At least one American dead in Algerian hostage crisis

Updated at 6:41 p.m. ET

An American in the Algerian hostage standoff in the Algerian desert has been killed, CBS News has learned.

Fredrick Buttaccio from Katy, Texas near Houston, was an employee of the oil company BP. It is unknown how he died, but U.S. government sources tell CBS News his body has been recovered and his family has been notified.

Who are the terrorists that Islamic militants want freed?

Meanwhile, a U.S. military plane has landed in Amenas, Algeria to pick up nine passengers - one American and eight foreign nationals - to be transported to Landstuhl, Germany, a military source told CBS News.

The flight, which contains an air medical evacuation team, was expected to have departed Algeria by Thursday afternoon.

It's not clear exactly how many total casualties have resulted from the fighting, but Algeria's state news agency reported that 12 foreign and Algerian workers had died since the start of the operation, citing an unidentified security source. That information could not be independently confirmed.

As CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported, the freed hostages told of how they fled in the confusion as the Algerian army attacked. Many were injured, some badly. One person said: "It happened so fast."

But it hasn't ended quickly, reported Phillips. The Algerians say they've freed nearly a hundred foreigners. And as they were being bused away, many thanked their rescuers. "They kept us all nice and safe and fought off the bad guys," said another person.

Also, more detail of the ordeal has emerged with the freed hostages. Some say they had explosives hung around their necks as they were placed in a convoy of vehicles by their captors. When the cars began to move, the Algerian Army units surrounding the site feared the captives were being taken out of the compound -- and opened fire.

The al Qaeda-linked Masked Battalio, led from afar by Moktar Belmoktar, may still be holding some of the roughly 30 foreigners still unaccounted for.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not get into specifics on the crisis Friday afternoon, but described it as an "extremely difficult and dangerous situation" and called on the Algerian government to "preserve innocent life" in their efforts to fully resolve the crisis. Clinton spoke after the State Department said that Americans were still being held hostage.

The desert siege erupted Wednesday when the militants attempted to hijack two buses at the plant, were repulsed, and then seized the sprawling refinery, which is 800 miles south of Algiers. They had claimed the attack came in retaliation for France's recent military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighboring Mali, but security experts have said it must have taken weeks of planning to hit the remote site.

Since then, Algeria's government has kept a tight grip on information about the siege.

The militants had seized hundreds of workers from 10 nations at Algeria's remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. The overwhelming majority were Algerian and were freed almost immediately.

Algerian forces retaliated Thursday by storming the plant in an attempted rescue operation that left leaders around the world expressing strong concerns about the hostages' safety.

Militants claimed 35 hostages died on Thursday when Algerian military helicopters opened fire as the Islamists transported the hostages around the gas plant. While Algerian officials acknowledged some hostage deaths, the number could not be independently confirmed.

On Friday, trapped in the main refinery area, the militants offered to trade two American hostages for two prominent terror figures jailed in the United States. Those the militants sought included Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks and considered the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

But U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said there would be "no place to hide" for anyone who looks to attack the United States.

"Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere," Panetta said Friday.

Workers kidnapped by the militants came from around the world — Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians.

A high-resolution satellite image of the Amenas gas facility taken on Dec 7, 2012.

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GeoEye Satellite Image

World leaders have expressed strong concerns in the past few days about how Algeria was handing the situation and its apparent reluctance to communicate.

Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the plant. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.

A U.S. military C-130 transport plane flew a number of people including former Ain Amenas hostages from the Algerian capital of Algiers to a U.S. facility in Europe, a U.S. official said. He declined to be specific about the destination, their nationalities or the extent of the wounds that he said some had.

A flood of foreign energy workers were being evacuated from the North African nation amid security concerns.

BP evacuated one U.S. citizen along with other foreign energy workers from Algeria to Mallorca and then London. The oil giant said three flights left Algeria on Thursday, carrying 11 BP employees and several hundred energy workers from other companies.

A fourth plane was taking more people out of the country on Friday, BP said.

