Kamis, 31 Oktober 2013
NY Times reveals ‘Double Down’ bombshell
>>>
website of the "new york times," details on the new book from the authors of game change called "double down." in it authors write that
president obama
's
inner circle
secretly considered switching out vice president
joe biden
with
hillary clinton
on the ticket. they went so far as to get the opinion of focus groups but in the end realized there was not enough support to justify such a bold move. the authors say
mitt romney
scratched new jersey governor
chris christie
because of several unanswered questions including some about his
medical history
. the authors will debut the new book monday morning on "today."
Stars dress for Halloween
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School bus plunges off Kansas bridge — driver rescued from water
Butler County Sheriff's Office via EPA
The school bus that went off the road into a creek Thursday near Douglass, Kan.
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News
The driver of a school bus that ran off a bridge was rescued safely Thursday from a swiftly moving creek near Wichita, Kan., authorities said.
The bus, which was carrying nine children from the Douglass Unified School District, plunged into a creek between Douglass and Aurora in Butler County, west of Wichita, at 4:01 p.m. (5:01 p.m. ET), Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet told NBC News.
None of the children, who crawled out and were rescued from the top of the bus, was injured, he said.
Herzet told NBC station KSN of Wichita that the oldest children, who are 13, helped the younger ones through the hatch. Rescuers used a line to help them to safety, he said.
The driver, described as a man in his 60s, was trapped for more than an hour before a swift-water rescue team managed to pull him to safety. He was being treated for hypothermia at Wesley Medical Center in wichita.
"The bus flipped over, and we [were] in the water," Logan Parker, a 12-year-old sixth-grader who was on the bus, told KSN.
"We climbed out and got on top of the bus," Logan said. "We were up there two hours and a half."
With other children yelling and crying, "I thought I was going to die," he said. "I would never ever see my grandma again, and I was scared."
The cause of the accident was unclear, but heavy rain fell in the area Thursday morning and "the water was running over the road," Herzet said.
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This story was originally published on Thu Oct 31, 2013 6:38 PM EDT
Halloween themed drug bust: Suspected cocaine smuggled in pumpkins at Montreal airport
Canada Border Services Agency
An X-ray scan image of two of the three pumpkins stuffed with suspected cocaine that were seized Thursday at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport.
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News
Border agents found a spooky Halloween surprise Thursday in three pumpkins someone tried to smuggle through the Montreal airport, authorities said — about four pounds of suspected cocaine.
The pumpkins were hollowed out, filled with about 2 kilograms of white powder in bags and recapped, the Canada Border Services Agency said. They were being transported Thursday morning by a suspect authorities would identify only as a female traveler arriving at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport.
A spokesman for the agency said the pumpkins seemed to be a little too heavy, so they were sent through an X-ray scanner. The Mounties were called in once the bags were discovered.
The 2-kilogram haul represents almost 5 percent of all cocaine seized at the airport this year, the border agency said in a statement.
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It's hard to say how much the cocaine is worth, because its price can be very different depending on its purity and how it's processed — crack costs less than powder cocaine, for example.
But in its pure, uncut form, cocaine was running $137 to $170 a gram from 2007 to 2010, the last years for which final figures are available from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes and the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (.pdf).
At those prices, 2 kilograms would be worth anywhere from $274,000 to $340,000.
Related:
San Diego drug tunnel held 8 tons of marijuana, 325 pounds of cocaine
Month in Space: October 2013
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CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY Town stages holiday for boy with aggressive cancer
Christmas has come early for an Ohio boy whose community has rallied around him in his fight against an aggressive form of brain cancer.
Devin Kohlman, 13 and a resident of Port Clinton, has been battling the cancer for more than a year, but doctors have told his family that chemotherapy isn’t working and he may only have a few weeks left to live, Toledo News Now reports.
"We want Devin to have the best Christmas that he's ever had," said his mother, Alexis Kohlman. "And we want to make sure that he has Christmas."
The community answered her wish, throwing a celebration with hundreds decorating the city and filling the streets with Christmas spirit.
“You’ll be the one who gets the moon this year.”
- Santa to Devin Kohlman
Devin returned home from a Cincinati hospital Sunday and was greeted by well-wishers at his home in the center of Port Clinton. The next morning volunteers decorated a gazebo and set up a Christmas tree in a nearby park, placing a star on the tree with the words “Merry Christmas Devin,” the Port Clinton News Herald reports. City workers trimmed a tree along a street to make sure Devin could see it from his window.
On Monday afternoon, hundreds of residents, with some dressed in Santa hats, gathered outside Devin’s home to sing Christmas carols including “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Jingle Bells.”
The crowd then paused for a moment to say a prayer before Santa and an elf arrived -- on the backs of motorcycles -- along with several members of the Lost Riders motorcycle club, the Port Clinton News Herald reports.
Santa visited Devin, who was sitting inside his home on a hospital bed. Walmart is funding all the family’s Christmas gifts this year, according to Toledo News Now.
“You’ll be the one who gets the moon this year,” Santa told Devin.
"I've never seen anything like it," Alexis Kohlman told Toledo News Now. "We're really thankful. But it's for Devin. It's not for us."
Port Clinton Mayor Vincent Leone said he was “overwhelmed” at the number of volunteers who participated in the celebration.
“We wanted to make sure that [Devin] knew he had the support of his community – that we really cared about him,” he said on Fox News’ Happening Now. “We are not unique to any other small town. I think in small towns you always have that closeness, everyone pretty much knows each other.”
“I know the Lord has his hand,” he added.
Ex-funeral home worker charged with stealing gold teeth from bodies
A former funeral home worker in California has been charged with picking through the mouths of the dead to steal gold teeth.
Prosecutors allege that Pete Jacob Lara, a 39-year-old who worked as an embalmer at a funeral home in Lancaster, was behind a string of thefts between June 25, 2012 and Oct. 28, 2013.
They say he took teeth, a cremation urn box and medallions used to decorate urn boxes worth more than $1,000 and pawned them off, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports.
Lara has been charged with removal or possession of dental gold from human remains, grand theft by embezzlement and possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, KTLA reports, citing the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
Lara pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday and will return on Nov. 12.
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NSA, British intelligence secretly tapped into Google, Yahoo cable links, officials say
By Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
As part of a long-standing effort to spy on foreign-to-foreign intelligence targets, the National Security Agency and British intelligence services have secretly tapped into Google and Yahoo communications links at collection centers scattered around the world, scooping up metadata on hundreds of millions of accounts — including those belonging to many Americans, NBC News has confirmed.
The agencies collect vast quantities of metadata on Americans who live, work or travel overseas if they use a foreign phone or email address, officials told NBC News.
But officials strongly rebutted a Wednesday report in The Washington Post, citing documents provided to the newspaper by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, claiming that the program is designed as a "back door" to the records of U.S. users of Google and Yahoo.
"If you've got a U.S. area code, you are filtered out," said a senior U.S. official familiar with the programs — one of which is called "MUSCULAR." That program is operated jointly with the NSA's British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, according to the Post's report.
The official added that the taps do not mean that the content of phone calls or emails is routinely read.
Data collected are not identifiable to any person unless they are judged to be a "valid intelligence target," the official said. If a person is deemed as such, intelligence services would then call up the account, review emails or listen to the content of telephone calls.
"Collecting metadata does not authorize reading emails or listening to calls. It is literally not identifiable," the official said. "It is not until we go back with a particular selector — where we can input it into a system — that it turns into something intelligible."
Officials said the length for which data are kept varies by region.
"We are talking about hard physical collection — on cables," a top official told NBC News.
Another official said congressional committees have been briefed on the tapping programs, adding: "What we are running into is members who did not go to a briefing or did not review the information."
Meanwhile, U.S. officials strongly deny an Italian report that the NSA eavesdropped on the Vatican.
"That is completely not true. It is made up. It did not happen. Categorically untrue," said a top official.
Reuters reported that when asked to comment on the claims in the Italian publication Panorama, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said: "We are not aware of anything on this issue and in any case we have no concerns about it."
NBC News' Daniel Arkin contributed to this report.
PEDAL TO THE METAL Trio shatters NY-LA drive record in under 29 hours
Ed Bolian had a serious cross-country need for speed.
The 28-year-old Atlanta man and a two-man crew shattered the unofficial record for fastest drive from New York City to Los Angeles earlier this month by making the 2,813-mile trip in 28 hours and 50 minutes, besting the previous mark set in 2006 by more than two hours.
