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Lebanon to End Doomed WCup Campaign "Clean Team"

As Theo Buecker prepares an almost entirely new team for the last match of Lebanon's World Cup qualifying campaign, he struggles with memories of a former squad that had given him reason to believe that they'd all create history.

"If our boys had not sold the two matches against Qatar, we'd reach Brazil," Buecker said. "We'd go to the World Cup next year."

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Google Boasts Predictive Powers for Box Office

Google says in a new study all the online searching and trailer-watching moviegoers do ahead of a film's release can have significant predictive powers at the box office.

The search company on Thursday published a "Quantifying Movie Magic" study that surveyed 99 of the top-grossing films of last year. Google says that four weeks before a film is released, search volume for its trailer can predict its opening box office with 94 percent accuracy when factoring in its status and the time of year.

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Tropical Storm Andrea Pounds Parts of Florida 

The first named storm of the Atlantic season hammered Florida with rain, heavy winds, and tornadoes Thursday as it moved toward the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, promising sloppy commutes and waterlogged vacation getaways through the beginning of the weekend.

Tropical Storm Andrea was losing speed late Thursday and not expected to strengthen into a hurricane but forecasters warned it could cause isolated flooding and storm surge over the next two days.

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Bible's Strong Comeback Surprises Secular Norway

It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway — one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe — the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book.

The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most prominent theaters.

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Russia Arrests Suspect in Foiled Terror Attack

Russia's counter-terrorism agency said Thursday that special forces have arrested a man for planning a terrorist attack on Moscow that the agency had foiled last month.

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that troops from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, arrested Yulai Davletbayev in suburban Moscow Thursday morning.

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Coach Juan Ignacio Martinez to Leave Levante

Levante has parted ways with coach Juan Ignacio Martinez after two successful seasons ended with an ongoing investigation into alleged match-fixing.

Levante sports director Manolo Salvador says Martinez will not be offered a new contract after his current deal runs out on June 30.

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Brazil Plummets to No. 22 in FIFA Rankings

Five-time World Cup winner Brazil dropped to a historic low of No. 22 in the FIFA rankings on Thursday only one year before hosting the showpiece tournament.

Brazil fell three places this month as it continues to play only friendlies, including a 2-2 draw against England on Sunday. Friendlies score less than competitive matches in FIFA's calculations, which have ranked teams since 1993 across a four-year results cycle.

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Mexico Finds Breast-Feeding Woes as Rate Drops

Despite the well-known advantages to breast milk and vigorous campaigns around the world championing breast as best, Mexican mothers say the bottle is better.

In a dramatic decline over the past six years, today only one in seven mothers in Mexico breast-feeds exclusively in the first six months, the standard recommended by the World Health Organization. That leaves Mexico with nearly the lowest level of breast-feeding in Latin America.

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Mayor: 6 Dead in U.S. Building Collapse 

A Philadelphia building that was being torn down collapsed with a thunderous boom Wednesday, raining bricks on a neighboring thrift store, killing six people and injuring at least 13 others in an accident that witnesses said was bound to happen.

Early reports from Mayor Michael Nutter had been that one woman had died in the Wednesday morning accident, but rescuers using buckets and their bare hands to move bricks and rubble kept working through the evening. Body bags were removed from the collapse site at night, and Nutter said at a news conference that authorities didn't know how many people had been in the thrift shop or on the sidewalk.

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New Zealand Driver, 105: 'I Don't Think I'm Old'

Bob Edwards was born before the first Model T rolled out of Henry Ford's factory in Detroit. He learned to drive in a French car that had a lever instead of a steering wheel. And he's still on the road, only now in a red four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi.

The oldest licensed driver in New Zealand, and one of the oldest in the world, has been driving for 88 of his 105 years and has no plans to give it up, just as he intends to keep working out every morning in his home gym, and to keep regularly cooking meals for himself and his wife, who's 91.

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