Ukol Talumpa, who had survived previous assassination attempts, and his wife among four killed at Manila terminal

A mayor from the southern Philippines, his wife and two others including a boy less than two years old have been fatally shot in a daring attack at a Manila airport terminal that also wounded four other people.

Manila airport general manager Jose Angel Honrado said men on a motorcycle fired at Ukol Talumpa, the mayor of Labangan in the country's south, and his wife as they stepped out of terminal 3 on Friday.

They were declared dead on arrival at a nearby air base hospital along with two others, including a boy aged about 18 months. It was not immediately clear if they were related to the mayor. The gunmen escaped.

Philippine airports are typically packed with people during the Christmas season.

Talumpa won a hotly contested electoral contest for mayor of Labangan in last May's elections, the AFP news agency said.

News reports in the Philippines said Talumpa had survived several other attempts on his life, including a September 2012 grenade attack in Pagadian city where he was vice-mayor, and a 2010 shooting in Manila that left he and a nephew wounded.

Source: Associated Press

Hundreds of people have demonstrated in the Belgian capital Brussels to demand that EU leaders meeting in the city put an end to government spending cuts blamed for mass joblessness and a growing social crisis in parts of Europe.

On Thursday, the demonstrators used tractors and bales of hays to block traffic around the site of the EU summit to protest many of the policies the 28 leaders would discuss during the meeting.

"The idea is to block access to the European summit," said Nic Goertz, a spokesman for the demonstrators, noting that 1,500 protesters had gathered in the Belgian capital.

The protests were organized by Alliance D19-20 which includes trade unions, farmers and groups from across Europe that are unhappy with EU cuts and a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership free-trade agreement that is being discussed with the US.

Opponents of the controversial trade deal argue that agreement is nothing more than a ploy by corporate lobbyists to ensure that new laws and regulations benefit large corporations.

The United States may have to fly military equipment out of Afghanistan at an additional cost of $1 billion since the land route through Pakistan has been blocked due to anti-US protests in Pakistan, American officials say.

The US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said flying the military equipment out of Afghanistan to a port would cost five to seven times as much as it does to truck it through Pakistan, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

An unnamed defense official said sending the cargo through the routes in Pakistan would cost around $5 billion through the end of 2014, adding flying the equipment to ports in the Middle East would cost about $6 billion if it continued through next year.

Around one hundred trucks are at the border, and hundreds more are loaded and kept in compounds waiting to leave Afghanistan while dozens of Pakistani protesters have gathered on the overland route.

A CNN segment about a federal judge's ruling on National Security Agency surveillance turned into an all-out battle that led to the victorious attorney in the case actually getting kicked off the air.

Larry Klayman, a longtime Washington attorney frequently referred to as a "gadfly," had from the start accused CNN anchor Don Lemon of being in the tank for President Barack Obama.

Before having him on, CNN aired a report about Klayman that highlighted a lawsuit he filed last year that Obama shouldn't be president because no one has confirmed he's a "natural-born citizen," and featured footage of Klayman at a rally saying "we are now ruled, quote unquote, by a president who bows down to Allah."

A former George W. Bush staffer in the report referred to Klayman as a "professional litigant" who "pretends that he's fighting for the little guy when he's really fighting for himself and his own, in my opinion, delusions of grandeur."

When Klayman finally came onscreen, he started by addressing Lemon: "I think it's important to note that you're a big supporter of Obama, you have favored him in every respect, you have to do a hit piece to diminish a very important decision - "

"Are you talking about me personally?" Lemon asked. "None of that is true, but go on."

"Well, it is true, Don. I've watched you for many years. You're an ultra-leftist and you're a big supporter of Obama," Klayman said. "Let's talk about the NSA, let's not talk about Larry Klayman. This victory is for the American people. It wasn't for me. And you, as somebody from the left ... should appreciate that you don't have a police state in this country that's going to be able to intimidate Americans to chill their free speech rights ... rather than talking about that you've got to try to take out somebody that has challenged President Obama."

Lemon said he was "not here to get into an argument" and that "nothing you have said about me has been correct." When Klayman kept interrupting, Lemon threatened to cut his microphone.

Seoul - In the heart of Seoul's famous Gangnam neighborhood lies the "Beauty Belt," a grouping of streets lined with hundreds of cosmetic surgery joints.

