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Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
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buried lead
Trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell reveals 'a house of horrors'
It was a scene the Philadelphia District Attorney called "a house of horrors." A warning to readers, some of the details in this story are gruesome.
West Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell is on trial for running an abortion clinic in which he allegedly killed babies who had survived illegal, late-term abortions, and where a woman allegedly died of a botched painkiller injection.
"The evidence is certainly compelling," said The Philadelphia Inquirer's Joseph Slobodzian. Slobodzian has been in the courtroom every day of the trial.
"There are any number of witnesses, most of them former employees of Dr. Gosnell's clinic, who say they saw late-term abortions being done, they saw fetuses, babies, that were moving, breathing after the procedure, and those babies were killed," said Slobodzian.
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world lead
Are drones turning people against the U.S.?
The effect of drone strikes in Pakistan leaves a lot of questions for the Obama administration, casting a shadow of doubt over the notion that deploying drones is the best strategy to reduce threats against the United States.
"It's a fact that anytime you do a military operation, whether it's with a drone or any other means, you're going to potentially sow frustration with the population," said Tommy Vietor, former National Security spokesman for the Obama administration. "You might turn some people against the United States."
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pop lead
Is PSY a one-hit wonder?
South Korean pop star PSY's hit song 'Gagnam Style' has racked up 1.5 billion hits and counting on YouTube. However annoying or overplayed you might think it is, people still can't stop dancing to the catchy tune.
The demand creates demand. Regardless of quality, when you create the most-watched YouTube video of all time and an international dance craze, you have to do an encore.
And for PSY, the pressure to create another global hit has been mounting for months. Resulting in panic, a freak out.
Psy told CNN's Alina Cho in November that he did not have a magical formula for success.
"People describe it as phenomena, and unfortunately, you cannot analyze phenomena," said PSY.
To be fair, PSY actually released several successful albums in South Korea long before "Gangnam Stlye" became a global phenomenon. But his worry about being a one-hit global wonder, is completely founded.
"Writing a great pop song is a lot harder than it looks. Its sounds simple on the radio but there are hours and hours and hours that go into that," said Simon Vozick-Levinson, associate editor at "Rolling Stone."
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world lead
Is U.S. drone policy creating more terrorists than it's killing?
A few years ago the Taliban held sway here in the Swat Valley a few hours drive from Pakistan's capital. Now, the valley is home to the next generation of jihadists.
We visited a classroom where young boys had come to be de-radicalized. Boys as young as eight had been trained to be child suicide bombers and killers. They come from poor families, and were weaned on Taliban propaganda, not about bin Laden, but U.S. drone strikes, according to a school official who hid her face during our interview, fearing Taliban attack.
The Taliban "drill into them a hatred against the Americans and the drones, they talk about the Americans conducting the drone attacks and killing civilians," said the school director of the Sabaoon School.
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money lead
Netflix is good, but it's no HBO
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted on his Facebook page that Netflix subscribers used the service for 4 billion hours over the last three months.
That's like watching the movie "White Chicks" 2.2 billion times. We did the math because we like to be thorough here.
An analyst with BTIG calculates that this likely makes Netflix the most watched cable network, even though it isn't really a cable network. Another sign that Netflix is taking over the home entertainment industry?
"Four billion hours as a number is impressive, there's no question, but it's a bit out of context,"said Rocco Pendola, columnist for TheStreet.com. Pendola adds he questions the math BTIG used to get to the numbers, saying it does not include outliers.
"Like the parents who plop their kids in front of the TV for six hours to watch cartoons all afternoon [and] the people who do this binge viewing," said Pendola. "That throws off the average a little bit."
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