GOP continues to slam new Obama war approach

Republicans keep slamming President Barack Obama's push to move the government away from a war footing and refine and recalibrate counterterrorism strategy.

Capitol Hill Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina say Obama is projecting weakness at a time when the United States needs to show resolve against terror networks like al-Qaida.

The South Carolina Republican said Sunday that "at a time when we need resolve the most, we're sounding retreat."

Obama gave a major speech Thursday in which he said al-Qaida is "on the path to defeat" and he's signaling that he's reluctant to commit troops overseas to conflicts like Syria or other countries struggling with instability in the uncertain aftermath of the Arab Spring. He's also modifying policies on the use of unmanned drone aircraft to try to limit civilian casualties and is redoubling his longstanding — but so far unfulfilled — promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where many terrorism suspects are being held without formal charges.

Obama is trying to recast the image of terrorists from enemy warriors to cowardly thugs and move the United States away a state of perpetual war.

Police in Australia issue warning on 3-D printed gun

The DIY 3-D gun may not be quite ready for prime time.

According to Techworld, the police commissioner in Australia’s New South Wales, Andrew Scipione, has issued a warning after his officers tested one of the firearms—dubbed the "Liberator"—and experienced a “catastrophic misfire” (no one was seriously injured).

According to the website, the NSW police used blueprints created by Defense Distributed to make two pistols that took 27 hours to create from start to finish. The cost for materials was $35 (the desktop 3-D printer costs some $1,700). Except for the firing pin and the pistol cartridge, all the pieces were plastic.

Despite the technical glitches, the NSW police force sees the printable gun as a potentially big problem, with Scipione calling the Liberator "truly undetectable, untraceable, cheap and easy to make."

Defense Distributed's plans, reports Techworld, were downloaded 100,000 times before the company took them down under pressure from the U.S. State Department. However, it's believed that the instructions will continue to circulate.

In the U.S., the Atlantic Wire also investigated the possibility of making a 3-D gun and discovered that "this gun is not easy to make as it's been portrayed, nor as cheap, nor very legal, and the weapon itself is terrible—if you're not too terrified to pull the trigger.”

Bad news, Glass fans: Google Glass will probably launch with terrible battery life

                                                      

Whether or not Google’s connected eyewear will appeal to the mass market, early reviews painted Google Glass as a very intriguing product. It’s not without some faults, of course, and one of the biggest problems with early units was battery life. Glass reportedly goes for about five hours on a charge with average usage, which isn’t very impressive at all. Use the device for something like capturing long videos, however, and battery life can drop to as low as just “a couple of hours.” The version tested by earlier reviewers was just a prototype though, and Glass fans are hoping that Google will improve the device’s efficiency before launching it. But according to recent comments from Google cofounder Sergey Brin, that may not be the case.

In its deep dive into Google’s X Lab, Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with Brin about a number of things “Google X” is working on. Glass is clearly the division’s most widely publicized project, and Brin made an interesting, possibly troubling comment while discussing it.

From the report: “Asked about Google Glass, a project he championed and which he has been photographed testing on the New York City subway, he points to the device perched on his nose and says, ‘You know, this is basically done.’ “

There are a few ways to interpret that comment. One interpretation suggests that while the “Explorer” models currently in use are prototypes, an updated version that is “basically done” exists within Google. Another interpretation, however, is that the version of Google Glass currently being used by early adopters is the version that is “basically done,” and we can expect Glass to launch with terrible battery life.

Extraordinary Video of Man Playing Guitar During Brain Surgery

When you think of all the advancements in medical technology, it can blow your mind. To prove that, we're bringing you the story of Brad Carter, a 39-year-old musician and actor. Carter has appeared on various TV shows, including "CSI." Carter had brain surgery recently, and you have to see it to believe it. Thanks to Vine, Twitter, and the power of the Internet, now you can.

