NEW YORK New York City police have identified a man they say was shoved to his death in front of a subway train by a woman.
Police said Friday that Sunando Sen was pushed from the platform the night before. The 46-year-old Sen was from India and lived alone in Queens.
Investigators identified him through a smartphone and a prescription pill bottle he was carrying when he was struck by a 7 train. His family in India has been notified.
Police are searching homeless shelters and psychiatric units for the woman believed to have pushed him. Witnesses say she was mumbling before she shoved him without warning.
The incident happened around 8 p.m. Thursday on the elevated tracks at the 40th Street Station on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, CBS Station WCBS reports.
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Search on for suspect in 2nd subway push death
Police said witnesses saw the woman pacing and mumbling on the platform before taking a seat alone on a wooden bench. Then, as the train approached the station, witnesses said she suddenly shot forward, shoving the unsuspecting man onto the tracks, directly into the path of an oncoming Number 7 train.
The New York Police Department released surveillance video of the suspect running away from the scene. Police said the woman raced down two flights of stairs after the attack and then disappeared onto the crowded street.
Detectives described her as a heavyset Hispanic woman in her 20s, approximately 5-foot-5, with blonde or brown hair. She was last seen wearing a blue, white and grey ski jacket and grey and red Nike sneakers.
The incident marked the second deadly subway push this month. On December 3, police said 58-year-old Ki Suck Han was pushed to his death by 30-year-old Naeem Davis. The two were seen on cell phone video arguing just moments before Han was pushed to his death.
In the most recent incident, witnesses said the victim never encountered his attacker and never saw what was coming.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at (800) 577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto Crime Stoppers or texting tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
In the Bible, he is called Moses. In the Koran, he is the prophet Musa.
Religious scholars have long questioned whether of the story of a prophet leading God's chosen people in a great exodus out of Egypt and the freedom it brought them afterwards was real, but the similarities between a pharaoh's ancient hymn and a psalm of David might hold the link to his existence.
Tune in to Part 2 of Christiane Amanpour's ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus, on Friday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Christian scripture says Moses was content to grow old with his family in the vast deserted wilderness of Midian, and 40 years passed until the Bible says God spoke to him through the Burning Bush and told him to lead his people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. According to tradition, that miraculous bush can still be seen today enclosed within the ancient walls of St. Catherine's Monastery, located not far from Moses' hometown.
But there was another figure in the ancient world who gave up everything to answer the call from what he believed was the one and only true God.
Archaeologists discovered the remains of the ancient city of Amarna in the 1800s. Egyptologist Rawya Ismail, who has been studying the ruins for years, believes, as other archaeologists do, that Pharaoh Akhenaten built the city as a tribute to Aten, the sun.
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She said it was a bold and unusual step for the pharaoh to leave the luxurious trappings of palace life in Luxor for the inhospitable landscape of Amarna, but it might have been his only choice as the priests from the existing religious establishment gained power.
"The very powerful Amun-Ra priests that he couldn't stand against gained control of the whole country," Ismail said. "The idea was to find a place that had never been used by any other gods -- to be virgin is what he called it -- so he chose this place."
All over the walls inside the city's beautiful tombs are examples of Akhanaten's radical message of monotheism. There is the Hymn to the Aten, which translates, in part, to: "The earth comes into being by your hand, as you made it. When you dawn, they live. When you set, they die. You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you."
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Some attribute the writing of the hymn to Akhanaten himself, but it bears a striking resemblance to a passage that can be found in the Hebrew Bible: Psalm 104.
"If you compare the hymns from A to Z, you'll find mirror images to it in many of the holy books," Ismail said. "And if you compare certain parts of it, you'll find it almost exactly -- a typical translation for some of the [psalms] of David."
Psalm 104, written a few hundred years later, references a Lord that ruled over Israel and a passage compares him to the sun.
"You hide your face, they are troubled," part of it reads. "You take away your breath, they die, And return to dust. You send forth your breath, they are created, And you renew the face of the earth."
Like the psalm, the Hymn to Aten extols the virtues of the one true God.
"A lot of people think that [the Hymn to Aten] was the source of the [psalms] of David," Ismail said. "Putting Egypt on the trade route, a lot of people traveled from Egypt and came back to Egypt, it wasn't like a country living in isolation."
Ismail believes it is possible that the message from the heretic pharaoh has some connection to the story of Moses and the Exodus, as outlined in the Hebrew Bible.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Indian gang rape victim whose assault in New Delhi triggered nationwide protests died of her injuries on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, potentially threatening fresh protests in India where her case is a rallying point for women's rights.
The 23-year-old medical student, severely beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi two weeks ago, had been flown to Singapore in a critical condition by the Indian government on Thursday for specialist treatment.
"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4:45 a.m. on Dec 29, 2012 (3:45 p.m. ET Friday). Her family and officials from the High Commission (embassy) of India were by her side," Mount Elizabeth Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement.
Most rapes and other sex crimes in India go unreported and offenders are rarely punished, women's rights activists say. But the brutality of the December 16 assault sparked public outrage and calls for better policing and harsher punishment for rapists.
The case has received blanket coverage on cable television news channels. The woman has not been identified but some Indian media have called her "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure".
"We are saddened to learn that she has succumbed to her injuries, and would like to extend our deepest condolences to her family during this time of bereavement," Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Earlier on Friday, the hospital had reported that the woman's condition had taken a turn for the worse. It said that her family had been informed and were by her side.
T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore, said after her death that the family had expressed a desire for her body to be flown back to India. Moments later, the woman's body was loaded into a van and driven away.
Talking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Raghavan declined to comment on reports in India accusing the government of sending her to Singapore to minimize the possible backlash in the event of her death.
Some Indian medical experts had questioned the decision to airlift the woman to Singapore, calling it a risky maneuver given the seriousness of her injuries. They had said she was already receiving the best possible care in India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has been battling criticism that it was tone-deaf to the outcry and heavy handed in its response to the protests in the Indian capital.
"It is deeply saddening and just beyond words. The police and government definitely have to do something more," said Sharanya Ramachandran, an Indian national working as an engineer in Singapore.
"They should bring in very severe punishment for such cases. They should start recognizing that it is a big crime."
"SIGNIFICANT BRAIN INJURY"
The Singapore hospital said earlier that the woman had suffered "significant brain injury" and was surviving against the odds. She had already undergone three abdominal operations before being flown to Singapore.
Protests over the lack of safety for women erupted across India after the attack, culminating last weekend in pitched battles between police and protesters in the heart of New Delhi.
New Delhi has been on edge since the weekend clashes. Hundreds of policemen have been deployed on the streets of the capital and streets leading to the main protest site, the India Gate war memorial, have been shut for long periods, severely disrupting traffic in the city of 16 million.
Commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration that many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social and economic issues.
Many protesters have complained that Singh's government has done little to curb the abuse of women in the country of 1.2 billion. A global poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.
New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in New Delhi and Saeed Azhar and Edgar Su in Singapore; Editing by Michael Roddy and Mark Bendeich)
PARIS: As the clock strikes 12 on Monday, millions will pop champagne corks and light fireworks while others indulge in quirkier New Year's rituals like melting lead, leaping off chairs or gobbling grapes.
One of the world's oldest shared traditions, New Year's celebrations take many forms, but most cultures have one thing in common -- letting one's hair down after a long, hard year.
For much of the globe this involves sipping bubbly with friends until the sun comes up, seeing out the old year with bonfires and flares and off-key renditions of Auld Lang Syne.
But others have rather more curious habits, often steeped in superstition.