“This was always to me sort of the holy grail of American automotive culture."
- Ed Bolian
“I’ve thought about doing this for the last 10 years,” Bolian told FoxNews.com on Thursday. “This was always to me sort of the holy grail of American automotive culture.”
Using a souped-up 2004 Mercedes-Benz CL55 AMG, Bolian, co-driver Dave Black and support passenger Dan Huang left the Red Ball Parking Garage on 31st Street in New York City at 9:55 p.m. on Oct. 19. The trio later arrived at the Portofino Hotel and Marina in Redondo Beach, Calif., at 11:46 p.m. local time on Oct. 20. The ride went as smooth as anyone could’ve imagined, Bolian said.
“The trip went completely perfectly, in ways I could not have guessed,” he said. “We had no traffic, no construction, no accidents, we didn’t find any speed traps and had no bad weather … It was perfection.”
The trio stopped only three times to refuel, add oil and to take restroom breaks. The Mercedes’ average speed was 98 mph, Bolian said.
“We honestly went pretty much as fast as we could the whole time,” Bolian continued. “We drove in a very careful way and we didn’t do aggressive passing or do any driving on the shoulder, but in order to maintain that kind of average, you’ve got to go really fast.”
Bolian, a Lamborghini sales director at the Motorcars of Georgia in Atlanta, declined to detail the exact route he took, but said the bulk of the ride was on U.S. Route 40, an east-west roadway that crosses 12 states. The group encountered light traffic getting out of Manhattan but had smooth sailing most of the way, he said.
With an average speed just under 100 mph, Bolian acknowledged he easily eclipsed local and state speed limits while driving the Mercedes that was outfitted with additional 22-gallon gas tanks, a police scanner, several GPS units and two laser jammers to avoid detection by police radar.
“There’s obviously concern about it,” Bolian said of potentially being ticketed or charged criminally for the stunt ride. “But this is not me trying to say that everybody need to drive 100 mph everywhere they go. The dangerous part about this is that we drove 3,000 miles on roads where people eat their breakfast, text on their phones, you name it.”
Bolian’s time bested the previous mark of 31 hours and 4 minutes set by Alex Roy and Dave Maher in a BMW M5. Such a demanding physical ride — one that could have ended in a fiery wreck or in the back of a patrol cruiser — isn’t for everyone, Bolian reiterated.
“I don’t want to come across as inciting anyone else to do this,” he continued. “At the end of the day, I did it for what I think it stands for — a challenge and a piece of automotive Americana.”
Why Washington is failing at 'too big to fail' regulations
24 minutes ago
JEWEL SAMAD / AFP - Getty Images
Getting an "F" at implementing financial reform. Five years after the financial crisis, fewer than half the rules meant to stop another one are in place.
Obamacare isn't the only piece of landmark legislation that some members of Congress have been diligently working to delay.
Five years after the financial system collapsed under a pile of risky debt, federal regulators have implemented fewer than half the rules ordered up to prevent another banking meltdown.
The latest efforts unfolded this week, when the House voted to delay key provisions of the sweeping Dodd-Frank regulations meant to prevent another financial crisis like the one that led to the Great Recession. One of those rules is supposed to regulate investment advice; the other would restrict banks' trading in certain derivatives.
The votes to delay the rules are just the latest roadblocks in a three-year slog of negotiations and political horse trading between Congress, federal regulators and the multiple corners of the financial industry that has slowed efforts to create more than 400 detailed rules called for in the 824-page law. Some say it has slowed more than just the rule-making; they contend that it has impeded economic growth and business expansion.
"Everyone that's affected is weighing in, and they're all kind of overwhelmed by the process," said Wayne Abernathy, head of financial institutions policy and regulatory affairs at the American Bankers Association.
Worse, say critics, even when the rules are finally written, none of the thousands of pages of new regulations would prevent the collapse of one of America's handful of giant banks.
"The legislation completely missed the target," said Cornelius Hurley, director of Boston University's Center for Finance, Law & Policy. "'Too big to fail' has not been eliminated."
To be sure, some pieces of the sprawling reform bill have been implemented and are providing effective safeguards. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an entirely new agency, is up and running. New rules ban most of the mortgage products and practices that contributed to the meltdown.
Trading in financial derivatives—the secret sauce that poisoned the well of global credit—has been moved out in the open through clearinghouses that insist traders put up a cash cushion in case their risky bets go bad.
The financial system also has become somewhat safer as some of the global market forces that lead to the Panic of 2008 have largely dissipated. The housing bubble has burst and begun recovering, the torrent of bad mortgages has washed out of the system, and banks are holding more capital and less risky paper on their books.
"Today we have modern financial markets that are the best in the world: the broadest, deepest, most efficient capital markets in the world," former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told CNBC earlier this week. "The banks are safer. They're better capitalized. They're better regulated."
But more than three years after Dodd-Frank was enacted, some 60 percent of the rules designed to protect the financial system from another meltdown remain unwritten. None of specific deadlines set out in the bill have been met. Work hasn't even started on about 30 percent of the new rules, according to Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm that is tracking the Dodd-Frank rule-making progress.
From the beginning, the debate over how to create new regulations to prevent another financial meltdown was one of the most contentious of the past decade, pitting reform-minded Democrats against free market Republicans aided by an army of lobbyists on all sides.
The resulting bill—named for former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank and former Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd—was a sprawling, kitchen sink of proposed regulations, signed by President Barack Obama in July, 2010, that contained nearly 400 proposed rules, in 16 separate sections, governing everything from bank bailouts to consumer credit.
"Both of us would like to have this done by now," Dodd told CNBC on Tuesday. But "if you asked me it's going to take six, eight months longer, but they're going to get a better outcome. I'll take the better outcome every time."
It remains to be seen what that outcome will look like—or even how long it will take.
One of the most critical rules called for in Dodd-Frank, for example, has also turned out to be the one of those most deeply mired in the approval process. The so-called Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would effectively ban banks from making risky bets with depositors' money.
Adapting that simple, Depression-era concept to the complexities of modern, global finance has turned out to be a lot harder than its proponents envisioned. That's a big reason the final rule is taking so long, said the ABA's Abernathy.
A long process
Even if there was a wider consensus on what the new rules should say, the process would still take years, say experts in financial regulations. That's because the law seeks to rewrite decades of existing regulations for multiple industries, forming a complex web of interconnected rules.
"For every new rule that's written, there are probably two or three old rules that have to be conformed or changed," said Gabriel Rosenberg, an attorney at Davis Polk who advises banks on Dodd-Frank reform. "It's a hugely monumental task. And if you look at the deadlines Congress set, it's pretty clear they underestimated the size of the task ahead."
The process has also bogged down because there is no one agency tasked with overseeing and coordinating the process—somewhat like trying to build a house without a general contractor. Early versions of the law gave that role to the Treasury Department. That authority didn't survive the final version of the law, which created the Financial Stability Oversight Council with representatives from multiple agencies.
"We have five regulators all fighting with themselves on how to write the rules," said Paulson. "The other reason (for the delays) is our nation is so polarized that it's very difficult in Congress to make the technical corrections you need to make it work. But it will get done."
Some in the banking industry complain that the glacial pace of rule-making has also frozen a lot of basic lending and investment and that, in turn, has hampered the broader economic recovery.
But Frank says that bankers facing uncertainty about the new rules will have second thoughts about practices that might soon run afoul of the new rules.
"It wouldn't be in the interest of any financial institution to start doing something now, some line of business that might be risky that soon be maybe illegal," he said on CNBC. "I think the fact that these rules are pending has frozen a lot of the bad activity."
In the meantime, bankers—and many of their customers—who are still operating under the old rules have become leery about setting up new lines of business that might soon run afoul of new regulations, said Rosenberg.
That might not be such a bad thing, said Boston University's Hurley.
"The fact is we have bigger, more complicated banks," he said. "And whenever anyone one of them stubs their toe everyone's sphincter freezes up and they say 'Oh my God!' is this going to the big one?"
—By CNBC's John Schoen. Follow him on Twitter@johnwschoen.
Dodd-Frank turns 3, but slew of rules are still unwritten
Big banks don't need to be split up: Sandy Weill
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Ohio sex offender pleads not guilty to slayings, could get death
Mark Duncan / Associated Press
Michael Madison is led into court in Cleveland on Thursday for his arraignment on updated charges that include aggravated murder.
