| Obama’s Halloween: No ‘web’ problems here Posted: 31 Oct 2013 03:35 PM PDT  Treats not tricks as president hosts military families
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| Cross-border drug tunnel had rail system, electricity Posted: 31 Oct 2013 03:21 PM PDT  SAN DIEGO (AP) — A tunnel designed to smuggle drugs from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego is equipped with electricity, ventilation and a rail system, U.S. authorities said Thursday, making it one of the more sophisticated secret passages discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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| Calif. woman who killed pimp now free on parole Posted: 31 Oct 2013 03:17 PM PDT  By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman who served nearly two decades in prison for killing her pimp at age 16 was released on parole on Thursday, after becoming the face of a campaign to reform the treatment of young offenders. Sara Kruzan, 35, left the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla before dawn, state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Luis Patino said in a statement. Kruzan was taken to Orange County in Southern California, where she will live, and processed at a parole office, Patino said. Earlier this week, when California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, upheld her parole, the decision was hailed as a watershed moment by lawmakers and activists who had fought on her behalf for more than five years.
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| Why spy on allies? Even good friends keep secrets Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:45 AM PDT  In geopolitics, just as on the playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows.
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| Iraqi PM: Terror 'found a second chance' in Iraq Posted: 31 Oct 2013 01:14 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Terrorists "found a second chance" to thrive in Iraq, the nation's prime minister said Thursday in asking for new U.S. aid to beat back a bloody insurgency that has been fueled by the neighboring Syrian civil war and the departure of American troops from Iraq two years ago.
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| No October jinx this time for the stock market Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:59 PM PDT  NEW YORK (AP) — October, with its history of big crashes on Wall Street, didn't scare off investors this time. To the contrary, the stock market seemed unstoppable.
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| Toronto police say they have mayor drug video Posted: 31 Oct 2013 04:38 PM PDT  TORONTO (AP) — Toronto police said Thursday they have obtained a video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking a crack pipe — a video that Ford had claimed didn't exist and has been at the core of a scandal that has embarrassed and gripped Canada for months.
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| Dell laptop buyers make a stink over cat smell Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:54 AM PDT NEW YORK (AP) — A noxious feline odor has some Dell customers caterwauling. |
| Kentucky is No. 1 in preseason poll Posted: 31 Oct 2013 12:51 PM PDT  LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Every time Kentucky coach John Calipari starts to praise his latest crop of talented freshmen, he's just as quick to point out that it is a work in progress.
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| Judge: No questionable comments on NY stop-frisk Posted: 31 Oct 2013 03:59 PM PDT  NEW YORK (AP) — A judge who ordered changes to the New York City police stop-and-frisk program and was removed from the case says she didn't comment on it inappropriately.
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| NY officials glad police stop-frisk ruling blocked Posted: 31 Oct 2013 03:30 PM PDT NEW YORK (AP) — New York City officials say they're pleased with a federal appeals court ruling that blocks a judge's order requiring changes to the police department's stop-and-frisk program. |
| Some Syrians lose themselves in music as war rages Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:47 AM PDT  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — As cannons thundered and mortar shells exploded nearby, the young Syrian woman in a slinky dark dress and stylish bob performed a song by pop star Adele, taking refuge behind a microphone from the civil war raging outside.
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| After unity, some Democrats push back on Obama Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:04 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — Just two weeks after President Barack Obama saw his Democratic Party put up an unyielding front against Republicans, his coalition is showing signs of stress.
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| Snags set back air traffic control system update Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:15 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (AP) — After a decade of work and billions of dollars spent, the modernization of the U.S. air traffic control system is in trouble. The ambitious and complex technology program dubbed NextGen has encountered unforeseen difficulties at almost every turn.
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| Watchdog: Syria destroyed chemical arms equipment Posted: 31 Oct 2013 05:39 AM PDT  BEIRUT (AP) — Syria has destroyed critical equipment for producing chemical weapons and poison gas munitions, the global chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday as fierce clashes raged in the country's north, close to one of the sites where toxic agents are believed to be stored.