Carter was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2006. He started experiencing hand and eye tremors, which caused him to lose his ability to play the guitar. Doctors at UCLA Medical Centerperformed a deep brain-stimulation surgery, which involves implanting an electrode emitter to affected areas of Carter's brain. Surgeons had to awaken Carter during the surgery to make sure they were implanting the electrode emitter in the right part of his brain.

Billionaire Investor Says Babies Are Like Divorce, They Both ‘Kill’ Focus

Hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones is making headlines after talking about “baby’s lips on a girl’s bosom” as a career-stunting “killer” for female Wall Street traders. Speaking at a symposium, he went on to discuss why he thinks being a mother makes it more difficult to become a successful trader in an ultra-competitive and male-dominated field.

Tudor Jones made the controversial comments last month at a University of Virginia panel that was not supposed to be reported on or recorded. The Washington Post obtained the video through a Freedom of Information Act request (so much for off-the-record).

In his commentary, Tudor Jones seemed to base his "typical female" case-study on two "girls" he started working with in the 1970s.

In a statement to The Post, Tudor Jones responded to the criticism he's received after his comments went viral.

He clarified that his remarks specifically referred to one area of trading, known as macro trading.

Macro trading “requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition,” Tudor Jones writes. “Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance.”

Tudor Jones didn't just single out women on his UVA panel; he also pointed to divorce as the type of emotional distraction that automatically subtracts 10% to 20% from any manager. He also noted that one of his rules as an investor is that if he finds out his manager is going through a divorce, he pulls money out of the fund immediately.

In the accompanying video, I talk to my Yahoo! Finance colleague Mike Santoli about Tudor Jones’ remarks.

Yes, Google Glass Is Ugly. So What?

One in ten Americans would be willing to give Google Glass a try if someone gave them the new, $1,500 wearable heads-up display for free. But a much larger share of the country—45 percent, to be exact—has already written off the device “because of its awkward aesthetic or because the device seemed irritating.”

Those stats underscore the only thing more troublesome forGoogle Glass than the technical challenges of building it, and that's the social stigma that inevitably follows wherever it goes. The device has yet to make its way into consumers’ hands; as a result, our only experience with Glass has been vicariously through early testers and the sometimes unfortunate photos of said testers.

Mocking Glass for its impracticality, goofiness and—oh yeah—its creep factor has become something of a national pastime. There's nothing wrong with a little satire, particularly when it's aimed at a company that presumes to tell us what we want before we know it. But here’s the thing. We're in danger of letting the ridicule get the better of us. At their best, parody and schadenfreude help us grapple with difficult problems. At worst, they can become a distraction unto themselves.

(Facebook)

Glass won't look the way it does forever; in fact, a couple of emerging technologies that actually predate it may soon help resolve its aesthetic issues. When that happens, we'll have to confront the ethical questions raised by the technology in a way that we're unprepared to do now. Getting hung up on a first-generation technology when the second generation lies just beyond has left us, well, shortsighted.

The knock against Glass isn't wrong, per se. Glass is ugly. It doesmake social interactions awkward. The headset places a semi-permanent barrier between people. It's distracting both to onlookers as well as to the user (if you're not checking Glass like you check your smartphone every few minutes, you're doing it wrong, at least from Google's perspective). These problems bleed inexorably into another: Right now, using Glass removes you from the present. The thought of withdrawing this way as a matter of habit creates the fear that we'll all become drooling, sedentary hunks of meat too engrossed in our digital lives to participate fully in our offline lives. It's the stuff of dystopian nightmares.

As disorienting as Glass is, the disruption it's causing is likely to be a momentary one, for several reasons.

The most important one is that by the time Glass finally makes it to market, it won’t be long before it gets displaced by something far less visually obtrusive. Two technologies will make this possible: brainwave readers and augmented-reality contact lenses.

In the health sector, brain scanners have been helping handicapped patients regain some control over their surrounding environment. Paralysis victims have learned to operate computers, robotic arms and other devices with their minds. It still has a ways to go, but someday soon, that technology is going to spread to the rest of us.