In Finland, say tour guides, people pour molten lead into cold water to divine the year ahead from the shape the metal sets in. If the blob represents a ship it is said to foretell travel, if it's a ball, good luck.
In Denmark, people stand on chairs and jump off in unison as the clock strikes midnight, literally leaping into the new year.
The Danes also throw plates at their friends' homes during the night -- the more shards you find outside your door in the morning the more popular you are said to be.
The Dutch build massive bonfires with their Christmas trees and eat sugary donuts -- one of many cultures to consume round New Year's foods traditionally believed to represent good fortune.
Spaniards, in turn, gobble a dozen grapes before the stroke of midnight, each fruit representing a month that will either be sweet or sour.
In the Philippines, revellers wear polka dots for good luck, while in some countries of South America people don brightly coloured underwear to attract fortune -- red for love and yellow for financial success.
Despite regional and cultural differences, for most the New Year's festivities are a chance to let off steam before the annual cycle starts all over again.
"This is a holiday that is about relaxation and letting go," explained George Washington University sociologist Amitai Etzioni.
"The whole year people are chained by social requirements, morals, laws... "And then there comes some occasion in which society says for today, 24 hours, for this evening, all bets are off, all norms are suspended, and it's OK.
"The next day we have to get back in line."
Historians say people have been marking the year change for thousands of years.
The ancient Romans, who gave us the solar calendar, celebrated in a way similar to ours.
Playing, eating, drinking
"It was a day of public celebration. People spent the day playing, eating and drinking," according to French historian John Scheid of the College de France.
"During the period of the empire, the first four centuries AD, this originally Roman custom became a general festival in the whole Roman world, and so it remained until today."
January 1 became the day widely marked as New Year's Day only in 46 BC, when the emperor Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar. March 1 had been the first day of the year until then.
Medieval Europe, though, continued celebrating New Year's Day on dates with religious significance, including Christmas.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian one, correcting mathematical inconsistencies.
Most Catholic countries immediately adopted the calendar and its January 1 start, but Protestant nations did so only gradually.
Britain and its then-colonies, including the United States, were among the last to introduce the new calendar, from 1752.
While most of the world has now adopted January 1 as the official start of the year, some still hold their festivities on other dates.
Orthodox churches celebrate on January 14 (January 1 on the Julian calendar), while the Chinese New Year can fall on any date between January 21 and February 20, depending on the position of the moon.
New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority finally joined the smartphone era today by releasing an iOS app showing train arrival times for seven subway lines.
Available for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad, MTA Subway Time will display train arrival times for 156 stations on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 lines and the S shuttle line. Though officially in a test version for the time being, the app will use the same arrival times shown on station countdown clocks and on the MTA's Web site.
"The ability to get subway arrival time at street level is here," said MTA Chairman and CEO Joseph J. Lhota in a statement. "The days of rushing to a subway station only to find yourself waiting motionless in a state of uncertainty are coming to an end."
According to the statement, the app can handle up to 5,000 incoming requests per second. The information comes from a feed that can be accessed by developers for other mobile operating systems.
Though the MTA has existing apps for bus arrivals and the drive times on its bridges and tunnels, this is the first time that the country's busiest transit agency has developed an app for subway service.
NEWTOWN, Conn. The children at the Sandy Hook Elementary school won't be returning to classes for another week, but officials from the town, school district and local agencies are doing their best in the meantime to keep them occupied following a massacre at their school two weeks ago.
The students have not attended school since a gunman killed 20 of their schoolmates and six adults on Dec. 14. They are slated to return to a different school next Thursday.
In the meantime, they've been treated to field trips, toy giveaways and some organized play time.
"A couple of the teachers have done pizza parties," said Janet Robinson, Newtown's school superintendent. "Another met her kids at the library so they could have a little reading time together. The most important thing has been connecting the students back to their teacher and their classmates."
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Newtown schools superintendent: We have to move forward
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Victims of Conn. school shooting
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Newtown police get a break on Christmas
The Newtown Youth Academy, a nonprofit sports center, opened its doors to all kids in town at no cost shortly after the shooting. But from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. last week, the building's turf field, basketball and tennis courts, and giant inflatable obstacle course were reserved just for Sandy Hook Elementary students.
There have been arts and crafts for the smaller kids, as well as face-paintings. Some celebrities, including two members of the Harlem Globetrotters and former University of Connecticut basketball star Tina Charles, also have stopped by to play with the children.
UConn's men's basketball team and its coaches made a trip to the academy Thursday and played games with the kids, posed for photos and signed autographs. "It was great for us to be able to see some smiles on their faces and to spend some time with them," Coach Kevin Ollie said.
On Thursday afternoon, school buses were loading up at the Youth Academy for a trip to Stamford and a larger complex, Chelsea Piers, which also has ice rinks and an indoor swimming pool, said academy owner Peter D'Amico. Sports celebrities, such as Brooklyn Nets forward Kris Humphries, planned to meet them there.
"The idea was to get them away from the house, the television and all the coverage of this tragedy and get them to a place where kids can just be kids," said D'Amico, a longtime youth coach in town.
University of Connecticut psychologist Julian Ford, who spent time counseling in Newtown in the first days after the shooting, said it's important for the grieving process to include an outlet that lets children know that while things will never be the same, it's OK to enjoy life.
"They are all going to be thinking about what happened," he said. "That, unfortunately, is inescapable. But this gives them a chance to say, `Life is carrying on.' Nothing will be the same, but it's also continuing in ways that it should be."
Some students and their parents on Thursday toured the Chalk Hill school in Monroe, a former middle school being reopened next week for the Sandy Hook students. An open house is planned for Wednesday.
"Getting back into the school is like getting back on the horse," Robinson said. "Some of the scariness is gone once they cross that threshold. They are just so happy to see their teachers."
State police said they plan to keep their contact with the children to a minimum as they continue investigating the shooting.
"We certainly don't want to traumatize them any more than they've already been traumatized," said Lt. J. Paul Vance, the department's spokesman. "If (an interview is) not necessary it won't be done. Our investigators will make all those determinations."
In the meantime, Ford has encouraged parents to keep the kids involved in a normal holiday routine and deal with the tragedy as it comes up, rather than making it a focal point of their lives.
David Connors, who has 8-year-old triplets who attend Sandy Hook, said he and his wife have made play dates with their friends, brought the kids to see family for the holidays and participated in the class get-togethers and recreation events.
"That's been, I think, helpful at least in the short term just to kind of keep them doing things, keep them seeing their friends and being nearby and talking to family," Connors said.
Todd Wood of Newtown has five children, the youngest age 4 and the oldest in college. His children's piano teacher lost a child in the shooting, and the family knows other victims as well.
He said he's found that each child has reacted differently to the tragedy. He said he is not making the shooting the center of his family's life but is not pretending it didn't happen, either.
"We did Christmas, we had our lights here, we've tried to make things as normal as possible," he said. "But we also went down to see the memorials. I don't want to shield them from it. I want to let them grieve in their own way."
Ford said that is healthy. He said children will remember their friends as they go about doing normal kid things.
Chris Wolcott, the sport's academy's operations manager, said the best part of having the kids at the center is that the tragedy is pushed aside, at least for a little while.
"A couple times someone would drop a weight (in the facility's health center) and you would hear a bang and there would be a kid who would freeze for a second," he said. "But that would last a split-second. Most of the time, everyone just had a great time."
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the retired general credited with leading U.S.-allied forces to a victory in the first Gulf War, has died at age 78, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
He died today in Tampa, Fla., where he lived in retirement, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.
Schwarzkopf, called "Stormin' Norman" because of his reportedly explosive temper, actually led Republican administrations to two military victories: a small one in Grenada in the 1980s and a big one as de facto commander of allied forces in the Gulf War in 1991.