By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
A convicted sex offender who allegedly killed three Ohio women and dumped their bodies in trash bags in an impoverished East Cleveland neighborhood pleaded not guilty Thursday to updated charges, including aggravated murder, that could get him the death penalty.
A shackled and stoic Michael Madison, 36, appeared in a Cleveland court Thursday for a brief arraignment on an updated indictment following another review of the case that put a death sentence on the table, according to the Associated Press.
His defense attorney, David Grant, entered the not guilty plea. Grant had tried to convince a prosecution committee in Cleveland not to pursue the death penalty, but said he was not surprised by the court decision, the AP reported.
Madison was arrested July 19 after police discovered the rotting remains of Shirellda Terry, 18, in a garage behind his East Cleveland apartment, after complaints of a foul stench.
The next day, authorities discovered the remains of Shetisha Sheeley, 28, in a weed-strewn lot two houses down from Madison's apartment, and the remains of Angela Deskins, 38, in the basement of a nearby vacant lot.
The county medical examiner has said Terry and Deskins were strangled and that Sheeley died of "homicidal violence by unspecified means," according to the AP.
Related: Sex offender charged with murder after 3 women found in Cleveland suburb
The 14-count updated indictment includes two counts each of aggravated murder for each victim, as well as three counts of kidnapping, three counts of gross abuse of a corpse, one count of rape, and one count of weapons possession by an ex-convict, the wire service reported.
Madison was registered as a sex offender in 2002 after he was sentenced to four years behind bars for attempted rape, according to court records cited by the AP. He also had drug-related convictions in 2000 and 2001.
East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton has said that Madison may have been inspired by notorious Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted of killing 11 women and leaving their bodies in garbage bags near his house in 2009.
The Madison case has drawn comparisons to that of Ariel Castro, the Cleveland serial rapist and kidnapper who held three women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — in his home over three years.
They were freed in May after Berry broke partway through a door and screamed for help while Castro was out of the house.
Castro pleaded guilty to nearly 1,000 charges. He was found hanged in his prison cell Sept. 3, just a month after into a life sentence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:29 AM EDT
FAA to allow tablets and e-readers during all phases of flight
1 hour ago
Redux Pictures
A passenger uses a tablet aboard a Southwest Airlines flight.
Airplane passengers who forgot to bring a magazine will soon have other entertainment options besides browsing SkyMall and the in-flight safety card. The FAA announced Thursday that the agency will be relaxing half-a-century old guidelines on passenger electronic device use during takeoff and landing, allowing the use of tablets, e-readers, dvd players and video game consoles during these critical phases of flight.
"The world has changed a lot in the past 50 years," said FAA administrator Michael Huerta. "Let's take a fresh look."
The FAA did not set a specific timetable for when passengers could expect to see the device restrictions eased, leaving that to the airlines. "It will take some time for each airline to certify their fleet is safe," said Huerta, "but we expect implementation to be soon."
Delta Air Lines announced shortly after the FAA press conference that its entire flight has completed carrier-defined PED tolerance testing and has submitted its plan to the FAA for approval.
The FAA's announcement follows a report made to the agency by a 28-member advisory committee in September. The group concluded that most commercial airplanes can tolerate radio interference signals from PEDs.
Devices will still have to be in "airplane mode" or with their cellular connection disabled. WiFi will be allowed as long as the flight has an installed system and allows its use.
Heavier devices, such as large laptops, might still be asked to be stowed during takeoff and landing, because they could become projectiles or block exit paths during turbulence or accident.
In a rare instances of low visibility, passengers may be asked to turn off all devices on flights whose landing systems are not proven to be PED tolerant.
During safety briefings, passengers will still be required to put down their devices, along with books and newspapers, and pay attention.
Making a phone call or sending a text during landing and takeoff still won't be allowed. Neither will be transmitting any kind of signal during that time via, for instance, a tablet that also uses cellular signals for data.
That could put flight attendants in the awkward position of being "tablet police" to make sure passengers are complying. Between the invisibility of the transmission and the variety of the devices on the market, that guideline could spell conflict between passengers and flight attendants.
“It’s going to become more challenging to determine whose device is okay and whose isn’t,” said Kelly Skyles, a 26-year flight attendant and national safety and security coordinator for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the union that represents cabin crews at American Airlines. “My greatest concern is that it’s going to put flight attendants at risk for more confrontations.”
Not to mention that passengers will sometimes sneak in a few Words with Friends turns when they think they can get away with it. “You can’t be looking at everybody all the time,” said Tiffany Hawk, a former flight attendant and the author of “Love Me Anyway,” a novel about airline culture. “People are always pretending to turn things off even when they’re not.”
The agency has come under increasing pressure in recent years from passengers, lawmakers and the electronic device industry who have argued the devices pose little threat.
Passengers are currently required turn off devices when planes are below 10,000 feet to avoid electronic interference with cockpit equipment during takeoff and landing. There are no confirmed reports of passenger devices interfering with flight navigation devices.
Contact Ben Popken via ben.popken@nbcuni.com, @bpopken, or benpopkenwrites.com.
IS IT HIM? Cops probe possible photo of missing NY autistic teen
Police in New York City are investigating whether a photo of a young boy riding a subway train is that of an autistic boy missing for nearly a month.
The photograph, obtained Wednesday by FoxNews.com, was reportedly taken by a teenager who thought the boy riding an E or F line train on Tuesday was 14-year-old Avonte Oquendo, who was last seen on Oct. 4 walking out of his school in Queens.
Tony Herbert, president of the Brooklyn East chapter of the National Action Network, told the Daily News that the unidentified teenager asked the boy, “Hey, are you Avonte?” The boy didn’t answer and the unidentified teen snapped a picture before getting off the train, the newspaper reports.
The boy in the photo bears such a likeness to Avonte — who is unable to communicate verbally — that even the boy’s father cannot be sure it is or isn’t him.
“Yes, it’s a close likeness,” Daniel Oquendo told the Daily News. “We need to get a better look to really tell. If we could find the individual who took the picture, that would help big time.”
Oquendo said he remains hopeful that one of the possible sightings of his son will eventually be confirmed.
“We just need to stay focused and analyze every sighting,” he said. “The more sightings, the better. Eventually one will pan out … We’re still hopeful.”
The boy in the photo was seen wearing a beige jacket and green khaki pants. Avonte, meanwhile, was last seen wearing a gray striped shirt, black jeans and black sneakers.
The frantic search for Avonte has included the use of his mother’s voice projected from a van in the Queens neighborhood near where he disappeared after inexplicably leaving his school.
“Hi Avonte, it’s mom. Come to the flashing lights, Avonte,” the boy’s mother, Vanessa Fontaine, said in the recording. “It’s mom, Avonte. Hi Avonte, come to the flashing lights. It’s mom.”
An NYPD spokesman told FoxNews.com early Thursday that the search for Avonte remains ongoing. Anyone with information regarding the boy is asked to call (800) 577-8477.
First Thoughts: Public places a curse on all of Washington
NBC/WSJ poll: Public places a curse on all of Washington… Last two polls have shown historic lows in approval and favorable ratings and historic highs in public dissatisfaction… Explaining Obama’s dropping approval: A boat that keeps accumulating water will eventually sink… That said, troubled health-care rollout hasn’t damaged the law’s standing that much… Comparing Obama’s slide with Bush’s… Syria meets deadline for destroying chemical weapons… And First on First Read: DNC taps Amy Dacey to be its new CEO.
By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Jessica Taylor, NBC News
*** Public places a curse on all of Washington: On this Halloween, it’s only appropriate to point out that ALL Washington politicians have been cursed by the American public after the government shutdown and after the latest sparring over the health-care law and its website troubles. According to our new NBC/WSJ poll, just 42% approve of President Obama’s job performance (his all-time low in the poll), and 51% disapprove of his job (tied for his all-time high). What’s more, for the first time in the survey, Obama’s fav/unfav rating is upside-down, with 41% viewing him a favorable light and 45% viewing him negatively. But it’s not just the president. The public’s view of the Republican Party has reached another all-time low in the survey, with now just 22% seeing the GOP in a positive light and 53% viewing it negatively; House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remain unpopular at record levels; 63% of voters want to replace their own member of Congress (which is the highest percentage ever recorded on this question that dates back to 1992); only 22% think the nation is headed in the right direction; and half of respondents (50%) think it’s likely there will be another government shutdown. If either party is trying to comfort themselves in the others’ woes, then they are completely misreading the message from the public.
file photo
Night falls over the U.S. Capitol Dome.