Then there's an ambitious project to create a kind of Terminator-vision that doesn't require goggles or glasses. As far back as 2009,  researchers at the University of Washington were alreadyexperimenting with rudimentary contact lenses embedded with circuits and LEDs. More recent versions by Belgian scientists have built-in LCD screens.

What Detroit crisis? Pension fund trustees hang out in Hawaii

                   

The city of Detroit may be facing a deepening financial crisis but that hasn't stopped four trustees of its public pension funds from spending $22,000 of retirement system funds to attend a conference in Hawaii this week.

The trip 4,500 miles west to a four-star resort on the world-famous Waikiki Beach in Honolulu doesn't sit well with the top officials now running Detroit's finances under an emergency order from the state of Michigan. Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has not ruled out a bankruptcy as the city struggles under a $15 billion debt burden, which is being strained further by its hefty pension obligations.

"It especially doesn't look good when you have city employees, police, firefighters having taken pay cuts," said Bill Nowling, spokesman for Orr. "Middle-class, blue-collar workers, their dream vacation when they retire may be a two-week trip to Hawaii - they don't associate Hawaii with a place you go to work."

The four trustees from Detroit were among hundreds of pension officials from around the country who traveled in the past week to Honolulu for the annual convention of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. Nowling said that Orr's team did not think they had the power to prevent the trip.

John Riehl, a senior sewage plant operator and 34-year Detroit employee, is one of the four. The cost fell within continuing education guidelines set by the legislature, he said.

"It's one of these things we trustees must do to stay on top of the field," Riehl said. "It's important that we participate in these conferences. The stakes are too high."

Of the three other trustees from Detroit, one declined to comment and two others could not be reached for comment.

Witnesses describe deadly Oklahoma tornado: ‘All you could hear were screams’

MOORE, Okla. – The hell he saw was harrowing, but it’s the sounds at Plaza Towers Elementary that Stuart Earnest Jr. says will haunt him forever.

“All you could hear were screams,” Earnest said. “The people screaming for help. And the people trying to help were also screaming.”

Plaza Towers, a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school, took a direct hit when a titanic tornado chewed a deadly and destructive 20-mile path through Newcastle, Moore and parts of southern Oklahoma City for 40 minutes Monday afternoon.

State officials have adjusted the number of casualties a few times since the tragedy. Tuesday morning, Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer at the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's Office, said that the death toll had been reduced to 24 for now, including 9 children. Seven of those children died at the school.

Elliott said believed the deaths had been double counted earlier, leading to an inaccurate death toll of nearly 50. “It could conceivably rise,” Elliott said.

KFOR reported that at least 233 people were injured by the storm.

Not to be pessimistic... but we think the death toll will continue to climb as we find more bodies," Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb said on CNN Tuesday morning.

Mother Nature was showing no mercy to Moore on Tuesday. Drenching rains and lightning had moved into the area by 9 a.m. Forecasters weren’t predicting tornadoes, but said hail and damaging winds were possible through late afternoon.

$590M-plus Powerball: 1 winning ticket sold in Fla

                                     

 Iowa (AP) — It's all about the odds, and one lone ticket in Florida has beaten them all by matching each of the numbers drawn for the highest Powerball jackpot in history at an estimated $590.5 million, lottery officials said Sunday.

The single winner was sold at a supermarket in Zephyrhills, Fla., according to Florida Lottery executive Cindy O'Connell. She told The Associated Press by telephone that more details would be released later.

"This would be the sixth Florida Powerball winner and right now, it's the sole winner of the largest ever Powerball jackpot," O'Connell told AP. "We're delighted right now that we have the sole winner."

She said Florida has had more Powerball winners than any other state.

The winner was not immediately identified publicly and O'Connell did not give any indication just hours after Saturday's drawing whether anyone had already stepped forward with that winning ticket.

With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, lottery executives said earlier that someone was almost certain to win the game's highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars — and that's after taxes.

Saturday night's winning numbers were 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball of 11.