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One American Confirmed Dead in Algeria

U.S. officials told ABC News that at least one American has been killed in the hostage standoff at an Algerian gas plant, and the family of the deceased American has been notified.

An al Qaeda-linked group called the Masked Brigade and led by the one-eyed jihadi Mokhtar Belmokhtar raided the BP joint venture facility in In Amenas on Wednesday, taking an undetermined number of hostages from more than half a dozen nations, including at least two Americans.

On Friday, the group demanded the release of two convicted terrorists held in U.S. prisons, including the "blind sheikh" who helped plan the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, in exchange for the freedom of two American hostages, according to an African news service.

The terror group reportedly contacted a Mauritanian news service with the offer. In addition to the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they demanded the release of Aifia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who shot at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.

Asked about the unconfirmed report of a proposed swap, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said firmly, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists." She repeated the statement again when questioned further. She also said she was not prepared to get into any details about the status of Americans in "an ongoing hostage situation."

At least three Americans were being held hostage by the militants when the Algerian military mounted a rescue operation at the facility Thursday that reportedly resulted in casualties.

Five other Americans who were at the facility when it was attacked by the terrorists are now safe and believed to have left the country, according to U.S. officials.

Algeria Hostage Situation: Military Operation Mounted Watch Video

Reports that dozens of hostages were killed during the Algerian military's attempt to retake the compound have not been confirmed, though Algeria's information minister has confirmed that there were casualties. It's known by U.S. and foreign officials that multiple British, Japanese and Norwegian hostages were killed.

According to an unconfirmed report by an African news outlet, the militants said seven hostages survived the attack, including two Americans, one Briton, three Belgians and a Japanese national. U.S. officials monitoring the case had no information indicating any Americans have been injured or killed, but said the situation is fluid and casualties cannot be ruled out.

On Friday, a U.S. military plane evacuated between 10 and 20 people in need of medical attention, none of them American, from In Amenas and took them to an American medical facility in Europe. A second U.S. plane is preparing to evacuate additional passengers in need of medical attention.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament today that the terror attack "appears to have been a large, well coordinated and heavily armed assault and it is probable that it had been pre-planned."

"The terrorist group is believed to have been operating under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a criminal terrorist and smuggler who has been operating in Mali and in the region for a number of years," said Cameron.

Cameron said Algerian security forces are still in action at the facility. On Thursday, he said that the situation was "very bad … A number of British citizens have been taken hostage. Already, we know of one who has died. ... I think we should be prepared for the possibility for further bad news, very difficult news in this extremely difficult situation."

The kidnappers had earlier released a statement saying there are "more than 40 crusaders" held "including 7 Americans."

U.S. officials had previously confirmed to ABC News that there were at least three Americans held hostage at the natural gas facility jointly owned by BP, the Algerian national oil company and a Norwegian firm at In Amenas, Algeria.

"I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation," said Panetta. "I don't think there's any question that [this was] a terrorist act and that the terrorists have affiliation with al Qaeda."

He said the precise motivation of the kidnappers was unknown.

"They are terrorists, and they will do terrorist acts," he said.

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Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?

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Are we being too free with our genetic information? What if you started receiving targeted ads for Prozac for the depression risk revealed by your publicly accessible genome? As increasing amounts of genetic information is placed online, many researchers believe that guaranteeing donors' privacy has become an impossible task.

The first major genetic data collection began in 2002 with the International HapMap Project – a collaborative effort to sequence genomes from families around the world. Its aim was to develop a public resource that will help researchers find genes associated with human disease and drug response.

While its consent form assured participants that their data would remain confidential, it had the foresight to mention that with future scientific advances, a deliberate attempt to match a genome with its donor might succeed. "The risk was felt to be very remote," says Laura Lyman Rodriguez of the US government's National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Their fears proved to be founded: in a paper published in Science this week, a team led by Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used publicly available genetic information and an algorithm they developed to identify some of the people who donated their DNA to HapMap's successor, the 1000 Genomes Project.

