.Soda and other sweetened drinks — the focus of obesity-fighting public health campaigns — are the source of about 6 percent of the calories adults consume, on average. Alcoholic beverages account for about...

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Growth worries, U.S. fiscal fears hit shares

LONDON (Reuters) - World share markets fell for a seventh day on Thursday, hit by evidence that Europe's debt crisis has stalled economic growth and as concern over the fiscal problems facing the United States ratchets up. Economic growth in Germany, Europe's largest economy, cooled to 0.2 percent over the July-September period compared with the previous three months, while data showed...

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China names conservative, older leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party unveiled an older, conservative leadership line-up on Thursday that appears unlikely to take the drastic action needed to tackle pressing issues like social unrest, environmental degradation and corruption. New party chief Xi Jinping, premier-in-waiting Li Keqiang and vice-premier in charge of economic affairs Wang Qishan, all named as...

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In Britain, spate of prosecutions for Twitter and Facebook tirades spark free-speech debate

LONDON – One teenager made offensive comments about a murdered child on Twitter. Another young man wrote on Facebook that British soldiers should “go to hell.” A third posted a picture of a burning paper poppy, symbol of remembrance of war dead.All were arrested, two convicted, and one jailed — and they’re not the only ones. In Britain, hundreds of people...

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