Estimates had earlier put the jackpot at around $600 million. But Powerball's online site said Sunday that the jackpot had reached an estimated $590.5 million.

Terry Rich, CEO of the Iowa Lottery, initially confirmed that one Florida winning ticket had been sold. He told AP that following the Florida winner, the Powerball grand prize was being reset at an estimated jackpot of $40 million, or about $25.1 million cash value.

The chances of winning the prize were astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million. That's how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimated that about 80 percent of those possible combinations had been purchased recently.

While the odds are low for any one individual or individuals, O'Connell said, the chance that one hits paydirt is what makes Powerball an "exciting game to play."

Saudi Arabia has another case of new coronavirus: WHO

 Saudi Arabia has reported another case of infection in a concentrated outbreak of a new strain of a virus that emerged in the Middle East last year and spread into Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

In a disease outbreak update issued from its Geneva headquarters, the WHO said the latest patient is an 81-year-old woman with multiple medical conditions. She became ill on April 28 and is in a critical but stable condition.

Worldwide, there have now been 41 laboratory-confirmed infections, including 20 deaths, since the new coronavirus was identified by scientists in September 2012.

The novel coronavirus, which had been known as by the acronym nCoV but which some scientific journals now refer to as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, belongs to the same family as viruses that cause common colds and the one that caused a deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003.

MERS cases have so far been reported in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Britain, Germany and France, but Saudi Arabia has had the vast majority of cases.

The WHO said that latest patient was in the same clinic in eastern Saudi Arabia that has seen 22 cases, nine of them fatal, since April 8.

WHO experts visiting Saudi Arabia to consult with the authorities on the outbreak have said it seemed likely the new virus could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact.

Analysis: Airline emissions deal may not come before EU deadline

                       

Hope is fading for a global deal to regulate the airline industry's greenhouse gas emissionsahead of a fall deadline, even though failure could push the industry back to the brink of a trade war over the European Union's emissions trading system.

Last November the EU suspended its controversial scheme to force all airlines to buy carbon credits for any flight arriving in or departing from European airspace.

The scheme had pitted European states against China, the United States, India and others, who said it violated their sovereignty. The EU said it had to act, after more than a decade of inaction on the environmental impact of aviation.

European officials gave the United Nations' agency that governs aviation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), more time to craft a compromise in the form of a global regulatory regime.

They have vowed to bring their own program back into force unless they see real progress by the ICAO assembly, which runs September 24 to October 4. The assembly, which would have to approve any global regime, meets only once every three years.

But there is still disagreement on how to charge for emissions from flights that cross borders; how to deal fairly with developing countries; and whether airlines, states or both should be subject to regulation.

All those issues have stalled efforts to reach a compromise.

"Think of aviation as a microcosm of the big geopolitical process," said Paul Steele, executive director of the industry group Air Transport Action Group and one of the technical experts who has advised ICAO on the issue.

The group, a coalition of some 50 plane makers, airlines and narrower associations like Airports Council International, wants a global emissions regime, not a messy and expensive "patchwork" of systems around the world.

Genetic Testing Guidelines Under Fire

If you underwent a genetic test for a heart condition, but the test also revealed that you have a high risk of colon cancer, would you want to know?

A respected scientific society says your doctor should tell you, but the group is receiving criticism for its recommendation that "incidental findings" of genetic tests be shared with patients.

Incidental findings are unexpected results, unrelated to the reason for testing. What to do with these findings has been a controversial issue for adults undergoing genetic testing, as well as children.

In March, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) released guidelines saying that when patients receive genetic testing for any medical reason, they should be screened for mutations in an additional 57 genes, including mutations that strongly increase the risk of breast, ovarian and colon cancer.

The ACMG argues that doctors have an obligation to look for and report these mutations because there are ways that people can act to reduce their of developing a medical disorder.

However, some researchers and bioethicists say the new recommendations go too far, and take away patients' rights to refuse medical information they do not wish to know.