Anonymity not guaranteed

Erlich says the research was inspired by a New Scientist article in which a 15-year-old boy successfully used unique genetic markers called short tandem repeats (STRs) on his Y chromosome to track down his father, who was an anonymous sperm donor. Erlich and his team used a similar approach.

First they turned to open-access genealogy databases, which attempt to link male relatives using matching surnames and similar STRs. The team chose a few surnames from these sources, such as "Venter",and then searched for the associated STRs in the 1000 Genomes Project's collection of whole genomes. This allowed them to identify which complete genomes were likely to be from people named Venter.

Although the 1000 Genome Project's database, which at last count had 1092 genomes, does not contain surname data, it does contain demographic data such as the ages and locations of its donors. By searching online phonebooks for people named Venter and narrowing those down to the geographic regions and ages represented in the whole genomes, the researchers were able to find the specific person who had donated his data.

In total, the researchers identified 50 individuals who had donated whole genomes. Some of these were female, whose identity was given away because of having the same location and age as a known donor's wife.

Matter of time

Before publishing their findings, the team warned the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions involved in the project about the vulnerability in their data. Rodriguez says that they had been anticipating that someone would identify donors, "although we didn't know how or when".

To prevent Erlich's method from being used successfully again, age data has been removed from the project's website. Erlich says that this makes it difficult, although not impossible, to narrow the surnames down to an individual.

"The genie's out of the bottle," says Jeffrey Kahn of Florida State University in Tallahassee. "It's a harbinger of a changing paradigm of privacy." A cultural zeitgeist led by companies such as Facebook has led to more information sharing than anyone would have thought possible back in 2002 when HapMap first began, he says.

Recurring problem

This is not the first time genome confidentiality has been compromised. When James Watson made his genome public in 2007, he blanked out a gene related to Alzheimer's. But a group of researchers successfully inferred whether he carried the risky version of this gene by examining the DNA sequences on either side of the redacted gene.

While someone is bound to find another way to identify genetic donors, says Rodriguez, the NIH believes it would be wrong to remove all of their genome data from the public domain. She says that full accessibility is "very beneficial to science", but acknowledges that the project needs to strike a careful balance between confidentiality and open access.

It is especially pertinent, says Kahn, because genetic data does not just carry information from the person from whom it was taken. It can also reveal the genetic details of family members, some of whom might not want that information to be public. A relative's genome might reveal your own disease risk, for example, which you might not want to know or have an employer learn of. While laws prohibit health insurers and employers from discriminating against people based on their genetic data, it would not be difficult to give another reason for denying you a job.

An individual's relatives could not prevent that individual from learning about themselves, says Rodriguez, but researchers should encourage would-be genome donors to discuss the risks and benefits with their families.

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Euro gains despite US economic data; yen loses

NEW YORK: The US dollar slipped against the euro Thursday despite encouraging US data on housing and jobs, while the yen slumped to new multi-year lows on speculation of new easing.

The euro benefited from more positive remarks from regional leaders and solid results of a Spanish bond auction, analysts said.

"The Euro rallied to 1.3376 as the European Central Bank and European Union President Herman Van Rompuy stirred hopes of seeing the euro-area return to growth in 2013, but optimism surrounding the single currency may fail to materialize as the debt crisis continues to drag on the real economy," said David Song of DailyFX.

Also helping was strong investor enthusiasm at a US$4.5 billion Spanish bond auction, pushing the troubled government's borrowing costs lower.

At 2200 GMT the euro was at US$1.3375, compared to US$1.3286 late Wednesday.

The US dollar failed to get a boost from a strong fall in weekly jobless claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, and a rebound in housing starts in December, showing sustained strength in the housing sector.

The yen meanwhile fell to a fresh 30 month low. The dollar topped the 90 yen level briefly before slipping back to 89.86 yen, compared to 88.37 a day earlier.

The euro rose to 120.20 yen, its best level since April 2011, up from 117.42 Wednesday.

