Buckingham Palace to get £369m refurbishment and other top stories.

• Buckingham Palace to get £369m refurbishment

  Image copyright PA Buckingham Palace is to undergo a 10-year refurbishment costing the taxpayer £369m, the Treasury has announced.The Queen will remain in residence during the work, to begin next April.Ageing cables, lead pipes, wiring and boilers will be replaced, many for the first time in 60 years, amid fears about potential fire and water damage.Tony Johnstone-Burt, Master of the Queen's Household, said phased works offered the "best value for money" while keeping the palace running. ..

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• Fashion designer urges industry to refuse to dress Melania Trump

  

  It’s not often that the political and fashion worlds collide, but one designer brought the two industries into the same realm on Thursday afternoon.French designer Sophie Theallet, who has dressed First Lady Michelle Obama, tweeted an open letter explaining why she’ll stay away from Melania Trump once she moves into the White House.“As an independent fashion brand, we consider our voice an expression of our artistic and philosophical ideas. The Sophie Theallet brand stands against all discrimin..

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• Myanmar man accused of self-immolation in Australian bank

  

  Canberra, Australia: A 21-year-old man accused of injuring 26 bystanders when he set himself on fire with gasoline in a bank branch in Australia’s second-largest city was identified on Saturday as a Myanmar asylum seeker who had been waiting three years to be accepted as a refugee.The suspect, known by his friends as Noor, and five bystanders were taken to hospital with serious burns following the fire at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia branch in the Melbourne suburb of Springvale Friday morn..

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• Trump-Romney meeting another wild 2016 twist

  

  The thought that Mitt Romney would ever join the cabinet of Donald Trump -- given their fuming hostility, mutual contempt and venomous rhetorical exchanges -- might be the most absurd notion yet of a crazy political year.But the possibility that Trump and the man he labeled a "choke artist" could find common cause in the new administration is nonetheless a hot topic ahead of their meeting Saturday at the president-elect's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf retreat.Prominent members of Romney's orbit, ..

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• Syria activists: Airstrikes knock out hospitals in rebel-held Aleppo

  

  However, activists working inside the city said up to five other hospitals in eastern neighborhoods are still functioning."For the first time, eastern Aleppo is out of hospitals operating at full capacity," Dr Mazen Kewara, Director of the SAMS Turkey Office, told CNN. "There are remaining medical facilities but they are not operating at full capacity," he said. One of those hit was a children's hospital, forcing staff to evacuate babies to safety.Syrian government aircraft resumed airstrikes Tu..

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• Would Trump Leap to the Defense of Our NATO Allies?

  

  This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.Throughout the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s attitude toward NATO has engendered significant consternation throughout both Europe and the U.S. foreign policy establishment.Although the president-elect has not explicitly advocated pulling out of the NATO, he has suggested that the United States should rethink its involvement since the United States continues to bear a disproportionate share of the defense burden within the allia..

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• Thousands of Malaysians March Against Government

  

  When they were completed in 1998, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were the tallest buildings in the world. At 1,483 feet, they beat out Chicago’s Sears Tower — which had held the record since 1973 — by only 10, but all the same, the superlative was a trophy for a Southeast Asian nation that had transformed itself from a sleepy agrarian society into a crucial economic center in less than a quarter of a century. Specifically, they were a point of pride for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, w..

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Adidas to Restructure Reebok Brand .	Woman whose daughter died after skipping flu shot raising awareness of vaccine .
Poll: Clinton, Trump in virtual dead heat on eve of first debate .	The 'Punkin Reaper' was supposed to launch pumpkins. Instead, it exploded, hospitalizing two. .