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Video Ceators Look for Bigger Audiences at VidCon

At a weekend conference for online video, one might expect cute puppies or unlucky skateboarders to be in attendance. Perhaps a "Twilight" cast member or teenage viral video star Rebecca Black would be there?

Yet none of the above is present, though one panel — "I Got This, You Got This, Now You Know It" — is named after a lyric from Black's viral music video sensation "Friday."

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Extremists Flocking to Facebook for Recruits

When the English Defense League sprang to life two years ago, it had fewer than 50 members — a rough-and-tumble bunch of mostly white guys shouting from a street corner about what they viewed as uncontrolled Muslim immigration.

Now, the far-right group mentioned by confessed Norway gunman Anders Behring Breivik as an inspiration says its ranks have swollen to more than 10,000 people, a spectacular rise its leaders attribute to the immense global power of Facebook and other social networking sites.

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17 Killed in Vietnam Shoe Factory Fire

A fire at a Vietnamese shoe factory killed 17 people and seriously injured 21 others in the northern port city of Hai Phong, state-controlled media reported Saturday.

Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Bui Thi Them, one of the survivors, as saying the fire broke out Friday afternoon when welding sparks ignited roofing insulation. The welder was installing a lightening rod on the factory's tin roof in preparation for a tropical storm that is expected to hit northern Vietnam later Saturday.

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Gunmen Kill 11 Shiites in Pakistan Sectarian Attack

Gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying minority Shiite Muslims in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing 11 of them in a sectarian attack, police said.

Two people were also wounded in the attack in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, senior police official Hamid Shakeel said.

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Tens of Thousands Rally for Unity at Cairo’s Tahrir Square

Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Friday seeking to unify their demands despite rifts over key issues between liberal activists and Islamist groups.

Protesters carrying banners, flags and umbrellas to shield them from the punishing Cairo sun filled the square in one of the largest demonstrations since the popular uprising pushed President Hosni Mubarak from power in February.

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Cannabis on Busy Vienna Thoroughfare

Vienna police have shut down an unusual cannabis "ring" — hemp growing along the Austrian capital's busy Ring Street encircling the city's center.

Alerted by a news article about the illegal crop, police officers on Friday plucked a 200-meter (yard) stretch of green space along the three-lane street clean of the offending plants.

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Dubai Decides Not to Bid for 2020 Olympics

Hit hard by the global economic crisis, the Gulf city of Dubai decided Friday not to bid for the 2020 Olympics and will focus instead on a possible candidacy for the 2024 Games.

A feasibility study found 70 percent of the infrastructure demands were already in place but that a "a bid would be better timed for 2024," the National Olympic Committee of the United Arab Emirates said.

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How Ancient Rome Built its Mediterranean Empire

"Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization" (Penguin Group), by Richard Miles: For ancient Romans, "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" had to be the wave of the future if they were to become the unrivaled masters of the Mediterranean and the lands on its shores. Look at a map.

Carthage, a colony of seagoing Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon, was strategically on the Mediterranean's south coast, halfway between its Middle East homeland and the entry to the Atlantic. It was building an empire of its own, subjecting tribes in North Africa, Spain and the big islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

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U.S. Fugitive Taunts Police on Facebook to Catch Him

A fugitive who taunted police on his Facebook page to 'catch me if you can. I'm in Brooklyn' has been arrested.

The Daily News says U.S. marshals and NYPD detectives tracked Victor Burgos down to an apartment in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood Monday night, sitting at a computer with his Facebook page open.

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NY State Fair Unveils 1,500-Calorie 'Donut Burger'

Want fries with that ... doughnut?

A food booth in Syracuse will unveil the "Big Kahuna Donut Burger" at this year's New York State Fair.

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