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With Republicans blaming his energy policies for higher gas prices and rising fears that U.S. gas prices could hit an average of $5 a gallon, President Obama on Thursday will renew a call Democrats make whenever oil prices rise that Congress repeal tax breaks for oil companies.

Andrew Breitbart, who cultivated controversy with his BigGovernment website and was a conservative thorn in the sides of many liberals, has died, his newssite's editor-in-chief, Joel Pollak, just said he can confirm. He emailed that word to The Two-Way moments ago.

In a post on BigGovernment, it's reported that "Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles." He would turn 43 this year.

There are reports from several news outlets that fighters who have been battling the Syrian Army in the beseiged Baba Amr district of Homs are retreating from that area.

There were 2,000 fewer first-time claims for unemployment last week than in the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

It says there were 351,000 such filings.

In 1968, Hugh Masekela was not quite 30 years old and though he was in exile from his homeland of South Africa, he seemed ready to become at home on the American jazz and pop markets. That summer, he had scored a number one single, "Grazing in the Grass." A year earlier, he'd been one of the few international performers at the 1967 Monterrey International Pop Festival and had appeared in its D.A. Pennebaker documentary. Yet strangely enough, over the next 45 years Masekela never quite found his sweet spot.