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ROME (Reuters) - Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession. "We hope that this government will finally start listening to us because we are losing our patience," said Enzo Bernardis, who joined the sea of protesters waving red flags and calling for more workers' rights and better contracts. ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired three short-range missiles from its east coast on Saturday, South Korea's Defence Ministry said, prompting Western powers to urge Pyongyang to exercise restraint. Launches by the North of short-range missiles are not uncommon but, after recent warnings from the communist state of impending nuclear war, such actions raise concerns about the region's security. "North Korea fired short-range guided missiles twice in the morning and once in the afternoon off its east coast," an official at the South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman's office said by telephone. ...

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings. France's official journal announced on Saturday the bill had become law after the Constitutional Council gave it the go-ahead on Friday. The bill, a campaign pledge by the Socialist president, has been for months hotly contested by many conservatives in France, where allowing gay marriage is one of the biggest social reforms since abolition of the death penalty in 1981. ...

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Suspected Sunni Muslim militants killed four state-backed Sunni fighters in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said, apparently viewing them as collaborators with the Shi'ite-led government of a nation plagued by sectarian hatred. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in Iraq have been amplified by the conflict between mostly Sunni rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite-dominated forces in neighboring Syria. ...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police angered by the kidnapping of seven colleagues by Islamist gunmen kept a crossing into the Gaza Strip closed again on Saturday, stranding hundreds of Palestinian travelers, witnesses said. The protest began on Friday when police strung barbed wire across the Rafah border post and chained up the gates, local residents said, a day after the abductions. Gunmen demanding the release of jailed Islamist militants had seized seven policemen and soldiers on a road between the Sinai towns of el-Arish and Rafah. ...

BENGHAZI (Reuters) - Armed groups attacked military posts in Libya's second city Benghazi with bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade, an army commander said on Saturday. Nearly two years after the uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, the government still exerts little control over the armed brigades that helped overthrow him. Oil-producer Libya is largely split into fiefdoms of such brigades that are competing for influence. No one was hurt in the four overnight attacks on three Benghazi army posts, said the military commander, Hamed Belkhair. ...

The failure of the University of Montana to respond adequately to rape and sexual assault allegations against popular football players has led to a broadening of how the federal government defines sexual harassment, causing free speech advocates to worry that the new policy will be used to punish ?unwelcome? flirting and chill the right to speak freely on campus.

The field for Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness Stakes is set to take aim at Kentucky Derby winner Orb, as he attempts to become the first thoroughbred in 35 years to capture the Triple Crown, consisting of victories in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes.

For most of her 20-year marriage to Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs was content to be a behind-the-scenes philanthropist.

Benghazi terrorist attack ... IRS and the tea party ... snooping on Associated Press reporters ... losing track of terrorists in the witness protection program.

BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian President Bashar Assad says he won't step down before elections are held in his war-ravaged country.

BAGHDAD (AP) ? A string of attacks killed at least 16 people in Iraq on Saturday, while gunmen abducted eight policemen guarding a post on the country's main highway to Jordan and Syria, the latest in a wave of violence to grip the country.

MOSCOW (AP) ? Part of an airliner carrying more than 130 people caught fire as it was landing in Moscow, and passengers evacuated the plane by jumping off one of its wings and shooting down an evacuation slide.