Informed consent

A crucial part of genetic testing ethics is ensuring that patients understand what a test might find, and what those findings could mean for future treatment.

Under the new recommendations, a patient who consents to any genetic test is consenting to be screened for mutations in an additional 57 genes. Some bioethicists take issue with this approach, because patients may not wish to know their results for all of these genes.

A positive result for any one of these mutations may increase patients' anxiety, or cause them to live their life differently, said Susan Wolf, a professor of law, medicine and public policy at the University of Minnesota.

Google's wearable Glass gadget: cool or creepy?

                         

Google staged four discussions expounding on the finer points of its "Glass" wearable computer during this week's developer conference. Missing from the agenda, however, was a session on etiquette when using the recording-capable gadget, which some attendees faithfully wore everywhere - including to the crowded bathrooms.

Google Glass, a cross between a mobile computer and eyeglasses that can both record video and surf the Internet, is now available to a select few but is already among the year's most buzz-worthy new gadgets. The device has geeks all aflutter but is unnerving everyone from lawmakers to casino operators worried about the potential for hitherto unimagined privacy and policy violations.

"I had a friend and we're sitting at dinner and about 30 minutes into it she said, 'You know those things freak me out,'" said Allen Firstenberg, a technology consultant at the Google developers conference. He has been wearing Glass for about a week but offered to take them off for the comfort of his dinner companion.

On another occasion, Firstenberg admitted to walking into a bathroom wearing his Glass without realizing it.

"Most of the day I totally forget it's there," he said.

Obama to discuss al Qaeda, drones, Guantanamo Bay in Thursday speech

 President Barack Obama, under fire for security lapses at a U.S. mission inLibya, will in a speech on Thursday lay out his wide-ranging counter-terrorism policy, from the controversial use of drones to efforts to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama's use of military drone aircraft to attack extremists has drawn fire and increased tensions in countries like Pakistan and been criticized by human rights activists in the United States.

His inability to follow through on a 2008 campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison has been dramatized by a hunger strike among many of the terrorism suspects being held there.

And the resurgence in recent weeks of questions surrounding the deaths of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in an attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, last year has put Obama on the defensive.

Ken Venturi dies at 82; golfer had dramatic win in 1964 U.S. Open

Ken Venturi sinks his final putt to win the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. Venturi lay on the clubhouse floor between rounds suffering from dehydration and exhaustion. Playing slowly and taking water and salt pills, he overtook leader Tommy Jacobs about midway through the final round and finished with a 70 to win by four strokes. (Associated Press / June 20, 1964)

Ken Venturi, who won the 1964 U.S. Open golf championship in dramatic fashion and became a longtime television commentator, died Friday in Rancho Mirage. He was 82.

Venturi, who was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame earlier this month, died at Eisenhower Medical Center after battling a spinal infection, pneumonia and an intestinal infection, his son Matt said.

The U.S. Open victory was one of Venturi's 14 tournament wins as a pro. Though he suffered from a severe stutter as a youth, he worked as the lead analyst for CBS Sports from 1968 to 2002.

"Doctors told his mother he will never speak," fellow broadcaster Jim Nantz said at the May 6 Hall of Fame induction, which Venturi was too ill to attend. "He will never be able to say his own name. That's what drove him to golf, to sit on a range, beating balls, hearing himself in total clarity in his head, 'This is to win the U.S. Open.' And he overcame that with great will and determination, and became the longest-running lead analyst in the history of sports television."

Why Is North Korea Testing Missiles Now?

North Korea noticed the world stopped paying attention to them, and so, the country fired three short range missiles off the coast to out all eyes on them. Are we about to fall back into the endless stream of provocations and threats that seemed to die down?

It's too early to make a solid guess about that. But this is what we know. South Korean officials are reporting three short-range KN-02 missiles were fired into the sea Saturday from North Korea. Short range missiles don't travel more than 1,000 kilometers. (Or 620 miles, for the Imperialists.) These ones didn't even make it to Japanese waters.