"'Stormin' Norman' led the coalition forces to victory, ejecting the Iraqi Army from Kuwait and restoring the rightful government," read a statement by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "His leadership not only inspired his troops, but also inspired the nation."
Schwarzkopf's success during that fight, also known as Operation Desert Storm, came under President George H.W. Bush, who through his office today mourned "the loss of a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation."
"Gen. Norm Schwarzkopf, to me, epitomized the 'duty, service, country' creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great nation through our most trying international crises," Bush said. "More than that, he was a good and decent man -- and a dear friend."
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Bush's office released the statement though the former president, himself, was ill, hospitalized in Texas with a stubborn fever and on a liquids-only diet.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today called Schwarzkopf "one of the great military giants of the 20th century."
Schwarzkopf, the future four-star general, was born Aug. 24, 1934, in Trenton, N.J. He was raised as an army brat in Iran, Switzerland, Germany and Italy, following in his father's footsteps to West Point, earning an engineering degree and being commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1956.
Schwarzkopf's father, who shared his name, directed the investigation of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping as head of the New Jersey State Police, later becoming a brigadier general in the U.S. Army.
The younger Schwarzkopf earned three Silver Stars for bravery during two tours in Vietnam, gaining a reputation as an opinionated, plain-spoken commander with a sharp temper who would risk his own life for his soldiers.
"He had volunteered to go to Vietnam early just so he could get there before the war ended," said former Army Col. William McKinney, who knew Schwarzkopf from their days at West Point, according to ABC News Radio.
In 1983, as a newly-minted general, Schwarzkopf once again led troops into battle in President Reagan's invasion of Granada, a tiny Caribbean island where the White House saw American influence threatened by a Cuban-backed coup.
But he gained most of his fame in Iraq, where he used his 6-foot-3, 240-pound frame and fearsome temper to drive his forces to victory.
"He was known as a soldier's general," said retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, as he explained the "Stormin' Norman" nickname to ABC News Radio. "In other words, he really liked the troops and was soft on the troops. But boy, on his general officers, his officers, his NCO's, he was very, very tough and he had a real quick temper."
Gruff and direct, Schwarzkopf said during the Gulf War that his goal was to win the war as quickly as possible and with a focused objective: getting Iraq out of Kuwait.
BANGUI (Reuters) - The president of the Central African Republic appealed on Thursday for France and the United States to help push back rebels threatening his government and the capital, but Paris said its troops were only ready to protect French nationals.
The exchanges came as regional African leaders tried to broker a ceasefire deal and as rebels said they had temporarily halted their advance on Bangui, the capital, to allow talks to take place.
Insurgents on motorbikes and in pickup trucks have driven to within 75 km (47 miles) of Bangui after weeks of fighting, threatening to end President Francois Bozize's nearly 10-year-stint in charge of the turbulent, resource-rich country.
French nuclear energy group Areva mines the Bakouma uranium deposit in the CAR's south - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.
The rebel advance has highlighted the instability of a country that has remained poor since independence from Paris in 1960 despite rich deposits of uranium, gold and diamonds. Average income is barely over $2 a day.
Bozize on Thursday appealed for French and U.S. military support to stop the SELEKA rebel coalition, which has promised to overthrow him unless he implements a previous peace deal in full.
He told a crowd of anti-rebel protesters in the riverside capital that he had asked Paris and Washington to help move the rebels away from the capital to clear the way for peace talks which regional leaders say could be held soon in Libreville, Gabon.
"We are asking our cousins the French and the United States, which are major powers, to help us push back the rebels to their initial positions in a way that will permit talks in Libreville to resolve this crisis," Bozize said.
France has 250 soldiers in its landlocked former colony as part of a peacekeeping mission and Paris in the past has ousted or propped up governments - including by using air strikes to defend Bozize against rebels in 2006.
But French President Francois Hollande poured cold water on the latest request for help.
"If we have a presence, it's not to protect a regime, it's to protect our nationals and our interests and in no way to intervene in the internal business of a country, in this case the Central African Republic," Hollande said on the sidelines of a visit to a wholesale food market outside Paris.
"Those days are over," he said.
Some 1,200 French nationals live in the CAR, mostly in the capital, according to the French Foreign Ministry, where they typically work for mining firms or aid groups.
CEASEFIRE TALKS
The U.N. Security Council issued a statement saying its members "condemn the continued attacks on several towns perpetrated by the 'SELEKA' coalition of armed groups which gravely undermine the Libreville Comprehensive Peace Agreement and threaten the civilian population."
U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. embassy had temporarily suspended operations and the U.S. ambassador and other embassy personnel had left the country.
Officials from around central Africa are due to meet in Bangui later on Thursday to open initial talks with the government and rebels.
A rebel spokesman said fighters had temporarily halted their advance to allow dialogue.
"We will not enter Bangui," Colonel Djouma Narkoyo, the rebel spokesman, told Reuters by telephone.
Previous rebel promises to stop advancing have been broken, and a diplomatic source said rebels had taken up positions around Bangui on Thursday, effectively surrounding it.
The atmosphere remained tense in the city the day after anti-rebel protests broke out, and residents were stocking up on food and water.
Government soldiers deployed at strategic sites and French troops reinforced security at the French embassy after protesters threw rocks at the building on Wednesday.
In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry said protecting foreigners and embassies was the responsibility of the CAR authorities.
"This message will once again be stressed to the CAR's charge d'affaires in Paris, who has been summoned this afternoon," a ministry spokesman said.
He also said France condemned the rebels for pursuing hostilities and urged all sides to commit to talks.
Bozize came to power in a 2003 rebellion that overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse.
However, France is increasingly reluctant to directly intervene in conflicts in its former colonies. Since coming to power in May, Hollande has promised to end its shadowy relations with former colonies and put ties on a healthier footing.
A military source and an aid worker said the rebels had got as far as Damara, 75 km (47 miles) from Bangui, by late afternoon on Wednesday, having skirted Sibut, where some 150 Chadian soldiers had earlier been deployed to try and block a push south by a rebel coalition.
With a government that holds little sway outside the capital, some parts of the country have long endured the consequences of conflicts in troubled neighbors Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo spilling over.
The Central African Republic is one of a number of nations in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local forces try to track down the Lords Resistance Army, a rebel group responsible for killing thousands of civilians across four African nations.
(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas and Louis Charbonneau; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Paul Simao)
SEOUL: South Korea's industrial production accelerated sharply in November to post a third consecutive monthly rise, according to government data.
Production in the mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity industries grew 2.3 percent from the previous month, up from narrow 0.7 percent gains in both October and September, Statistics Korea announced on Friday.
The three months of expansion came after Asia's fourth largest economy logged three consecutive months of declines in factory output from June to August.
From a year earlier, the November reading was up 2.9 percent, sharply rebounding from a 0.8 percent year-on-year fall in October.
South Korea's export-driven economy has been slowed by shrinking overseas demand due to the eurozone crisis and a slowdown in US and Chinese markets.
In a biannual economic outlook, the finance ministry on Thursday revised its earlier estimate of 4.0 percent economic growth in 2013 to 3.0 percent, and the 2012 estimate from 3.3 percent to 2.1 percent.
Following suit with other major holiday shopping days, Christmas Day also saw a jump in online traffic this year.
According to marketing firm Experian, the top 500 U.S. retail sites had 27 percent more online traffic on this year's Christmas Day compared with last year. A total of 115.5 million people in the U.S. visited sites like Target, BestBuy, Sears, and Apple's online store.