*** All the highs and lows over the past month: Here’s another way to look at our last two NBC/WSJ polls taken during and after the government shutdown -- all the highs and lows in these two surveys. The country on the wrong track (78%) tied for its high; Obama’s approval rating (42%) reached its low; the GOP’s fav/unfav also reached new lows (24%-53% in early October; 22%-53% in late October); House Speaker John Boehner saw his highest negative rating (43%); so did Harry Reid (34%) and Mitch McConnell (28%). Bottom line: The events over the past month (the shutdown and the poor health-care rollout) have angered the American public. They’ve been in an anti-Washington mood for some time. But folks, we’re now at historic levels. And this raises the question: What is it going to take for the politicians in Washington to get the message? Republicans might be rejoicing in Obama reaching new lows in our new NBC/WSJ poll. But this finding should SCARE THE HECK out of them on this Halloween: Asked to pick their choice for a member of Congress -- among a Democrat, Republican, or third-party candidate -- the Democrat comes out on top with 35%, the third-party candidate comes in second at 30%, and the GOP candidate comes in third at 28%. And ready for this: For the second-straight survey, a majority of adults told us they do not identify with EITHER major party. If you want to know why it’s foolhardy to weight by party ID, it’s for findings like this. The public is uncomfortable being identified with either party -- with the GOP losing folks a lot faster than Dems.
*** Explaining Obama’s dropping approval: A boat that keeps accumulating water eventually will sink: All that said, it’s a big deal in our poll that Obama has hit all-time lows. For his entire presidency, he had been able to float above much of the dissatisfaction with Washington, as well as the unhappiness with the state of the economy. (Perhaps the public kept holding out hope that the candidate many fell in love with in 2008 would eventually change Washington.) But that’s no longer the case. The NBC/WSJ pollsters argue that no single reason explains Obama’s lower poll standing. Rather, they attribute it to the accumulation of setbacks since the summer -- allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health-care law’s federal website and its overall implementation. At some point, a boat can’t keep accumulating water -- or it starts to sink. And that’s what is happening with Obama right now.
*** Troubled health-care rollout hasn’t damaged the law’s standing too much: But while the troubled health-care rollout hasn’t been good news for Obama’s political standing, it hasn’t damaged the health-care law’s standing that much. Per the poll, 37% see the law as a good idea, versus 47% who see it as a bad idea. That’s down slightly from the 38% good idea, 43% bad idea in the previous survey. But the public is divided over whether the problems associated with the health-care law’s federal website are a short-term issue than can be solved, or a long-term issue that signals deeper troubles. In the poll, 37% say that the website woes are a short-term technical problem that can be fixed, while 31% believe they point to a longer-term issue with the law’s design that can’t be corrected. Another 30% think it’s too soon to say. Bottom line: Much of the public is more patient about the website woes that the media are. That said, here’s something the White House shouldn’t ignore: A combined majority says the law should either be totally eliminated (24%) or needs a major overhaul (28%).
*** Comparing Obama’s slide with Bush’s: It’s worth noting that George W. Bush’s approval rating at this same point in his second term (Oct. 2005) was at 39%. That, of course, was the erosion he suffered after the Iraq war worsened, as well as after Hurricane Katrina. Bush, of course, never recovered. What the White House needs to understand is that, at some point, when new floors are set (42%), new ceilings are set, too. In other words, if he bounces back, it may not be as high as it once was. Of course, it could be even worse: Perhaps this is a short-term setback, but second terms can have their tipping-point moments.
*** Syria meets deadline for destroying chemical weapons: Given all the attention to the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons in late August and early September, this is a story worth pointing out. The New York Times: “The international chemical weapons watchdog said on Thursday that Syria had met a key deadline for ‘the functional destruction’ of all the chemical weapons production and mixing facilities declared to inspectors, ‘rendering them inoperable’ under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.” A statement from the Joint Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons adds, “The Joint Mission is now satisfied that it has verified - and seen destroyed - all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment. Given the progress made in the Joint OPCW-UN Mission in meeting the requirements of the first phase of activities, no further inspection activities are currently planned.” Among the frustrations inside the White House is that they aren’t getting credit for this development. Ditto with the news about the deficit, per the AP: “The government says the deficit for the 2013 budget year totaled $680.3 billion, down from $1.09 trillion in 2012. That’s the smallest imbalance since 2008, when the government ran a $458.6 billion deficit.”
*** First on First Read: NBC News has learned that the Democratic National Committee has tapped veteran Democratic strategist Amy Dacey to be its CEO. Dacey, who previously served as executive director at EMILY’s List and also worked at the SEIU and had stints at the DSCC and DCCC, takes over for Acting Executive Director Laura Santucci. “Amy brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and strategic insight that will be instrumental in helping the DNC continue to grow, build on the electoral gains we made in 2012, advocate on behalf of the president’s agenda and prepare a robust campaign operation for 2014 and 2016,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is expected to say in an upcoming news release. The DNC outraised the Republican National Committee last month, and says it’s on pace for its most successful two months of online fundraising in its history. But the RNC has outraised it so far for the cycle, $61 million to $49 million. The RNC also has more cash on hand by a 2-to-1 margin.
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Severe storm system looms over wide swath of US as rain, floods lash Texas
By Alexander Smith and Daniel Arkin, NBC News
A ferocious storm system was hurtling from Texas to the northeast early Thursday, threatening to lash a long arm of the U.S. with buckets of rain and high winds.
Meteorologists warned people in the Ohio Valley, the lower Mississippi Valley and western Gulf Coast to brace for harsh gusts of wind and even tornados — a scary forecast just in time for Halloween, according to Weather.com.
Indianapolis, Memphis, Tenn., and Houston are expected to bear the brunt of the severe storm system, Weather.com reported.
The trouble was already brewing near Austin, Texas, early Thursday, where heavy train triggered flash floods, forcing scores of people from their homes amid evacuation advisories and prompting helicopter rescues, officials said.
Some areas surrounding the city were slammed by as much as 15 inches of rain, according to Austin-Travis County’s Emergency Medical Service (EMS). Meanwhile, emergency crews staged 15 water rescues across Austin and Travis counties, EMS spokesman Warren Hassinger said.
There was no reported deaths and only minor injuries early Thursday, although Hassinger said there were reports from neighboring Hays and Comal Counties of people calling for help who were trapped in vehicles or clinging to trees.
The Texas Department for Public Safety said there were no firm numbers yet for the four worst affected counties of Williamson, Hays, Comel and Travis.
It said there were at least 20 homes affected in Hutto, a town of more than 18,000 in Williamson County.
The worst of the rain is over for the region, with the storm moving from west to east, according to the department.
“It will have hopefully abated by about 2 p.m. this afternoon,” a data collector at the department said.
“But the run-off is what we worry about – there’s always that danger.”
Severe weather could impact Halloween
>>>
there are communities throughout a region of the country trying to put off halloween, at least delay trick or treating 24 this hours until rough weather moves through, mostly in ip, kentucky and ohio. there is a real threat of big storms,
high winds
, potential tornadoes starting tomorrow night. this stretcheses into the
mississippi valley
, includes parts of texas where parents need to be wary for
bad weather
conditions. when
Ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to be next Boy Scouts president
Win Mcnamee / Getty Images, file
Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates salutes at Arlington National Cemetery after attending a burial service for a U.S. Marine on June 28, 2011.
By Lisa Maria Garza, Reuters
The Boy Scouts of America on Wednesday chose former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA director Robert Gates as its next president, who will face the task of repairing divisions in the organization from a heated debate over accepting gay scouts.
As Defense Secretary, Gates supported President Barack Obama's withdrawal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Congress repealed the ban in 2010 and it was lifted in 2011.
While a Boy Scout, Gates achieved the highest honor of Eagle Scout. He was due to begin his two-year term in May 2014.
Gates will succeed Wayne Perry, who led the scouting organization through the emotionally charged debate in May when the council voted to lift a century-old ban on openly gay scouts.
The ban on gay scouts will officially end on January 1, 2014. A prohibition on openly gay adult leaders remains in place.
More than 60 percent of the group's National Council, comprising some 1,400 delegates, voted in favor of ending the youth ban, according to the Boy Scouts.
