NASA marks 10th anniversary of Columbia disaster

Evelyn Husband-Thompson, widow of Columbia Commander Rick Husband, remembers the fallen crew and the devastating impact of the 2003 disaster in a ceremony Friday at the Space Mirror Memorial honoring fallen astronauts.(Credit:William Harwood/CBS News)In an emotional memorial service, the widow of the shuttle Columbia's commander recalled their last meeting the day before launch and the devastation...

Read More..

Clinton's legacy: Smart power, celebrity status

(CBS News) After four years as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was officially replaced by Sen. John Kerry Friday. An improbable pick after a tough primary battle with Barack Obama back in 2008, Clinton has used her celebrity status around the world to make changes both at home and abroad. John Kerry sworn in as secretary of state In a heartfelt goodbye to thousands of State Department employees...

Read More..

Ala. Standoff: Students Say Suspect Threatened to Kill

A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board."I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like,...

Read More..

Turkish leftist group claims U.S. embassy bombing: website

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish leftist group DHKP-C claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, according to a statement on a website close to the group. "Our warrior Alisan Sanli carried out an act of self-sacrifice on Feb 1, 2013, by entering the Ankara embassy of the United States, murderer of the peoples of the world," the statement on...

Read More..

Football: Beckham's arrival creates headache for PSG coach

PARIS: The unveiling of David Beckham as a Paris Saint-Germain player was undoubtedly a major media event and marketing ploy but what can the Englishman, now 37, actually offer on the pitch?The fact that Beckham has signed only a five-month contract indicates that football is not the priority, especially as the French season finishes in mid-May and the player has admitted that he will...

Read More..

BlackBerry teases Super Bowl ad with colorful, um, something

Is Alicia Keys somewhere in there?(Credit:BlackBerry)You know it's going to be wonderful. Or terrible. Or just dull.Yes, I'm talking about the Super Bowl. But I'm also talking about BlackBerry's new ad for its Z10 smartphone that will debut during Sunday's game.BlackBerry doesn't have a florid history with respect to advertising. Can you even remember one BlackBerry ad that moved you to anything other...

Read More..

Cell users complain: Too many Amber Alerts

LOS ANGELES The next time a child is abducted near you, your cell phone may shriek to life with an alert message. A new national Amber Alert system officially rolled out earlier this month to millions of cell phones, and because the alerts are automatically active on most newer phones, the messages have already taken tens of thousands of people by surprise. The newly-expanded emergency alert system...

Read More..

Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled

The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan...

Read More..

Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber from a far-left group killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street. The attacker blew himself up inside U.S. property, Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall and could be heard a mile away....

Read More..

Govt completes review of SMEs

SINGAPORE: The government has completed a review of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore and new initiatives for the sector will be unveiled in the upcoming Budget announcement.This is according to Minister of State for Trade and Industry Mr Teo Ser Luck who was speaking at the 26th Singapore 1000 Awards dinner on Friday evening.Mr Teo said the review was conducted against...

Read More..

BlackBerry 10.1: What we want to see next

BlackBerry Z10: Not your father's BlackBerryBlackBerry (formerly RIM) may have just lifted the lid on its completely overhauled BlackBerry 10 OS for mobile devices, but CNET has been testing the heck out of the OS and Z10 smartphone for over a week now. There are elements that we love and elements that we frankly think the smartphone-maker could have done better.So three of us who have spent time...

Read More..

Child-hostage taker, Ala. police keep up standoff

Updated at 12:10 p.m. ET MIDLAND CITY, Ala. A standoff in rural Alabama went into a third day as police surrounded an underground bunker where authorities said a retired truck driver was holding a 5-year-old hostage he grabbed off a school bus after shooting the driver dead. A normally quiet dirt road was teeming with activity Thursday around the siege that began late Tuesday. More than a dozen...

Read More..

Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage

An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.Dykes...

Read More..

Syrian rebels make slow headway in south

AMMAN (Reuters) - The revolt against President Bashar al-Assad first flared in Deraa, but the southern border city now epitomizes the bloody stalemate gripping Syria after 22 months of violence and 60,000 dead. Jordan next door has little sympathy with Assad, but is wary of spillover from the upheaval in its bigger neighbor. It has tightened control of its 370-km (230-mile) border with...

Read More..

Goodyear says French plant with over 1,100 staff set to close

PARIS: Executives at a Goodyear tyre plant in Amiens, northern France, unveiled on Thursday a plan to close the site, which employs 1,173 workers."Closing the factory is the only option after five years of unsuccessful negotiations," said a French-language statement, which added that the plan had been presented to a works committee and would be the basis of talks with workers' representatives.Henry...

Read More..

BackBlaze iPhone app gives access to online backups

Backblaze's iOS app gives access to an account holder's backed-up PC files.(Credit:Backblaze)Backblaze, an online backup start-up, announced plans to release an iPhone app in coming weeks to let customers tap into their files."Having restored 2.5 billion files for our customers, we found that 22 percent of recoveries contained a single file and realized customers were using Backblaze to access their...

Read More..

Possible suspect for NYC mom missing in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey Turkish police on Wednesday were trying to trace a contact who apparently corresponded with a New York City woman through social networking sites before she went missing, an official said. Undated photo of Sarai Sierra/Facebook Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old mother of two from Staten Island, N.Y., has been missing since Jan. 21 when she was supposed to return home from a solo vacation...

Read More..

Giffords to Senate: 'Americans Are Counting on You'

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose congressional career was ended by a bullet wound to her head, opened a Senate hearing on gun violence today by telling the panel, "Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important."She told the Senate to be "courageous" because "Americans are counting on you."Giffords sat alongside her astronaut husband Mark Kelly as...

Read More..

Merkel urges Egypt's Mursi to hold crisis dialogue

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Egypt's Islamist president on Wednesday to open a dialogue with all political forces in the crisis-ridden Arab country after a week of violence that has killed more than 50 people. President Mohamed Mursi flew to Germany to try to convince Europe of his democratic credentials, but in a sign of the political tensions back home,...

Read More..

Pakistan approves port transfer to China

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday approved a deal transferring from Singapore to China the management of the strategically located deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.China provided about 75 percent of the initial $250 million in funding for the construction of the port in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan.It is currently being operated by Singapore's PSA International,...

Read More..

Best photo apps for Android

Snapseed (free)Snapseed is not your typical one-dimensional, tap-to-apply photo-editing app. No, this Google-made download is aimed at more discerning photographers who need to get granular in their adjustments. You can use Snapseed to adjust photographic attributes like color levels, saturation, brightness, white balance, contrast, and more. Plus, the app lets you perform basics like straightening,...

Read More..

Report: A-Rod, Cruz, Gonzalez linked to PED probe

New York Yankees' $275 million man Alex Rodriguez, Washington Nationals All-Star Gio Gonzalez and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz are among the players connected to performance-enhancing drugs in a new investigative report by the Miami New Times. A former employee of a South Florida clinic called Biogenesis gave the Miami New Times "an extraordinary batch of records" showing athletes received...

Read More..

Obama's Immigration Plan to Have More Direct Path

President Barack Obama is expected to lay out his principles for immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas today that will include a potentially quicker path to citizenship than the bipartisan plan a group of senators unveiled earlier this week.The president will offer some new details about the White House's immigration reform plan, which expands on a blueprint it released in...

Read More..

Army warning: unrest pushing Egypt to brink

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief said political strife was pushing the state to the brink of collapse - a stark warning from the institution that ran the country until last year as Cairo's first freely elected leader struggles to contain bloody street violence. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a U.S.-trained general appointed by President Mohamed Mursi last year to head the armed forces,...

Read More..