David Gilmore of Foreign Exchange Analytics, said speculation was rising that the Bank of Japan could add to stimulus measures in its next policy meeting on January 21-22.

The British pound fell to US$1.5992 from US$1.6006, while the US dollar gained to 0.9322 Swiss francs from 0.9309 francs.

- AFP/jc

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His 2nd term, America's 2nd chance?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Reeling from the turmoil of the last four years, the country may be ready to regroup


• President Obama, adopting a more assertive posture, will need to still persuade a divided country to get things done


• The economy is improving, the nation's demographics are shifting and a new America is emerging

Washington (CNN) -- On the eve of the inauguration, President Barack Obama's second term may also be America's second chance.

The country, in the last four years, has been battered by an economic earthquake while trying to reconcile a debt load threatening to cripple the next generation.

It has been pulled apart by political extremism and the inability to compromise in Washington. The people have been divided -- by demographic shifts, cultural battles and clashes between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots.

So, days before the president's second inaugural, the nation, too, is set to regroup. What it does differently this time around and the decisions the people make, experts say, will speak to the kind of America that emerges during the next four years.

"The enormous promise that everyone felt four years ago, it isn't completely gone but we have diminished our horizons," said Robert Schmuhl, an American studies professor at the University of Notre Dame. "We have learned that we are now living in an era of limits." Obama is perhaps more keenly aware of this than most.

Hope and hurdles

The 44th President was ushered into the Oval Office by a wave of seemingly limitless optimism and buoyed by the historic nature of his presidency as the first African American elected to the lead the free world.

But once in office, he found his efforts to right an economy hobbled by high unemployment -- 10% at its worse in 2009 -- and home foreclosure rates -- one in 29 homes were in foreclosure between 2007 and 2012 -- were limited by the magnitude of the problem and the political realities of a partisan Congress.

His plan to reform the nation's healthcare system further expanded political divides in Washington and helped lead to huge losses among his party's moderates in the 2010 election.

His re-election this fall — due in no small part to demographic shifts that included large numbers of minorities and women — was quickly followed by a protracted and deeply partisan showdown over trimming the nation's debt.

"I think Obama has learned some things," said Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. "He's going to be unlike most second term presidents in that he will be far more assertive than he was in his first term. He will be stronger on pushback against some of the most extreme elements in the Republican House. He's willing to go to battle on the whole concept of getting the economy moving."

The public saw hints of that assertiveness on Monday during a surprise news conference, where he lashed out at Republicans in Congress for playing politics with the debt ceiling.

"We are not a deadbeat nation," Obama said during a nearly hour-long briefing from the East Room of the White House. It a newly combative tone, he called it "absurd" for the federal government not to pay "bills that have already been racked up" and said he will not negotiate "with a gun at the head of the American people."

From Obamacare to the economy to Sandy Hook

Over the next four years, the country will also get a chance to see whether the Affordable Care Act -- or "Obamacare" -- is a positive or negative step for the nation. In 2014, many of the most controversial provisions, including requiring individuals to either participate in a health insurance program or pay a penalty, take effect.

"We will see whether or not we have the strength within ourselves to figure out how we should deal with entitlement programs," Schmuhl said. "In a way, it's a period when the administration will be dealing with problems that are in process."

Obama's ability -- or failure -- to navigate all of this while coming off as a strong, levelheaded leader could help set the nation's tone for years to come.

"If the economy becomes more robust you will have no doubt he will point back and say see that's what I was doing," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and CNN contributor.

Reagan, Clinton faced similar issues

It's what happened when former President Ronald Reagan, who led the nation at a time when the country was reeling from a tough economy and just starting to get over the Vietnam War. In his second term "there was a sense America was moving in the right direction in terms of how it was doing around the globe," Zelizer said.

When former President Bill Clinton took office the economy wasn't doing well, but by the second term the economy was picking up, allowing him to deliver a balanced budget and ultimate surplus by the end of his presidency.