Two missiles were launched in the morning while the third came later in the afternoon. The North hasn't released a statement yet so we don't know why, exactly, they're doing this now. The North tends to test short-range missiles every few months. The last tests came in March when tensions were at a high between the international community and the North. It seemed like the tensions in the region that had everyone walking on egg shells earlier in the year had died down. 

This Is Exactly How Massive the Texas Fertilizer Explosion Was

Representatives of the ATF and the Texas Fire Marshall provided an update on their joint investigation into the fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas. The short story is that the cause of the fire is undetermined. The long story is that the investigation has been as massive as was the explosion.
At 7:29 pm on April 17, something caught fire in the seed and fertilizer building at the plant. Three minutes later, the fire department was dispatched; by 7:38 firefighters were on-scene. Three minutes later, more firefighters were called out.
At 7:51, the fire was hot enough to change the sensitivity of the ammonium nitrate stored in the building in a tall column of wooden bins. Something hit the unstable compound — a piece of equipment, or some debris — and triggered a small explosion. That explosion created enough additional heat and enough shock to set off a far larger blast a few milliseconds later. Investigatorsknow there were two explosions because they were separately recorded on a seismograph at a nearby college. An estimated 28 to 34 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded, with the force of 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of TNT. An additional 20 to 30 tons in the building didn't go off, nor did 100 tons in a nearby railcar.The blast killed twelve of the first responders at the scene, and three others elsewhere. It left a crater 93 feet wide and ten feet deep. Debris was scattered over a 37-block area, and pieces were found 2.5 miles away. Over 104 people from the two agencies spent 30 days going over the scene of the blast, excavating and mapping the crater, generating nearly 300 leads, interviewing 500 people. They combed an area covering about 14 acres. At one point, investigators looking for evidence sifted through an entire silo of corn — 300,000 pounds — by hand.

MARATHON BOMBERS ARE PART OF LARGER PICTURE

WASHINGTON -- The one thing no one has suspected Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of being is a closet essayist. The idea of this young Chechen/Dagestani/Khrgyz man who, with his brother is accused of the vicious Boston Marathon bombings, making notes on his ideas had not entered the bio.

And yet, as I write, news sources are reporting new information about Dzhokhar. Lying helplessly in the landlocked boat he was hiding inside of, in the small Massachusetts town outside Boston where they had fled, he wrote several primitive but revealing thoughts on the hull of the bullet-pocked boat with a pen he found. Since these are the first revelations of this young would-be Trotsky leaking out his likely last words to the world, they are probably quite honest -- and they would be totally admissible in court.

The most important thing he says is that, far from carrying out his nihilistic act with his brother because of persecution in Russia's war-wracked Chechnya province, they had attacked the Boston Marathon because of American soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and "crimes against Muslims" across the world.

He seems to know that his brother is dead. But he will not mourn him, because he knows thatTamerlan is already in paradise, where he himself will soon join him. Yes, there was "collateral damage" in the marathon bombings, but that is simply the way of war.

It had seemed that there would be not really very much more to discover about the marathon bombers. But these simple words -- as he imagined he was about to be killed -- do help to clarify some elements of the case.

Since it was discovered several days after the attack that Tamerlan, the older and more ideological of the brothers, had taken a lengthy six-month trip to Dagestan last year, ostensibly to see his mother and father, analysts have never stopped talking about the fact that he may well have made contact with the multiple radical Islamist groups there, hiding in the hills and ready to fight their old nemesis, Russia.

Throughout Central Asian history, the Russians have been exceptionally brutal to the Chechens and other Caucasus mountain people, deporting them from their native lands in 1944 and fighting two recent wars against them, one in which they leveled the Chechen capital, Grozny.

This ingrown Chechen hatred of the Russians and so many other persecuting peoples may well have inspired Tamerlan, but now it seems unlikely that it inspired Dzhokhar, who was born much later in the saga. So this gives a new twist to the already poisoned story.