Looking at the past seven-week period, online retail traffic went up 10 percent over 2011, and each major shopping holiday had traffic increases this year, according to Experian. Thanksgiving had a 6 percent increase, while Black Friday had a 7 percent jump, and Cyber Monday went up 11 percent.
Of the sites that saw the most traffic on Christmas Day, Amazon won out, with nearly 25 million visitors. It was followed by Walmart with more than 7 million visitors and Target with more than 3.5 million visitors. Amazon has also been the most visited site throughout the entire holiday season.
According to Experian, many of these shoppers were searching for tech gifts -- tablets topped the charts as the No. 1 most searched-for product. The marketer tracked traffic from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day and saw that visits to Apple's iTunes store increased by 193 percent, while the store on Apple's Web site saw a 155 percent increase. The top product search terms people queried were iPod Nano, iPad Mini, and iPad 4. For Amazon, the top product search terms were Amazon Kindle, Kindle Fire, and Kindle.
(CBS News) Abby Alonzo was 10 when she was diagnosed in 2009 with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. With proper treatment, 90 percent of patients survive.
"It wasn't as hard for me as I think it as it was on my mom and my brother and my dad," Abby says.
Abby began a seven-drug regimen. But in 2010, doctors told Abby's mother, Katie, there was a nationwide shortage of one of the medicines -- mechlorethamine.
"I started to get a little hysterical, 'Why is it not available?'" says Katie.
In 2010, 23 cancer drugs had shortages. Reasons include manufacturing problems and low profit margins for the drugs, which became mostly generic, and therefore less expensive, than brand-name.
"There is really nothing you can do," Katie says. "You do what your doctor tells you to do, you take what medications your doctor tells you to take, and you pray that it works. And if one of those medications isn't available, you just take, you know, the next-best thing."
Doctors thought the next-best thing for patients like Abby was a drug called cyclophosphamide.
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But a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed 88 percent treated with the original drug were cancer-free after two years -- compared to only 75 percent of those receiving the replacement drug.
"This is the first study to clearly show that when we substitute one drug for what we think is just an equally good drug, that's not always going to be the case. So it's demonstrating a negative impact on patients," says Dr. Richard Gilbertson, the director of cancer care at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Abby was one of the patients who relapsed. She then needed a bone marrow transplant, radiation and more chemotherapy. Right now, she shows no signs of cancer.
"What if I relapsed again? Or what if something else happens? You know, it is just really scary, that part," Abby says.
The original drug in the study is finally available again after almost three years. But there are still 13 drugs used in cancer therapy, and a total of 100 on the FDA shortage list.
Congress passed legislation last July giving the FDA more authority to deal with cancer drug shortages. That new law has made a big difference, and the key provision is the requirement that drug manufacturers let the FDA know when there's an impending shortage.
Since that law was passed, there has been a doubling of those notifications, so the FDA can increase imports from abroad and tell other manufacturers in the United States to step up production.
Another provision in that law is that the FDA set up a task force looking at other possible solutions to the drug shortage crisis, and they're required to submit that report to Congress by this coming July.
Toyota has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to customers to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged its vehicles accelerated dangerously and without warning, according to statements by the carmaker and the plaintiffs' attorney.
The deal, which still needs approval by a federal judge in California, includes a $250 million fund to be paid to Toyota owners who sold their cars at a loss following reports of vehicle malfunctions, as well as the installation of a brake override system in about 3.25 million vehicles
An additional $250 million fund will be created to pay those owners whose vehicles are not eligible for the retrofitted brakes.
David Zalubowski/AP PHoto
Toyota recalled more than 14 million vehicles after reports of sudden, unexplained acceleration in several models began to surface between 2009 and 2010. There were also reports of brake problems with the Prius hybrid.
Toyota insists that it was not an electrical flaw that caused the acceleration problems, but driver error, floor mats and sticky gas pedals.
Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA have said there is nothing in wrong with programs that run the vehicles' onboard computers
"From the very start, this was a challenging case," said Steve Berman, the plaintiffs' lawyer. "We brought in automotive experts, physicists and some of the world's leading theoreticians in electrical engineering to help us understand what happened to drivers experiencing sudden acceleration."
The settlement also includes $30 million to be given to outside groups to study automotive safety.
In a statement, Toyota agreed to the deal.
"In keeping with our core principles, we have structured this agreement in ways that work to put our customers first and demonstrate that they can count on Toyota to stand behind our vehicles." said Toyota spokesman Christopher P. Reynolds.
KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan policewoman suspected of killing a U.S. contractor at police headquarters in Kabul suffered from mental illness and was driven to suicidal despair by poverty, her children told Reuters on Wednesday.
The woman was identified by authorities as Narges Rezaeimomenabad, a 40-year-old grandmother and mother of three who moved here from Iran 10 years ago and married an Afghan man.
On Monday morning, she loaded a pistol in a bathroom at the police compound, hid it in her long scarf and shot an American police trainer, apparently becoming the first Afghan woman to carry out such an attack.
Narges also tried to shoot police officials after killing the American. Luckily for them, her pistol jammed. Her husband is also under investigation.
Her son Sayed, 16, and daughter Fatima, 13, described how they tried to call their parents 100 times after news broke of the shooting, then waited in vain for them to come home.
They recalled Narges's severe mood swings, and how at times she beat them and even pulled out a knife. But the children said she was consistent in bemoaning poverty.
"She was usually complaining about poverty. She was complaining to my father about our conditions. She was saying that my father was poor," Sayid said in an interview in their damp, cold two-room cement house.
On the floor beside him were his mother's prescriptions and a thick plastic bag filled with pills she tried to swallow to end the misery about a month ago. On another occasion, she cut her wrist with a razor, Sayed said.
"My father was usually calm and sometimes would say that she was guilty too because it wasn't a forced marriage. They fell in love and got married."
There was no sign in their neighborhood of the billions of dollars of Western aid that have poured into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, or of government investment.
RAW SEWAGE, STAGNANT WATER, DIRT ROADS
The lane outside their home stank of raw sewage.
Dirty, stagnant water filled holes in dirt roads nearby, where children in tattered clothes played and butchers stood by cow's hooves in shops choked by dust.
Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest nations, with a third of its 30 million residents living under the poverty line.
The sole distractions from the daily grind appeared to be a deck of playing cards and a compact disc with songs from Iranian pop singers, scattered on the floor of a room where Narges would lock herself in and weep, or sit in silence.
At times, Narges would try to focus on building her children's confidence, telling them to be guided by the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to tackle life's problems.
Sayed and Fatima said she never spoke badly of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or of President Hamid Karzai's government.
Neighbor Mohammad Ismail Kohistani was dumbfounded to hear on the radio that Afghan officials were combing Narges' phone records to try to determine whether al Qaeda or the Taliban could have brainwashed her into carrying out a mission.
But he was acutely aware of her mental problems and often heard her scream at her husband, whose low-level job in the crime investigation unit of the police brought home little cash.
Kohistani, who operates a small sewing shop with battered machines, never imagined his neighbor could be accused of a high-profile attack that raised new questions about the direction of an unpopular war.
"I became very depressed and sad," said Kohistani, sitting on the floor few feet from a tiny wood-burning stove in Narges's home, alongside family photographs and a police training manual.
Fatima would often seek refuge in Kohistani's house when her mother's behavior became unbearable. "She did not hate us, but usually she was angry and would not talk to us," said Fatima, her eyes moist with tears.
Nevertheless, she missed her mother. The children were staying with a cousin.
"I ask the government to free my mother, otherwise our future will be destroyed," said Fatima.