"There was clearly a shift in the mood," Zelizer said. "In both cases, the presidents were good at claiming credit for it."

Mood matters in the age of austerity

Everyday folks have learned to cut back and suck it up—some after finding themselves underwater on mortgages they could not afford to pay; others after losing jobs that their companies could no longer afford to keep.

So, Americans have been using their credit cards less and paying down debt more -- household debt as a percentage of disposable personal income is at its lowest rate in almost 30 years, according to the Federal Reserve and credit card balances had reached their lowest level in more than a decade.

And many expect the same discipline from their government.

"Americans will be realistic, just as those in government need to be realistic," Schmuhl said of citizens' likely approach to their own finances over the next four years.

But, as Obama enters his second term, both the housing and job markets have been on a slow and steady uptick. Housing sales were up 6% in 2012 -- the biggest gain since 2005, according to CoreLogic -- and the unemployment rate had dropped to 7.8% in December, although there are still 4.8 million Americans -- or 39.1% of the jobless -- classified as long-term unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Going into the second term, the fiscal situation will continue the agenda and the discussion," he said. "It will say a lot about us and where not only the government but the nation might be going. If it is difficult and, shall we say, fractured and there's a sense coming out of it that things are not working as they should my guess is that the public will begin saying: 'When will Washington work on our behalf?'"

Governing on a deadline

That sentiment was foreshadowed in the frustration over the down-to-the-wire, partisan political maneuvering as the last Congress sought to avert the fiscal cliff's steepest domestic spending cuts.

Obama appeared to prevail on that skirmish, delivering on a promise to raise tax rates on wealthy Americans -- although he shifted his definition of "wealthy" from those making $250,000 or more to those making $400,000 and up.

According to Pew Research Center and Gallup polls, Americans were none too impressed with how lawmakers handled the negotiations or the deal that was struck.

Some 41% of those polled disapproved of the deal, according to Pew, and 52% thought the deal would hurt people like them. In the Gallup poll, 67% - disapproved of congressional Republicans' handled the negotiations while 55% disapproved of how Democrats performed.

Still, partly due to deliberate redistricting to protect -- or create -- more partisan congressional districts, American voters continued to elect or re-elect safe representatives to do their bidding in Congress. For instance, most of the 435 members of the House of Representatives -- Republicans and Democrats -- faced little real opposition on Election Day in 2012.

Other battlegrounds: Sequester, gun control, immigration

But the next battle looms. Just weeks after Obama takes his oath of office, a new Congress will be tasked with addressing the automatic spending cuts, or sequester, that were kicked down the road in order to pass a smaller deal at the end of the year.

The new Congress will also consider raising the nation's debt ceiling, or the ability of the U.S. Treasury to borrow money to pay America's bills. Most agree that defaulting on the nation's obligations would be disastrous for America and the global economy, but some Republicans in Congress are starting to hint that they may be prepared to let that happen anyway if large spending cuts are not secured.

And after that, the fight over gun control, a high priority for the White House in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre, will pit the president against many members of the House and Senate from safe districts with high ratings and big-dollar donations from gun rights advocates.

The president and vice president unveiled a major plan on Wednesday that included 23 executive actions the president has ordered on his own, while urging the new Congress to take on the meaty issues of an assault weapons ban, limits on the number of bullets a gun magazine can hold, and other sweeping reforms the gun lobby and others say would gut the constitutional right to bear arms.

Immigration reform, another White House priority, will also stoke ideological differences and test the demographic shifts in Congress. For the first time, the House Democratic caucus is dominated by women and racial minorities, while the Republican caucus in that chamber is largely composed of white men. In the Senate, 20 women — the largest number in history — currently hold office.

But women and minorities are far outnumbered and outranked by white males on some of the most powerful congressional committees. And despite several high-ranking exceptions, Obama's Cabinet -- so far -- is shaping up to be largely male and white.