One of America's best-known youth groups boasting 2.6 million members scrapped its 22-year-old ban on gay Boy Scouts, but gay adults are still banned from serving as Scout leaders. NBC's Craig Melvin reports.
Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and founder of Scouts for Equality, said the appointment of Gates was a clear step the organization was on a path to unity.
"It's a significant and positive development," Wahls said. "Gates is respected by both sides of the debate on gay youth and parents in the Boy Scouts."
Gates, 70, served in various roles in the CIA including head of the intelligence agency from 1991 to 1993.
President George W. Bush appointed him defense secretary in 2006 and he was retained by Obama, making him the only defense secretary to be asked to remain in office by a newly elected president, according to the Department of Defense.
He has also served as president of Texas A&M University.
Related:
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Off-duty Delta Airlines pilot accused of fondling girl during flight
By Jonathon Kaminsky, Reuters
An off-duty Delta Airlines pilot has been charged with fondling a 14-year-old girl seated next to him on a flight, but he contends he was sleeping at the time, authorities said on Wednesday.
Michael Pascal, 45, was returning to his home in Utah on Saturday after piloting an early-morning flight from Salt Lake City to Detroit when the alleged incident occurred.
Pascal plans to plead not guilty to a federal charge of abusive sexual contact with a minor, his lawyer Rhome Zabriskie said. The pilot's initial court appearance is scheduled for Thursday in federal court in Salt Lake City.
If convicted, Pascal faces a maximum of two years in federal prison, said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City-based U.S. Attorney's Office.
The girl was flying as an unaccompanied minor when she was seated in a window seat next to Pascal, who had a middle seat, according to the criminal complaint against the pilot. The girl had crutches due to a foot injury, the documents said.
Pascal helped the girl get a blanket and asked about her injured foot, the complaint said. She lowered the armrest between them, spread the blanket over her lap, pulled her legs toward her chest and went to sleep, according to the document.
When she awoke, according to the complaint, the armrest had been raised and the palm of Pascal's hand was touching her inner thigh and gripping her buttock. He was leaning against her and "clearly awake" with his eyes open, the girl told authorities.
The complaint stated the girl elbowed the pilot and pointedly asked him what he was doing. Pascal apologized, said he had been asleep and hurried for the bathroom, the documents said.
The girl notified a flight attendant and switched seats with another passenger at the rear of the airplane.
Pascal was detained at the Salt Lake City airport and questioned by the FBI. Pascal said he raised the armrest between himself and the girl because he was crowded by the man in the aisle seat, according to the complaint.
He said that he fell asleep with his hands in his lap, awoke to the girl jabbing him and did not know where his right hand was when he was awakened, according to the complaint.
Pascal, a resident of Park City, Utah, and the divorced father of a teenage girl, was "blindsided" by his arrest, attorney Zabriskie said.
"It's his practice to take a nap on these return flights," he added. "Everything was going normally until he felt an elbow jabbing him and he woke up and that's when his horror began."
This story was originally published on Thu Oct 31, 2013 5:22 AM EDT
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
NSA reportedly taps into Google, Yahoo data centers
The National Security Agency has broken into the highly secure data centers where Google and Yahoo store vast troves of data on their users by hacking an unencrypted weak point in the data pipeline linking the enormous centers, according to a new story at The Washington Post.
The massive servers run by the leading Internet companies are carefully guarded and strictly audited; according to Google, buildings housing its servers are guarded 24/7 and secured with heat-sensitive cameras, biometric verification, and more.
These servers hold terrabytes of confidential data on users, including the emails they send, their video chats, banking information and so on -- all the private data one would hope to be kept under lock and key. But the links between the servers that are scattered across the globe are less secure. And by tapping into that link, the NSA can collect information at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts -- not just foreign citizens but emails, videos and audio from American citizens.
'Obviously, this was not turned on last week.'
- Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for Zscaler
“The numbers are staggering. 180 million records in 30 days? This is not a small program by any means,” Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for Internet security firm Zscaler, told FoxNews.com.
Indeed, according to documents obtained by the Post, a Feb. 28, 2013 memo from analysts working on the operation reveals numerous complaints that the program was harvesting too much data, much of it with “low intelligence value.”
That’s because it’s not just “metadata” but pure information straight from the Internet giants.
They’re tapping into the fiber optic cable,” Sutton said. “This is raw stuff in proprietary data format, so they had to have a system in place tor translate that to human readable format.”
“Obviously, this was not turned on last week,” he said.
It’s called Operation MUSCULAR, and it’s the latest way the NSA has sought to tap into Internet communications. MUSCULAR relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. that offers secret access to a cable or switch through with Google and Yahoo pass unencrypted traffic between their servers, the Post reported. It's a clear weakness in Google’s digital armor.
Google said it was aware of the chink, though the company was unaware that the government had exploited it so thoroughly.
“We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we continue to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links,” a Google spokesman said told the Post.
Yahoo expressed a similar sentiment, adding that “we have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.”
In September, Google announced that it would start encrypting the data it was passing between data centers, an effort to prevent exactly the type of snooping that the NSA has been engaged in.
“It’s an arms race,” said Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google, based in Mountain View, Calif, in comments to the Post at the time. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”
But fixing the hole is no simple task. Sutton said the company would need to add SSL acceleration cards -- specialized hardware components that offload the work of encoding and decoding information into SSL, which at one time was merely for secure transactions between browser and server and now is used end-to-end in much Internet communication.
"Authorization used to be just at log in,” Sutton told FoxNews.com. “As privacy has become an increasing concern, we’ve seen the web go to SSL for everything.”
Adding such cards to the data centers would be costly, but is clearly underway.
“It would not be a trivial effort, but when the chairman is commenting on it, it’s clearly a high profile project,” he said.
DINO WALKS AGAIN Scientists digitally recreate largest dinosaur of all time
A digital reconstruction of the world’s largest known land animal, the Cretaceous dinosaur Argentinosaurus, has allowed it to take its first steps -- albeit virtually -- in over 94 million years.
The recreation, outlined in PLoS ONE, is the most anatomically detailed walking simulation so far for a dinosaur, according to the researchers. The study also provides the first ever virtual trackway for Argentinosaurus.
The skeleton used in the study shows that the plant-eating dinosaur measured at least 131 feet long. The reconstruction reveals that it lumbered along at around 5 miles per hour.
“The simulation shows a slow walking gait, which is to be expected, given that the animal weighs 80 tonnes,” lead researcher Bill Sellers from the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences, told Discovery News. “What is interesting is how well the simulated footfall pattern matches up with typical sauropod trackways.”
For the study, Sellers and his colleagues laser scanned the huge dinosaur’s skeleton. They then used an advanced computer modeling system (Sellers has his own software called Gaitsym) that involves the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers. It virtually recreated the dinosaur, including the sauropod’s movements.
The discovery that Argentinosaurus could walk counters prior speculation that the animal could not have done so, based on previous estimations of its size.
This latest research concludes not only that Argentinosaurus could walk, but that it was also at the top of its food chain.
“Once you hit 80 tonnes, you don’t have to worry about being eaten by predators,” Sellers explained. “We don’t know whether this animal used its long neck to graze over wide areas of low-laying vegetation or for reaching the tops of trees, but from its locomotion we know that it was a slow, steady mover.”
Argentinosaurus eggs, however, were no bigger than those of many dinosaurs and large birds. It's therefore likely that Argentinosaurus young were fairly small and would have been easy prey for other carnivorous species that lived along the Cretaceous planes of what is now Patagonia, South America.
Understanding how such past animals moved may help us to better understand modern day musculoskeletal systems.
“If you are trying to understand any body system that is shared by a range of different animals then it is often extremely useful to compare this system across different species,” Sellers explained. “Vertebrate muscles, skeletons and joints work exactly the same way in everything from fish to humans.”
He continued, “The really interesting aspect of dinosaur locomotion is that you are looking at animals that test the limits of the musculoskeletal system simply by virtue of being so big. They have to make compromises and come up with ways of coping that help us to understand the limits and compromises in the human musculoskeletal system.”
Phillip Manning is head of the Paleontology Research Group at the University of Manchester and is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History.
Manning told Discovery News that paleontology is now undergoing a renaissance, with more interdisciplinary approaches, such as this, helping to solve long-standing questions.
“To carefully break down the key components of the locomotion of such vast animals as Argentinosaurus is allowing us greater insight to the biology and physiology of such vast organisms,” Manning said. “The diverse plethora of techniques and technology available to paleontology today is changing the way we study and interpret the fossil record.”