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| Google, Oracle, Red Hat to help fix HealthCare.gov Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:50 PM PDT  By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration said it has brought in experts from top technology companies including Google Inc and Oracle Corp to fix the HealthCare.gov website, as Republicans press for details about the botched October 1 launch that prevented millions of Americans from signing up for new insurance plans. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it had added dozens of technology experts and engineers to its round-the-clock effort to fix the technical glitches on the site that is key to the implementation of President Barack Obama's healthcare restructuring law. Giving some of the first details of who might be leading the tech fix, HHS officials identified two experts by name: Michael Dickerson, a website reliability engineer on leave from Google, and Greg Gershman, a Baltimore-based innovation director with the firm Mobomo and who previously worked for the White House and the General Services Administration. "We are doing everything we can to assist those contractors to make HealthCare.gov a highly performant, highly reliable, highly secure system." Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday in Redwood City, California.
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| Millions face food stamp cuts on Nov. 1 Posted: 31 Oct 2013 12:43 PM PDT  Currently, 1 in 7 American families rely on the benefits.
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| Halloween live blog: White House ghost stories Posted:  The best of the web for the holiday.
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| Justices reverse wrongful death Virginia Tech verdict Posted: 31 Oct 2013 07:56 AM PDT  RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The state Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a jury's wrongful death verdict against the state stemming from the April 16, 2007, killing of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
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| Prosecutor reviewing facts in Georgia gym mat death Posted: 31 Oct 2013 01:39 PM PDT  MACON, Ga. (AP) — A federal prosecutor said Thursday that he is conducting a formal review of facts and evidence in the death of a teenager whose body was found inside a rolled-up wrestling mat in his high school gym.
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| Cory Booker sworn in as U.S. senator Posted: 31 Oct 2013 11:46 AM PDT  Minutes after his swearing-in, Senator Booker cast his first vote.
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| Boy falls from Disneyland Paris pirate ride Posted: 31 Oct 2013 06:17 AM PDT  PARIS (AP) — A popular boat ride at Disneyland Paris is closed and under police examination after a 5-year-old boy suffered serious injuries in an accident.
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| Drink it while you can, as study points to looming wine shortage Posted: 31 Oct 2013 04:45 AM PDT  Attention wine lovers: savor every last sip, as researchers say there may be a global shortage looming. Wine prices could shoot up because of a fall in production and growing thirst for wine among Chinese and Americans, Morgan Stanley research said in a report Wednesday. But since then supply has fallen because of lower production capacity, slipping in 2012 to the lowest level in 40 years, the US bank said. Production capacity has dropped particularly in Europe, where today it is 10 percent lower than in 2005, especially in France, the world's top producer, followed by Italy and Spain.
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| Businessweek mocks Obamacare glitches Posted: 31 Oct 2013 07:31 AM PDT  Bloomberg Businessweek poked fun in its new issue at the tech problems that have plagued HealthCare.gov since it opened for business Oct. 1.
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| FAA tells air travelers to rock on Posted: 31 Oct 2013 01:59 PM PDT  Listeners won't have to power down during takeoffs and landings.
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| Court testimony reveals affair between two Murdoch editors Posted: 31 Oct 2013 07:49 AM PDT  Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, two former editors of Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid, were having an affair at the time their reporters are accused of hacking into phones, a court heard on Thursday. Prosecutor Andrew Edis said the closeness of their relationship showed that both knew as much as each other how staff at the tabloid were operating. "What Mr Coulson knew, Mrs Brooks knew too. What Mrs Brooks knew, Mr Coulson knew too," Edis told the court.
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| FAA allows passengers' gadget use Posted: 31 Oct 2013 12:41 PM PDT  Travelers will be able to use most electronics from gate-to-gate.
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| 'This call may be monitored': Snowden gets tech support job in Russia, report says Posted: 31 Oct 2013 04:11 AM PDT  MOSCOW (AP) — Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer for former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, says his client has found a technical support job at a Russian website.
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| Obamacare court challenge: Do corporations have religious freedom rights? Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:41 AM PDT  For-profit corporations could opt out of the law by asserting freedom of religion.
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| Watchdog: Syria has destroyed chemical production facilities Posted: 31 Oct 2013 02:01 PM PDT  By Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria has destroyed or rendered inoperable all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline in an ambitious disarmament program, the international chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which won the Nobel Peace prize this month, said its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. Syria "has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable," it said, meeting a November 1 deadline for the work. The next target date is November 15, by when the OPCW and Syria must agree to a detailed plan of destruction, including how and where to destroy more than 1,000 metric tonnes of toxic agents and munitions.
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