"The first thing we learned is that we're not post-race. That was a lot of willful imagining in '08 that his election would allow us to transcend these questions of race," said Mark Anthony Neal, a cultural and Black studies professor at Duke University. "The American electorate is looking different in terms of race and ethnicity and young folks being engaged. In 2016 our political realities will look more like our demographic realities."

And that's where the nation's shift over the next four years may be most visible.

But look first to the 2014 midterms and then the 2016 presidential election to see if the people signal continued frustration with the current regime -- in Congress and in the White House -- or demonstrate through the power of their vote that they feel the nation has finally turned the corner.

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Manti Te'o kept girlfriend myth alive after revelation

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te'o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

13 Photos

Manti Te'o

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned on Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn't she dead, she wasn't real.

On Thursday, a day after Te'o's inspiring, playing-through-heartache story was exposed as a bizarre lie, Te'o and Notre Dame faced questions from sports writers and fans about whether he really was duped, as he claimed, or whether he and the university were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.

Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel said the case has "left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naJive football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion."

Gregg Doyel, national columnist for CBSSports.com, was more direct.

"Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next," he wrote. "I cannot comprehend Manti Te'o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim."

On Wednesday, Te'o and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the player was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phony name Lennay Kekua, and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was via the Internet and telephone.

Te'o also lost his grandmother — for real — the same day his girlfriend supposedly died, and his role in leading Notre Dame to its best season in decades endeared him to fans and put him at the center of college football's biggest feel-good story of the year.

Relying on information provided by Te'o's family members, the South Bend Tribune reported in October that Te'o and Kekua first met, in person, in 2009, and that the two had also gotten together in Hawaii, where Te'o grew up.

Te'o never mentioned a face-to-face meeting with Kekua in public comments reviewed by the AP. And an AP review of media reports about Te'o since Sept. 13 turned up no instance in which he directly confirmed or denied those stories — until Wednesday.

Among the outstanding questions Thursday: Why didn't Te'o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own?

Te'o's agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at the IMG Academy.

Notre Dame said Te'o found out that Kekau was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.

Play Video

Manti Te'o's girlfriend hoax: How did it happen?

The AP's media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.

Te'o was in New York for the Heisman presentation on Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te'o said: "I mean, I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I've really tried to go to children's hospitals and see, you know, children."

In a story that ran in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., on Dec. 11, Te'o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekau died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.

"She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play," he said.

On Wednesday, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te'o family to come forward first. But Deadspin.com broke the story Wednesday.

Reporters were turned away Thursday at the main gate of IMG's sprawling, secure complex. Te'o remained on the grounds, said a person familiar with situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Te'o nor IMG authorized the release of the information.

"This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis. ... Given the choice between reality and fiction, Notre Dame always will choose fiction," sports writer Rick Telander said in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Which brings me to what I believe is the real reason Te'o and apparently his father, at least went along with this scheme: the Heisman Trophy.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass blasted both Te'o and Notre Dame.

"When your girlfriend dying of leukemia after suffering a car crash tells you she loves you, even if it might help you win the Heisman Trophy, you check it out," he said.

He said the university's failure to call a news conference and go public sooner means "Notre Dame is complicit in the lie."

"The school fell in love with the Te'o girlfriend myth," he wrote.

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Biden Confirms Support for Second Amendment

Jan 17, 2013 6:41pm

Alex Wong/Getty Images

One day after President Obama unveiled the administration’s plan to curb gun violence, Vice President Joe Biden today defended their intentions, answering critics who have spoken out against the plan for potentially infringing on the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

“The president and I support the Second Amendment,”  Biden said definitively.

Biden, who’s led the task force on gun violence since the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, noted that he owns guns.

“I have two shotguns, a 20-gauge and a 12-gauge shotgun,” he said. Later in the speech he said his son Beau was a better shot than he is but that is because Beau is in the Army.