Officials described it as another "insider shooting", in which Afghan forces turn on Westerners they are meant to be working with to stabilize the country. There have been over 52 such attacks so far this year.
The shooting at the police headquarters may have alarmed Afghanistan's Western allies. But some Afghans have grown numb to the violence.
Kohistani's 70-year-old father Omara Khan, who sports a white beard, sat twirling prayer beads beneath a photograph of Narges in a black veil beside one of her husband.
Asked what he thought of the attack, he laughed.
"This is common in Afghanistan," said Khan, who lived through decades of upheaval, including the 10-year Soviet occupation and a civil war that destroyed half of Kabul and killed some 50,000 civilians.
CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua: Some 1,500 farmers living on the slopes of the San Cristobal volcano refused to leave, despite being ordered to evacuate as the volcano spewed gas, sand and ash.
"People have not evacuated because we do not want to go and leave the area abandoned," Maria Pereira told AFP.
Pereira lives in "Grecia 4", a community of about 600 people at the base of the volcano, in the Chinandega department.
She said columns of ash "bathed the trees, houses, and roads in white" and "pretty sand fell" in the morning. She said by early afternoon volcanic activity had decreased, though in the evening new columns of ash shot up.
In another community near the volcano, Bethlehem, some farmers resisted efforts of Civil Defence officials to convince them to obey the evacuation order.
Around 140 Civil Defence troops have been deployed to "persuade" farmers to move away from the danger zone, state deputy Colonel Nestor Solis told reporters.
The government issued a yellow alert on Wednesday, ordering the evacuation of 300 families living near the volcano.
Reiterating the evacuation order on Wednesday, first lady Rosario Murillo, a government spokeswoman, said "the situation of the volcano is unstable".
But she did not specify how many had obeyed the evacuation order or where they are being housed.
San Cristobal, the tallest of Nicaragua's seven active volcanoes, is believed to have erupted for the first time in 1685.
Too bad we can't control all cockroaches through Twitter. Yuck.
(Credit: Brittany Ransom)
Next time you see a cockroach, don't scurry away faster than it can flee. In fact, if you're a lover of the weirder side of life, the intrusive insect could represent one heck of a science project.
For example, artist Brittany Ransom created Twitter Roach -- a discoid cockroach that can be controlled through tweets that it receives on the popular microblogging service.
As it turns out, humans can actually control cockroaches with a device called RoboRoach -- a tiny electronic backpack that attaches to a cockroach and stimulates the bug's antenna nerves, enabling the controller to turn the insect left or right with the press of a button.
Ransom built upon the Roboroach concept and added some Arduino hardware and custom-programmed software to link the bug to Twitter. While on display at the "Life, in some form" art exhibition by the Chicago Artists Coalition, visitors could send the @TweetRoach account commands such as "#TweetRoachLeft" and #TweetRoachRight."
The Tweet Roach sits while awaiting its next command.
(Credit: Brittany Ransom)
Those of you concerned about insect welfare can rest easy; the roach didn't stay enslaved all day long. Ransom told Crave via e-mail that the bug "wears the backpack for short intervals" and "is only accessible to the Twitter community during designated times." To avoid a flood of commands, Ransom set the cockroach to receive no more than one tweet every 30 seconds.
Why would someone take on such a strange project? Ransom says she's exploring a kind of insectoid parallel to the digital overstimulation many of us experience today. She aims to see if the cockroach can learn to eventually learn to adapt and ignore the stimulating effects of her setup.
"At what point does its intelligence and ability take over? How much does it take before we are all desensitized to overstimulation? As we, as human beings, grow more cyborgian and interconnected through social media, this project helps us participate in discovering the answer," Ransom said in an e-mail about the project.
NEWTOWN, Conn. Newtown observed Christmas amid snow-covered teddy bears, stockings, flowers and candles left in memory of the 20 children and six educators gunned down at an elementary school just 11 days before the holiday.
Volunteers were keeping watch over a candlelight vigil scheduled to last all Christmas day in the Connecticut town.
Twenty-six candles, one for each victim, were lit at midnight Monday near a huge sidewalk memorial filled with teddy bears, flowers, candles, posters and other tributes to the dead.
Volunteers were taking three-hour shifts Tuesday to ensure they remain burning.
Police officers from other communities were filling in for Newtown police so they could have the holiday off.
"It's a nice thing that they can use us this way," Ted Latiak, a police detective from Greenwich, Conn., said Christmas morning, as he and a fellow detective, each working a half-day shift, came out of a store with bagels and coffee for other officers.
And well-wishers from around the country continued visiting the town to pay their respects.
At Christmas morning services, congregants were told that good always overcomes evil.
The pastor of a church in Newtown, Conn., that was attended by eight of the child victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting told parishioners that this Christmas Day "is the day we begin everything all over again."
The Rev. Robert Weiss spoke at the second of four Masses at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.
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Newtown first responders: Don't call us heroes
Recalling the events of eleven days ago, Weiss said, "The moment the first responder broke through the doors, we knew good always overcomes evil."
Today, he says, "We know Christmas in a way we never ever thought we would know it."
The outpouring of support for this community was evident on Christmas Eve, with visitors arriving at town hall with offerings of cards, handmade snowflakes and sympathy.
"We know that they'll feel loved. They'll feel that somebody actually cares," said Treyvon Smalls, a 15-year-old from a few towns away who arrived bearing hundreds of cards and paper snowflakes collected from around the state.
An overflow crowd of several hundred people attended Christmas Eve services at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown. They were greeted by the sounds of a children's choir, in a sanctuary hall decorated with green wreaths and red bows.
The Trinity Church program said flowers were donated in honor of Sandy Hook shooting victims, identified by name or as the "school angels" and "Sandy Hook families."
36 Photos
Vigils for Conn. school shooting victims
The service, which generally took on a celebratory tone, made only a few vague references to the shooting. Pastor Kathie Adams-Shepherd led the congregation in praying "that the joy and consolation of the wonderful counselor might enliven all who are touched by illness, danger, or grief, especially all those families affected by the shootings in Sandy Hook."
Police say the gunman, Adam Lanza, killed his mother in her bed before his Dec. 14 rampage and committed suicide as he heard officers arriving. Authorities have yet to give a theory about his motive.
While the grief is still fresh, some residents are urging political activism. A group called Newtown United has been meeting at the library to talk about issues ranging from gun control, to increasing mental health services to the types of memorials that could be erected for the victims. Some clergy members have said they also intend to push for change.
15 Photos
U.S. gun shops report spike in sales
"We seek not to be the town of tragedy," said Rabbi Shaul Praver of Congregation Adath Israel. "But, we seek to be the town where all the great changes started."
Since the shooting, messages similar to the ones delivered Monday have arrived from around the world. People have donated toys, books, money and more. A United Way fund, one of many, has collected $3 million. People have given nearly $500,000 to a memorial scholarship fund at the University of Connecticut.
In the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section Monday, a steady stream of residents and out-of-towners snapped pictures, lit candles and dropped off children's gifts at an expansive memorial filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.
"All the families who lost those little kids, Christmas will never be the same," said Philippe Poncet, a Newtown resident originally from France. "Everybody across the world is trying to share the tragedy with our community here."
Richard Scinto, a deacon at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, said the church's pastor, Rev. Robert Weiss, used several eulogies this week to tell his congregation to get angry and take action against what some consider is a culture of gun violence in the country.
Praver and Scinto said they are not opposed to hunting or to having police in schools, but both said something must be done to change what has become a culture of violence in the United States.
"These were his mother's guns," Scinto said. "Why would anyone want an assault rifle as part of a private citizen collection?"