Untold numbers of Koreans - as well as Chinese and Southeast Asian tourists - have trekked to this district, seeking a pointed nose, rounded eyes, a slimmer jaw line and even a gentler smile, considered graceful in some East Asian countries.

South Koreans are the most cosmetically enhanced people in the world, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. In this hyper-competitive society, plastic surgery is often seen as a prerequisite to job and relationship success.

But what if you can't afford these high-end clinics?

Turns out, there's an alternative: do-it-yourself cosmetic enhancements.

It's popular among anxious Korean teens who lack the funds to purchase the rarified good looks plastered on subway and bus advertisements. Taken together, a "VIP package" of procedures such as an eye lift, nose job, and even a popular jawbone-cutting operation can fetch more than $10,000.

Impatient for such treatments, these youngsters are taking the burden upon themselves to craft a better face. Enter the DIY craze, a potentially hazardous fad among high school friends who self-apply cheap and scantily regulated tools bought online.

The process usually doesn't involve self-mutilation (although there are exceptions). But cosmetic surgeons insist it is potentially dangerous because it involves trying to contort and manipulate bodies that have not fully matured - offering the potential for harm.

Official White House Spying Panel Implies that It Might Be ...

Hidden in the report which the White House panel on NSA released today is a stunning implication: that the U.S. government has been using its massive offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts and otherwise manipulating financial systems.

Specifically, the panel's report states (page 221):

(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;

(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems ....

A Republican congressman from Georgia who is hoping to be party's next Senate nominee said over the weekend that poor children should have to pay or sweep floors if they wanted to eat school lunches.

"I'm on the Agriculture Committee, we have jurisdiction over the school lunch," Rep. Jack Kingston explained to the Jackson County Republican Party in a clip obtained by The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel. "School lunch program is very expensive."

"But one of the things I've talked to the secretary of agriculture about: Why don't you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch?" he suggested. "Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria - and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money."

"But think what we would gain as a society in getting people - getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch," Kingston added.

While campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2011, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also floated the idea of replacing unionized janitors with children during a talk at Harvard's Kennedy School.

He later told a crowd in Iowa that poor children were basically lazy.

A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an "angel from heaven" and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother's life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children's Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.

"She is an angel from heaven," said Aisha Ford, a family friend for 15 years who also was caught up in the evening of terror.

The girl's mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. The gunman was disarmed by police and arrested at the scene of the shooting, a Detroit gas station. Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months. Parker, who was treated and released at Detroit Receiving Hospital, is now at her daughter's bedside. She declined to comment Tuesday.

© Unknown

Give them an apartment first, ask questions later.

Utah has reduced its rate of chronic homelessness by 78 percent over the past eight years, moving 2000 people off the street and putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015. How'd they do it? The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000.

Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment. Other states are eager to emulate Utah's results. Wyoming has seen its homeless population more than double in the past three years, and it only provides shelter for 26 percent of them, the lowest rate in the country. City officials in Casper, Wyoming, now plan to launch a pilot program using the methods of Utah's Housing First program. There's no telling how far the idea might go.

Sebastian Prevot watched helplessly as three police officers advanced on his wife. Prevot was handcuffed and bleeding in the back of a cop car. Half of his left ear dangled where it had been torn from his head. The Houston Police Department doesn't deny that its officers gave Prevot these injuries during a late-night arrest in January 2012. The only dispute is whether he earned them.

Prevot had been returning home from a night out with a friend. He was two miles from his house when he stopped just past the white line at a four-way stop sign. Two officers in a patrol car tried to pull him over, but he kept driving. Prevot says he didn't want to pull over and continued home - "going the speed limit, stopping at every stop sign" - because he knew he was about to be detained and have his car impounded.

"My kids had to go to school in the morning," he told me. "My wife had to go to work."

Prevot sits across from me in a noisy McDonald's at dusk. He's 30, married, with three little boys. In 2009 Prevot was one semester away from getting his bachelor's degree in marketing when his wife, Annika Lewis, was promoted at her job with AT&T, and the family moved to Houston from Lafayette, Louisiana. Now he takes care of his sons, ages 7, 5, and 4, coaches youth sports and looks for work. His left ear still bears a crosshatching of paler brown where an emergency room doctor stitched it up on January 27, 2012, the night he should have stopped.