Biden spoke today before the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors’ meeting in Washington, D.C. Not everyone in the audience, Biden noted today, agrees with recommendations the White House put forward yesterday. But he defended the administration’s move to push this issue, at one point addressing the roomful of mayors as if he were speaking to them individually, saying that “murder rates in both of our towns are …  well beyond … what’s remotely tolerable for a civilized circumstance.”

“We’re going to take this fight to the halls of Congress,” he said. “We’re going to take it beyond that. We’re going to take it to the American people. We’re going to go around the country making our case, and we’re going to let the voices, the voice, of the American people be heard. ”

Biden again noted that there will not be consensus across the nation, given cultural differences among the states. In many states, he added, hunting is  “big deal.”

But, he quipped, addressing the use of high-capacity magazines in hunting, “As one hunter told me, if you got 12 rounds — you got 12 rounds, it means you’ve already missed the deer 11 times. You should pack the sucker in at that point. You don’t deserve to have a gun, period, if you’re that bad.”

High-capacity ammunition magazines “leave victims with no chance,” Biden said.

He summed up saying, “Recognizing those differences doesn’t in any way negate the rational prospect of being able to come up with common-sense approaches how to deal with the myriad of problems that relate to gun ownership.”

Biden said the “time is now” to make these changes and scoffed at some alternative strategies, like the proposal from the NRA for an armed guard to be placed in every school.

“We don’t want rent-a-cops in schools armed,” he said. “We don’t want people in schools who aren’t trained like police officers.”

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NASA buys blow-up habitat for space station astronauts

NASA wants to blow up part of the International Space Station – and a Las Vegas firm is eager to help.

The US space agency has signed a $17.8-million contract with Bigelow Aerospace of Nevada to build an inflatable crew habitat for the ISS.

According to details released today at a press briefing , the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will launch in 2015. Astronauts on the ISS will test the module for safety and comfort.

BEAM will fly uninflated inside the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Once docked and fully expanded, the module will be 4 metres long and 3 metres wide. For two years astronauts will monitor conditions inside, such as temperature and radiation levels.

Bigelow hopes the tests done in orbit will prove that inflatable capsules are safe and reliable for space tourists and commercial research, an idea almost as old as NASA itself. The space agency began investigating the concept of expandable spacecraft in 1958. Space stations like this would be easier to launch and assemble than those with metal components, so would be cheaper. But research ended after a budget crunch in 2000, and Bigelow licensed the technology from NASA.

Stronger skin

The company has made progress, developing shielding that resists punctures from space debris and micrometeorites. BEAM's skin, for instance, is made from layers of material like Kevlar to protect occupants from high-speed impacts. The craft's skin has been tested in the lab alongside shielding used right now on the rest of the ISS, says Bigelow director Mike Gold.

"Our envelope will not only equal but be superior to what is flying on the ISS today. We have a strong and absolute focus on safety," he says.

And we have to be sure that inflatable craft are safe, says William Schonberg, an engineer specialising in orbital debris protection at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. "The overall risk to the ISS is the sum of the risks of its individual components," he says.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but a flexible, inflatable design is just as likely to survive punishment from space debris as metal shielding, says Schonberg. "Certain composite cloth materials have been shown to be highly effective as shields against [high-speed space] impacts. So depending on what material is used, and in what combination it is used with other materials – such as thermal insulation blankets – the final design could be just as effective and perhaps better than the more traditional all-metal shields used elsewhere on the station."

Gold hopes BEAM will also demonstrate that fabric shielding can limit radiation risks. This is a major worry on missions to the moon or an asteroid say, where astronauts have to spend weeks or months outside Earth's protective magnetic field.

High-energy particles called cosmic rays constantly fly through the solar system, and when they strike metal shielding, they can emit secondary radiation in the form of X-rays. This doesn't happen with Kevlar-based fabric shields and so expandable habitats could be more desirable for travellers heading deeper into space, says Gold.

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Cricket: Warne faces new ban

SYDNEY: Australian veteran Shane Warne is facing a new ban for an alleged breach of the spirit of the game in a domestic Twenty20 match, Cricket Australia said Thursday.