Doctor who promised cancer cure faces sentencing

OS ANGELES (AP) -- At the age of three, Brianica Kirsch was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Her parents, desperate to find alternative measures for their daughter who had undergone surgeries and chemotherapy, turned to Dr. Christine Daniel, who offered an herbal supplement with a success rate she claimed was between 60 and 80 percent.

Brianica's parents spent thousands of dollars on the herbal product and their daughter spent much of her time in those last few months before she died in the summer of 2002 being shuttled from her Ventura County home to Daniel's clinic in the San Fernando Valley.

Daniel, 58, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom where federal prosecutorsare asking she be sentenced to 27 years in prison for crimes they deem cruel, despicable and heinous. Daniel's lawyer is seeking a nearly six-year prison term.

Daniel was convicted in September 2011 of 11 counts, including wire fraud, tax evasion and witness tampering. Authorities said Daniel used her position both as a doctor at the Sonrise Wellness Center and a Pentecostal minister to entice people from across the nation to take her herbal product to remedy cancer, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

Penitent Romanian hacker aims to protect world's ATMs

VASLUI, Romania (Reuters) - Valentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world's ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself.

Boanta, 33, is six months into a five-year sentence for supplying gadgets an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers, which can copy data from an unsuspecting ATM user's card so a clone can be created.

He said he had started to make the devices for the sheer excitement of it and denies ever planning to use them himself, saying he only sold them to others.

Boanta says his arrest in 2009 and trial brought contrition, as he realized the impact of his actions and felt an urge to make amends. It also brought the former industrial design student a flash of technical inspiration.

"When I got caught I became happy. This liberation opened the way to working for the good side," Boanta said.

The New Science of Giving

A young Houston couple is planning to give away $4 billion—but only to projects that prove they are worth it. Can they redefine the world of philanthropy?

LIKE ANY POPULAR food writer, Gary Taubes gets more than his share of e-mails about his work. So he didn't give it much thought one day two years ago when he got a five-line comment about a podcast he'd given the week before. It was plainly signed "John."

The man was intrigued by Taubes's theories on why people get fat—more specifically, the food writer's argument that most of the science on obesity is either badly flawed or inconclusive. What was needed, Taubes had said, was a comprehensive experiment that can answer some of the key questions about how our bodies process food. The problem is that such a study is hugely expensive. "From the little I know about the science of nutrition, your study makes a lot of sense," the listener wrote, adding that he ran a foundation focused on public policy.

Profile photo of John and Laura Arnold from the Arnold Foundation …Taubes noticed that the full name in the email was John Arnold, and a quick Google search turned up a curious figure under that name: a wunderkind natural-gas trader at Enron who later founded his own hedge fund. The fund was secretive—little-known in its hometown, Houston, much less the rest of the country—but legendary in hedge-fund circles for its mega-returns. It was starting to get interesting.

Taubes passed the name onto Peter Attia, a medical doctor with whom he had recently founded a nonprofit focused on nutrition science.
Attia recalls that when he called to see if he could set up a meeting with Arnold, the response was, "First give us the names of 20 top experts in the field, half of whom think you are crazy." A few weeks later, he found himself in a conference room located just off the trading floor at Arnold's Houston office, during which it became apparent that Arnold and his staff had already spoken with most, if not all, of the experts Attia provided. And something else was apparent: Though boyish and just 37, Arnold was dead serious about launching the obesity study. Indeed, his ambitions couldn't have been higher. He wanted to know if all the best and brightest food scientists got together—and had unlimited resources—what could they accomplish?
Interactive: The Big Give

Afghan lawmakers block law on women's rights

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Conservative religious lawmakers inAfghanistan blocked legislation on Saturday aimed at strengthening provisions for women's freedoms, arguing that parts of it violate Islamic principles and encourage disobedience.

The fierce opposition highlights how tenuous women's rights remain a dozen years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime, whose strict interpretation of Islam once kept Afghan women virtual prisoners in their homes.

Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada, a conservative lawmaker for Herat province, said the legislation was withdrawn shortly after being introduced in parliament because of an uproar by religious partieswho said parts of the law are un-Islamic.

"Whatever is against Islamic law, we don't even need to speak about it," Shaheedzada said.

The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women has been in effect since 2009, but only by presidential decree. It is being brought before parliament now because lawmaker Fawzia Kofi, a women's rights activist, wants to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent its potential reversal by any future president who might be tempted to repeal it to satisfy hard-line religious parties.

The law criminalizes, among other things, child marriage and forced marriage, and bans "baad," the traditional practice of exchanging girls and women to settle disputes. It makes domestic violence a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and specifies that rape victims should not face criminal charges for fornication or adultery.

Stella Tremblay, New Hampshire Legislator, Says Jeff Bauman 'Was Not In Pain' After Bombing

                                   

The New Hampshire state legislator who has said the federal government caused the Boston Marathon bombing claimed proof in a victim who lost both legs and "was not in pain."

State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) told a conservative talk show host Tuesday that she knows the federal government was behind the attacks because Jeff Bauman, a bombing victim who helped identify the suspects, was not "screaming in agony" after both his legs were blown off. Tremblay made the comments on The Pete Santilli Show, first reported by miscellanyblue.com, a liberal-leaning website, on Wednesday.

"Then, my first gut reaction seeing the horror of that person that has their legs blown off," Tremblay said. "You know, the bone sticking out? He was not in shock. I looked and I thought, there’s something. … I don’t know what’s wrong, but it seems surreal to me. I talked to my sister, who’s not into politics at all, and she said, 'Yes, I saw the same thing.' He was not in shock. He was not in pain. If I had had those type of injuries, I’d be screaming in agony."

Tremblay, a tea party member with ties to the birther movement, made the remarks about Bauman after causing a stir with her marathon bombing government conspiracy theory. She said photos of the bombing showed intact backpacks, which she said should have been destroyed if they contained bombs. Last week, she posted a comment on Glenn Beck's Facebook page saying the federal government caused the bombing. She has resisted calls to resign over the post.

During the interview with Santilli, Tremblay said she should not get all the credit for linking the government to the bombing. She said a constituent had pointed her to the information. She said she previously trusted the federal government.

Tyler The Creator's 'Racist' Mountain Dew Commercial Pulled By PepsiCo After Criticism

PepsiCo is once again learning the risks of celebrity partnerships after an ad for Mountain Dew was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and making light of violence toward women.

The soda and snack food company said it immediately pulled the 60-second spot after learning that people found it offensive. The ad was part of a series developed by African-American rapper Tyler, The Creator, and depicted a battered white woman on crutches being urged to identify a suspect out of a lineup of black men.

A goat character known as Felicia is included in the lineup and makes threatening comments to the woman, such as "Ya better not snitch on a playa" and "Keep ya mouth shut."

The woman eventually screams "I can't do this, no no no!" and runs away. The word "do" is in apparent reference to the soft drink's "Dew It" slogan.

Mountain Dew, known for its neon color and high caffeine content, is generally marketed to younger men and sometimes attempts to have edgier ads. But the controversy over its latest spot illustrates the fine line that companies must walk when trying to be hip.

In fact, Mountain Dew also was criticized recently because of its endorsement deal with Lil Wayne, whose rap lyrics compared a rough sex act to the tortuous death of Emmett Till, a black teen who was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Last month, Reebok also ended its relationship with Rick Ross after he rapped about giving a woman a drug to have his way with her.

Laura Ries, president of Ries & Ries, a marketing firm based in Atlanta, said companies that want the "street cred" of a celebrity may end up losing control of the message they want to convey.

If PepsiCo had created an ad for Mountain Dew, for example, she said it might not have been considered edgy or cool. But by handing over control to a celebrity, she said the company ran the risk of having an ad that wasn't appropriate.

PepsiCo Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., said it understood how the ad could be offensive.

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