A mediator who worked with Lanza's parents during their divorce has said Lanza, 20, was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, an autism-like disorder that is not associated with violence. It is not known whether he had other mental health issues. The guns used in the shooting had been purchased legally by his mother, Nancy Lanza, a gun enthusiast.
A convicted killer, who shot dead two firefighters with a Bushmaster assault rifle after leading them into an ambush when they responded to a house fire he set in Western New York, left behind a typewritten note saying he wanted to "do what I like doing best, killing people," police said.
William Spengler, 62, set his home and a car on fire early Monday morning with the intention of setting a trap to kill firefighters and to see "how much of the neighborhood I can burn down," according to the note he wrote and which police found at the scene. The note did not give a reason for his actions.
Spengler, who served 18 years in prison for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer in 1981, hid Monday morning in a small ditch beside a tree overlooking the sleepy lakeside street in Webster, N.Y., where he lived with his sister, police said today in a news conference.
Police said they found remains in the house, believed to be that of the sister, Cheryl Spengler, 67.
As firefighters arrived on the scene after a 5:30 a.m. 911 call on the morning of Christmas Eve, Spengler opened fire on them with the Bushmaster, the same semi-automatic, military-style weapon used in the Dec. 14 rampage killing of 20 children in Newtown, Conn.
"This was a clear ambush on first responders… Spengler had armed himself heavily and taken area of cover," said Gerald Pickering, the chief of the Webster Police Department.
Armed with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, a Mossman 12-gauge shotgun, and the Bushmaster, Spengler killed two firefighters, and injured two more as well as an off-duty police officer at the scene.
As a convicted felon, Spengler could not legally own a firearm and police are investigating how he obtained the weapons.
One firefighter tried to take cover in his fire engine and was killed with a gunshot through the windshield, Pickering said.
Responding police engaged in a gunfight with Spengler, who ultimately died, likely by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
As police engaged the gunman, more houses along Lake Ontario were engulfed, ultimately razing seven of them. Some 33 people in adjoining homes were displaced by the fire.
SWAT teams were forced to evacuate residents using armored vehicles.
Police identified the two slain firefighter as Lt. Michael Chiapperini, a 20-year veteran of the Webster Police Department and "lifetime firefighter," according to Pickering, and Tomasz Kaczowka, who also worked as a 911 dispatcher.
Two other firefighters were wounded and remain the intensive care unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.
Joseph Hofsetter was shot once. He sustained an injury to his pelvis and has "a long road to recovery," said Dr. Nicole A. Stassen, a trauma physician.
The second firefighter, Theodore Scardino, was shot twice and received injuries to his left shoulder and left lung, as well as a knee.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian voters overwhelmingly approved a constitution drafted by President Mohamed Mursi's allies, results announced on Tuesday showed, proving that liberals, leftists and Christians have been powerless to halt the march of Islamists in power.
Final elections commission figures showed the constitution adopted with 63.8 percent of the vote in the referendum held over two days this month, giving Mursi's Islamists their third straight electoral victory since veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a 2011 revolution.
Opposition groups had taken to the streets to block what they see as a move to ram through a charter that mixes politics and religion dangerously and ignores the rights of minorities.
Mursi says the text - Egypt's first constitution since Mubarak's fall - offers enough protection for minorities, and adopting it quickly is necessary to end two years of turmoil and political uncertainty that has wrecked the economy.
"I hope all national powers will now start working together now to build a new Egypt," Murad Ali, a senior official in the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, told Reuters.
"I see this as the best constitution in Egypt's history."
In a sign that weeks of unrest have taken a further toll on the economy, the government ordered new restrictions on foreign currency apparently designed to prevent capital flight. Leaving or entering with more than $10,000 cash is now banned.
Two years since waves of unrest broke out across the Middle East and North Africa - sweeping away long-entrenched rulers in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen as well as Egypt - well-organized Islamist parties have emerged as the main beneficiaries.
Urban secularists and liberals who were behind the revolts complain that their success has been hijacked.
"We need a better constitution," said Khaled Dawood, an opposition spokesman. "It does not represent all Egyptians."
Mursi's opponents say the new constitution could allow clerics to intervene in lawmaking, while offering scant protections to minorities and women. Mursi dismisses those criticisms, and many Egyptians are fed up with street protest movements that have prevented a return to normality.
Immediately after the announcement, a small group of protesters set tires on fire and blocked traffic near the central Tahrir square, the cradle of Egypt's uprising, but there were no immediate signs of violence or major demonstrations.
Washington, which provides billions of dollars a year in military and other support for Egypt and regards it as a pillar of security in the Middle East, called on Egyptian politicians to bridge divisions and on all sides to reject violence.
"President Mursi, as the democratically elected leader of Egypt, has a special responsibility to move forward in a way that recognizes the urgent need to bridge divisions," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. He noted that many Egyptians had voiced "significant concerns" over the constitutional process.
WORSENING ECONOMY
The government says its opponents are worsening the economic crisis by prolonging political upheaval. It has pledged to impose unpopular tax increases and spending cuts to win a loan package from the International Monetary Fund.
The ban on travelling with more than $10,000 in cash followed a pledge by the central bank to take unspecified measures to protect Egyptian banks. Some Egyptians have begun withdrawing their savings in fear of more restrictions.
"I am not going to put any more money in the bank and neither will many of the people I know," said Ayman Osama, father of two young children.
He said he had taken out the equivalent of about $16,000 from his account this week and planned to withdraw more, adding that he had also told his wife to buy more gold jewellery.
The "yes" vote paves the way for a parliamentary election in about two months, setting the stage for another battle between surging Islamists and their fractious opponents.
The final result, announced by the election commission, matched - to the last decimal place - an earlier unofficial tally announced by Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood.
But the opposition said it was disappointed - it had appealed for the result to be amended to reflect what it described as major vote violations during the two-round vote.
Officials said there were no violations serious enough to change the result significantly. "We have seriously investigated all the complaints," said judge Samir Abu el-Matti of the Supreme Election Committee. The final turnout was 32.9 percent.
SENSE OF CRISIS
The referendum has sharpened painful divisions in the Arab world's most populous nation and a growing atmosphere of crisis has gripped Egypt's polarized society.
Anxiety about the economy deepened this week when Standard and Poor's cut Egypt's long-term credit rating. Prime Minister Hisham Kandil told the nation of 83 million on Tuesday the government was committed to fixing the economy.
"The main goals that the government is working towards now is plugging the budget deficit, and working on increasing growth to boost employment rates, curb inflation, and increase the competitiveness of Egyptian exports," he said.
The referendum follows Islamist victories in parliamentary and presidential elections, representing a decisive shift in a country at the heart of the Arab world where Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed for generations by military rulers.
However, secularist and liberal opposition members hope they can organize better in time for the next parliamentary vote.
Hossam El-Din Ali, a 35-year-old newspaper vendor in central Cairo, said he agreed the new constitution would help bring some political stability but like many others he feared the possible economic austerity measures lying ahead.
"People don't want higher prices. People are upset about this," he said. "There is recession, things are not moving. But I am wishing for the best, God willing."
(Additional reporting by Patrick Werr, Tamim Elyan, Ahmed Tolba and Marwa Awad; Writing by Maria Golovnina)
UNITED NATIONS: China, Brazil, India and other emerging powers agreed to major increases in their United Nations payments as the global body hammered out a new budget deal this week to avoid its own fiscal cliff.
The boom countries will pay more as economic crisis allows European nations, such as Britain, Germany and France and Japan to cut their contributions.