In the future, the researchers plan to digitally recreate other dinosaurs, such as Triceratops, Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, in order to better understand their movements. Prior simulations of duck-billed hadrosaurs uncovered novel gaits, so Sellers joked that “running, skipping and jumping may well turn up.”
Rabu, 30 Oktober 2013
Eew, that's the pits! Man had armpit odor for 4 years
7 hours ago
One man's irrepressible body odor was the result of a bacterial infection of his armpit hair, according to a new report of the case.
Credit: The New England Journal of Medicine ©2013
A bacterial infection of armpit hair was the cause of one man's body odor. Above, infected armpit hair (right) and view of hair under a microscope (left).
The 40-year-old man told his doctors he'd had armpit odor and "dirty" armpit hair for the last four years.
There was a "creamy yellow" substance on the man's armpit hairs. Looking at the hairs under the microscope, the doctors saw that the hairs were surrounded by an "opaque material" that was only on the hair surface.
The doctors diagnosed the man with trichomycosis axillaris, which is an infection of hair shafts caused by the bacteria Corynebacterium tenuis, the researchers said. The infection can produce yellow, black or red masses around hair shafts.
The bacteria tend to grow on hair in moist regions of the body — mostly armpit hair, but sometimes pubic hair.
The odor that comes with the condition is due, in part, to the ability of the bacteria to metabolize testosterone in sweat into smelly compounds, the researchers said.
The man had his armpit hair shaved, and was treated with aluminum chloride (used to treat sweating) as well as the antibiotic erythromycin. The odor went away several weeks later, his doctors said.
Previous research has found that humans, like other animals, might use scent to sniff out appropriate mates. In one study, women ranked the scent of men infected with gonorrhea as "putrid."
The report, described by researchers in Beijing and Madrid, is published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
NBC News' Joy Jernigan contributed to this report.
More content from LiveScience:
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2013 Rockefeller Christmas tree hails from Connecticut
8 hours ago
A Shelton, Conn., tree will soon be the most famous one of holiday season, guarded by police until it moves to its new home at Rockefeller Center.
New battery deal could boost Tesla production
10 hours ago
Paul Sakuma / AP
Tesla significantly boosted the number of batteries it plans to buy from Panasonic, enough to power about 80,000 vehicles, over four years.
It’s been a rough month for high-flying Tesla Motors, but despite a pair of fires and several downgrades by industry analysts, the California electric vehicle maker remains upbeat enough to ink a deal that will substantially boost the number of batteries it buys from Japan’s Panasonic Corp.
That, in turn, suggests that Tesla is expecting to sell significantly more of its vehicles than it originally expected. It has already delayed the launch of a second vehicle, the Model X SUV, to catch up on demand for its initial offering, the Model S sedan.
“This expanded agreement with Panasonic is important to Tesla as we continue to increase the pace of production,” the maker’s co-founder and CEO Elon Musk said in a statement Wednesday. “We look forward to strengthening our relationship with Panasonic, and I’m confident that this partnership will continue to be an integral part of Tesla’s success for years to come.”
Under the terms of their agreement, which revises an original 2011 contract, Panasonic will now supply nearly 2 billion automotive-grade lithium-ion battery cells to Tesla during a four-year period. That’s expected to be enough to power about 80,000 vehicles.
Production of the Model S began in July 2012 and has been ramping up this year, with Tesla now expecting to deliver 21,000 of the battery-electric vehicles for all of 2013. The maker originally planned to add the Model X this year but has delayed that until sometime toward the end of 2014. Meanwhile, the maker is expanding its distribution network in Europe and Asia. All told, Tesla hopes to double sales to 40,000 vehicles in 2014.
The Model S has received a wide range of kudos from reviewers, including Consumer Reports magazine, which gave it the magazine’s highest-ever ranking for a vehicle it tested. That helped drive a more than seven-fold surge in Tesla’s stock price, from a 52-week low of $27.37 to a high of $194.50.
But things threatened to unravel earlier this month when a video surfaced on YouTube showing a Model S on fire after its battery pack was struck by metal debris while driving through a Seattle suburb. While the maker quickly downplayed the incident it coincided with negative reports from several analysts who cautioned that Tesla stock was significantly over-priced, sending shares tumbling.
It perhaps didn’t help when CEO Musk declared in an Oct. 24 TV interview that, "The stock price that we have is more than we have any right to deserve. I'm not going to sit here and say we deserve every penny of that.”
Days later, video surfaced of another Tesla Model S fire in Mexico, sending Tesla stock on another slide. At midday Wednesday, Tesla was trading at just under $161 a share, off around $3.50, or 2 percent. Over the past month, however, the stock has dipped by more than $30.
As for consumers, there are no signs yet that the two fires have had any impact on demand. If anything, blogs and chat sites have been largely rich with praise for the fact that both fires were largely limited to small sections at the front of the vehicle due to the way Tesla designed its firewalls.
And the new deal with Panasonic suggests that even if Musk anticipates Tesla stock is due for a slide the CEO doesn’t expect its battery-car sales to run out of power anytime soon.
Related stories:
Government Motors No More — Well, Almost, But Taxpayers to Lose $9.7 bil on GM Bailout
Ford's Little Fiesta Now America's Most Fuel-Efficient Non-Hybrid
A $70,000 Kia? Korean Maker Set to Launch New K900 Luxury Sedan
Copyright © 2009-2013, The Detroit Bureau
Romance, romance, romance? No, no, no, says George Clooney
3 hours ago
If you can't keep the recent George Clooney romance rumors straight, here's a simple cheat sheet: None of them are true.
The "Gravity" star has been rumored to have had recent flings with actress Katie Holmes, model Monika Jakisic, and lawyer Amal Alamuddin. But the gossip magazines are batting .000, Clooney told People magazine on Wednesday.
"Three different stories in three weeks," Clooney said. "I should be an athlete. But, no of course, it's all made up."
Clooney's representative was even more blunt. "George wants this Monika crap to stop," Stan Rosenfield told People. "He wants Katie to get a break, and he wants Amal to be able to prosecute cases without being hassled because she had one dinner with George and four others … I even asked George if these (rumors) were true and he said he never comments on his private life, but in the interest of stopping the harassment of all three of these women, he felt he should."
Holmes seems to have entered the rumor mill after being photographed smiling with and hugging Clooney at the "Gravity" premiere. Alamuddin, who is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's attorney, was photographed riding in a car with the actor. And while Clooney may have dated Jakisic years ago, he told the U.K. Daily Mail that reports of the two holding hands at a nightclub are false.
Clooney's next film, the World War II art-hunt drama "Monuments Men," was recently pushed back from December to February 2014.
HOME AWAY FROM HOME? Scientists study Earth-like planet 700 light years away
Is it home away from home?
A planet with a similar mass and size to our own planet Earth, likely similarly composed of rocks and iron, has been spotted orbiting a star some 700 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, scientists announced Wednesday. But don’t expect to find your 2.0 living there.
"It's Earth-like in the sense that it's about the same size and mass, but of course it's extremely unlike the Earth in that it's at least 2,000 degrees hotter," said team member Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT and a member of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "It's a step along the way of studying truly Earth-like planets."
'It's Earth-like in the sense that it's about the same size and mass, but of course it's ... at least 2,000 degrees hotter.'
- Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT
The planet, deemed Kepler 78b, is lightning-quick compared to Earth, orbiting its star in just 8.5 hours. By contrast, it takes roughly 8,765.81 hours, or 365 days, for our planet to orbit the sun. Kepler 78b's speedy transit of its homeworld was identified by scientists in August.
But continued studies revealed other facts about Kepler 78b, notably its mass: The distant planet's mass is about 1.7 times that of Earth’s. But those scorching temperatures on the surface mean life as we know it is unlikely there.
The information was revealed in a pair of papers published Wednesday in the science journal Nature.
"The gold standard in science is having your findings reproduced by other researchers," explained Andrew Howard of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. "In this case, we did not have to wait for this to happen."
Spotting planets against the inky black of interstellar space is a unique challenge. To find this one, the team analyzed the light given off by the star as the planet passes in front of it, or transits. The researchers detected a transit each time the star's light dipped, and measured this dimming to determine its size. The bigger the planet, the more light it blocks.
