National / International News

Hospitals are partnering with pharmacies to keep discharged patients from returning too soon. Walgreens, for one, is helping hospitals to manage patients' medications after they go home.

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Hospitals are partnering with pharmacies to keep discharged patients from returning too soon. Walgreens, for one, is helping hospitals to manage patients' medications after they go home.

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Interpol says it has arrested hundreds of people across Central and South America in a three-month operation against the illicit timber trade.

Gas prices typically rise this time of year as refineries switch to summertime formulas, which are designed to reduce smog. But because of maintenance work — partially delayed by Superstorm Sandy — the run-up in prices is happening earlier this year.

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Arsenal face a huge task to qualify for the Champions League quarter-finals after losing 3-1 to Bayern Munich.

Accident and Emergency (A&E) units at four London hospitals are to be downgraded.

Armed robbers have pulled off one of the world’s biggest diamond heists in a lightning raid at Brussels Airport. Disguised as police, the thieves cut a hole in the airport perimeter fence and broke into a plane that was about to take off. They stole an estimated $50 million worth of gems that were being shipped from nearby Antwerp -- the hub of the global diamond trade.

The chances are, these stones will never be recovered.

“The possibility that they will be sold by the burglars is a very big possibility," says Caroline de Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. “And it’s also a product that is quite easy to transport. So we’re afraid that we won’t see them again.”

The stones were uncut and should carry a certificate under the Kimberley Process, a system designed to eliminate so-called blood diamonds that finance armed conflicts. But Annie Dunneback of the human rights group Global Witness says the process is not totally effective.

“Places like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates tend to have weaker controls and less government oversight. So that might be an easier place to dispose of these diamonds,” she says.

Even so, it could be very time-consuming. Fred Cuellar is author of “How to Buy a Diamond” and knows a thing or two about  brushes with law. Almost 15 years ago, he racked up what he calls an unjust felony conviction over diamond dealing. He says the thieves will need to trickle the diamonds into the market.

“They would take one or two stones and mix them in together with stuff that was not stolen and then slowly disperse them that particular way,” he says.

There are other possibilities. The stolen diamonds could become a kind of criminal currency -- used to finance the trade in illegal drugs and weapons. But however they’re disposed of, Cuellar says, the robbers should not expect to get more than 3 or 4 percent of the face value of the gems. Divide that between the eight people who staged the raid and the haul begins to look rather more modest.

“They’d be lucky to get a few hundred thousand,” claims Cuellar.

Meanwhile -- as police investigate the possibility that this was an inside job -- Antwerp is counting the cost to its reputation as a safe, secure and discreet diamond center.

A recent piece in the New York Times said that the Chinese army is constantly hacking American computers. The article is based on a study by cybersecurity firm Mandiant. The study shows Chinese intrusions into corporate networks in the U.S. trace back to an Army unit in Shanghai.

Scary stuff, right? Kim Zetter of Wired says “scary” may be the wrong word to use.

“I don’t like to use that word. This is espionage, and a lot of it is economic espionage; in the past, it’s happened in a lot of other ways. Computers just make it a lot easier and a lot more stealth,” said Zetter.

But how do these guys even go about hacking into corporate systems? Zetter says the main avenue for hackers is through email.

“It’s very easy to get into email. You have a lot of protections on a network, but you can’t block email from getting in,” said Zetter.

Zetter said hackers use “spearfishing” attacks: Malware emails that are crafted in a way that entice users to click. These emails usually come from a person that the user knows or is about a topic that the employee is interested in. When the email is open, it allows malware into the system, and hackers use that to dig deeper into a system.

Although it may seem like common sense to stray away from clicking something suspicious, Zetter says you can take all the measures you want to get employees not to do something, but they will still do it.

Based on what we think we know about the Higgs boson, an alternate universe could wipe out ours. Our universe, now, the scientists explained, is at the precipice of stability.

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Up to 120 jobs are under threat at a window factory in Pembroke Dock as the owners launch consultation on closing the site within three months.

The number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has fallen for the first time in six years, a UN report says.

Tests for horsemeat in meat products are being expanded, the Food Standards Agency says, to include foodstuffs like kebabs and dripping.

In Charlotte, N.C., a secret bunker rests quietly below a radio station. Built in 1963, it was part of a federal network designed to provide emergency communications in case of a nuclear attack. With a new slew of potential threats to contend with, FEMA has revived the idea.

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Photographs emerge which are said to show the 12-year-old son of a Tamil rebel leader alive and well in custody less than two hours before he was shot dead.

Pakistani developers are planning a $30 million amusement park in Abbottabad, the place Osama bin Laden secretly lived for several years before his death. The park's project manager says he wants to look past the event that put the town on the map.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is out with his first ad of the 2014 election cycle. It's a three-minute, Web-only spoof that pokes fun at President Obama and an array of Democrats who might challenge the five-term Kentucky senator.

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When you think whisky from the U.K., you think Scotch. But a group of entrepreneurs is trying to restart England's long-dormant whisky business — and prove their version of the quaff can be jolly good, too. English whisky is headed stateside in April.

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Nasa ground controllers re-establish contact with the International Space Station hours after a computer failure interrupted communication.

A man who blew up his house in a gas blast in Greater Manchester, killing his neighbour's two-year-old son, is jailed.

U.S. Army Spc. Tyler Jeffries lost both legs in a roadside bombing last October in Afghanistan, and he has been learning to walk on prosthetic legs. But Jeffries was determined to meet his buddies when they returned from duty in January.

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