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Poll: Quarter of Lebanese Muslims Say Laws Should Follow Quran

A survey in 10 countries with significant Muslim populations, including Lebanon, found "striking" differences in the extent to which people believe the Quran should influence a nation's laws.

Possible reasons for these differences include a nation's history and religious composition as well as personal factors such as intensity of religious observance, age and level of education, said the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey among more than 10,000 Muslims and non-Muslims a year ago. Error margins ranged from 3.4 to 4.3 percentage points.

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McDonald's Testing McNugget Recipe without Preservatives

McDonald's is testing Chicken McNuggets with no artificial preservatives as it works to revive its U.S. business.

The world's biggest hamburger chain says it began testing the new recipe in about 140 stores in Oregon and Washington in March.

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Artificial Limbs Offer Syrians New Chances at Life

Every time 3-year-old Seif wears his new prosthetic legs, the toddler puts up a fight. He has already made peace with walking on his stumps, but there is no dodging his daily rehabilitation session at a prosthetic clinic in southern Turkey.

In a small clinic in the dusty border town of Reyhanli, dozens of wounded Syrians come to be fitted each month with prosthetic limbs, their best shot at restoring a semblance of a normal life.

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Nintendo Sinks into Bigger Quarterly Loss on Weak Sales

Japanese video-game maker Nintendo Co. reported a 24 billion yen ($216 million) loss for January-March Wednesday, bigger than the loss it reported the previous year.

Nintendo also said Wednesday that its new game platform codenamed NX will be launched globally in March next year. Some game fans had expected the machine might be shown at the annual E3 electronics show in Los Angeles in June.

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Maybe Twitter Needs to Get Used to Being Small

Twitter gets lots of grief from investors because it hasn't taken over the world the way Facebook did, at least in terms of amassing users.

But maybe it's destined to stay small, serving a vital, if limited, role for the public. Maybe Twitter just isn't meant to be an all-encompassing social utility. Maybe stock price is not the only lens through which a company can be valued. Twitter, perhaps even in spite of its difficult interface and site-specific lingo, has become a cultural force since its 2006 founding.

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Apple Reports iPhone Sales down, 1st Revenue Drop since 2003

Apple sold more than 51 million iPhones in the first three months of this year — and that's the problem.

That's 10 million fewer iPhones than the tech giant sold during the same quarter a year ago. As a result, Apple on Tuesday reported its first drop in quarterly revenue in 13 years — and the first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.

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In Internet Age, Pirate Radio Arises as Surprising Challenge

In the age of podcasts and streaming services, you might think pirate radio is low on the list of concerns of federal lawmakers and broadcasters. You'd be wrong.

They're increasingly worried about its presence in some cities as unlicensed broadcasters commandeer frequencies to play anything from Trinidadian dance music to Haitian call-in shows. And they complain the Federal Communications Commission can't keep up with the pirates, who can block listeners from favorite programs or emergency alerts for missing children and severe weather.

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Dutch Mark Chilly King's Day with Music, Free Markets

The Dutch marked their king's birthday Wednesday with an official celebration in the northeastern city of Zwolle and festivals and unofficial garage sales around the nation.

Numbers of revelers were expected to be lower than in previous years because of wintery temperatures and showers forecast to sweep over the country of 17 million.

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Movie 'Doctor Strange' Turns Tibetan Man into European Woman

A Tibetan male character from the "Doctor Strange" comic books presented such a political minefield to Marvel that in the film version they cast a Caucasian woman in the role, reflecting the pressures Hollywood movie makers perceive when trying to appeal to the Chinese market.

One of the film's screenwriters has suggested that the casting of British actress Tilda Swinton as sorcerer the Ancient One was partly done to avoid potentially offending China's government and moviegoers, who now represent the world's second-largest annual box office after North America.

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Romania: Culture Minister Resigns over Opera Dispute

Romania's culture minister has tendered his resignation amid a bitter dispute at the country's main opera house involving internationally renowned ballerina Alina Cojocaru.

Vlad Alexandrescu announced that he would be stepping down in a posting on his Facebook page Wednesday, after he failed to solve a conflict at the Bucharest National Opera that has seen three shows canceled so far.

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