To measure the planet's mass, the researchers tracked the motion of the star itself. Depending on its mass, a planet can exert a gravitational tug on its star. This stellar motion can be detected as a very slight wobble, known as a Doppler shift.
Winn and his colleagues looked to measure Kepler 78b's Doppler shift by analyzing observations from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii — one of the largest telescopes in the world. The team analyzed starlight data taken over a period of eight days. Despite the telescope's strength, the signal from the star was incredibly faint, making a daunting task for the scientists.
"Each of the eight nights along the way, we were agonizing over it, whether it was worth continuing or not," Winn said.
Who is the richest person in every state?
48 minutes ago
Most of us know the richest person in America (Bill Gates at $70 billion).
YURI GRIPAS / REUTERS
Bill Gates is the richest person in America (and Washington state). Who is the richest person in every state?
But what about the richest person in your state?
Wealth-X has put together a list of all 50 states with their top wealth holders. Surprisingly nine states don't have billionaires (and yet somehow they manage to function). It only took $300 million to be the richest Wyoming resident, and $400 million to be the wealth king of Alaska.
Granted, many of the super rich don't really "live" anywhere, since they flit from home to home and state to state. Wealth-X used the business address for each wealth holder to determine residence.
Here's the list, by state, person and net worth value after valuation, in billions of dollars:
- Alabama, Jonathan Nelson, 1.5
- Alaska, Robert Gillam, 0.4
- Arizona, Bruce Halle Sr., 4.4
- Arkansas, James Walton, 37.1
- California, Lawrence Ellison, 46.4
- Colorado, Charles Ergen, 13.7
- Connecticut, Raymond Dalio, 13.4
- Delaware, Leon Gorman, 0.8
- Florida, Micky Arison, 5.9
- Georgia, Anne Cox Chambers, 11.4
- Hawaii, Jay Shidler, 0.7
- Idaho, Frank Vandersloot, 1.2
- Illinois, Samuel Zell, 3.8
- Indiana, Gayle Cook, 4.8
- Iowa, Dennis Albaugh, 1.6
- Kansas, David Koch, 41.5
- Kentucky, Brad M. Kelley, 1.9
- Louisiana, Thomas Benson, 1.3
- Maine, Robert Gore, 0.8
- Maryland, Theodore Lerner, 4.1
- Massachusetts, Abigail Johnson, 16.9
- Michigan, Kenneth Dart, 6.6
- Minnesota, Whitney MacMillan, 3.8
- Mississippi, Jim Barksdale, 0.6
- Missouri, John L. Morris, 3.8
- Montana, Dennis Washington, 5.6
- Nebraska, Warren Buffett, 59.8
- Nevada, Sheldon Adelson, 32.3
- New Hampshire, Richard Cohen, 10.0
- New Jersey, David Tepper, 7.9
- New Mexico, John A Yates, 0.8
- New York, Michael Bloomberg, 21.4
- North Carolina, James Goodnight, 7.4
- North Dakota, Gary Tharaldson, 0.9
- Ohio, Leslie Wexner, 5.2
- Oklahoma, George Kaiser, 9.8
- Oregon, Phillip Knight, 14.7
- Pennsylvania, Hansjorg Wyss, 9.2
- Rhode Island, Marguerite Harbert, 1.5
- South Carolina, Anita Zucker, 2.6
- South Dakota, T. Denny Sanford, 1.3
- Tennessee, Thomas Frist Jr., 3.2
- Texas, Michael Dell, 16.0
- Utah, Blake Roney, 0.6
- Vermont, Robert Stiller, 1.1
- Virginia, Forrest Mars Jr., 20.1
- Washington, Bill Gates, 70.8
- West Virginia, James Justice II, 1.6
- Wisconsin, John Menard Jr., 7.3
- Wyoming, John Martin, 0.3
Source: Wealth-X
Related story:
The 10 richest states in America
© 2013 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved
11-year-old who allegedly brought gun to school erupts after being ordered to remain in custody
An 11-year-old Washington state boy accused of taking a gun, knives and 400 rounds of ammunition to school erupted with profanities in court. Kyle Iboshi of NBC station KGW of Portland, Ore., reports.
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News
An 11-year-old Washington state boy accused of taking a gun, knives and 400 rounds of ammunition to school last week yelled obscenities and fought detention officers after a judge ordered him to remain in custody.
The Clark County prosecutors office said Tuesday that the boy, whom NBC News isn't identifying because he's a juvenile, would be charged with attempted murder, theft of a firearm and other weapons charges.
Prosecutors said he'd changed his story to admit planning to shoot multiple people last Wednesday at Frontier Middle School in Vancouver, Wash.
Clark County Juvenile Court Commissioner Jennifer Snider rejected the testimony of a court-appointed psychologist who said the boy presented a low risk of threat to the community and ordered him returned to police custody.
"I feel that at this point, he needs to be held to protect him from himself and also (to protect) the community," Snider said after prosecutors told her the boy had threatened suicide at least once before.
As he was being led out of court, the boy started crying and screaming: "Get off me! Get the (expletive) off!" — as well as other curses.
In a declaration of probable cause filed last week, police said the boy had "claimed in the presence of school officials that a 'voice in his head' was telling him to kill" another student after he had called the boy's friend "gay."
But prosecutors told Snider that the boy later gave them a different story: that he actually planned to wait until after school to shoot several people.
Prosecutors said the boy had managed to sneak the gun onto school grounds at least twice before this month and that on the day of his arrest, he told a school counselor: "I'm not going to (expletive) tell you anything. You don't know what I'm capable of."
HERO'S ARRIVALTargeted by Taliban, Afghan interpreter safely lands in US
The Afghan interpreter who saved the life of an Army intelligence officer and became a target of the Taliban for his trouble has finally arrived in the U.S. to start a new life, after a long battle to win a special visa.
Janis Shinwari arrived at Reagan National Airport in Washington late Tuesday night, where he was heartily greeted by Matthew Zeller, the Army soldier who says he owes his life to Shinwari. Zeller campaigned tirelessly for a special visa reserved for translators who put their lives on the line for U.S. military personnel. The visa was finally approved last month, but then mysteriously pulled, according to Zeller.
Shinwari, 36, told FoxNews.com he, his wife and their two children are eager to start a new life in the U.S., especially after Shinwari spent the last several months in hiding after he became known for helping the U.S. military.
"I'm feeling very happy," Shinwari said. "Now we are in the U.S. and we will have a good life. No fear of the Taliban. No fear of sending my children to school."
“He ... is thrilled to finally start his new and very well-earned life in the U.S.”
- Matthew Zeller, soldier saved by Afghan interpreter Janis Shinwari
Zeller, who greeted Shinwari at the airport with the Arabic salutation "Assam alaikum,” said he'll be close to his friend and help him adjust. Shinwari is looking for work as a translator.
“He [Shinwari] will live in Alexandria [Virginia], 10 minutes from me, and is thrilled to finally start his new and very well-earned life in the U.S.,” Zeller said.
Shinwari applied to move to the U.S. in 2011 under a special immigration program begun in 2009 for people who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shinwari was Zeller’s interpreter while he was stationed near Kabul and was saved by him during the war.
The two met in 2007. A year later, Zeller was on patrol in the Ghazni Province when he and his unit were ambushed by the Taliban. Shinwari was back at the base and went with a team to aid the men, even though it wasn’t his job. Armed with a rifle, he was on the front lines assisting Zeller’s unit when an armed Taliban fighter sneaked up on Zeller. Shinwari shot the enemy before he could harm Zeller, and the two formed a brotherly bond from that point on, Zeller said.
Zeller, 31, credits media pressure from Fox News and other outlets after Shinwari’s visa was revoked with pressuring the U.S. Embassy to fast-track the translator’s application. Under the program, applicants are carefully vetted to ensure they will not work against U.S. interests once in America.
“The U.S. government ended up polygraphing him twice in Kabul -- he passed with flying colors each time,” Zeller said.
While he was waiting to emigrate, Shinwari and his family had to move constantly as Taliban teams hunted them, Zeller said.
Shinwari and his family arrived with little money, and Zeller has set up a website where the public can make contributions to help them. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is arranging his resettlement and housing and the Truman National Security Project will help the family to furnish their new home through donations of furniture, clothing and other items.
In the short period between his visa being greenlighted and then pulled for further review, Shinwari had left his job as a translator and sold nearly all of his possessions. Like most translators, he had become a potential target from Taliban militants.
