Character actor, World War Two hero Charles Durning dies at 89

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Charles Durning, a World War Two hero who became one of Hollywood’s top character actors in films like “The Sting,” “Tootsie” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” has died, a New York City funeral home said on Tuesday. He was 89.Durning, who was nominated for nine Emmys for his television work as well as two Academy Awards, died of natural causes at his New York City home...

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Two firefighters die in ambush at blazing New York house

A gunman ambushed four volunteer firefighters responding to...

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Army Goes Goth With 'Super-Black' Materials

Get ready to break out the eyeliner and the candelabras, because the Army is going goth.In its latest round of solicitations for small businesses, the Army is asking for proposals for super-black material. That is, material so black that it absorbs 99 percent of all light. But it isn’t really black paint, exactly. The plan is to use either an “antireflective coating or surface treatment process...

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Quentin Tarantino unchains America’s tormented past in “Django”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Twenty years after Quentin Tarantino unveiled his first film “Reservoir Dogs,” the director has turned his eye to America’s slavery history, spinning a blood-filled retribution tale in his trademark style for “Django Unchained.”Tarantino, 49, has become synonymous with violence and dark humor, taking on the Nazis in “Inglourious Basterds” and mobsters in “Pulp Fiction.”In “Django...

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News Analysis: Scientists to Seek Clues to Violence in Genome of Gunman in Newtown, Conn.

In a move likely to renew a longstanding ethical controversy, geneticists are quietly making plans to study the DNA of Adam Lanza, 20, who killed 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Conn. Their work will be an effort to discover biological clues to extreme violence. The researchers, at the University of Connecticut, confirmed their plans through a spokeswoman but declined to provide...

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Gun Makers Based in Connecticut Form a Potent Lobby

Gun owners packed a hearing room in the Connecticut capital, vowing to oppose a bill that would require new markers on guns so that they are easier to trace. One after another, they testified that the technology, called microstamping, was flawed and would increase the cost of guns. But the witness who commanded the most attention in Hartford that day in 2009 was a representative of...

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Raging fire guts Kabul market

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Firefighters battled through the night to contain a raging fire that swept through a market in the Afghan...

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Hourglass Nebula

This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star.The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the...

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“Hobbit” fever beats Tom Cruise at box office

(Reuters) – The big-budget “Hobbit” fantasy movie ruled movie box office charts for a second straight weekend, fending off Hollywood heavyweight Tom Cruise in new crime drama “Jack Reacher.”“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hauled in nearly $ 37 million from theaters in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates of Friday-through-Sunday ticket sales. The film is the first of three...

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York TimesDr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs...

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