While the sums involved are not huge by global standards -- the revised UN budget for 2012-2013 is $5.4 billion -- diplomats say the new shareout is a snapshot of the world's changing economic fortunes.
And the UN system has maintained sum of its quirks with Greece, despite its economic slump, still paying more than India, which aspires to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
UN contributions are worked out according to a country's share of global gross national income (GNI). China will pay an extra 61 per cent in UN fees, taking its share of the budget from 3.2 to 5.1 per cent. It will overtake Canada and Italy to become the sixth biggest UN contributor.
Brazil has agreed to an 82 per cent hike in payments. It will pay 2.9 per cent of the budget instead of 1.6 per cent. India's payments will increase 24 per cent, taking its budget share from 0.5 to 0.66 per cent. And Russia's payments will go up by 52 per cent.
The United States remains the major UN financier, though its contributions are pegged at 22 per cent while it accounts for 24.2 per cent of world GNI.
Other major contributors will all see payments decrease. Japan, in second place, will see a 13.5 per cent drop to 10.8 per cent of the budget. It previously accounted for 12.5 per cent of UN finances.
Germany's share of the budget will fall from 8.0 to 7.1 per cent, France from 6.1 to 5.6 per cent and Britain from 6.6 to 5.18 per cent.
"This is a start brought on by the economic crisis in Europe, but there will have to be more changes eventually," said one western diplomat.
Another noted the new payment breakdown reflects changes around the world, and that the contrast between Greece and India was "striking."
Greece's share of budget will decrease from 0.7 to 0.64 per cent. But its share of global GNI is 0.5 per cent, while India, which pays about the same amount, accounts for 2.2 per cent of world GNI.
A complicated series of rebates allows various countries to claim reductions in payments. China and the other emerging powers still pay less than their share of the world economy. The Europeans and Japan still pay more.
The UN's regular budget does not include its peacekeeping operations, which cost more than $7.5 billion a year and are paid for with separate assessments.
Under the deal agreed this week, a pay freeze has been ordered for the estimated 10,000 UN staff in New York.
An Iranian news agency says the country successfully fended off yet another attack by the Stuxnet worm, according to reports.
The cyberattack targeted a power plant and other sites in southern Iran over the fall, the BBC and the Associated Press reported today.
Discovered in June 2010, Stuxnet is believed to be the first malware targeted specifically at critical infrastructure systems. It's thought to have been designed to shut down centrifuges at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant, where stoppages and other problems reportedly occurred around that time. The sophisticated worm spreads via USB drives and through four previously unknown holes, known as zero-day vulnerabilities, in Windows.
Stuxnet is just one of several versions of malware aimed at Middle Eastern countries in the past two and a half years. Along Stuxnet, there have arisen Duqu, Gauss, Mahdi, Flame, Wiper, and Shamoon.
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. Volunteers at a U.S. Air Force base monitoring Santa Claus' progress around the world were on track to answer a record number of calls Monday from children wanting to know everything from Saint Nick's age to how reindeer fly.
Oh, and when are the presents coming?
Phones were ringing nonstop at Peterson Air Force Base, headquarters of the North American Aerospace Command's annual Santa-tracking operation.
First Lady Michelle Obama joined in from Hawaii, where she answered phone calls for about 30 minutes.
First Lady Michelle Obama reacts while talking on the phone to children across the country as part of the annual NORAD Tracks Santa program. Mrs. Obama answered the phone calls from Kailua, Hawaii, Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2012.
/ The White House/Pete Souza
NORAD Tracks Santa was on pace to exceed last year's record of 107,000 calls, program spokeswoman Marisa Novobilski said.
But NORAD has some fresh competition: Google has unveiled a new Santa tracker this year. As CNET reports, Google Maps engineers developed a new route algorithm that will let users track Saint Nick's journey on a special Santa Tracker page.
"Google has been tracking Santa via Google Earth since 2004," CNET's Don Reisinger notes. "This is the first time the company has launched a broader Santa Tracker tool that competes with NORAD's perennial favorite."
Volunteers started taking calls at 4 a.m. Mountain time on Monday and will keep updating until 3 a.m. on Christmas morning.
NORAD Tracks Santa began in 1955 when a newspaper ad listed the wrong phone number for kids to call Santa. Callers ended up getting the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor, and a tradition was born.
Officers played along. Since then, NORAD Tracks Santa has gone global, posting updates for nearly 1.2 million Facebook fans and 104,000 Twitter followers.
Volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the recent Connecticut school shooting.
"I'm from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was," she remembered the child asking. "Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?"
Sara, just 13 herself, gathered her thoughts quickly. "If I can get ahold of him, I'll try to get the message to him," she told the child.
Following is a sampling of calls received at the base:
---
GIFTS IN HEAVEN: One little boy from Missouri phoned in to ask what time Santa delivered toys to heaven, said volunteer Jennifer Eckels, who took the call. The boy's mother got on the line to explain that his sister had died this year.
"I think Santa headed there first," Eckels told him.
---
IS HE THERE YET?: James Solano took a call from a young girl and her father in Bangkok, asking when Santa would arrive. Solano checked the map and said it wouldn't be long.
"The dad was saying, `We've got to get to bed soon,"' said Solano, an Army colonel.
"It was kind of neat," he said. "They were very thrilled."
---
SANTA KNOWS: Glenn Barr took a call from a 10-year-old who wasn't sure if he would be sleeping at his mom's house or his dad's and was worried about whether Santa would find him.
"I told him Santa would know where he was and not to worry," Barr said.
Another child asked if he was on the nice list or the naughty list.
"That's a closely guarded secret, and only Santa knows," Barr replied.
---
THE REAL DEAL: A young boy called to ask if Santa was real.
Air Force Maj. Jamie Humphries, who took the call, said, "I'm 37 years old, and I believe in Santa, and if you believe in him as well, then he must be real."
The boy turned from the phone and yelled to others in the room, "I told you guys he was real!"
People drawn to Newtown to share in its mourning brought cards and handmade snowflakes to town Monday while residents prepared to observe Christmas less than two weeks after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at an elementary school.
On Christmas Eve, residents said they would light luminaries outside their homes in memory of the victims. Tiny empty Christmas stockings with the victims' names on them hung from trees in the neighborhood where the children were shot.
"We know that they'll feel loved. They'll feel that somebody actually cares," said Treyvon Smalls, a 15-year-old from a few towns away who arrived at town hall with hundreds of cards and paper snowflakes collected from around the state.
Organizers said they wanted to let the families of victims know they are not alone while also giving Connecticut children a chance to express their feelings about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
At the Trinity Episcopal Church, less than 2 miles from the school, an overflow crowd of several hundred people attended Christmas Eve services. They were greeted by the sounds of a children's choir echoing throughout a sanctuary hall that had its walls decorated with green wreaths adorned with red bows.
The church program said flowers were donated in honor of Sandy Hook shooting victims, identified by name or as the "school angels" and "Sandy Hook families."
Julio Cortez, File/AP Photo
U.S. Sends Christmas Wishes to Newtown, Conn. Watch Video
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The service, which generally took on a celebratory tone, made only a few vague references to the shooting. Pastor Kathie Adams-Shepherd led the congregation in praying "that the joy and consolation of the wonderful counselor might enliven all who are touched by illness, danger, or grief, especially all those families affected by the shootings in Sandy Hook."
Police say the gunman killed his mother in her bed before his Dec. 14 rampage and committed suicide as he heard officers arriving. Authorities have yet to give a theory about his motive.
While the grief is still fresh, some residents are urging political activism in the wake of the tragedy. A grassroots group called Newtown United has been meeting at the library to talk about issues ranging from gun control, to increasing mental health services to the types of memorials that could be erected for the victims. Some clergy members have said they also intend to push for change.