“I’m afraid I’ll be in serious trouble,” he said to FoxNews.com back in September.” The interpreter village was really the only safe place. I have nowhere to hide.”
Both Shinwari and Zeller have been invited to present their story in person to Congress next week and will discuss the visa program, how it should be reformed and fixed, and what it means to serve as an interpreter of the U.S. military at war.
Twitter goes for more eye-catching look
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© Kacper Pempel / Reuters
The shadows of people holding mobile phones are cast onto a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw on Sept. 27.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter was born in 2006 as a stream of SMS text messages. Before going public in 2013, it's now reveling in images.
The company tweaked its design Tuesday to favor image- and video-sharing by showing visual media directly within the Twitter timeline. Users previously had to click on a tweet to view the embedded multimedia.
Although the change does not affect the basic mechanics of how content is shared, it will likely alter the feel of Twitter, which long clung to its roots as an 140-character, text-based service invented in an era before smartphones existed.
As Twitter prepares to go public in a matter of weeks, the change will also present Twitter's advertisers with more opportunities to get attention-grabbing ads in front of users — leading to more revenue for the company.
Twitter has long acknowledged that pictures and video are some of the most often shared content in social media.
NBC News / Twitter
NBC News on Twitter
The most re-circulated tweet in Twitter history, for instance, was a picture sent from President Obama's account on Election Night in 2012. Three words — "Four more years" — captioned a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama embracing the moment the president declared victory.
"These rich tweets can bring your followers closer to what's happening, and make them feel like they are right there with you," Michael Sippey, Twitter's vice president of product, said in a short blog post Tuesday. "We want to make it easier for everyone to experience those moments on Twitter."
Twitter's changes served up another reminder that social media remains one of the most hotly contested arenas in the technology sector.
Facebook Inc made changes to its layout and newsfeed algorithms this year to more heavily promote visual content. It also acquired Instagram for $1 billion last year and has recently begun showing ads on the picture-heavy social network.
Earlier on Tuesday, Google Inc unveiled new features that let users publish slick home videos to its Google+ social network — a veiled assault on Twitter's Vine app and Facebook's Instagram, which support video-sharing.
Twitter's new look immediately drew mixed reactions from some of the tech digerati and early adopters, including many who predicted the more visual look would appeal to newcomers who might find Twitter's stream of rolling text confusing.
But Mathew Ingram, a writer at GigaOm, said Twitter was "in danger of suffering from what some call the MySpace effect (an excess of ads and gaudy images)" precisely because Twitter's old guard was accustomed to streamlined text.
"Will the number of enthusiastic advertisers make up for the number of irritated and/or overwhelmed users?" Ingram wrote.
Others, like Aaron Levie, the wise-cracking chief executive of file-sharing company Box, took advantage of the new design to simply point out how different Twitter felt.
Levie tweeted: "People on Twitter right now." In the same tweet, he appended a screenshot of two characters from the film Jurassic Park, their jaws slack with astonishment.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
Gov't document: Health site posed security risk
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An internal government memo obtained by The Associated Press shows administration officials were concerned that a lack of testing posed a "high" security risk for President Barack Obama's new health insurance website.
The Sept. 27 memo to Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner said a website contractor wasn't able to test all the security controls in one complete version of the system.
Insufficient testing "exposed a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a high risk," the memo said.
The memo recommended setting up a security team to address risks, conduct daily tests, and a full security test within two to three months of going live.
At a congressional hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the site's security certification is temporary, but asserted consumers' personal information is secure.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
'TO MAKE HER PAY'Man admits killing mistress for having HIV, report says
A Dallas man who police say admitted to killing his mistress after she revealed that she was HIV positive told police, "She killed me, so I killed her," The Dallas Morning News reported.
Larry Dunn, who has not yet tested positive for HIV, visited Cicely Lee Bolden's home for unprotected sex one last time in September 2012, and then took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Bolden in the neck as she laid in bed, according to his video testimony that was played in court Tuesday at his murder trial, the report said.
'I wanted to make her pay'
- Larry Dunn
"She didn't see it until it was in her throat," Dunn reportedly told police. "She wasn't very strong."
Her body was reportedly discovered by her two young children in bed, naked from the waist down.
If convicted, Dunn, who said he was worried he infected his wife, faces up to life in prison in the killing. His attorney reportedly will try to prove he acted with "sudden passion," which carries a 20-year sentence.
Dunn initially denied killing Bolden when he was initially confronted by police, the report said.
Brian Tabor, a Dallas detective, reportedly told the court that Dunn was convincing, but he continued pressing the suspect because of his likely connection. He reportedly admitted to the crime in a second interview.
"I wanted to make her pay," Dunn said in the recorded interview. "Killing her wasn"t on the menu. That's just how it ended up."
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Jon Hamm shaves 2-3 times a day for smooth 'Mad Men' look
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AMC
Don Draper (Jon Hamm) doesn't come to work with a 5 o'clock shadow.
Jon Hamm is one seriously manly man; no wonder he's the star of AMC's hit "Mad Men." But according to the series' makeup artist, he might be just a little more manly than average — since when the show's filming, she and her team have to continuously check on his facial hair.
"We shoot such long hours," five-time Emmy nominee Lana Horochowski told OK! Magazine. "For Jon, we shave (him) sometimes two, three times a day."
Meanwhile, Hamm's on-show wife Megan (Jessica Paré) needs a little hair enhancement ... on her eyes. "Megan has more of a nude, chalky lip, and then she has the crazy 'Twiggy' painted-on eyelashes. She'll wear like three sets of lashes," Horochowski said. "We go for it."
But when it comes to makeup, Horochowski insists they keep it minimal, for the men, at least. And in the case of some of the other actors, their facial hair has to be faked entirely. "It's more skin maintenance," she said. "We throw a little tinted moisturizer on them."
'Miserably frustrating': Sebelius apologizes for glitchy Obamacare site
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
The cabinet secretary responsible for Obamacare apologized Wednesday to Americans frustrated by the glitch-prone website that has blocked them from comparing and enrolling in health insurance plans.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, called it “a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans.”
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius apologizes for the problems facing the healthcare.gov website at a House hearing Wednesday.
“I am as frustrated and angry as anyone with the flawed launch of healthcare.gov,” she told the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “So let me say directly to these Americans: You deserve better. I apologize.”
Just Tuesday, the site crashed for the second time in a week when a data center owned by Verizon went down.
The Obama administration has pledged to fix the site by Nov. 30. Sebelius told the committee that the administration is committed to solving the problem.
Critics of Obamacare have also seized on complaints from Americans whose health insurance plans have been canceled because they do not meet coverage standards set by the new law.
Those critics say that the cancellations contradict repeated assurances from President Barack Obama that Americans who liked their health plans would be allowed to keep them.
“Some people like to drive a Ford, not a Ferrari, and some people like to drink out of a red Solo cup, not a crystal stem,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Sebelius at the House hearing Wednesday. “You’re taking away their choice.”
The White House has said that the cancellations apply only to the 5 percent of Americans who buy insurance on the individual market, not the 80 percent who are covered by their employers.
The administration has also argued that the individual market has been “like the Wild West” — poorly regulated and leaving people subject to the whims of insurance companies, which before Obamacare could easily deny coverage and hike premiums.
“They can get health insurance,” Sebelius said, answering Blackburn. “They must be offered new plans, new options” — either through the federal marketplace or outside it.
Pressed by the congresswoman on who was responsible for the failures, Sebelius said: “Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.”
Some Republicans have called for Sebelius’ resignation. They have argued that the administration had more than three years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the law known as Obamacare, to get the system right.
Marilyn Tavenner, the government official whose department oversaw the creation of the site, told Congress on Tuesday that 700,000 people had submitted applications through the federal and state health insurance marketplaces.
But she would not say how many people had enrolled for coverage. She said that the number would not be available until mid-November, and that “we expect the initial number to be small.”
The administration has faced a torrent of additional questions, including why the site was not tested until two weeks before its launch, and why the launch was not delayed when problems became clear.
The White House on Tuesday reaffirmed a March 31 deadline for people to sign up for health insurance, even if their coverage does not kick in until later.
In light of the website glitches, the administration is being pushed to soften some of the law’s requirements, including what is known as the individual mandate — the requirement almost everyone have health insurance starting next year.
Related:
First Read: Battle over health care reform that started in 2009 is still raging today
This story was originally published on Wed Oct 30, 2013 9:21 AM EDT