The bowling great apologised last week after a foul-mouthed rant against West Indian all-rounder Marlon Samuels that earned him a ban and a fine in Australia's Big Bash League.

But in Wednesday night's semi-final Warne, the official Melbourne Stars skipper, was not listed as captain for the match they lost against Perth Scorchers.

Cricket Australia said they had recently sent a memo to BBL teams about the captaincy role.

"If a team's official captain is selected but not named as captain, this will be considered against the spirit of cricket and may attract a code of behaviour charge," CA said.

"Warne has been reported for breaching CA's code of behaviour," it said.

The time and date of Warne's hearing was yet to be fixed.

The 43-year-old spinner, who was banned for one match and fined A$4,500 over the Samuels row, claimed 708 Test wickets in a celebrated career.

But he has also courted controversy, notably when he was fined for accepting money from a bookmaker and sent home from the 2003 World Cup for taking a banned diuretic.

- AFP/jc

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U.S. regulators ground Dreamliners over fire risk

By Aaron Cooper, CNN

updated 7:32 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2013

This battery was involved in a fire aboard a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 January 7 in Boston.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: A veteran pilot calls the grounding a prudent move


• FAA grounds Dreamliners for battery fix


• The move follows an emergency landing in Japan and another incident in Boston


• United is the only U.S. carrier to fly the 787 and says it will comply

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. regulators Wednesday ordered airlines to stop flying their Boeing 787s until they can show they've fixed a fire risk linked to battery failures aboard the closely watched Dreamliners.

The move by the Federal Aviation Administration follows an emergency landing in Japan that prompted that country's two major airlines to ground their fleets of 787s, and a similar problem aboard a Dreamliner on the ground in Boston nine days earlier.

"The battery failures resulted in release of flammable electrolytes, heat damage, and smoke on two Model 787 airplanes," the FAA announced Wednesday evening. "The root cause of these failures is currently under investigation. These conditions, if not corrected, could result in damage to critical systems and structures, and the potential for fire in the electrical compartment."

The only U.S. carrier to operate the eagerly awaited, long-delayed jetliner is United Airlines, which said earlier Wednesday that it had inspected its fleet of six 787s and would continue flying them. United spokeswoman Christen David said Wednesday evening that the airline would comply with the order "and will work closely with the FAA and Boeing on the technical review."

The FAA noted that its directive also signals international aviation authorities to take "parallel action" regarding their own airlines.

Since July, the growing list of reported troubles aboard the Dreamliner include a fuel leak, an oil leak, two cracked engines, a damaged cockpit window and a battery problem. The FAA announced a safety review of the aircraft last week.

In the most serious incident so far, an All Nippon Airlines 787 with 129 people aboard made an emergency landing after a battery alarm Wednesday morning. Those on board reported a burning smell in the cabin, and an alarm indicated smoke in a forward electrical compartment.

Hours later, ANA and Japan Airlines announced that they were grounding their Dreamliners pending an investigation. A maintenance worker discovered an electrical fire aboard an empty Japan Airlines 787 slated for departure from Logan International Airport in Boston on January 7.

There was no immediate response from Boeing, which saw its stock take a beating after the incident in Japan. But Boeing chief engineer Mike Sinnett expressed confidence in the battery system after last week's incident in Boston, "I am 100% convinced the airplane is safe to fly. I fly on it all the time."

Asked last week whether he would consider grounding the jets, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said there was "nothing in the data" that suggested the Dreamliner was unsafe.

Longtime commercial pilot and industry analyst Patrick Smith said the battery issue did not appear to be a major problem, but called the FAA order "a positive and pro-active step."

"I don't think that it was dangerous for the plane to be flying, but it probably wasn't the best thing to be flying it on the heels of this latest emergency landing in Japan," Smith said.

"All airplanes have their teething problems, and this was trending in a bad direction," he added. "Now the authorities have said, 'Stop,' and that's a good thing."

CNN's Mike M. Ahlers and Thom Patterson contributed to this report.

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