Maria Sharapova withdrew from the Brisbane International with an injured right collarbone Tuesday and 2011 champion Petra Kvitova slumped out in a straight-sets loss soon after.
Combined with Daniela Hantuchova's 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 win over No. 5 Sara Errani and the first-round exits of No. 7 Sam Stosur and No. 8 Caroline Wozniacki, the season-opening event featuring eight of the top 10 ranked women had already lost five of its top eight seeds before the end of the second round.
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Spoiler alert: This story contains words and phrases that some people want to ban from the English language. "Spoiler alert" is among them. So are "kick the can down the road," ''trending" and "bucket list."
All are on the 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. The nonbinding, tongue-in-cheek decree released Monday by northern Michigan's Lake Superior State University is based on nominations submitted from the United States, Canada and beyond.
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A Pennsylvania newspaper has just received a calendar to help ring in the new year — except the year is 1950.
Scranton's The Times-Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/S23ykD ) a mail carrier delivered it 63 years late without explanation on Friday.
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Measles cases surged in Pakistan last year with hundreds of children dying of the disease, an international health body said Tuesday, as health officials said they had launched a new vaccination campaign in the affected areas to immunize hundreds of thousands of others.
Pakistan struggles with a beleaguered health care system, unsanitary conditions in many parts of the country and a lack of education about how to prevent disease. All those factors make it difficult to combat infectious diseases such as measles and polio.
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Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley.
But Goecker isn't in California. He's more than 2,300 miles away, working at home in Seymour, Indiana.
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A million people crammed into New York's Times Square on Tuesday to greet the New Year in a global party that kicked off in Australia before rolling around the world in a non-stop chain of firework displays.
But tragedy struck in the Ivory Coast when at least 61 people died and dozens more were injured as a crowd that had gathered for New Year's fireworks stampeded in the economic capital Abidjan, rescue workers there said.
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Physical fitness is a way of life on the beautiful beachfront oasis of Santa Monica. From sunrise to sunset, there's huffing and puffing in the city's parks as trainers put their students through the paces of every form of exercise imaginable.
All along the 420 acres of greenery paralleling the Pacific Ocean are groups of a dozen or more people furiously pumping iron, doing sit-ups, stepping on and off little benches and stretching on mats. Some flex their muscles with weight machines tied by big rubber bands to pretty much anything that's anchored to the ground.
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Blood clots like the one that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is being treated for following her recent concussion can occur for a host of reasons. How serious a clot is depends on where it is and why it formed. A Clinton aide would not say where hers is located.
WHAT THEY ARE: Blood pools and thickens into a clot after an injury or because of a heart problem, clogged arteries or other condition. Clots also can break off and travel to another part of the body.
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The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has urged followers to write to their representatives in Parliament to oppose the government's plans to allow gay marriage.
In a letter read to congregations over the weekend, Archbishop Vincent Nichols called for Catholics to express their views "clearly, calmly and forcefully."
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A kid for Kimye: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child.
The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. He told the crowd of more than 5,000 at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall in song form: "Now you having my baby."
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