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• Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.
• Worse, those jobs weren't just lost to China and other developing countries. No one got them. They vanished, victims of increasingly sophisticated software and machines that can do tasks faster, cheaper and often better than humans.
• Here is a photo gallery of jobs especially hard hit by the technological onslaught:
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic Sen. John Kerry, on a smooth path to confirmation as secretary of state, is likely to face friendly questioning when he testifies before the committee that he's served on for 28 years and led for the past four.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman will sit at the witness table Thursday when he appears before the panel, a month after President Barack Obama said he wanted him to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton is stepping down.
• The five-term Massachusetts senator is widely expected to win overwhelming bipartisan support from his colleagues, and that notion was reinforced by the list of people who will introduce him: Clinton, Massachusetts freshman Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. John McCain.
• McCain and Kerry are friends who have worked closely on national security issues. They're also decorated Vietnam War veterans and former presidential candidates who know the sharp sting of defeat.
• At the conclusion of a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday, McCain joked about Kerry's hearing and the tough tactics that won't be employed.
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• NEW YORK (AP) -- On most construction projects, workers are discouraged from signing or otherwise scrawling on the iron and concrete. At the skyscraper rising at ground zero, though, they're being invited to leave messages for the ages.

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