"We seek not to be the town of tragedy," said Rabbi Shaul Praver of Congregation Adath Israel. "But, we seek to be the town where all the great changes started."
Since the shooting, messages similar to the ones delivered Monday have arrived from around the world. People have donated toys, books, money and more. A United Way fund, one of many, has collected $3 million. People have given nearly $500,000 to a memorial scholarship fund at the University of Connecticut. On Christmas Day, police from other towns have agreed to work so Newtown officers can have the time off.
In the center of Newtown's Sandy Hook section Monday, a steady stream of residents and out-of-towners snapped pictures, lit candles and dropped off children's gifts at an expansive memorial filled with stuffed animals, poems, flowers, posters and cards.
"All the families who lost those little kids, Christmas will never be the same," said Philippe Poncet, a Newtown resident originally from France. "Everybody across the world is trying to share the tragedy with our community here."
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan woman wearing a police uniform shot dead on Monday a civilian contractor working for Western forces in the police chief's compound in Kabul, NATO said.
The incident is likely to raise troubling questions about the direction of an unpopular war.
It appeared to be the first time that a woman member of Afghanistan's security forces carried out such an attack.
There were conflicting reports about the victim.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said a U.S. police adviser was killed by an Afghan policewoman. Then ISAF said in a statement only that it was a "contracted civilian employee" who was killed.
Mohammad Zahir, head of the police criminal investigation department, described the incident as an "insider attack" in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western troops they are supposed to be working with. He initially said the victim was a U.S. soldier.
After more than 10 years of war, militants are capable of striking Western targets in the heart of the capital, and foreign forces worry that Afghan police and military forces they are supposed to work with can suddenly turn on them.
The policewoman approached her victim as he was walking in the heavily guarded police chief's compound in a bustling area of Kabul. She then drew a pistol and shot him once, a senior police official told Reuters.
The police complex is close to the Interior Ministry where in February, two American officers were shot dead at close range at a time anger gripped the country over the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base.
"She is now under interrogation. She is crying and saying 'what have I done'," said the official, of the police officer who worked in a section of the Interior Ministry responsible for gender awareness issues.
TIPS FOR TROOPS
The insider incidents, also known as green-on-blue attacks, have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces who are under mounting pressure to contain the Taliban insurgency before most NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
Security responsibilities in a country plagued by conflict for decades will be handed to Afghan security forces.
Many Afghans fear a civil war like one dominated by warlords after the withdrawal of Soviet occupying forces in 1989 could erupt again, or the Taliban will make another push to seize power if they reject a nascent peace process.
At least 52 members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force have been killed this year by Afghans wearing police or army uniforms.
Insider attacks now account for one in every five combat deaths suffered by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, and 16 percent of all U.S. combat casualties, according to 2012 data.
Hoping to stop the increase in the attacks, Afghan Defense Ministry officials have given their troops tips in foreign culture.
They are told not to be offended by a hearty pat on the back or an American soldier asking after your wife's health.
NATO attributes only about a quarter of the attacks to the Taliban, saying the rest are caused by personal grievances and misunderstandings. Last year, there were 35 deaths in such attacks.
Afghan forces are vulnerable to "insider attacks" of their own. In Jawzjan province in the north, a police commander shot and killed five comrades overnight, the Interior Ministry said.
Last year, he defected from the Taliban, said the ministry.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the commander had rejoined the Taliban. That could not be confirmed.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)
SAN FRANCISCO: A lawsuit is seeking to stop Instagram from changing its terms of service, saying the Facebook-owned smartphone photo-sharing service is breaching its contract with users.
The class action lawsuit filed Friday by the Southern California-based Finkelstein and Krinsk law firm called on the federal court to bar Instagram from changing its rules.
"Instagram is taking its customers property rights while insulating itself from all liability," the law firm said in the filing, which also demanded that the service pay its legal fees.
"In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us.'"
Facebook said the complaint was "without merit." "We will fight it vigorously," the social network added.
Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service had included wording that allowed for people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free.
Last week, Instagram tried to calm a user rebellion by apparently backing off the changes, due to come into effect from January.
"I want to be really clear: Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did. We don't own your photos, you do," Instagram co-founder and chief Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.
But the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, argues that Instagram didn't backpedal enough and that customers who leave the service still forfeit their rights to any photos that they had previously shared on the service.
"The purported concessions by Instagram in its press release and final version of the new terms were nothing more than a public relations campaign to address public discontent," the complaint said.
Tens of thousands of Instagram users in the state of California are eligible to join the class action lawsuit.
It's possible you might put on a few pounds during this holiday season.
Might I suggest you perform additional exercises with your fingers? You know, so that they don't get too large.
This would seem to be extremely sane advice if you want to buy an iPhone from Sprint.
At least that's what one Sprint customer would have you believe. This customer says he billowed his way into his local Sprint store in order to get a replacement for his damaged phone.
As told to Tom's Hardware, when he discovered he could get a free replacement iPhone 4, the customer thought this seemed like a sound value proposition.
The Sprint salesperson allegedly countered by telling the customer that the iPhone is "really a piece of s***."
I am all for creative salesmanship. This, however, seemed to go down as well as a restoration of the Mona Lisa involving acrylics and a hairbrush.
As many salespeople are, this one was apparently undeterred.
He allegedly went on to list all the many, colorful reasons why the iPhone is really, really "a piece of s***."
These included battery life, fragility, and size -- the last of which supposedly led to "your fingers are too fat for such a phone. You should get the Galaxy S3."
More Technically Incorrect
I would be stunned into emitting lava from my mouth had I not myself, with a slim-fingered witness at my side, enjoyed a somewhat similar experience at a Verizon store, where the salesperson did everything possible to unsell me an iPhone.
No, he didn't use the phrase "really a piece of s***." But he did offer that other phones were 10 times faster than the iPhone and that only Apple wants to push iPhones, Verizon doesn't.
I am sure that in neither case could the salesperson's iPooh-poohing be at all related to the amount of money the store makes (or doesn't) from the iPhone.
I have contacted Sprint to see whether the company has any comment about the digital size of customers who are eligible to buy an iPhone.
In this particular case, the transaction doesn't seem to have gone in Sprint's favor.
For the customer concluded:
"Okay [M], your nametag doesn't say 'Sprint Rep/Nutritionist' so don't tell me how I can't use the phone because of my 'fat' fingers." Fed up with his attitude and tone of condescension, I walked out, no phone in hand. I'd rather have a broken phone than to have to put up with such a rude person.
Sen. Michael Crapo, R.-Idaho, was arrested in Virginia early Sunday morning and charged with driving under the influence, Alexandria police say.
Police spokesman Craig T. Fifer said an officer was on routine patrol when he saw Sen. Crapo's vehicle run a red light. It was stopped at Hume Avenue and Mount Vernon at 12:45 a.m.
Crapo then underwent several field sobriety tests, which he failed, Fifer said in a statement. He was then taken into custody without incident.
Police took the senator to the Alexandria jail and he was released on $1,000 bond at about 5 a.m., Crapo's office said. He has a January 4 court date.
"I am deeply sorry for the actions that resulted in this circumstance," Crapo said Sunday night. "I made a mistake for which I apologize to my family, my Idaho constituents and any others who have put their trust in me. I accept total responsibility and will deal with whatever penalty comes my way in this matter. I will also undertake measures to ensure that this circumstance is never repeated."
Crapo is one of four Republicans in the self-named "Gang of Eight" -- a bipartisan group of senators who came together to work on a budget deal to avoid the upcoming "fiscal cliff."
